The Ancients - Hannibal: Battle by the Trebia

Episode Date: January 7, 2021

It’s 218 BC, and Hannibal has made the mammoth journey across the Alps en route to Italy, accompanied by his army, their horses, and their elephants. But the real battle is yet to come, and in this fantastic second episode with Louis Rawlings, he takes us onto the battlefield with the Carthaginian army and into the fight against their Roman and Allied opposition. Louis and Tristan discuss the strengths and weaknesses of each side, and the tactics deployed under Hannibal’s remarkable leadership.

Hi, I'm Tristan Hughes, and if you would like The Ancients ad-free, get early access and bonus episodes, sign up to History Hit. With a History Hit subscription, you can also watch hundreds of hours of original documentaries, including my recent documentary all about Petra and the Nabataeans, and enjoy a new release every week. Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com slash subscribe. by visiting historyhit.com slash subscribe. It's the Ancients on History Hit. I'm Tristan Hughes, your host,

and in today's podcast we are continuing our chat about Hannibal with Dr Louis Rowlings from the University of Cardiff. Now, the first part of this podcast aired just before Christmas and it focused on the outbreak of the Second Punic War between Carthage and Rome and Hannibal's famous intrepid crossing of the Alps with his army and his elephants. Now we are continuing the story. It is late in 218 BC. Hannibal has just finished crossing the Alps. He has reached Cisalpine Gaul, what is now northern Italy in the Po River Valley, and his army is in need of replenishing. But the Romans are there and they are growing stronger. This would ultimately culminate in

one of the great set-piece battles of Hannibal's career, fought in December 218 BC on the snowy fields near the ice-cold waters of the River Trebia. And it is this battle that is the climax to this podcast. Without further ado, here's Louis. So Louis, as you've been saying, he's got across the Alps. I'm astonished by actually, it sounds like it's actually not that long that he's doing the Alps journey as it were, but it's incredibly hard on him and his men. It takes him a few days to resupply his troops, but also I'm guessing, to replenish because he's lost a lot of men in the crossing too.

Yes, there are various figures that we're given about Hannibal's army. The army in Spain, according to Livy and Polybius, and there are some differences with the ancient sources, but the whole Carthaginian army in Spain is about 102,000 men. Hannibal leaves about half of that in Spain as a garrison with his brother Hasdrubal to hold on to the territories that they control, to deal with the Romans if they turn up. And he takes around about, well, we're given the figure, 59,000 across the Pyrenees. There appear to be desertions. One of the things that Hannibal does at the very beginning of the campaign, before he's even left Spain, is to send everyone on vacation for a couple of weeks

after he's sacked Saguntum. He gives them some time off, and any that don't want to come back don't have to, essentially. So he already winnows out the ones who have had enough. But nevertheless, the journey is pretty tough on his army in terms of desertion even so he crosses the Pyrenees with say 59,000 by the time he gets to the Rhone and he hasn't had many difficulties his army is down to 38,000 infantry and about 8,000 cavalry so he's down to 46,000 so 13,000 have disappeared somewhere along the way whether they've been left with garrisons whether they've been frittered away in some other way, they've deserted, or they've just got foot sores and not caught up. We don't know. So he's already losing a significant amount.

By the time he gets to Italy, this army of 46,000 is a mere 26,000. So he has 20,000 infantry and 6,000 cavalry left. Polybius asserts that this is the figure because Hannibal tells him. Hannibal, in an inscription which he left in southern Italy at the very end of the war, some 16 years later, gave these figures and said that he arrived in Italy with only 26,000 men. So Polybius believes this figure there are other figures out there there's some of the less reliable sources say that he actually arrived with 90 000 men which seems almost impossible because by the time we get to the battle of trebia he has around about 40 000 men if we go with polybius and he's got 26 000 men when he first arrives in poor condition and he

may not have enough good quality horses he does still seem to have all 37 elephants so far as we're not told that he loses any he may have but we assume that he still has all 37 by the time he gets down the alps which is a remarkable feat as well given how much elephants eat and how dangerous the crossing was one of the interesting things about the british data collection in the 1940s 50s is that actually elephants are pretty good at walking in mountains and they have very big padded hills which allows them actually to walk on rough terrain without getting very foot sore they're also incredibly well practiced at walking they've been walking all their lives from battle to battle all over spain and back again dealing with iberian tribes

