Trebia - Hannibal's first great victory in Italy

in December 218 BC general Hannibal Barca fought the Romans and won an extraordinary victory at the Battle of trivia and that's what I'm going to be talking about in this video which has been sponsored by the great courses plus more of them later now it's difficult to know where exactly to start this story but a quick summary of events so far Hannibal has crossed the Pyrenees and he's marched all the way across southern Gaul and Publius Cornelius skip-bo who was a consul who'd been given orders from Rome to go and fight him in Spain found out about this when he made a stopover in Mesilla which today's Marseilles he discovered that a massive army commanded by Carthaginian general had crossed the Rhone and fought a battle against the local Gauls and was heading east possibly for the Alps but surely he wouldn't be crossing the Alps I mean it's getting snowy now he wouldn't be doing that well he did anyway what did skip you do well he sent his brother to carry on with the mission to Spain while he himself for the small force went back to warn Rome and he said right I'm the Consul so you and your troops after me and you and you and he he cobbled together a hotchpotch army and went north who to investigate what was going on and to see about to heading off this Hannibal guy it has he actually crossed the Alps I mean really that's been weird but maybe he has and yes he had and he fought a battle at the river thickness and lost essentially I won't go into great amount of details but it wasn't a huge and decisive battle but it was a definite defeat for the Romans and the defeat was inflicted largely by the cavalry arm of the Carthaginians the Carthaginians had a lot of cavalry far more than was typical for a Roman army and he was very good experienced cavalry and they did so well in fact that they overran the HQ squadron of skippy US army and skippy of himself was severely wounded and of course that threw him onto the back foot and Rome discovering this that sent orders to the other consul Tiberius Sempronius longus but he was in Sicily a long way to the south at a place called Lille bayum and it took him 40 days too much welter first he had to sail to Italy and then he had to march up into the through Rome which I imagine was not just convenient because the good roads went to Rome but also I think it was an opportunity to give his troops maybe one day in as a stopover rest to see their families and so forth and then head out again afterward of resupply perhaps from the capital city to deal with this threat in the north and 40 days later he arrived now there is some difficulty in working out exactly what happened next because the history is not very clear about this did the two armies skippy owes army and Sempronius 'yes did these two combine into one Grand Army did the two generals actually meet and have a conversation at one point we are told that Hannibal is in between the two armies perhaps deliberately keeping them apart because he didn't want them to combine into one super army but we are also given dialogues between skippy oh and Sempronius suggesting that they were in the same room or tent together arguing the situation so is this the historians way of telling us what the situation was I know let's tell it in the form of a dialogue between two opposing points of view or did these two men actually meet and if they did actually meet was there really someone writing down everything they said accurately that seems pretty unlikely particularly given that in their dialogue they get straight to the point no pleasantries no did you have a you know a good journey or place there you know have a warm your feet by the fire none of that just straight to the tactics Skippy oh and some peroneus were of two minds Sempronius said right come on let's fight let's add them I've come all this way my men haven't marched for forty days - then just hang around it's let's get stuck in come on Skippy let's do it but Skippy Oh was no no wait wait okay right first I want to command because you have been sent to assist me and I'm wounded so let's give it a while for my wound to heal and then I'll be in command and that'll be better plus meaning no offence and burnish your men particularly the Latin troops they're really not very well trained at all that they've got almost no battle experience maybe we should spend the winter and winter is not a good time to be fighting frankly it's very cold and wet let's train them through the winter my wounds will heal and then we'll be in a much better position next season to take on Hannibal plus these goals who have just I did with Hannibal you know what girls are like they're fickle give him a few months of hanging around in the cold and they'll all just want to go home yeah if we just wait that'll be good for us Sempronius was thinking no I don't know this I'm you is is this a Roman consul or his wound talking now come on the opportunity is now we've got two combined armies together we're never gonna have more troops than this are we going to just spend the winter eating our supplies away and and what Third Army are we waiting for no no it's us it's it it's our armies we're here to do the job we should get stuck in and my men are enthusiastic Hannibal meanwhile was probably wanting a fight for much the same loads of reasons that Skippy Oh didn't want a fight he didn't want Skippy O's wound to heal he didn't want these troops to be trained up and he perhaps was worried that his allied goals were to kind of defect to melt back to their homes into the countryside so he was quite happy for there to be a fight now he did actually get a fight because some of the local Gauls were hedging their bets someone they didn't know which way the wind was blowing they didn't know which side to support and they knew that the consequences of supporting the wrong side could be pretty dire so they were sending out