Ad Astra - Scipio and Hannibal - Vol. 12 Ch. 75 - A Fateful Exchange

RDZu9Zr.png


"Papa... where are we going tomorrow?"
 
Man i loved Hannibal and Scipio conversations even tho we knew he was buying time for some scheme.




@Volphied omg bro I died ahahah
 
Elephants scare horses and that could make their numidian cavalry rout. Elephants can also scare Roman infantry to those who have never fought one before. Is Hannibal's grand scheme is to just throw a bunch of elephants to Scipio's proud army and use his army to kill the ones who aren't shaken? Sounds too simple to be true.
 
@Rosen_Ritter

that's exactly it.
with enough elephants spread over the battlefield (rather than focused on one wing like with Hasdrubal's battle), he can cause enough disquiet to both roman infantry and numidian cavalry.
and should they run amok, they will be too isolated to cause a dangerous stampede, but will still disrupt the enemy lines by their very presence and impede clock-work movements of a well-trained army like Scipio's. thus allowing the more numerically-superior side to take advantage of any gaps in formation.
 
As expected, straight to Zama. Not surprising at all but still, too bad though that the author couldn't fit in the original peace and betrayal. I always thought it was interesting/important that Scipio and Carthage originally agreed on a treaty with very generous terms, regardless of the total war damage Scipio talked about in this chapter. It was Carthage that then regained confidence and breached, after which only total surrender was acceptable. The author glosses over the omission as well as could be expected, but still a shame, the dynamic there would have made for an even better final face-to-face.

And yeah the plan to cause chaos to make use of numbers was interesting, but this also highlights how critical intelligence is and scouting vs deception, which in turn was another issue with elephants: they're big, and hard to hide.
 
The worst thing here is that we know Hannibal will lose, so all these young elephants will truly die for nothing.
 
Was Hannibal planning to unleash a whole herd of young elephants into the Roman army, unattended, so they can run amok? Or is THAT a feign to make Scipio warier for elephants and not for actual humans?
 
I am still dumbfounded on Hannibal's use of the Elephants at Zama. Was some important piece of history was lost for the battle. I really wish we could find out
 

Users who are viewing this thread

Back
Top