and then they've crossed the pyrenees already so that yeah they're just used to walking these things and one of the things that we should remember is hannibal's army is lean and mean in that respect they are very well accustomed to marching long distances and doing it quite quickly one of the marks of a great general is how quickly your army is able to march with its supplies the hannibal's is up there with Alexander's in terms of swiftness and much faster than many of their contemporary opponents armies so Hannibal has got to Italy with quite a small force an exhausted force as you say and it needs to be replenished but he also has to deal with a relatively lukewarm reception from the Gauls although the Gauls are receptive the very local tribe of the Taurini, who are based around Turin, aren't very happy about having Hannibal turn up at their doorstep

and oppose him. So the first thing he does, once his armies finally finish rubbing the cold out of their bones, is to take the Taurini on, to defeat them in battle, sack their city, kill anyone who they catch, plunder the place replace their footwear you know do whatever they need in terms of supplies get some more vinegar all that sort of stuff maybe some actual wine as well olive oil they get their hands on i would imagine all these sorts of things they get hold of to set themselves up for the winter also to persuade the other gallic tribes that they're not to be trifled with and that they should abide by their request to kind of join Hannibal. So demonstrating the potency of even his much reduced force gives the Gauls an opportunity to come to him and recognise his

power and prowess. He is a man who's going to be taking the Romans on. How does it therefore lead, Louis, from this pretty brutal start in northern Italy? Hannibal is there. He's making clear that his army is now there. How do the Romans respond? And then how does this lead all the events to eventually end up at the Battle of the River Trebia at the end of 218 BC? So the Romans had known that Hannibal was coming, obviously, because Scipio had found out when he was at Marseilles. He made a very momentous decision. He sent the army on to complete its mission, which is to

basically contest Spain with whatever's left of Hannibal's and the Barca's forces. So over the next few years, Scipio's brother, Gnaeus, takes the army and engages with Hasdrubal's forces in Spain. So that's one thing. The second thing is that Scipio sails back to northern Italy and rounds up the legions that had been waging war against the Gauls. So actually one of the ironic things about the whole campaign is that the Gauls being provoked into attacking Placentia and Cremona early on meant that there were Roman forces there for Scipio to actually hoover up and put together as an army, which is... otherwise there wouldn't have been much of a force there. It would all have gone to Spain. But Scipio was able to grab this force, which is actually the force that he was originally allocated. And when the revolt broke out in the

north, it was sent there under a lesser commander and Scipio was given license to raise new troops to center Spain so it is actually ironically the force that he would have had anyway if the Gauls had not revolted just in the right place at the right time now for him so he gathers together three legions it seems and he gathers together a whole range of allies from the rest of Italy but also he gathers allies from the Gauls. You might find this quite strange. The Gauls themselves have recently been fighting terrible wars against the Romans and some pretty stiff defeats they'd received at the hands of these Romans. And yet they were then immediately absorbed and enlisted into the Roman army.

There are various Gallic tribes. Some are more friendly to the Romans than others. Some caved in quite quickly and were given lenient terms. Those are the kinds of people that the Romans relied on predominantly. The Canomani were the particular tribe. There's also a tribe called the Veneti as well, who don't seem to send that many troops to this engagement, this campaign. Nevertheless, they are important because they hold the flank, as it were, of the Romans. The Romans can operate with these friendly tribes in the rear. But when it comes to hostile and recently defeated tribes it's actually really quite

interesting that both the Carthaginians and the Romans are able to integrate defeated enemies into their armies very quickly. So when Hamilcar invaded Spain he wins a battle very early on against a large tribal confederacy. The survivors of that army are immediately employed by him, and he then uses them to conquer their own tribes and other tribes as well. It seems to be something that these warriors are quite happy to do. If there's a big man out there who's a successful general who hands out booty and pay, then they're quite happy to serve with them. The Romans are maybe a little bit distrustful of the Gauls, but they call upon them anyway.

So Scipio marches out with a sort of confederate force of Italians and Gauls and Romans to challenge Hannibal as quickly as he possibly can. Obviously, there are Gallic tribes who are being receptive to Hannibal. Scipio's presence dampens down the Gallic resolve, and so Hannibal doesn't receive as many reinforcements as he might have done initially. So by the time we get to the first engagement between the Romans and Carthaginians at the river Ticinus, which is a river that feeds into the upper Po to the west of the plains, we have Gauls on both sides. Some Gauls have joined Hannibal. So Hannibal's 26,000 troops had now risen to about 40,000. So he must have had about 10,000 Gallic infantry, about 4,000 cavalry added to him,

