Visite des anciens arseneaux Français à Menzel Bourgiba et la zone Franche annexe.
Décembre 2005
Les plages de sable de la Tunisie 15/12/2005
Les chantiers de Menzel Bourgiba 15/12/2005
Autre vue des chantiers 15/12/2005
Mais c'est qu'ils bossent dur ici ! 15/12/2005
Un peu d'histoire :
Hannibal's great adventure and Canne's trap.
after the loss of Sardinia in the first punic war, Hannibal, at the age of 9, left with his father Hamilcar to Spain, a new land to conquer, to carry out the daring glory dreams that the strict education of his father had nourished.
Hannibal
The frontier war exalted his experience among the memories of the past: the great Carthago he had left, -like a ship at anchor,- enjoying its last wealthy trades and the ambition of competing with the dynamic power in expansion threatening that existence: Rome, so different from Carthago, two cities of strong traditions (three hundred years of empire and power).
At the age of 24 the maturity had occurred: so he decided to pass from theory to practice, from plans to reality. His father’s death placed in his hands the necessary tool for struggling: the powerful Carthaginian army. Sagunto’s siege (219) offered him the opportunity to challenge Rome, at last. Then he incredibly made the big leap at the very heart of his enemy, by the Alps’ crossing, never attempted before. They left in fifty thousands and arrived in twenty thousands, but the adventure had begun. Three hundred thousands men awaited Hannibal, arbiter of their lives in the bloody battles that followed one another at the Ticino, the Trebbia, the Trasimeno and at Canne. Polybius wrote: what happened to both rivals, that is to Romans and Carthaginians, was the work of one person and of one man: Hannibal’s.
After the Trasimeno victory in June 217 b.c. (15.000 fallen in the roman army, 1.500 in the Carthaginian) that did not produce the expected results (the Rome federate towns of the Centre of Italy did not betray), Hannibal, tenacious and imperturbable, decided to repeat the effort with the greek culture’s towns in the South, still little reliable for Rome: he wanted to create the reasons for a new alliance taking advantage of the opportunity of totally destroying the roman apparatus of war.
Hannibal’s route
In october he had already reached Apulia to spend there the whole winter, to prepare the plans for the following spring while, at the beginning of summer, he went to Canne.
An attentive observer, the nature of the place did not pass unnoticed to him, for the advantages that could derive in a resolutive battle, to his mobile and disciplined army, supported by a skilled and manoeuvreable cavalry, in the middle of a theatre in which the natural elements (plain, river, hill) would have brought their contribution to the final result. So, at dawn of August 2nd, 216 b.c. , the consul Caio Terenzio Varrone, the butcher’s son, master in rash boasts, who had received the supreme command on that day, fell in the trap and Hannibal could thank the gods as they had lead his enemy in the place most favourable to his plans.
Varrone wanted (just like the Senatus and the Roman People) to inflict to the Carthaginian a last heavy defeat and free the Republic by the Punic nightmare (the 80.000 men recollected by the previous year conscription constituted an imposing mass). But the roman phalanx, that unlucky day, ill-assorted and bad commanded, was not facing an ordinary army or an ordinary general, but the ductile skill of the terrible genius, able to move his army like one man, with the quickness and the fury of the lightning (as indicates the family’s nickname: Barca).
Hannibal had placed his main camp on the right bank of the Ofanto in front of the stronghold (San Mercurio hill).
Canne’s stronghold
But soon he changed the location, moving down to the left bank. The romans found themselves on the left too (at about 9 km from the enemy) but with a smaller camp on the right. On august, 2nd, "prima luce", all the detachments, crossing the river, prepared for the battle just in front of this camp. Therefore, Hannibal also moved his men to the right, closing the ranks with their back to Canne’s hills, while the romans had their backs to the sea.
Varrone drew up the romans on a straight line one and a half km long, with compact and deep ranks to increase the roman phalanx’s breaking capacity; the 2.400 cavalrymen on the right (along the river), the second consul Lucio Emilio Paolo behind and the 3.600 italic cavalrymen on the left, at his command. Hannibal drew up the Carthaginians in a brand new manner: the libic veterans on continual lines; on the left the celtic and iberical cavalry, at his command, and, on the right, the famous and skilled numidian cavalry at Annone’s command. Hannibal kept for himself the command of the most delicate central sector (on which the whole battle had to be hinged) arranging it as a convex arch composed by light infantry (Celts and Iberians), that in the general’s plans had to yield little by little without breaking, going back as a funnel, attracting towards the back of the imprudent roman soldiers. The battle developed according to Hannibal’s plans. He and his cavalry, soon put L. Emilio Paolo cavalry in flight, dispersing them, but came back to help the numidians thus contributing to rout the opposite italic cavalry.
Then he was able to attack at the rear the roman infantry, which meanwhile had wedged themselves in the fatal funnel, where, surrounded by the libic veterans, they could not escape. The impossibility to find a way of escape, the great number of soldiers in a little space, the panic and the mess made the romans’ massacre worse, really awful: above 40.000 dead in the troops; further, the three consuls, the quaestors, 29 military tribuns, 80 senators, 2.700 cavalrymen, 19.000 prisoners; 15.000 survived (Varrone among them), hiding themselves in the near towns of Canosa and Venosa. Among the Carthaginians there were only 6.000 fallen: a triumph for Hannibal.
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