embassies to both sides and Hannibal found out about this he was very well informed and sent out a punitive raid with his cavalry to Niccolo to their stuff and punished them but that was when Sempronius forces turned up and some peroneus forces surprised the laden cavalry of the Carthaginians they were all carrying loads and loads of booty and they couldn't move very fast and they caught them and killed loads of them and pursued them right towards the Carthaginian camp and then the Carthaginian in the camps important we're not having this and so they then spilled out of the camp and then they they put the Romans to flight and they chase them to walk to the Roman camp and then sir Proteus so go ahead we got a big fight on our hands guys and he then brought up a load more Romans and he then chased the Carthaginian counter-attack back to the Carthaginian camp at which point Hannibal said stop stop guys I'm in command here let's not get ahead of ourselves I haven't chosen this fight this is not the ground I would choose to fight on this is not the day I would choose to fight on these are not the circumstance not the time not the place and I'm in command so he then something quite remarkable he then ordered all his troops steadied them and brought them back in good order suffering almost no more casualties back into camp which is extremely impressive and difficult to do but also showed that he was really not a hothead and this is something about him whenever the Romans do catch him at the disadvantage they're never able to capitalize on it Hannibal it seems was always very very good at recognizing when this was not his day and the best thing would be to just stop and pull back in good order before a genuine disaster occurs Hannibal could not afford one significant defeat but he could afford a minor defeat now there was actually a use to this defeat because it proved to Sempronius that Sempronius was a great guy I mean he'd just beaten the Carthaginians and he'd he'd beaten their cavalry arm their best guys oh yeah I mean these cavalry they defeated skip he heard the river ticking us but yeah Skippy oh that wounded guy I am Sempronius and the gods are clearly with me because I've just won a victory as he saw it so he was buoyed up with this idea that he can do this he's got the man he's got the morale and this is an opportunity so he was it seems a bit of a hothead and this we are told was reported to Hannibal through Galax spies so Hannibal then picked his day and picked his ground and we are told that he did his own scouting and went out to ride on a horse and found just the right place for the battlefield his camp was uphill and looking down onto a river and he found an area perfect for an ambush now he was aware that the Romans were quite wary of woods nearby because dolls like to hide in woods you can be in a wood or behind a wood you wouldn't see them say if you see a wood there's a just a very convenient wood just there just where you would want to spring an ambush from so they would look at those woods and think very suspiciously about them but if they saw just some open rolling landscape I think okay well the land is clear there's clean the ambush there everything's fine except as a good infantry commander will tell you a rolling landscape actually has loads of opportunities in it for hiding large numbers of troops and Hannibal found a Little River Valley which from down by the river couldn't be seen it just looked like just just rolling land but there was actually a Little River Valley in there marshy with some bushes and you could hide a load of guys there for an ambush but as you advanced across the plain you would see nothing so that night he said to Mego his younger brother who was one of his cavalry commanders he said pick out one hundred of the best infantry and 100 of the best cavalry and tell them to meet me I'm going to make a speech to them so Megha did this and Hannibal spoke to these two hundred men I think one of the reasons that he wanted to speak to two hundred men is that they're actually before the days of PA systems and so forth there's quite a limit to the number of people you can actually speak to clearly and expect to be heard and he wanted these guys to hear em he said right all of you you pick out 10 according to Polybius or nine according to Livie men each these will be your squad you will pick them and they will be serving with you on special duty tonight you're going to be part of the ambush which is going to win us this next battle it's slightly odd that we're told this detail perhaps the reason we're told this is that that's really not the way the Romans would have done it you see the Romans each man is it's a privilege to serve in the army and you have you take your oath to your commander to obey Him and the commander's say right you you you you and you your you're going to be in the ambush perhaps they would say whereas Hannibal had a volunteer mercenary army and perhaps he had to treat his men quite differently accordingly so if you are one of those hundred men who have been summoned to be personally addressed by Hannibal you might be feeling pretty good about yourself hey I'm one of the 100 best infantryman in the whole army this is an army of perhaps 40,000 men but I'm in the top hundred get a load of me oh and I get to pick my own squad of my own friends all the guys I think are the best to get to serve with me okay so you then pick those guys and those guys gonna think hey I've been picked for special duty what is that duty well it's to spend all night in a free Marsh hiding mother that sounds so great does it but if you've been picked out for special duty because you're so trusted and by by doing that special duty you've proven to all the rest of the army that you're one of the best guys in it what's the do wonders for your status and perhaps wonders for your self-esteem and so perhaps that's the way you have to