WI: Roman Victory at Cannae

Let's say the weight of the Roman infantry on his middle breaks the Gauls, and they flee throwing caution to the wind. Hannibal, assuming he gets away, is forced to pull his men out after many casualties. How does this affect the rest of the Second Punic War? Does it take less time to defeat Carthage? Would it still take a huge defeat to do it?

EDIT: From Roman Cavalry to Infantry
 
You have to work on how Hannibal can lose this battle. Cannae was the perfect trap. The roman army then did not have the manoeuvering flexibility to adapt to the qualities of the carthaginian army in a pitched battle.

That's precisely why Fabius Maximus, who had perfectly understood it, advocated what was called the Fabian strategy.

And Rome can't make its military reform in a blink. It took Scipio Africanus several years of warfare in Spain to train his army to manipular tactics.

So this is ASB.

You should rather have Rome stick to the Fabian strategy instead of going to fight at Cannae.
 
I don't think it's ASB to have Rome win at Cannae. Really, you just need them to adopt a more spread out formation, rather than making it more compact than usual. Basically, have the formation spread out much wider than the Carthaginian formation in front of them. They have the numbers to do it and it doesn't take any military innovation to do it. It's hard to be encircled when you are pushing hard on the flanks as well as in the middle.

That said, we have to remember Hannibal chose this battle. He chose it knowing exactly how the Romans were planning to fight. So with that in mind, if the Romans are adopting a different strategy, Hannibal's not going to fight. He's shown in the past and in the future that he could escape virtually any attempt to pin him down, so they can't force him to fight. He's only going to fight on his terms.

So if anything, Hannibal's just going to win another ambush battle as the Roman consuls get less patient and more careless in their eagerness to win a battle against Hannibal before their term is up. More importantly, Rome will still think they can defeat Hannibal in a conventional battle, a fiction that won't be shattered yet like it was at Cannae. So in a couple years you probably have TTL's equivalent of Cannae occur. And that would actually have far worse consequences than OTL's Cannae for Rome. Rome'd likely have to abandon their campaign in Spain as well (they'll desperately need the veterans in Spain) and that frees up Hasdrubal to head to Italy much earlier than OTL.
 
I disagree because if Rome sticks to the Fabian strategy, Hannibal is not going to be aboe to wait for several years for a pitched battle. The Fabian strategy led Hannibal to defeat by attrition and Hannibal, like Fabius, perfectly understood it.

Rome had almost endless human ressources. It was able to form several armies to harass Hannibal and it worked.

Hannibal needed continued roman strategic stupidity to have a chance of victory. Otherwise his plan was doomed from the start because either he had not understood the nature and strength of Rome's control of central Italy of, if he had understood it, he voluntarily played poker with a weaker hand against a much ficher player.
 
I disagree because if Rome sticks to the Fabian strategy, Hannibal is not going to be aboe to wait for several years for a pitched battle. The Fabian strategy led Hannibal to defeat by attrition and Hannibal, like Fabius, perfectly understood it.

Rome had almost endless human ressources. It was able to form several armies to harass Hannibal and it worked.

Hannibal needed continued roman strategic stupidity to have a chance of victory. Otherwise his plan was doomed from the start because either he had not understood the nature and strength of Rome's control of central Italy of, if he had understood it, he voluntarily played poker with a weaker hand against a much ficher player.
Yes, but Rome's not going to stick to the Fabian strategy until they have a Cannae like defeat. So if anything, Hannibal defeating Rome in another ambush rather than in a pitched Cannae-like battle might be beneficial to him. Rome will still think "if we can just get him in a pitched straight up fight, we'll win" and still push for that fight. That allows Hannibal to achieve a Cannae a couple years later, which has even more devastating effects for Rome than OTL.
 
Top