because we know that at the Battle of Trebia, he will have around 40,000 men. And we have Gallic tribesmen fighting for Scipio as well. The first encounter takes place at Ticinus and is a cavalry and skirmisher engagement. So Scipio is just trying to find out where Hannibal is and try to work out what kind of force he's got. He'd done quite well in that skirmish on the River Rhone when his scouts had beaten the Numidian scouts. So he had some optimism that his horsemen were pretty good. Not the same horsemen because those had gone to Spain, but nevertheless Roman horsemen were mostly aristocrats. They trusted in their own abilities. But he also had Latin horsemen and Campanian horsemen and other cavalry, and also Gallic cavalrymen as well,

who were pretty good with him. He also takes with him most of his light infantry. So the Roman infantry forces, the legions, are divided into three main heavy infantry categories the hastati who are the sort of frontline troops the principes who are the troops that form a middle line and then the triaria at the back the triaria old men old veterans in their 30s the principes are in the prime of their life in the 20s and the hastati are the youngest but the very youngest are actually the velites the light infantry who constitute about a quarter of each legion so they're not an insubstantial number and along with those he has Gallic light infantry and presumably there are Italian light infantry as well although we're never told that the allies contribute light infantry but they

must have he has about 6, 000 of those so with his 4 000 odd cavalry and 6 000 infantry he goes out and contests the plain of ticinus in the river of ticinus with hannibal's cavalry force which is around about 10 000 men by now or maybe 8 to 10 000 and the battle is actually a hallmark of what hannibal's tactics will be so hannibal has heavy troops line troops as it were, the ones that are going to do melee fighting in the centre and on the flanks his lighter troops are going to try and envelop the enemy's flanks. In this battle it's his light cavalry who are predominantly Numidian cavalry from North Africa who are excellent horsemen who have been overhyped

I think perhaps in modern scholarship a little bit. They are certainly extremely good for what they are which is skirmishers and scouts and raiders and that sort of thing and they are really good at melting away and forming amorphous blobs that make it very difficult for conventional cavalry forces to deal with. So he's got Namidians on both flanks which take on the Gallic cavalry on the wings hannibal's heavy cavalry in the center actually charges very quickly into the velites who are acting as a screen in front of the roman cavalry and drive them through the roman cavalry and create an enormous muddle and this gives hannibal's heavy cavalry a real advantage in in the melee that cut that follows the roman cavalry breaks it's in the vellet it scatters the light infantry is caught

by the flanking forces and is cut to pieces as well scipio himself is wounded in the battle and his son the famous scipio africanus of the battle of zarmat is actually present at this battle he's only aged 16 or 17 years old and there's a story in Polybius who tells it from the perspective of Scipio's best friend Lilius because Polybius talked to Lilius directly that the young 16 year old with his own bodyguard rode out and saved his father as he was being surrounded and only had a couple of the cavalrymen left and got him off the battlefield so Scipio the consul is wounded the young Scipio is lauded but it's basically the Roman cavalry has been mauled it's taken lots of casualties amongst the light

infantry the Gauls on its side have scattered and thought don't like this these Carthaginian cavalrymen are pretty hot so that sets the tone for the Carthaginian advantage in the entire war in Italy which is the quality of hannibal's cavalry is actually really exceptional and is really strong it's numerous and it's also incredibly potent when it comes to fighting so to see this is a really important conflict for demonstrating that it also takes scipio more or less out of the game when it comes to command and control. Scipio's army limps back to Placentia and then after some more manoeuvres it is joined by the other Roman army that the Romans had raised at the beginning of 218. So Sempronius Longus had been planning invasion of

Africa but because Hannibal had come back and because Hannibal mauls Scipio's army in the north, Sempronius is recalled by the Romans and told to head north to help out the defence of Italy. So Hannibal's plan, the strategic overall plan for the war management, has worked. It stopped an invasion of Africa, which could have ended the war really quickly. If the Carthaginians caved in in Africa, then it's all over. So that part of the plan has worked brilliantly the plan to defeat any roman defenses in the north initially is on track unfortunately there is this spanish army heading to spain which proves to be a real thorn in the carthaginian side for much of the rest of the war but it's all going really well

but now we're really getting into winter. The Battle of Ticinus is probably the end of November, towards the end of November, and it takes Sempronius around 40 days. So the timing's quite odd, but it looks like Sempronius was recalled before the Battle of Ticinus because Scipio's force is more or less scratch-built in the north. Scipio's force is more or less scratch built in the north but he is able to get to Scipio's force in 40 days according to the sources from Sicily so he sails along the coast and probably sails along the Adriatic coast and assembles his force at Ariminum at Rimini and then marches up into the Poe plains and along the Poe to join Scipio's force prior to the Battle of Trebia

on or around the solstice in December. And so we've got the Romans on one side of the River Trebia and Longus has just met up with Scipio. And on the other side of the river, we've got Hannibal's army encamped. Hannibal wants a battle, but do the Romans want a battle too? That's a very interesting question. So the sources reflect an interesting debate in the high command. So Scipio himself, having been wounded and seen

