Martin Antonenko
A Fixture
- Joined
- Jul 11, 2008
- Messages
- 8,994
Almost unknown: The Second Battle of Cannae...!
Almost everyone who deals with Roman history - or even military history - knows the famous Battle of Cannae in southern Italy, where on August 2, 216 BC. CE the army of Hannibal ground to dust a Roman army under the consuls Lucius Aemilius Paullus and Gaius Terentius Varro...:
The Carthaginians lost about 6,000 combatants during the battle - the Romans about 80,000 dead and 10,000 prisoners, their entire army including the consul Paullus (Varro, who was in supreme command that day, could escape)!
However, the second battle at the same place is almost completely unknown!
Again, two - significantly smaller - armies faced each other on the same fields near Cannae in 1018:
An army of the Byzantines under their Katepan (governor) Basileios Boioannes...
...on the one hand, and a force of southern Italian rebels under Meles of Bari, the Dux Apuliae, a regional prince of Lombard descent who sought independence for southern Italy from Byzantium.
Unfortunately there are no pictures of him, only his signature has survived...:
The southern Italers...
... are supported by a small army which Pope Benedict VIII.
... set up and equipped...
... as well as a larger number of Norman mercenary knights under Rainulf Drengot, the Dux Neapolis...
...who had also been recruited with papal funds...:
The battle is extremely one-sided, because the strategically and tactically far superior Byzantines...
... defeated the army of the insurgency devastating on October 1, 1018...
... and with this victory we can stabilize Byzantium's rule over large parts of southern Italy for another two decades...:
Ironically, the few surviving Norman mercenaries from this second Battle of Cannae will initiate the end of the Byzantines in Italy!
In contrast to Melos von Bari (who fled to Germany after the defeat and died in Bamberg two years later), the Normans will remain in the country, settle down, bring in more immigrants and eventually establish an independent rulership that will dominate over the next few decades all power-political competitors (Byzantines, Lombard princes, Arabs) will be ousted from southern Italy...
The so-called "star cloak" is kept in Bamberg today, which was long attributed to Emperor Heinrich II (973 - 1024), but according to recent research it was not made in Regensburg after 1020, but is much older and comes from Naples and belonged to Meles target...:
Almost everyone who deals with Roman history - or even military history - knows the famous Battle of Cannae in southern Italy, where on August 2, 216 BC. CE the army of Hannibal ground to dust a Roman army under the consuls Lucius Aemilius Paullus and Gaius Terentius Varro...:
The Carthaginians lost about 6,000 combatants during the battle - the Romans about 80,000 dead and 10,000 prisoners, their entire army including the consul Paullus (Varro, who was in supreme command that day, could escape)!
However, the second battle at the same place is almost completely unknown!
Again, two - significantly smaller - armies faced each other on the same fields near Cannae in 1018:
An army of the Byzantines under their Katepan (governor) Basileios Boioannes...
...on the one hand, and a force of southern Italian rebels under Meles of Bari, the Dux Apuliae, a regional prince of Lombard descent who sought independence for southern Italy from Byzantium.
Unfortunately there are no pictures of him, only his signature has survived...:
The southern Italers...
... are supported by a small army which Pope Benedict VIII.
... set up and equipped...
... as well as a larger number of Norman mercenary knights under Rainulf Drengot, the Dux Neapolis...
...who had also been recruited with papal funds...:
The battle is extremely one-sided, because the strategically and tactically far superior Byzantines...
... defeated the army of the insurgency devastating on October 1, 1018...
... and with this victory we can stabilize Byzantium's rule over large parts of southern Italy for another two decades...:
Ironically, the few surviving Norman mercenaries from this second Battle of Cannae will initiate the end of the Byzantines in Italy!
In contrast to Melos von Bari (who fled to Germany after the defeat and died in Bamberg two years later), the Normans will remain in the country, settle down, bring in more immigrants and eventually establish an independent rulership that will dominate over the next few decades all power-political competitors (Byzantines, Lombard princes, Arabs) will be ousted from southern Italy...
The so-called "star cloak" is kept in Bamberg today, which was long attributed to Emperor Heinrich II (973 - 1024), but according to recent research it was not made in Regensburg after 1020, but is much older and comes from Naples and belonged to Meles target...:
