Essay on Hannibal Barca

I wrote this for fun one day. I was gonna use it for college and whatnot. I'm not sure how it is though. Check it out for me.

Hannibal Barca was a general for the Carthaginian Empire during the
Second Century B.C. Few generals rank as high, and none higher, then
this great man. He is in my opinion the greatest general of all time. I
have many reasons for making this claim. He was feared by his enemies,
he was undefeatable even without help, his men loved him, he was a
great politician, his personal characteristics were great, and his
ability to innovate was the greatest of his time; Hannibal was defeated
using his Hannibal's tactics.

See, for some 16-17 long years he terrorized the Roman peoples to the
extent that even up until the Fall of the Western Roman Empire, Roman
parents would invoke his name to scare their children into behaving.
There is nothing more bad ass then being the Bogeyman. Hell, the Romans
who usually didn't afraid of anything, would not go into combat with
him. They were wetting themselves over him. Even after he was defeated
and returned to his native Africa the Romans still were afraid. They
hunted him down, even when he was an old man walking with a cane. He
was just that intimidating to them.

Add to that, he kicked Roman asses for half a generation without any
reinforcements at all. The army he had entering Italy was the same one
he had leaving Italy. And he still pwned. Even with his soldiers
starving, crying for home, and upset at the lack of success, Hannibal
was still untouchable. Ticinus, Trebbia, Cannae, etc. He did these all
after losing what was at least one-quarter of his army after crossing
the Alps.

Another big thing: He was great at keeping his units loyal to him. Only
once did any one desert, and this was a very small amount, and even
then this was before they entered Italy. Do note, he was leading an
army with people from many different cultures and who could not even
speak each others languages. You had Celts, Gauls, Italians, Numidians,
Phoenicians, Iberians, Libyans, etc, not to mention his own native
Carthaginian officers. This was a very mixed army. The fact that they
never abandoned him shows just how much they loved their general.

My fourth reason: He was a great politician while also being a great
general. After the end of the Second Punic War, Hannibal was left
without an army. So he ran for the office of Suffet, which is
equivalent to being President of the United States. He was elected
without any competition at all; the election was a landslide victory
for him. Now, at this point, the office of Suffet had been robbed of
most of it's power. Hannibal was able to restore it's power through his
amazing sense of guile. After doing all this, he restored the treasury
of the ailing Carthage to a manageable level in only a few years time
and was able to set them up on the path to power before he was
forcefully exiled by the Romans. It takes a great man to be able to
conquer the battlefields of both Politics and the Military; Hannibal
was just this kind of man.

An attribute that must also be discussed is his personality.
Determination is a trait that would describe this man more than any
other. Not once did he even think about giving up, even when the odds
were obviously against him, with Hannibal only leaving Italy after
being forced back by the Carthaginian government. His sense of chivalry
is also a trait worth looking at. Every source we have on Hannibal
comes from a Roman making every source on Hannibal severely biased
against him and yet if one reads between the lines it is easy to see
that Hannibal was a man of great honour. After the Battle of the
Cannae, he gave the enemy general a proper cremation and sent the ashes
to his fallen foe's family and after the Battle of Lake Trasimene he
attempted to give his enemy a proper burial and gave up looking for the
body after hours of strenuously looking for it. Despite being a man
with enough blood on his hands to fill up 10 Olympic-sized pools, he
was also a great family man; his sense of filial piety is worthy of
note. Having sworn an oath to his father at the age of nine to never
give Rome a moment's rest, he carried through with it even after his
father's untimely death. He was also deeply saddened upon seeing his
brother Hasdrubal's severed head and was depressed for many days after
wards.

My final reason is that Hannibal was vastly innovative. He was a
pioneer in combining infantry and cavalry into one cohesive army.
Before his time, most armies were heavily biased towards infantry or
cavalry, with only Phillip, Alexander and his own father, Hamilcar,
before him having tried combining the two. Hannibal was the one who
mastered this art and Hannibal achieved great success because of it.
Hannibal also introduced the double envelopment and was also the only
general ever to successfully implement it. Using this on the field of
Cannae, Hannibal was able to defeat an army almost twice as big as his
own. He also invented biological warfare; while in charge of a fleet
during his exile, he instructed his men to throw jars filled with
snakes at the enemy ships. Hannibal won the battle without contest.
Hannibal's changes to the way war was waged were so effective, it is
his own tactics that ultimately brought an end to his career. It is
only right to call him "The Father of Strategy".

In conclusion, Hannibal was a man of many great traits. His only
weakness was his terrible sense of luck. Luck was on the Roman's side
time and time again and despite this Hannibal was able to prove his
worth as a general. Hannibal lost against all odds and that really has
to say something about his worth as a gambler. Hannibal was more feared
then Genghis Khan, indefatigable even without assistance, idolized by
his men, renowned as a politician, and a genius in the art of inventing
ways to kick his opponents ass. Without a doubt, Hannibal is the
greatest general of all time and will be remembered by historians
thousands of years from now.