the quality of Hannibal's cavalry, thinks we need a bit of time. We've got two armies here who don't know how to cooperate. They've been sent separately. They haven't had months to march around and basically get used to each other. We could do with some training. We could do with some drilling. We should do with some practice. So we should spend the winter just getting to know one another, getting to work out how we're going to defeat these Carthaginians and their incredibly powerful cavalry. Also, there's this Roman stereotype that Gauls are quite fickle,

that if Hannibal hangs around and does nothing, achieves nothing, then the Gauls are just going to get fed up and go home. Whether believe that or not is moot it's what the sources think and it's this lovely stereotype that the Gauls are really quite headstrong at the beginning of battles but then they get fed up they run out of puff and that's the same goes for campaigns as well whenever we get a description of Gallic campaigning it always is an impetuous rush followed by a bit of exhaustion and then they will freak out and go home so Scipio's plan is basically to let Hannibal's support frizzle out if he doesn't have an early major victory and if the Roman army stays in being through the winter Hannibal is going to run out of supplies he's going to run out of support and Scipio's and Longinus army is going to just get stronger so that's Scipio's perspective Longinus' army is going to just get stronger. So that's Scipio's perspective.

Sempronius, however, is on a clock. He's consul for a year and he was due an invasion and a glorious battle somewhere in Africa. And he's not had one. And he needs to basically win a victory for his own glory and his own family reputation. And for the booty as well that he will accrue and acquire and he just needs a victory so he disagrees with Scipio and he says look we're twice as strong now as we were when you lost your battle let's just get stuck in and let's see to this Carthaginian we fought Carthaginian armies in the past and you know they're not so hot so his impression

is amplified by an event that happens soon after he arrives which is that Hannibal has been raiding for supplies and also to overawe various local Gallic tribes and they call on Sopronius to help them and he sends out his cavalry and some light infantry and some gauls as well and they catch Hannibal's foragers in the field laden down with booty wine and all that kind of stuff and fall upon them and defeat them quite heavily and this proves to Sempronius in his mind that the Romans when they're given a proper opportunity to fight these Carthaginians they're going to win very interesting the battle had been escalating so as Hannibal's foragers are running back to the camp Hannibal sends out his cavalry to screen them to try and cover them and reduce the casualties.

The Romans send out even more troops from their own camp and in fact bring out the whole army to kind of engage because they think this is it this is a great battle and Hannibal goes no actually we're not going to do that he recalls his cavalry breaks off the battle brings everyone back to camp and the Romans are sensible enough not to try and attack a well-fortified camp so they go back to camp as well but it shows that the Carthaginians are timid that they're overmatched in the battle even Hannibal's famous cavalry Scipio they're not as hot as you say they were they just gave up they broke off so in Sempronius's mind he's already won the coming battle and Hannibal

realizes this and one of the things that all of our sources say is that Hannibal is throughout the war is incredibly well informed about the emotional states of Roman commanders and he's got spies in Rome he's got spies probably in Gaul he's had desertions from the Roman camp famously at one point around 2,000 Gauls one night who were in the Roman camp actually break out they behead a number of Romans who get in their way break out of camp and take the heads back to Hannibal and say look we want to join you and fight for you and look we brought some lovely heads to show you just how keen we are to do this is something that Gauls were interested in doing as headhunting so Hannibal doesn't actually accept these men into his own army who would trust these traitors as it were but he sends

them back to their home communities to encourage revolt, saying, look, tell everyone what you did to the Romans. Tell everyone that I'm here and I'm going to win this battle, to gather up much more support in that respect. so we've had this pre-battle skirmish and hannibal's shown once again his incredible ability to keep hold and manage his troops so that they don't go into this full-blooded clash just yet. So when we get to the 18th of December 218 BC, that morning, how does Hannibal provoke the Battle of the River Trebia and how does it progress? Hannibal displays a real ability to choreograph battles all through the war. Here he's even chosen to fight a battle and he's so confident that he's going to provoke this battle that he's actually set an ambush in the field itself of battle. So the night before he provokes the battle he turns to his council and

he gives them the plan and the council approve it which shows again the quality of his own command system and his advisors and the generals and officers that he's going to have in his army they're all grizzled veterans most of them except for the young Mago who is his youngest brother and it's this Mago who is going to do the kind of job that Hannibal did for Hasdrubal which is basically to take a strike force and do something clever with it. Mago is told to bring a hundred horsemen and a hundred infantrymen to Hannibal's tent. And once he does that, after their supper, Hannibal says, you are the bravest men in my army. I want you to each choose 10 men and follow Mago and we will set an ambush. And at some point in the battle tomorrow, all you have to do is sit around

