Hannibal's Famous Crossing Of The Alps In The Second Punic War

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The Punic Wars are great examples of two empires clashing to expand their territory. The Punic Wars were fought between the Romans and Carthaginians. Each empire had great leaders, but the most famous leader of the wars was Hannibal Barca. Hannibal was most commonly associated with his famous crossing of the Alps in the Second Punic War. Although this act of warfare hurt the Carthaginian Empire more that it helped, it still was quite marvelous. The very famous crossing of the Alps is shrouded in controversy due to different accounts of writers during the time. Livy and Polybius were the two writers who wrote accounts on the famous mountain crossing. Both of them had different viewpoints on which route was taken when Hannibal made his famous …show more content…

The weather in the Alps can be quite unforgiving being it a high elevation mountain range. “About one-third of his army and most of his elephants perished during the journey, but those that made it through emerged after only two weeks of marching.” After the crossing Hannibal’s reduced forces were met by a brand new Roman outfit. Although being somewhat weak He still defeated the Roman forces although his numbers were somewhat depleted. “Although the discipline and courage of Roman and Italian had down to the point amply compensated for the Republics inexperienced generals, this system met by Hannibal.” He beat them using his impressive strategy that he has shown he had shown time and time …show more content…

He continued the siege for 8 months before eventually capturing. During the war both empires were more successful in different aspects of war. Carthage was more successful with ground troops due to good leadership and superior training and equipment. Rome had a more advanced naval power due to the last war being mostly naval. Hannibal’s plan to make their navy usless was to invade so that Rome would have to dedicate more resources to its ground forces and not fulfill its plan to invade Carthage with its Navy. After many convincing victories Hannibal set his sights on Rome. Once he got there he tried to siege the city, which was not very successful. The siege was not successful because Rome was such a heavily defende city. This is when things started to go bad for Hannibal and Carthage as a

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