Battles

After defeating the Sabines and the Aurunci, with this battle, Rome defeats the Latins and becomes the dominator of Lazio. It was used for the first time a dictator, who at critical moments for the nation assumed the powers for a year. Postumius had the honor of being the first.

After a long siege, Rome finally subdues the closest Etruscan neighbor with whom it had nearly a century of almost uninterrupted fighting.

The Brennus Gauls win with an army far superior in numbers, and provoke panic among civilians: they paint themselves in red, plunder Rome, and destroy the first legal code, which was exposed in the Forum, the «Laws of the Twelve Tables». The hero Marcus Manlius saves the Capitol. In the payment of the tribute, the Gaul pronounced his famous phrase: «Vae Victis» (Woe to the vanquished!) placing his sword in the dish of a false balance to weigh the Roman gold. Marcus Furius Camillus, named after with the title of second founder of Rome, attacks with a reorganized army and puts the Gauls in flight.

Near Cumae, Rome obtains a victory of prestige in the most important battle of the first Samnite War, being commanded by Valerius Corvus.

In the region of Samnium (central Italy), the Romans suffer one of the most painful defeats against the Samnites of Pontius. They are forced to pass under the «caudine forks», spears stuck in the ground, increasing the humiliation of the soldiers. In the first war the supremacy is Samnite.

Decisive victory of the Romans that ends the Second Samnite War. In a definitive way the balance of forces is tilted in its favor.

Great victory over a coalition of Samnites, Etruscans and Gauls, which puts an end to the Third Samnite War, and allows Rome to contact the Adriatic Sea, to dominate all central Italy and to set eyes on the Greek colonies of the south. The Samnite resistance is finished.

Roman victory over the Gallo-Etruscan coalition.

Pyrrhus, the king of Epirus, comes to the aid of the Greek colony of Tarentum, and with elephants among his troops manages to defeat the Romans.

After the defeat of Heraclea, the Romans regroup in front of the army of Pyrrhus that was only two days from Rome and make him retreat. When they face near Asculum they are again defeated, although they inflict many casualties on the Greek army. From these tight victories of the King of Epirus comes the expression “Pyrrhic victory.”

Definitive victory over Pyrrhus, who retires to Greece. There he dies three years later fighting against Argos, having conquered Macedonian lands. When he left Sicily, he said: «What a beautiful battlefield we left to the Carthaginians and the Romans!».

After the conquest of this rich city, Magna Graecia passes under the control of the Republic, that is, Rome seizes southern Italy and already dominates the entire peninsula.

Naval victory of the consul Duilius over Hannibal Gisco, within the first Punic War. The prows of the captured ships decorate the famous «rostral column» of the Forum, to celebrate the first naval victory in the whole history of Rome.

New naval victory. One of the battles with the largest number of boats involved in antiquity. The victor, the consul Atilius Regulus decides to disembark in Africa with a large army.

Regulus disembarks at Cape Bon, but Carthage is impregnable: its capital possesses great walls of 34 kilometers of perimeter, and its troops are entrusted to a Spartan general, Xanthipphus, who defeats the Romans and takes prisoner to the consul and 5,000 of his soldiers. In addition, immediately after, a storm destroys the Roman fleet with thousands of men on board. As a result the Romans are expelled from Africa and Carthage takes back control of Sicily.

While the Punic war is being fought, new Gallic incursions appear in the north. A general mobilization is proclaimed and the invaders are crushed. Rome wants to settle the question of its vulnerability, and for that it establishes colonies to the north, in the Po plain (Galia Cisalpina).

Near these islands, Lutatius Catulus defeat the Punics by sea again. This decisive victory forces Carthage to seal peace, abandoning Sicily and forcing itself to pay a heavy tribute.

After crossing the Alps, Hannibal defeated the Romans commanded by Scipio, father of the famous Scipio Africanus, in their first meeting, already in the second Punic War. Numidian cavalry plays a leading role by attacking on the flanks. After this victory the Gauls and Ligurians of northern Italy join the Carthaginian leader and greatly increase the strength of his army.

First major battle of this war. Hannibal annihilates almost 20,000 legionaries. The superior Carthaginian cavalry and the moral blow of the elephants that the Romans had never seen become decisive.