treat volunteer mercenary armies rather than by authority you you're in the ambush don't argue go so he took his two thousand or two thousand two hundred depending on exactly how you do the counting men off and hit them all night in that Marsh now he told the rest of his army Hannibal told the rest of his army we're going to be fighting tomorrow so get well rested and we're gonna build really big fires because it's going to be a cold night and you're going to be warming yourself by these these these fires and we everyone's gonna eat really well we're gonna put on extra rations and they doled out rations of olive oil with which the men drugged themselves this was supposedly to keep them warm and supple not entirely sure how that works but apparently this is this is what happened so that was the preparation made on the Carthaginian side now he started the battle by sending out his new Midian cavalry man now new midians were unusual cavalry man from North Africa they didn't use bridles or saddles they just had a thick rope fixed of ribbon of rope around the horse's neck and they would hang on like that in a way which some people say reminds them of Native American Indians well anyway they were very experienced troops they'd been fighting under Hannibal in Spain for a very long time and these were not primitive barbarians these guys could operate in large numbers and follow orders use their own initiative they were excellent cavalry he sent those out at night to attack Sempronius his camp and this they did and some proneness thought oh were under attack right okay wake everyone let's get to it here's the day of that battle I was hoping for the thing is though that he was playing right into Hannibal's hand now the the millions then withdrew but they'd been told to withdraw to the river and crossed the river and at this point the Romans giving chase arrived at the river so what happened next well first start let me just state that I'm going to avoid the controversy of which side of the river we're talking about historians have long debated where the Roman camp was or whether two Roman camps I think there probably were two Roman camps want to skip your office and proneness but it was the one Roman capital - and where was Hannibal in relation to them and which side of the river was everyone and which direction did the Romans across the river and so I'm not going to get embroiled in any of that because ultimately after talking for ages about it I have to say but we don't really know and he doesn't change the story of the battle all that much anyway so there were some caps in some positions and one army was one side of the river and the other army was the other whichever side that was right so it had rained heavily during the night and the river was quite swollen and came up to all all sources agree chest height now Sempronius ordered his men across the river this was necessary of course to get to grips with the Carthaginians who were retreating across the river and his last battle involved chasing the Carthaginians across a river and so you know perhaps he was in the habit of chasing Carthaginians across the river but this time it was different because Hannibal was ready for him had deployed his army now what did the Romans see when they looked across the river of course we don't know we have to speculate at this point and one of the things we have to ask ourselves is did the Carthaginians have any pikes yeah you see in Greek there are vague terms used for a long pointy stick that you use in war and sometimes the same word can be translated quite accurately as javelin or spear or Lance or pike and in my for instance copy of Polybius there are a lot of there are 8,000 Balearic slingers and pike men who are used as a screening force on the Carthaginian side pikemen well they may have been pikemen at trivia we have good reason to believe that the Carthaginians used to fight with lots of pikemen but there's pretty much no evidence that after this battle they ever used Pike's least not in the second Punic War when fighting in Italy against the Romans but possibly trivia was the last battle in which Pike's were used or pikes at least and here I really am speculating presented to the enemy because it strikes me that you might if you're in Hannibal's position actually want the Romans to look across the river and see Pike's because I think about Pike's is they can't move very fast yes one man could run I suppose reasonably fast with a pike although the big awkward things a pike is maybe it's an 18 feet long something like that but big formations of Pike's can't move very fast they just go at a fast walk if they're good because they have to stay together and stay in formation and getting the orders to travel down a very large formation of many thousands of men it's it's slow they're slow and ponderous troops but if you're looking across the river and you think right can we cross the river before those troops get us answer yes because they're a load of pikes and do the Carthaginians want us to cross the river well no because that's why they're pelting us with slings the Balearic slingers were mercenary troops from the Balearic Isles in the Mediterranean and they were famous for being really good slingers these were people who had learned how to sling as little shepherd boys right from from the early youth they've been using slings their whole life to hunt pests and to protect their flocks and even to hurt sheep you can sling in front of a sheep that's starting to stray to what get it to go back and join the flock so these were very good slingers they started young and they hide themselves out for good rates because they were they were valued troops so it looked as though they don't they didn't want to get across the river but maybe if we go quickly now we can get across the river but if you go in a column across the river it's going to take you absolutely ages and if there