and wait for the moment you are going to win the battle for me so these 100 guys 200 guys choose their best mates or possibly the coolest hardest soldiers that they know that the ones are going to rely on in this fight and they are taken off by Mago to a gully which is a sort of stream that feeds into the Trebia it's overgrown with all kinds of brush brambles and that sort of stuff and they hide there now remember this is middle of December the snow is falling there's frost on the ground if not snow it's going to be really cold all night and they're not going to have a fire they're just going to have to wrap up warm and just stay there hidden in this gully. And to the Romans, the planes are rolling.

They look really unadorned. The plane of Trebia is a flat plane for all intents and purposes. All planes have undulations, but it looks pretty straightforward. A nice place to deploy an army and to fight a battle. So Hannibal has already set a trap in a place which doesn't even look like it's capable of having a trap the Romans you know might be worried about hills or woods but they're not worried about flat ground the next thing that Hannibal does is just before dawn he gets his army up and he gets them cooking their food and they all have a nice big warm meal and

the army spends its time just getting warmed up and they rub olive oil into their skin which increases insulation it's a warming sort of agent it makes their joints supple as well it's something that just helps keep the cold out so while they're doing that he sends his numidians across the river so sempronius and some of scipio's forces are camped together across the river and the Numidians suddenly attack the pickets of the Roman camp and start throwing spears into the camp and just basically throwing insults there's even one account of Numidians comically falling off their horses to sort of demonstrate the ineptitude of the Roman cavalry compared with them they just do

these sort of comedy acts and it's basically taunting the enemy in various ways. And Sopronius sends out his cavalry and his light infantry to drive him off. The Numidians cause a number of casualties and then retreat across the river. And Sopronius thinks, ah, we've got an advantage here. I'm going to press this advantage. And he calls out his whole army and they pursue the numidian force that's harassing them and this is not an insubstantial force it could be as many as three four thousand numidians here knowing what happened last time which was that hannibal then would send out more forces and possibly send out his whole army or not and be too timid this is another great opportunity for simpronius to score points even if not a whole battle victory so he's going to

bring out his whole army in pursuit of the Dominions and they cross the river Trebia to engage and deploy their whole army ready for a proper battle now there are a couple of issues with this firstly that they do so in such a hurry as to not have breakfast so far as we know all kinds of ancient sources condemn sempronius here for not feeding his men before they go out so if there is a battle they're going to have to do it on an empty stomach compared with animals who uh they've all had their porridge as it were and they've got that ready brick they've got that ready brick shimmer around them if you've ever seen a british advert from the 1970s you know exactly what that image is. They're all insulated and set up for the day.

The Romans aren't. The second issue is that the River Trebia, it's the middle of winter. Water is cold. But also, it's been raining a lot in the hills to the south. And that has actually led to a rise in the water level. So all the sources say that the water was up to chest height for the Roman infantry as they crossed this. So they've had a nice pre-dawn or early dawn soaking of freezing cold water and now they're going to spend the day

in those cold wet clothes fighting in a windy wet rainy context without breakfast so hannibal has provoked sempronius to come across and hannibal then marches his whole army out to engage so now we get to the battle of Trebia proper and the key things to note about the deployments of the two armies first is that the Romans deploy in a very traditional way they have their legionary infantry which probably numbered around about 16 to 18,000 men in the center probably around four legions or thereabouts, flanked by their allied Italian infantry. So mostly Latins and others that they've enrolled for this on the flanks. Again, numbering as many as 20,000, 22,000 troops. So the infantry is a massive block in the centre. The Romans and probably the Allies as well are arranged in the four lines that i've

said so the velites out the front who have spent most of the morning already chasing nimidians around and throwing their javelins at them trying to hit these evasive horsemen who keep doing comedy things in front of them as well as hitting them the velites have just run out of ammunition it's said that they're very short on javelins at this point behind that we have the have the Stati and the Principes, and then finally the old men, the Triari, who may be at the battle or they may be back in camp guarding it. It's not clear. But that's a standard Roman deployment. We're not told the deployment explicitly, but that's the standard blueprint of all Roman deployments in this period.

