Why Hannibal Is To Blame

I, Gaius Terentius Varro was made commander for this battle at Cannae and have failed miserably, us Romans entered the battle outnumbering Hannibal’s army and his allies, but left leaving many murdered Roman men behind on the battlefield including my colleague Lucius Aemilius Paullus. The Carthaginian general, Hannibal has completely annihilated us. He has outsmarted us Romans. But alas, this was not my fault, we were not meant to win, there were too many aspects of this battle that were not in our favor, things I could not have controlled. It started from the beginning, Hannibal arrived to Cannae before us, giving himself the upper hand to set up his army and take advantage of the Aufidus River which was the main source of water closest to
Rome sent us into battle with about 80,000 men. Hannibal on the other hand, arrived at the battlefield with about 40,000 infantry and 10,000 cavalry. Hannibal was very smart with how he planned out this battle. He managed to put us in a position where we were stuck, in a valley, with a river. We would not be able to escape, our mobility being restricted and especially because during the battle because Hannibal had his army lines facing north, while we faced the south and unfortunately in the valley, wind gusts blew our way resulting in dust and grit getting into many our men’s eyes. We went according to our usual formation, our light infantry toward the front, our heavy infantry behind the light infantry, and putting light and heavy cavalry on back wings. This formation failed us. Our usual tactic of placing a large amount of men on the field to overwhelm our enemy has failed as well. It is possible that Hannibal knew how we set up our battles and such, and he was able to devise a plan to outsmart us since this is the only way we were taught to set up and