Battle of Zama
Coordinates: 36 ° 17 ′ 56 " N , 9 ° 26 ′ 57" E
| date | October 19, 202 BC Chr. |
|---|---|
| place | Zama, near Carthage |
| output | Roman victory, end of the war |
| Parties to the conflict | |
|---|---|
| Commander | |
| Troop strength | |
| 20,000 heavy infantry 14,000 light infantry 2,700 Roman cavalry 6,000 Numidian cavalry |
approx. 50,000 infantry 3,000 cavalry 80 war elephants, |
| losses | |
|
1,500 dead |
20,000 dead and wounded |
Saguntum - Lilybaeum II - Rhone - Ticinus - Trebia - Cissa - Lake Trasimeno - Ager Falernus - Geronium - Cannae - Nola I - Nola II - Ibera - Cornus - Nola III - Beneventum I - Syracuse - Tarentum I - Capua I - Beneventum II - Silarus - Herdonia I - Upper Baetis - Capua II - Herdonia II - Numistro - Asculum - Tarentum II - New Carthage - Baecula - Grumentum - Metaurus - Ilipa - Crotona - Large fields - Cirta - Zama
The Battle of Zama took place in 202 BC. And was the largest battle in North Africa during the Second Punic War . The Carthaginian Hannibal fought against the V. and VI. Legion of the Roman general Cornelius Scipio when they met at Zama .
prehistory
After the lost battle in the Great Fields , the Carthaginians had to conclude a humiliating peace, which included the recall of Hannibal and Magos from Italy . Hannibal landed in Leptis Minor with about 15,000 men, 8,000 of whom were veterans from long campaigns in Italy . Shortly thereafter, Mago's armed forces were added after Mago himself died during the crossing.
After Hannibal returned from Italy, the Carthaginians wanted to improve the harsh peace conditions in the room . Soon there was an incident that exacerbated the crisis: A convoy of Roman supply ships, which was supposed to supply Scipio's army, was shipwrecked in the Bay of Carthage. Under pressure from the population, who feared a famine after the devastation of the war, the Carthaginian Senate decided to confiscate the ships. When Scipio's messengers protested against this measure, they were insulted and rejected.
Both military leaders spent most of the summer of 202 BC. With to gather their armed forces. Hannibal sent negotiators to Scipio's camp. This did not respond, but let the Carthaginians move freely in the Roman camp - completely unusual. They noticed that Scipio had very little cavalry. Hannibal therefore decided to fight, not realizing that Scipio knew of the imminent arrival of the Numidian prince Massinissa with 4,000 mounted men. At the beginning of the war he had fought on Hannibal's side, but changed sides because of the marriage of his rival Syphax with the Sophonisbe , a daughter of Hannibal's general Hasdrubal , who had actually been promised to him . So the Battle of Zama came about.
Immediately before the battle began, Hannibal and Scipio met personally between the armies. Hannibal offered Scipio a peace, the terms of which would have been far more favorable to Carthage than those agreed a year ago. Scipio did not respond, especially since he was determined to punish Carthage for breaking the armistice. So the military leaders returned to their troops to let the arms do the talking.
Course of the battle
Zama marked a turning point in the battles of the Punic War, when the Romans first mobilized the smaller infantry , which Carthaginians surpassed in cavalry with 6000 against 3000. In the first row, Hannibal placed around 40 war elephants , which, however, were still very little trained. The infantry was split into three meetings. The veterans rescued from Italy (mainly Libyan spearmen and grossers as well as Gauls ) formed the last row and were supposed to bring about the actual decision after the first two rows had disordered and exhausted the Roman legionaries.
The battle was opened by Scipio with a surprise maneuver: of his legions, which were set up in a checkerboard pattern as usual, every second manipula was shifted to the side, so that free alleys were formed between the Romans orthogonally to the battle line, through which most of the war elephants, through loud noises of the Romans startled, went through without doing much damage. On the flanks, on the other hand, many elephants sought the path of least resistance from their own cavalry, so that the Carthaginian instead of the Roman line got a little disordered.