Hannibal ambushes the army sent to stop him and surrounds him in front of the lake. After several hours of fierce confrontation, the Romans, who fought for their lives without being able to form in a consistent battle order, yield and are largely annihilated.

The most humiliating defeat of the Republic. Hannibal enters the legend. With a clearly depleted troops defeats an impressive Roman army, through a strategy that occupies pages of honor in military history: with its Iberians and Gauls cooks a trap over a low heat enveloping and annihilating their enemies again, this time around 60,000 legionaries. He has Rome at his mercy without soldiers to defend him (Anibal ad portas, or Hannibal at the gates), although surely for lack of sufficient troops discards the occupation.

Scipio after taking Carthago Nova (Cartagena) defeats the armies of Hasdrubal in Bailen (province of Jaen).

The late Carthaginian reinforcements are intercepted near this river, before arriving in Italy. The young General Hasdrubal dies, and he will no longer be able to help the decimated troops of Hannibal.

With this battle in the current Alcala del Rio (Seville), Scipio takes Cadiz and definitively expels the Carthaginians of Hispania. Two years later he takes the war to Africa.

Hannibal returns abruptly to aid Carthage. Scipio evolves the legions using his maniples to annul the tactical advantage of the enemy elephants, opening corridors and letting them pass between his troops without losing order in the formation and, with the Numidian cavalry on his side, he has just decanted in his favor a battle close in terms of troops.

The consul Flamininus defeats Philip V of Macedonia. The flexible legions retire  the heavy and rigid phalanges, which for three centuries had been tactically intractable.

Victory over King Antiochus of Syria, who had welcomed Hannibal, intended to dominate the Egypt of the Ptolemies, and intrigued against Rome in Greece. Soon after, he betrayed Hannibal who ends up poisoning himself, and he will humble himself in the capital of the Republic, which will divide his kingdom among his allies: Rhodes and Pergamum.

The consul Aemilius Paullus defeats Perseus of Macedonia (son of Philip), who sought revenge against Pergamum. An entire Macedonian king is humiliated on the triumphal walk through Rome and dies two years later in prison.

The abuses of Rome to the Hispanic populations culminate with this massacre of 9,000 Lusitanians, which Servius Sulpicius Galba gathers unarmed with deception, without distinguishing between women, children or the elderly. A boy survivor of this genocide: Viriathus, years later will reunite a Celtiberian army against Rome and will defeat the legions continuously until he is killed by traitors. Meanwhile, Numantia forges another myth of resistance (falling in 133 BC, after an atrocious siege). Both become the hallmarks of the indomitable Iberian resistance through the centuries.

After the definitive submission of Corinth, Carthage and Numantia, the Roman legions go to Massilia (Marseille) in aid of their colony, threatened by their neighbors, and found Aix in southern Gaul. Near Montelimar defeat 200,000 Gallic soldiers: the Allobroges, allies of King Bituitus of the Arverni. After this, they put outposts between Lyon and Toulouse, and from Rome they begin to speak with pride of the Mediterranean as Mare Nostrum, our sea.

Gaius Marius faces for two years the king of Numidia: Jugurtha, who had been able to defeat a legion in Africa. With this victory he wins the war.

Cimbri and teutones (germanic people of the Baltic) annihilate some legions in this battle of the Gaul. After their victory, they split into two groups and seek their fortune separately.

Gaius Marius destroys the teutones in Aix-en-Provence, applying his revolutionary reform of the legions that become invincible under the command of minimally competent generals.

Gaius Marius destroys the cimbri in the plain of the Po (in the Rudii Fields), culminating the revenge of the annihilated legions in Orange, and is received in the capital as a savior being elected up to seven times as consul and greeted as the third founder of Rome (along with Romulus and Camillus).

Victory of Sulla over Mithridates, King of Pontus. That same year, Marius, his great rival in the struggle for the power of Rome, dies.

In this river up to 20 Roman legions are needed to finally defeat Spartacus and quell a slave revolt that was ravaging Italy.

Pompey gathers a great fleet composed of 200 ships and definitively defeats the Cilician pirates. Thousands of prisoners and hundreds of ships formed a booty that enlarged the fame of the Roman general.

