War reaches northern Italy, 215 BC

News in from Ian P about the result of a battle between Hannibal Barca and Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus. Hannibal has come over the Alps, bringing with him a mixture of troops including Carthaginian citizes, Numidan cavalry and elephants, Spanish cavalry and foot. How much attrition the elephants and horses have suffered on the march is hard to say. At any rate, there are plenty of Gauls willing to support a man who will lead them against the Romans.

Report from Ian (posted on the Society of Ancients forum): 

So my approach was a little different. I decided on a Roman Army and thought how could they be disadvantaged – not quite the Trebia but they are crossing a ford and not appreciated how close Hannibal is. Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus is of course leading the right wing and has crossed the ford and deployed his troops in a pretty pattern sorry effective Battle formation …

The left wing, being lead by Silanus Punctilious is still crossing the river. At this point I decided to throw an average dice to see how many elephant units Hannibal had got across the Alps and rolled a 2 and wrote up an Army list to equal the Romans. I decided that Hannibal knew where the Romans were and enough about their deployment methods to risk a gamble. He has three divisions and plans to attack at speed. He has stacked the right wing in an attempt to block off the Romans entry / exit point from the Battleground and entrusted this to Maharbal the Numidian and conveniently it will contain the Numidian Cavalry and Elephants as well as two units of Iberian Scutari. Knowing he needs to keep the Roman right busy he has persuaded his Celtic Allies (ever disposable!) to attack Gracchus head on, knowing that, even if defeated, they will do a lot of damage to their opponents. He places a Hasdrubal to oversee this with his Punic cavalry. That leaves Hannibal following up with his main line of Battle hardened Libyans to deliver the coup de grâce if all goes well. 

To return to the Battle

Suddenly the Romans see figures appearing from the treeline in front of them…

(Sorry for distortion but this gives an idea of the overall battleground.)

The Romans win the first move and mostly freeze. Gracchus clearly spluttering in disbelief fails to get his troops actually moving (too busy drying their feet off?) Sempronius, having given orders that washed over the stunned troops has to bellow his orders again to get his wing moving to dry ground but not in any sort of good formation. The Numidians as expected sweep in to box up the Roman Cavalry crashing into the Velites en route who die valiantly but fail to stop the Numidians continuing into the Roman horsemen. The rest of the right wing and Hannibal in the centre advance. On the left wing both Cavalry units get stuck in breaking one opponent and forcing the other back. However the rest of the Celts have clearly had a heavy night of drinking and fail to follow up. However they will do so and well in following turns managing to get the drop on charging the Romans.

However the die is now cast. On the right the Romans struggle against the Celts but slowly dispose of Cavalry and one Waband but lose some units and are left out of position with two of the three warbands now effectively behind their main lines. On the left wing, having seen off the Numidians, the Romans [u]almost[/u] get their line together - The Campanian Legionaries are the unit in limbo at the back. The elephants are the beasts of the Battle as they finish off the Roman Cavalry in front of them and then take two Roman units away from the centre to hold them up leaving the centre far too weak to withstand the hammer blow about to land as Hannibal marches his Libyans into the centre of the Battle.

This is the situation at the end of turn 3 Hannibal has a solid battle line of mostly heavy infantry (light blue) where the Roman line is broken up (red) (In both cases double lines represent two units). The Romans are in real danger of being enveloped so the result from here is inevitable – a victory to Hannibal. 

Many thanks to Ian for another great report for the campaign.

We turn now to the campaign map after the latest actions of Turn 4:

Situation at 215 - 213 BC - Cisalpine Gaul and Greece disputed.

Actions to follow: there will likely be return battles in both areas as Rome and the Achaean League respond to the attacks on their respective territories. 

More to come!

Campaign history