It appears that Mallius opened negotiations with the Cimbri without consulting Caepio, and Caepio launched a surprise attack on the Cimbri without telling Mallius. So instead of a combined army of 80,000 Romans acting together, the Cimbri had to cope with two rather confused armies of 40,000 men acting separately, and the Cimbri coped rather easily. The biggest Roman army since the battle of Cannae suffered the greatest Roman defeat since the battle of Cannae. Almost all of the 80,000 strong army were killed. Two notable survivors were the generals Caepio and Mallius who both fled from the
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