Crassus is attacked by the skillful parthian cavalry while crossing the desert of Mesopotamia with his legions. When he tries to negotiate while beating his retreating army, he is betrayed by the enemy, who captures 10,000 prisoners and annihilates the rest of the legionaries.

After unstoppable campaigns in Gaul and part of Germania, Caesar is forced to return quickly from Britania, to quell a revolt caused by the harsh repression of the Romans to the Gallic tribes. A Young prince of the Arverni, Vercingetorix, groups together most of the peoples, creating a large army and slows the final victory of Caesar in Gergovia, the capital of Auvergne. Vercingetorix then attacks the Romans, who are intractable, and the Gallic army is broken, flees to the impregnable Alesia. Caesar conceived a double fence, dividing the besieged and the great reinforcements of these. This strategy achieved the final victory over Gaul and its absorption for the Republic.

Caesar fails in his attempt to surprise and strike a blow quickly to the Pompeian troops located in this enclave of present-day Albania. He managed to flee with the bulk of his army and a few weeks later the decisive confrontation took place in Pharsalia.

Definitive caesarian victory on the children of Pompey in Hispania. Caesar, who had been re-elected consul and appointed dictator for 10 years, died assassinated in the Senate the following year, in the fateful «Ides of March», when he had not yet been able to enjoy the honeys of victory, and was preparing a great campaign over Parthia and he dreamed of attacking Germania in the back. He also left the foundations of a formidable Empire for his successors.

Gaius Octavius (later Augustus), Mark Antony, and Lepidus are allied in a second triumvirate. Definitive victory over the deceased assassins of Caesar; the two main ones: Brutus and Cassius, commit suicide.

Octavius defeats Antony’s forces. They reconciled by sealing the peace of Brindisi, and Antony moves away to the East, where he starts an affair with Cleopatra despite having married Octavius sister: Octavia.

Octavius naval victory over Antony, who left the former as master an lord of Rome, annexing Egypt as well. Two years later celebrates the triumph in the capital and other two delays in obtaining that the Senate abdicates of its powers and grants the title to him of Augustus (since the one of Caesar was still morally unattainable). Here begins a new time: the Republic gives way to the Empire.

The last Cantabrian, Asturian and Galician warriors are defeated heroically in front of the legions of Gaius Furnius and Publius Carisius. The last survivors prefer to commit suicide rather than fall captive. After two centuries of Hispanic resistance, this battle supposes the fall of the last rebel focus of importance.

Slaughter of the legions of Varus by the Germanics of the chief Arminius, who being subject to imperial authority, betrayed his covenant by attracting the legions to swampy and leafy forests, and in them they were annihilating the legions whose soldiers were being isolated with the mud on the knees at the mercy of the terrible barbarians. Augustus, who had planned the establishment of the province of Germania within the empire, to the Elbe River, according to Suetonius, suffered such pain that for months he did not cut his beard or hair, shouting incessantly: «Varus, Varus, give me back my legions». The great Germanicus would recover the sacred eagles years later, but the dream of incorporating the Germania into the Empire was undone for the second and last time, placing the border on the Rhine and becoming the first error that led to the fall of Rome four centuries later.

Great victory of Germanicus who defeated Arminius and avenged the legions of Varus. It faces with its 8 legions a barbarian army armed with spears of up to 3.6 m. One of the last times that legionaries wore tufts of horsehair in their helmets. According to Tacitus, the great battle involved 128,000 men, and lasted from 9:00 in the morning until the night. The army of Arminius was annihilated and 16 km of land were covered with weapons and corpses. Even so, the Cherusci leader survived.

Arminius regroups his forces determined to avenge and plot a trap in a gigantic wall of land built in the past by the tribe of the Angrivari when they were at war against the Cherusci. Germanicus is informed of his enemy’s plans and uses it to equalize the balance. Another battle that lasted hours in which the Romans finally won. The Germanic leader escaped again, and Germanicus soon after losing part of his fleet, disembarked and attacked the other side of the Rhine, where he recovered another Eagle of Varus. The year 17 AD celebrated the deserved triumph. Fate wanted both contenders to die the same year, 19 AD, the Roman said that poisoned in Syria by order of Emperor Tiberius and the German at the hands of his own people.

With this name in English the battle is remembered in which only 10,000 legionaries commanded by Suetonius Paulinus, using a closed infantry tactics in three wedges and cavalry surrounding the flanks, defeated the one that Tacitus considered as the “greatest army that had ever been assembled”. After her two daughters had been raped and her village burned, Queen Boudica joined between 120,000 and 230,000 Britons soldiers, annihilated 80,000 Roman citizens and allies, and destroyed three main enclaves in Britannia as revenge. In the confrontation at least 80,000 Britons died and those who could not flee were taken captive. Roman rule on the island was secured for several more centuries after this absolute victory.

After a five-month siege, Titus troops destroy the city and the temple of Solomon.

Eight camps, seven months of siege and three months of construction of a huge ramp, are necessary to subdue this almost impregnable fortress, which had welcomed refugees from Jerusalem and Jewish troops who refused to surrender.

The most northerly victory in Rome and the last one in which he faced cars. General Gnaeus Julius Agricola, commanding 20,000 legionaries and auxiliaries, crushes on this mountain in present-day Scotland an amalgam of various Caledonian tribes that far exceed the strength of his army. Roman troops had never been so far north before.

The Dacian king Duras defeats the legions that Domitian had sent in retaliation to the invasion of the Dacians in Moesia. It would take fourteen years for the Emperor Trajan to avenge the Empire and change the direction of the tribute of war.

Decisive victory of the legions of Trajan against the Dacian king Decebalus. After this pitched battle, the Romans take positions to subdue the Dacian capital with the arrival of good weather.

New victory of the legions on Decebalus, who had invaded by surprise with the help of his allies bastarnae and roxolani the Roman province of Moesia, in a bold attempt to take Trajan away from the Dacian capital, Sarmizegetusa. The king asks for peace and Trajan accepts it. Years later he rebelled again and Trajan definitively annexed the province to the Empire.

After the victory of the emperor Gordian III, the Persians return to present battle in Edesa. While the Alamanni are defeated in Milan, and the Saxons, Franks and Goths begin incursions, the Persian Empire with King Shapur in front takes the Roman Emperor Valerian prisoner in this battle, and deport him to Susa where he is employed in the construction of a dike and a city: Gundishapur.

Constantine defeats Maxentius near Rome in his struggle for imperial power, on October 27. Bastard son of Constantius Chlorus, he read in the sky the following: «In hoc signo vinces» (in this sign you shall conquer). It is said that he saw a luminous cross in the sky, although current scholars believe that it would be an asteroid that could cross the sky at that time. From this battle, the labarum became an army banner (a cross with the monogram of Christ surrounded by a laurel wreath), in front of the Sun symbol, which Maxentius and the imperial legions used since Aurelian established it as new pagan god.

Victory of Theodosius against Flavius Eugenius, who dies in combat. Stilicho and Alaric accompany the emperor. After this battle, any attempt to restore paganism is impossible, and Catholicism becomes the only official religion of the Roman Empire. This date is considered to be the end of the gods of the ancient world, although their cult would continue for a long time in rural areas, until finally vanishes under the new order that leaves no space for them.

Flavius Stilicho again defeats the Gothic king Alaric, who was looting the north of Italy as pleased and besieged Milan, where was the court of the emperor Honorius, with the intention to loot Rome next. In a few months the general manages to unite the two legions of the Rhine, that of Recia and that of Britannia to his troops, and together with his powerful heavy cavalry with mesh armor and a select auxiliary contingent of Alans, defeat the Goths temporarily saving Italy. Upon his arrival in Rome, next to the emperor, he is acclaimed with all merit, the people sees in him a general at the height of the great ones of the glorious past. In 410, with the Roman general executed shortly before by the immature and manipulable emperor, Alaric fulfills his promise and plunders the capital of the Empire.

Victory of the Romano-Britons in front of the invading barbarians of Britannia. Saint Germanus of Auxerre, on Easter day, delivers the penultimate victory important to the Romans of the island, that without imperial armies could hardly defend themselves from the incursions of Jutes, Scots, Angles and Saxons, helped by Celtic traitors tyrants who pushed their establishment to consolidate their illegitimate power.

Last great victory and perhaps the greatest of the Roman Empire, ally of Visigoths and some Franks, against the Huns of Attila. Flavius Aetius and Theodoric achieve the survival of our culture against all odds against a diabolically immense enemy in the Campus Mauriacus, in the north of Gaul, on June 21.

