Tea at Trianon: The Importance of the Battle of Cannae

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Friday, July 11, 2025

The Importance of the Battle of Cannae

From War on the Rocks:

The Battle of Cannae, fought on Aug. 2, 216 BCE, the crowning success of Hannibal Barca over the Romans, sits comfortably in the pantheon of great military victories. It is one of the most spectacular examples of adroit tactics enabling a smaller, less heavily equipped army to defeat a larger, heavier opposing force in an open, pitched battle. However, though Cannae is frequently described as a “decisive victory,” it was, of course, nothing of the sort: The battle took place two years into the 17-year-long Second Punic War, which Hannibal lost. The failure of even the greatest of tactical victories to alter the overall strategic situation is every bit as much of the legacy of Cannae as Hannibal’s dazzling double-envelopment tactics.
Three accounts of the Battle of Cannae survive, none of them contemporary. The oldest is Polybius, writing in the mid-second century BCE. Polybius came to Rome in 167 and both interviewed surviving witnesses of the war and relied on the (now lost) history of Fabius Pictor, who had been a member of the Roman Senate at the time of the battle. The other essential source is the Roman historian Livy, writing at the end of the first century BCE. Livy relied on Fabius Pictor and Polybius, but also a number of other lost historical works, including that of Lucius Coelius Antipater, though his account is hampered by his own lack of military experience and a few embellishments born of literary pretensions. Finally, the second century CE historian Appian also provides an account of the battle, though it is confused and generally regarded to be of little value. Consequently, scholarly debates on Cannae remain focused on reconciling relatively small differences between Livy and Polybius’ accounts, which remain the bedrock of our understanding of the battle. (Read more.)