are Pike to the other side the pikes could just attack the head of that column and mash it but if the planks are set back from the river and we cross the river in a line so we all form up an army one side of the river and we all cross together we'll be across the river pretty quickly the planks won't be able to stop us and neither will those Balearic slingers because yes they'll cause some casualties but we'll be able to get across and then stuck in straightaway so perhaps the Carthaginians did have pikes no I'm perfectly willing to accept that maybe they didn't for instance in one historical source the Pikes are described as racing ahead with the new medians in order to attack the flanks of the enemy which makes them sound more like javelin armed light infantry which also fits that they were 8000 of them sent forward with the Balearic slingers yes you might also mix in a load of javelin armed infantry perhaps with shields as well so maybe they had pikes maybe they didn't anyway it seems that the Romans did cross the river which was a huge mistake of course they had to across the river in order to get to grips with the enemy but it was December and it was icy and all the sources talk about gusts of snow and if you're wading across a river up to your chest and of course some men about to stumble and going over their heads you are going to get very cold and you climb out the other side and then you're going to be standing around for a while you're not going to get stuck in straightaway battles of this size to size took hours and to get thousands and thousands of men all together in position and then to get the orders all the way down the line and get them to do whatever it is he wanted to do it takes ages so inevitably a lot of those men were standing around and the wind was getting up and it started to rain and sleet and they were soaking wet and they hadn't had breakfast either because if you remember they were attacked very early in the morning actually before dawn and no breakfast had had been issued because temporariness all were under attack we have to respond breakfast cut that's for sissies come on get out there so these men are not eaten and they haven't been warmed by fires and they'd been drenched in a freezing cold river with ice on its banks and now they had to fight their way uphill against the Carthaginians so things at this point didn't look too good now the first clash first clashes happened with the cavalry and it's it said that the new midians who had been feigning this retreat suddenly whirled about and fell upon their pursuers with such ferocity that perceivers went oh oh heck this isn't good and they then fell back the Roman cavalry was heavily outnumbered the Romans had 2,000 cavalry on each flank whereas Hannibal's army had 5,000 cavalry and better cavalry on both flanks so when they suddenly whirled about and charged in the Roman cavalry really didn't stand much of a chance nor did they will eat ace now that will eat a Tsar the lightest of the Roman troops the youngest of them would have been 17 years old and the oldest not many years older than that and these men had been fighting with the nemedians for some while and expended a lot of the javelins so they only had one or two javelins left each and they were very cold and they were inexperienced and they then were attacked by outnumbering horde of Hannibal's light infantry and these were a lot of them were Kelty barians and spanish troops had been fighting for campaign after campaign after campaign in Spain and they really knew what they were doing they wouldn't have been a huge amount older they would have been perhaps 25 years older but when you're 17 and you're with a load of 17 year olds and you see that the other guys are up against a 25 they're not just bigger and stronger but they're more confident and they're not soaking wet and they really know what they're doing and you've never done this before and the Welli taste got absolutely mashed they were hopelessly outclassed um but I didn't matter too much at this stage because it was generally imagined that once you've got an army into position you're going to pull back your screen of light troops anyway they're not expected to win the battle so the fact that the Willie tase got horribly mashed it didn't matter that much and Sempronius pulled them back to the rear of his line and then because ready to get stuck in with his heavy troops now a lot of you that because you're watching this I imagine they're quite interested in the the gentle art of hitting people and if so then you might be interested that the great courses plus is now got of course in martial arts yes martial arts is a 25 lecture course of 25 1/2 hours and it covers all sorts of basic principles and the class is taken from Krav Maga and karate and Taekwondo and jeet kune do-- and I think it's tiebacks in there and tai chi and various other martial arts and they've all been commissioned especially these are not just a cobbled together or we found 25 videos no these have been shot especially in all in the same studio they've brought in experts in these various martial arts and have told them to prepare a half hour lecture in something specific and if only there was some where you could see this very there is what you could do is you could click the link in the description or if you loved typing you could go to www.extracareanimalhospital.net and you've tried before and weren't able to pay and got little bit frustrated you should now be able to pay but you don't have to for the first month of course that's free and you can watch in that first month as many of the 9000 lectures that are there as you like for free so tickling in the description and unfortunately I can't do any gags here about scholars cradles because would you believe I didn't see a single scholars tradeable that's martial arts people for you isn't it right now back to the Battle of the trivia or