How Did Hannibal Win The Roman Army

Hannibal was a Carthaginian general who is considered to be one of the most talented and able field commanders. Although the military strategies that were used during this time were few and far between, Hannibal, who would fight like no other, would use his wits to outsmart the Romans in many battles. Hannibal could be called the general who won the battle and lost the war because of his new military formation that would win the Battle of Cannae, his Hellenistic approach to war and his tactics that would later be used against him to end the Second Punic War. Hannibal began the Second Punic War when he attacked the city of Saguntum, which was a Roman ally, and then continued on his conquest and "terrified the Romans by marching troops and war elephants over the Alps into Italy", through northern Italy and into Roman territory, capturing cities along the way (Hunt, Martin, Rosenwein & Smith, 2012). Once Hannibal had taken all of northern Italy, the Roman senate felt as though he would continue to march to Rome, and although the Roman army was present, they were doing little more than preventing Hannibal from completing his plans through strategy rather than engagement. When the Battle …show more content…
The focus for Hannibal was to fight and win battles so that the leaders of the losing side would see that there was so much more to lose than there was to gain by continuing to fight. Hannibal believed that because he was able to win so many battles that the Romans would be forced to negotiate, and this kept him from pursuing additional attacks on Rome. Continued attacks on Rome were unnecessary in Hannibal's mind, but when the Romans refused to negotiate after the Battle of Cannae, Hannibal's plan began to fail because the number of his troops and supplies were diminishing and he could not expect Roman allies to join