As Will Durant wrote, "It was a supreme example of generalship, never bettered in history... and it set the lines of military tactics for 2,000 years".
•
As Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force in World War II, wrote, "Every ground commander seeks the battle of annihilation; so far as conditions permit, he tries to duplicate in modern war the classic example of Cannae".
•
Following the battle, the commander of the Numidian cavalry, Maharbal, urged Hannibal to seize the opportunity and march immediately on Rome.
Battle of Waterloo | Battle of Britain | Battle of the Somme | Battle of the Bulge | Battle of Gettysburg | Battle Creek, Michigan | Battle of France | Battle of Trafalgar | Battle of Hastings | Battle of Antietam | battle | Battle of Shiloh | Battle of Midway | Battle of Belleau Wood | Battle of the Alamo | Battle of Leipzig | Battle of Agincourt | Battle of Verdun | Battle of Thermopylae | Battle of the Plains of Abraham | Battle of Vienna | Second Battle of the Marne | Second Battle of El Alamein | Battle of the Nile | Battle of the Boyne | Battle of Stalingrad | Battle of Austerlitz | The Last Battle | Kathleen Battle | Battle of Vitoria |
Zumalacárregui attempted to follow a plan of battle similar to that enacted by Hannibal at Cannae: he would allow enemy forces to drive themselves into a large arc — whereupon the Carlist infantry, positioned on the flanks in the forests of Holm oaks on the mountain of Dos Hermanas, would encircle the main body of Liberal infantry and destroy it.
Khalid decisively defeated the numerically superior Persian forces using a variation of the double envelopment tactical manoeuvre, similar to the manoeuvre Hannibal used to defeat the Roman forces at the Battle of Cannae; however, Khalid is said to have developed his version independently.
•
Rather than launching his cavalry via the flanks (as Hannibal had done in the Battle of Cannae), Khalid made use of the terrain, and positioned a part of the cavalry behind the western ridge of the battlefield.
The above is only standard procedure and was often modified; for example, at Zama, Scipio deployed his entire legion in a single line to envelop Hannibal's army just as Hannibal had done at Cannae.
•
The later debacles at Lake Trasimene and Cannae, forced the proud Romans to avoid battle, shadowing the Carthaginians from the high ground of the Apennines, unwilling to risk a significant engagement on the plains where the enemy cavalry held sway.
Books 8-10 describe in vivid detail the battle of Cannae; Juno prevents Hannibal from marching on Rome.