Battle of Herdonia

Overview

The second battle of Herdonia took place in 210 BC during the Second Punic War. Hannibal, leader of the Carthaginians, who had invaded Italy eight years earlier, encircled and destroyed a Roman army which was operating against his allies in Apulia. The heavy defeat increased the war's burden on Rome and, piled on previous military disasters, aggravated the relations with her exhausted Italian allies. For Hannibal the battle was a tactical success, but did not halt for long the Roman advance. Within the next three years the Romans reconquered most of the territories and cities lost at the beginning of the war and pushed the Carthaginian general to the southwestern end of the Apennine peninsula.

Overview adapted from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Significance

The second Battle of Herdonia in 210 BC saw Hannibal encircle and destroy a Roman army operating against his Apulian allies, inflicting casualties estimated between 7,000 and 13,000 Roman dead. The defeat added to the cumulative military burden Rome had carried since Hannibal's invasion of Italy eight years earlier, and it strained relations with Rome's Italian allies, who were already exhausted by the prolonged conflict. For Carthage, the battle demonstrated that Hannibal retained the operational capacity to annihilate Roman forces in the field even as the war entered its second decade. Yet the strategic consequences were limited: within three years Roman forces had reconquered most of the territories and cities lost at the outset of the war, steadily compressing Hannibal's zone of operations toward the southwestern end of the Apennine peninsula. The battle thus stands as a Carthaginian tactical success that could not arrest the broader Roman recovery in Italy.

Tactics

Forces & casualties

Commanders (2)