After extensive preliminary skirmishes between Roman light infantry and Hannibal's mixture of light infantry and war elephants, the main troops met.
The Roman cavalry was able to gain the upper hand over their opponents very quickly and then pursued them instead of intervening again in the central events and exploiting the advantage of superiority in this branch of arms.
In the infantry fight, Hannibal put his opponents under great pressure. Although his first and second series of battles broke, this was intended and now the fresh, Carthaginian veterans of the third series were to defeat the tired Romans. When the second line of battle retreated, they threatened to destroy the order of the third, decisive line and Hannibal gave the order to lower the spears against their own people. As a result, the fleeing troops in the second line tried to escape sideways between the two armies, and those who made it gathered on the flanks of the veterans' battle line.
The Carthaginians threatened to gain the upper hand when the Roman cavalry suddenly returned from their pursuit and, falling in the rear of Hannibal's troops, destroyed their order of battle and decided the clash. The Romans emerged victorious from the battle.
Political consequences of the battle
Hannibal escaped to Hadrumetum and from there to Carthage. He fled into town and advised the Senate to surrender. Scipio returned to his camp at Utica and then marched on to Tunis . Here he received an embassy that had been sent on Hannibal's advice and asked for peace. The Carthaginian general offered peace again and promised that Carthage would withdraw from all European countries when the Romans left Africa. But Scipio relentlessly demanded surrender and even tightened the demands made before the battle.
First, a three-month truce was signed. A little later, the Roman Senate charged Scipio with the final negotiations. The new peace provisions were considerably tougher than those from 203 BC. Carthage had to surrender all of its elephants and its entire fleet except for ten ships, and the war indemnity, which was originally 5,000 talents, was increased considerably. For fifty years Carthage was to pay two hundred talents a year. The ally Massinissa received large areas as a reward, particularly the realm of his rival Syphax. The stipulation that he should get back all areas that had once belonged to him or his ancestors led him to raise ever more extensive territorial claims against Carthage in the years to come. Particularly fatal for the Carthaginians turned out to be the clause that they were not allowed to wage war outside of Africa and only in Africa with the consent of Rome.
The result weakened Carthage so much that it could never endanger Roman hegemony in the Mediterranean. The victorious general had in 201 BC Burning the remains of the Carthaginian fleet as a token of his triumph.
swell
- Polybios : Histories XV.5–16.
literature
- Lorenz Rumpf: Scipio and Hannibal before Zama. Observations on the structure of historical judgments and comparisons in Livy and Polybius . In: Hermes 134 (2006), pp. 159-180.
- Hans Delbrück: History of the Art of War. The ancient world , reprint of the first edition from 1900, Nikol Verlag, Hamburg 2003, ISBN 3-933203-73-2
- Georg Veith: Ancient battlefields. Building blocks for an ancient war story. By Johannes Kromayer and Georg Veith. III. Volume: Italy and Africa. Second section: Africa (by G. Veith) , pp. 599–702, Weidmannsche Buchhandlung, Berlin 1912. (standard work)
- Johannes Kromayer, Georg Veith: Ancient battlefields. Building blocks for an ancient war story. By Johannes Kromayer and Georg Veith. IV. Volume: Battlefields from the Persian Wars, from later Greek history and the campaigns of Alexander and from Roman history up to Augustus , pp. 626–636, Weidmannsche Buchhandlung, Berlin 1924–1931. (Standard work)
- Paul K. Davis: 100 Decisive Battles: From Ancient Times to the Present . Oxford University Press 2001, ISBN 0-19-514366-3 , pp. 47-51
- BH Warmington: Carthage. The rise and fall of a world power . Title of the original English edition: Carthago . Robert Hale Ltd., London 1960. Translation from English by Paul Baudisch. FA Brockhaus, Wiesbaden 1964, p. 230 ff.