So we assume that that's basically what the formation looked like in terms of the fine grain detail but we do know that the Romans cavalry that's the Romans the allied cavalry who contribute roughly three times as many cavalry and also any Gauls that are still left with them and there are some Gauls there's some Kenomani still with them are on the flanks and they are to guard the flanks of the infantry and make sure that there's no problems and also to win a glorious victory of course unfortunately they're up against hannibal's army which has super abundance of cavalry 5 000 on each flank so they outnumber each of the roman cavalry forces by two and a half to one and also hannibal it appears has put his elephants there as well

elephants are really good at scaring horses, particularly horses that have never seen elephants before. So the Roman cavalry, even if it is super cool, which the Romans thought it was, but it probably wasn't compared with Hannibal's veteran cavalry, may well be spooked by any elephants that they come near, and that will certainly crimp their battle style at the very best. In the centre Hannibal has his heavy infantry laid out with around about 8,000 Iberians. These are veterans of all the wars that Hannibal and his family have fought. Maybe some of those guys who had changed sides at the very first battle were still in this force of Iberians. He's

a real veteran. He's a tough guy. These are real veterans. These are tough guys. There are about 12,000 Africans as well, mostly Libyans, possibly some Carthaginians in there as well, possibly some Phoenicians from other Punic cities that live on the coast. Those are in the infantry as well. So they're there as well, and they are veterans. They've been there a long time as well. And then we have around about 10,000 Gauls,

who seem to be quite up for it they seem to be in the center of the army with the Iberians and the Africans on either flank one thing to note actually is that this is a relatively new army most of it's a veteran but the Gauls themselves are a very new element and they're basically put together in a chunk in the middle when we come to the battle of can i two years later those gauls that have joined hannibal in his campaign south will be much more used to serving with hannibal and he's able to break them up into much smaller units and to intermix them with iberians and africans so that you have a much more checkerboard group of smaller units but here they're in a big block because basically hannibal hasn't had time to integrate them so it's really interesting thing to bear in mind that Hannibal has to work with the things that he's got to hand in front of that he has 8,000 skirmishes

8,000 skirmishes now the Romans had lost a number of light infantry skirmishes at Ticinus and they probably were outmatched and also out of ammo as well. So they are facing what are called lontroferoi. Some translations translate that as pikemen, but that seems incredibly weird for skirmishers. The lonche just means a spear of some sort, and sometimes it's a long one, sometimes it's a short one. So we probably, these are spear carriers of some sort, so they may be spears for throwing,

but they might also have a sticky in the melee purpose, so hand-to-hand combat as well. So the lonche may be a bit more of a they might also have a sticky in the melee purpose so hand-to-hand combat as well so the launch may be a bit more of a catch-all kind of weapon but here they are predominantly for throwing at the exhausted velites and then throwing at anybody else that they can get close to like the hastati also there are balearic slingers and hannibal's army has several thousand of these guys these are people who have been trained through their lives the stereotype is that they were all goat herds and they used to hunt birds with their sling stones when they were children but essentially there's a large mercenary

market of Balearic specialist slingers that the Carthaginians have been drawing upon for decades if not for centuries and Hannibal's army is particularly well equipped with these guys the other great thing about slingers is rain and snow does not stop a stone flying straight archers they might find it a bit difficult because the strings and the sinews go slack in wet weather javelin men have a limited range and if you've got slippery spears and snow in your eyes it's much more difficult. But slingers, they aim true and they can hit things.

And these slings stones are much, much bigger than Eastern Mediterranean sling stones, which are small lead stones. Balearic stones are imagined as more kind of cricket ball sized. Bloody hell. If you get hit by one of these,

yeah, you're not probably not getting up. You're not getting up, no. So the Balearics are creating all kinds of havoc at the beginning of the battle and then eventually the two sides meet. you're not probably not getting up you're not getting up no so the balearics are creating all kinds of havoc at the beginning of the battle and then eventually the two sides meet the exhausted romans exhausted because of the cold because of the fact that they're hungry have to deal with this much more well-accommodated carthaginian force and the flanks predictably collapse so the roman flanks are driven off the cavalry is driven off and scattered and probably doesn't suffer too many casualties.

It just collapses under the weight of the Carthaginians. The Carthaginians then press in on the Romans' flanks and start to envelop from behind. The cavalry press in on the Latins and the Gauls on the Roman legions' flanks. So the pressure is there. And actually they start to cave in under this and their momentum is holding because they're having to face in not just forwards towards the heavy infantry they've also got enemies on the flanks and that slows their momentum but the center the Roman legions do get into contact and do make a big impression on the Gallic center that's

essentially Hannibal's and that's where the stiffest fighting is and where the Romans have success they actually cut through the centre of Hannibal's army defeating most of the Gauls and breaking through about 10,000 of them actually break through in some versions and Livy's version they form a square so at some point in the battle having made progress they realise that they're surrounded and they form a squad and they kind of march off the battlefield. But in any case, the Romans smash through the centre. But not enough of them do. And not enough of them break through the centre to actually cause Hannibal too much in terms of problems. His other infantry is able to break the formations of the Latins.

