Explanation: During the Italian campaign of the Carthaginian general Hannibal Barca, Carthaginian forces ravaged the allies of the Roman Republic up and down the Italian peninsula for some ~15 years. Roman forces hesitated to meet him in open battle, and he largely had his pick of targets.
… but his lack of siege equipment meant that every success against fortified cities came at a high cost in time and supplies. While most siege equipment would have been constructed on site, the lack of a strong engineering corps and the diversity of Hannibal’s mercenary army (many of whom did not even share a common language or command structure) meant that coordinating engineering efforts was not always a quick or efficient undertaking.
By contrast, even the relatively early militia-legions of the Roman Republic at this point were organized and trained for manual labor of that sort en masse. The first thing a legionary learns is obedience; the second, labor; and combat only third! Get digging, legionary! So whenever Hannibal would leave a conquered city, the Romans would wait until he was just far enough away to make returning a dangerous prospect, and then swoop in and re-take the city FOR ROME in a fraction of the time.
Explanation: During the Italian campaign of the Carthaginian general Hannibal Barca, Carthaginian forces ravaged the allies of the Roman Republic up and down the Italian peninsula for some ~15 years. Roman forces hesitated to meet him in open battle, and he largely had his pick of targets.
… but his lack of siege equipment meant that every success against fortified cities came at a high cost in time and supplies. While most siege equipment would have been constructed on site, the lack of a strong engineering corps and the diversity of Hannibal’s mercenary army (many of whom did not even share a common language or command structure) meant that coordinating engineering efforts was not always a quick or efficient undertaking.
By contrast, even the relatively early militia-legions of the Roman Republic at this point were organized and trained for manual labor of that sort en masse. The first thing a legionary learns is obedience; the second, labor; and combat only third! Get digging, legionary! So whenever Hannibal would leave a conquered city, the Romans would wait until he was just far enough away to make returning a dangerous prospect, and then swoop in and re-take the city FOR ROME in a fraction of the time.
What a frustrating game of whack-a-mole!
Ahhh. Now I finally understand why the Cunctator’s strategy was sound.