Failed joint disembarkation of troops of the two empires to reconquer the African territories occupied by the vandals. King Genseric with great skill tricks the Romans and, after the landing and five days of waiting negotiating the terms of surrender, treacherously destroys much of the imperial fleet, which was composed of hundreds of ships and transported up to 100,000 soldiers. With this disaster, the West definitively loses the riches of North Africa and is at the mercy of the barbarians, who shortly after depose the last Western emperor. A few decades later, in the times of Justinian and his great general, Count Belisarius, this affront was avenged and these territories recovered.

Epic and heroic victory, the last of importance, of the Romans in Britannia. «The Last of the Romans»: Ambrosius Aurelianus (most probably the inspirer of the Arthurian legend, Camelot and the dream of British unity), momentarily slows the Anglo-Saxon advance to the west, in the still Roman-Briton Domnonea (present Devon and regions adjoining). This victory is a mirage, since barbarian waves continue to land in the southeast of the island and its pressure on the last redoubts of resistance becomes unstoppable. All indications point to the battle of Mons Badonicus was fought in the current Badbury Rings, on the banks of the Stour, in Dorset.

Framed in the war of Iberia (Georgian kingdom of the Caucasus) that faced the Eastern Rome against Persia, the great general Belisarius obtains a fragile victory in inferiority facing the sassanid elite composed by the famous immortals. The Romans will continue to face the continuing Sassanid threat.

The Eastern Romans, with Belisarius in command, defeated the vandal army of King Gelimer near Carthage, destroying the Vandal kingdom and again submit their dominions to the imperial power. The Byzantine military elite composed of less than 6,000 men is imposed on an enemy that almost multiplied by ten their forces. Count Belisarius joins the select group of legendary military men in the history of Rome.

The Eastern Romans, with the general Eunuch Narses in command, destroy the Ostrogoths and already have in their hands the reconquest of Italy. Totila dies, the penultimate Ostrogothic king.

In the Mons Lactarius the Romans definitively reconquer the Italian peninsula. Die Teia, the last Ostrogothic king. His people fled to other barbarian kingdoms, although a minority accepted Roman authority and stayed in the fields. They leave a devastated territory after more than two decades of fierce war.

Romano-Briton disaster, where three briton kings die. It is the end of all hope: the Saxons seize the last important Roman cities of the island: Cirencester, Gloucester and Bath, make contact for the first time with the west coast of the island, and isolate the last nucleus of resistance in Cornwall and in Wales. From this defeat, the vulgar Latin will practically extinguish when the last relevant cities disappear and, against all odds, some Celtic languages will survive painfully among the Germanic tide.

In this battle (also known as «Battle of Lake Janda») fought in July, and which the legend says lasted eight days, Islam enters Hispania, destroying the most prosperous and advanced kingdom in Europe emerged from the fusion of Romans and Germanic (although the latter were a minority). Favored the installation and fortification of the hosts of Tariq in Gibraltar, at the instigation of the Jews on both sides of the strait, who had been mistreated by the Goth kings in their national construction based on a single religion of state: Catholicism, and especially supported by the treason of Count Don Illan (or Don Julian), Lord of Ceuta and territories annexed to Tangier. This vassal of the Gothic kingdom of Spain, provided a fleet and supplies to the infidel troops, in revenge against King Roderic (later known as «Rudericus, ultimus rex gothorum»), which was said to have dishonored the count’s daughter in the royal court. In any case, the battle was being decided in favor of the Hispanics, when a treacherous faction changed sides and the last Christians were annihilated.

While the Spanish-Goths, who did not want to submit to the infidel were held in the mountains of the north (Cantabrian Mountains and Pyrenees), the Muslims continue their unstoppable progress in Gaul lands, where the Franks with all their strength plant battle and defeat the hosts invaders, thus saving Christianity in the heart of Europe. The victorious king: Charles Martel, will provide with this glorious triumph, the name of Carolingians to the royal house of the Pippinids (of the nobility of Austrasia), which with great historical relevance will inherit years later Charlemagne, first emperor of what would later be known as Holy Roman Empire, the restored Western Roman Empire.