formations of the latins and also as the romans advanced they advanced past that ambush that hannibal had set with mago waiting there in the cold and they at one point rise up and fall on the rear of the roman army which now is mostly velites who have only got swords left they've got very few missile weapons suddenly a fresh force attacks them some elite cavalry the best of the army and some very elite infantry and only about 2,000 2,200 of these guys but they're enough at this stage of the battle to just cause what's left of the Roman army to collapse and scatter across the battlefield so Sempronius smashes through the front thinks hey I've won turns around and then sees the other 28 000 of his army either lying dead being killed or scattering to the four winds and so realizing he can't actually a get back to the river to cross over to his own camp the river level is actually risen as well because

it's been raining and it's even worse he actually then marches back to Plekentia the colony and is received there with his 10,000 men he's also joined by most of the cavalry Scipio who's been back at his camp with some troops also sends out the troops to kind of cover the retreat as well so I would imagine that about 20,000 Romans survive of the combined forces but we're looking at somewhere in the region of 20 to 25 28 000 roman casualties in this battle which is a stupendous achievement for hannibal's army which was roughly in parity at the beginning of this battle and the other thing i would say is that hannibal's army pursues as much as it can it's got light infantry it's got 2 000 fresh guys who are there really to maximize death at the end of the day they're the substitutes they've been brought on at the end to score the goal at the end these guys just are fresh they

run the romans legs off them and kill as many as they possibly can so the romans are suffering disproportionate casualties at this point because they are exhausted and famished and just have no energy whereas the carthaginians apart from being buoyed on by their success are joined by these relatively fresh troops but they also have many more cavalry many more light infantry who can move fast and capture and catch up with anybody who's running away on the roman side as well they're much lighter and much swifter so this is why the casualties are so severe for the romans here and the romans probably suffer in the region of 60 to 75 78 casualties from their original army that's mostly death because even the wounded will have perished in the winter overnight there's a heavy fall of snow there's strong winds as sleet and it's just horrific conditions that

night and many many people die overnight including victorious carthaginians who get back to their camp nevertheless they lose a lot of horses and a lot of men who may have been wounded through this perishing cold is absolutely the right word to say here and the carthaginians also appear to lose some of their elephants so they don't lose them necessarily in the battle but the cold winter night the exhaustions of the battle seem to have done for some of the elephants according to polybius all but one of the elephants perishes that night later on he says through the winter at a later date all but one of the elephants perish so over the winter we can say that the cold finally gets to those poor elephants that have done that fantastic crossing of the Alps.

They actually make it to all the hay they could eat, but nevertheless, the cold really does get to them. This winter is a really severe one for Hannibal's army. So Hannibal's victory is remarkable. It causes a great stir in Rome and causes Rome to double its mobilisation. It doesn't admit defeat at this point you know those consuls were idiots let's just send some more up north and the Romans would raise two new armies to head north to prevent Hannibal from entering Italy proper as it were the Roman part

of Italy as opposed to the recently converted or crushed Gauls so they send two armies north they also send more armies to reinforce other parts of their relatively small empire they send a legion to sardinia they send more forces to sicily suspecting that the carthaginians may well attempt to retake what had been their territory at the early part of the third century sicily and sardinia robins taking those off them at the end of the first punic war and they knew that they already had forces as well in Spain. So they raise many, many more people. They really are taking this war seriously and they're going to reinforce their army in a major way.

Sempronius and Scipio hold out through the winter at Placentia and also at Cremona. Scipio moves to Cremona to reduce the burden. Hannibal gets hold of supplies from the Gauls. He also captures a number of Roman supply bases at Clastidium and at Victimuli as well. There's one place where it's betrayed by a Roman ally, a guy from Brundisium called Dacius, who betrays the city and allows Hannibal to get the supplies. Hannibal not only gets enough supplies to feed his army over winter, he also recruits actively amongst the Gauls, who are now well impressed with this Carthaginian.