trivia or trivia which is the name of the river which has been crossed and has soaked the Roman army so they're all dripping wet and freezing cold and miserable but a lot of them are still pretty good troops and they are marching with their commander Tiberius Sempronius longus uphill against the the the forces of Hannibal Barca arrayed against him the Romans have had a very conventional formation cavalry on the wings light troops have start in the front and then pull to the back and then three lines with your ha start eprint co-pays and triarii moving up in the usual way they had lots of allies with them including quite a lot of Gauls actually there was just one tribe the Ken Omani who had stayed loyal to them and they were they were fighting on the Roman side opposite them Hannibal had put possibly some pikes but maybe not his own light troops which also were pulled back after the initial encounter then he had heavy troops in the front including his very experienced African spearmen when you said when I say African by the way that's troops from Africa but these are Phoenicians and Libyans these are not sub-saharan African so people from the USA when they hear African they often think of all African Americans they think of dark-skinned sub-saharan woolly head troops no they weren't like that they were they looked far more well in the case of the Phoenicians the Phoenicians were actually from the eastern Mediterranean so they just sort of looked generally Mediterranean II perhaps think of today people from Lebanon Palestine and places like that and the North African natives such as the new midians they were like the Berbers or two arrays of today a sort of Arabic he look anyway so he had those in the center and the Gauls as well arrayed in in the center and some versions in politicus has the elephants in front of the flanks of the the heavy infantry which I find reasonably likely but according to Livy they were beyond the cavalry outside of the cavalry so he had heavy infantry cavalry elephants according to levy but III feel Polybius is probably right Livius was writing much closer to the events and he's usually taken to be more accurate by historians though it is notable but there are awful lot of things that Livy says that just simply do not appear in polybius and how much should we trust them anyway the elephants do get stuck in in Polybius account they don't seem to do a huge amount they see off a lot of the cavalry and then don't seem to play a huge amount of role in the battle after that but Livvy has them doing all sorts of things he has them seeing off the enemy cavalry then attacking the infantry and then being seen off by the light infantry which have brought forward to see them to see them off light infantry are actually more effective against elephants than heavy infantry that may seem a little account but if you're a light infantryman you can get out of the way because you're in a dispersed formation you can get round behind and jab your javelin and so forth into into vulnerable spots like just beneath the tail up the jacksie of the of the elephant and so forth where as heavy troops sometimes just get smashed and trampled by by elephants and because of an elephant charging you that means that everyone in the formation doesn't want to be the guy who's right at the front who just gets trampled on literally so you've got a heavy formation of guys we're all trying to get out of the way and they all get in each other's way and so doing so yes light troops are actually more effective than heavy troops against elephants but anyway it seems that the Romans were able to see them off and it came to the point that according to Livy Hannibal saw that the elephants might actually panic and start trampling his own side and so he withdrew them and set them in again against the the Gauls which is not impossible but it shows an impressive amount of command and control over such notoriously difficult to command and control units such as elephants anyway the elephants did whatever the elephants did and the two lines did meet and for a long time the two lines just clashed and it wasn't obvious who was winning but then may go here M Omega was waiting in ambush was able to launch his ambush and get his two thousand or two thousand two hundred men round the back now 2,200 may not sound that many if you're up against the Roman army of perhaps thirty seven thousand but you can remember that the land isn't all flat it's not like in the movies where you can see absolutely everything because they've picked a convenient bit of land for that and the land rolls a bit and if you see two thousand guys are those the nearest two thousand guys of a body of men that's ten thousand big and if you see the front row of a unit do you know how deep that formation is so when you see what is a large number of troops appear behind you they those troops are enormous ly more effective than just their own numbers would imply so 2,000 men behind the roman blinds are worth six thousand men or or the like and mego was commanding his cavalry who then cut down the poor will eat a so at this point was trying to shelter at the back of the army the wrong place to pick as it turned out because a load casting in kaveri then came and mowed them down and some peroneus saw that everything was going wrong his flanks panicked and collapsed and men started fleeing in all directions some tried to get back to the river behind them but of course it's pouring with rain should have said it's pouring with rain at this points you can't see very far and the river is now really swollen and even more dangerous and difficult to get across but Sempronius manages to cut his way through the Carthaginian line with ten thousand men formed in a square now it seems that they did inflict not insignificant losses against the Carthaginians doing this but when they got on top of the hill they were able to look down and see the flanks have gone all the troopers at the back are being annihilated our allies are all running away the cavalry is gone the cavalry just fled it seems that most of the cavalry got away it's actually very difficult even if you're on a horse and a good cavalry man to catch and kill an enemy kaverman if he just doesn't want to be caught if he's not fighting you if he's just trying to escape he usually can so the most of the Roman cavalry fleas and Sempronius with his men at the top of the hill just think well we're not going to rescue this situation so he marches in in good order to the nearby Roman colony that was quite young of black entia and we're told that skip EO marched with his army to Cremona having gotten 2% e of or plenty at first but went on to Cremona so as not to burden the town one town with two armies wintering in it which very strongly suggests that there was a significant number of men with skippy oh so did the skip EO lend any of his army to Sempronius almost certainly yes we're told that the Romans had 37,000 men so it seems that skip you must have lent some men for that my best guess is that he gave them he gave some peroneus his Latin allies about two legions worth whilst kept keeping two legions for himself that fits everything that I've read in all the sources so that's that's what I would say but I'm sure there are people out there who would disagree with me so Hannibal managed to lure an entire Roman army across a river to get it soaking wet and then ambush it and then hit it with elephants with his very keen Gallic allies and and smash it up yes 10,000 of the Romans got away but from an army of 37,000 that's not brilliantly impressive Rome when it heard the news well it was first actually a little bit confused because Sempronius was trying to save face now one of the reasons which I forgot to mention earlier the Sempronius wanted to fight this fight in the first place is that there were elections coming up if they waited for the spring he would be replaced because during the wait before the new campaigning season started back in Rome they would elect to new consoles and he would just be a proconsul just a placeholder for the new commander to take over from and he wanted to be the guy who defeated Hannibal and save Rome right and his faction even though he himself wasn't up for election his faction was up for election and he would have done his his faction a tremendous amount of good if he was fresh back from a victory so by going for personal glory he had fallen into Hannibal's trap but cross the river when he shouldn't across the river got suckered into chasing a load of cavalry who completely outclassed him once they knew what they were doing he got all his light troops annihilated his cavalry ran away he got hit by elephants it all went horribly wrong and something like 28,000 Romans were killed or at least lost so this was a very significant victory for Hannibal and it was the first really big victory for Hannibal in Italy but unfortunately still at this point no known of the none of the Latin states that was allied to - to Rome at this point of vassal states none of them came over to his side but there wasn't this a little Devon there was a little bit of help the town of class stadium sent word to him that they had loads of stores and he could they could use the grain the Roman grain in those stores they were the let in by the commander who was called Brindisi as' and it's thought that he was from Brundusium which is modern Brindisi and that he was actually one of those latin vassal citizens that possibly you know that was a sign that maybe he could persuade these people who were subjugated by the Romans to swap signs and that he could cast himself as the liberator of Latin Italy against the domination of Rome but the evidence for all that is is quite slight in some versions he just bribes the guy with a very large amount amount of money and that's how he gets in but in other versions he's let in and then later rewards him which is a little bit different in field anyway Sempronius sent word to the Senate of what had happened and he said that the battle had been fought but that it had be interrupted by bad weather and that he was unable to to make it a decisive victory so that was rather ambiguous but later on the Romans found out that was just rubbish they found out that both their senators both their consoles had fled and were wintering in fortified cities and that the that they'd lost a huge number of men and that the field was commanded by Hannibal and that the goals were going over in some numbers to Hannibal's cause so yeah his attempt at painting the this loss in a good light really didn't last very long and what would have happened if he had waited well one of the things possibly is that the cold would have killed a lot of those elephants we are told that all but one of Hannibal's elephants just died of cold shortly after that battle so perhaps if they just waited a bit that would have happened and perhaps the perhaps the Gauls would have defected and perhaps the Hannibal would have been in a terrible supply situation he was already it seemed getting short on grain it's winter he's got a huge army to feed how is he gonna do it he has to win victories and steal stuff off the enemy and and impress the local so that they start donating food to his cause and so Hannibal who was in more of a hurry than the Romans to fight this battle and but whoops thanks to the hothead Sempronius he scored something of a victory [Music] the man you

Channel: Lindybeige

Views: 436,078

Rating: 4.938199 out of 5

Keywords: Trebia, rome, carthage, hannibal, italy, ancient, river, cold, weather, fording, camps, troops, soldiers, romans, velites, pikes, numidians, second, punic, snow, carthaginians, ambush, mago, defeat, victory, history

Id: RI2j_Z57e1s

Length: 35min 22sec (2122 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 29 2018