They really are coming out wholeheartedly for him, so much so that by the end of the winter, he has in excess of 20,000 Gallic infantrymen and cavalry as well have joined him. Gallic infantrymen and cavalry as well have joined him so he effectively doubles the amount of troops that he has from the Gauls for the start of the 217 campaign. Louis from what were you saying there just to wrap it all up then you mentioned how the Battle of the River Trebia it doesn't end the war between Hannibal and Rome and we know that Hannibal goes on to fight several more remarkable clashes against the Romans in Italy proper. But why then is the Battle of the River Trebia, this winter clash, why is it so significant? Is it because Hannibal proves with this victory to the Gauls, to those in northern Italy, that he is the real deal? I think undoubtedly he is setting down a marker for the Romans and anybody else who is observing,

and that includes the Gauls. So yes, from the Gallic perspective, it sets him up to head south as a liberator from the Romans. You know, the Gauls have suffered from the Romans. The wars that the Gauls had fought against the Romans in the past decade had all been about Roman encroachments to the north and mistreatment of various communities, Gallic communities, that the Romans actually had control of prior to that. So Hannibal was showing the Gauls for sure that he is someone who can champion them and he's going to take the fight to the Romans. And he's enthusiastically joined by Gauls who will form a good half of his army at the Battle of Cannae a couple of years down the line. We could say it's the greatest Roman defeat in history, if you want to really be bombastic about it, but it's also the greatest victory that the Gauls inflict on the Romans, other than the sack of Rome in 390 BC. The Battle

of Cannae is the great Gallic victory, with the Carthaginians on the side, led by Hannibal. So in other words, yeah, the Gauls will get their revenge under hannibal at least in the short term the other thing it does is it shows the carthaginian authorities that the war can be fought in italy and that if they carry on supporting hannibal it'll come and in fact there's a expedition to the italian coast sent by the carthaginians in 217 that turns up at pisa which misses a rendezvous with hannibal but nevertheless it was planned I think that that was going to happen and it sets a sort of blueprint for what the Romans and the Carthaginians are going to try and do in this war at least in Italy which is that Hannibal is going to try and provoke battles as much as he can and he's going to try and win them because he can demonstrate to Rome's conquered populations and allies that

the Romans can't protect them that he is going to be the arbiter on the battlefield and therefore he's going to control the peninsula through this and one of the things he does with the Latin prisoners that he captures and the allied prisoners that he captures after and during Trebia the ones that survive is that while he keeps any Roman prisoners on a kind of starvation ration, he rewards or thanks the Latins for their loyalty to Rome. But then he says, you can go home now because my war is against the Romans, not you. I want to liberate you from the Romans. So he's setting himself up as a juergetes, a saviour, a liberator new hercules and he is also trying to show these allies therefore that there is another way you don't have to put up with rome he's carrying on

that pyrrhus idea of let's strip the romans of their allies by giving them an alternative so i think that's part of it and also in terms of the campaign in the way that fights are going to happen the romans are going to show that they are going to try and contest with hannibal on the battlefield and they're going to keep doing it irrespective of what happens so the great thing about what the romans do is that they kind of there's a bit of a minor panic but they don't really panic they really panic the following year and then they really super panic the following year after that but nevertheless they don't give in What they're going to do is they're going to keep producing armies, like a Hydra, and every time you kill an army, two will grow up,

says Pyrrhus' advisor when Pyrrhus has been defeating Roman armies. And Hannibal knows that. He's read the idea. So he knows that the Romans will keep coming for him, and he's just going to keep chopping heads off while hoping that the body withers, the allies who are supplying those armies will wither at some point so he knows the romans are going to try and fight pitch battles their consuls were always out for glory they're always out to try and earn that great victory to end the

war in italy and he's just going to keep playing on that so he'll do that in 217 at trasimene he'll do that in the following year at cannae. He'll do that any time a Roman army comes against him. And while we know about the big three victories of the first three years, actually, when you look at the number of battles that Hannibal fights in Italy in his 16 years, it's 22. He fights 22 battles against the Romans. Big armies and smaller armies as well. Anything under about 8,000 troops, I'm not going to count as a battle.

Just the big proper pitch battles. He fights 22 of these in that period. So the Romans keep coming for him. They don't give up. They only need to land one hit to win. And they never do. Not until he is finally forced to go back to Africa because the Carthaginians have lost the war everywhere else.

But in Italy, Hannibal and his cavalry and the ghost of his elephants carry that weight of dominance. You know, the Romans have to keep throwing armies at him and he just keeps either humiliating them or rubbing them down or when they have an advantage over him, he just escapes, he twists away.

Like at that engagement prior to Trebia, he knows when to call quits and to keep his army even if he's suffered a minor loss because it'll only encourage the Romans to be rash and he'll get another opportunity sooner or later to really deal them another blow well Louis this has been a fantastic run through of the 218 BC campaign Hannibal the crossing of the Alps and the battle of the river trebia Louis thank you so much the crossing of the Alps and the Battle of the River Trebia. Louis, thank you so much for coming on the show. It's been an absolute pleasure, Tristan. Thank you.