The 33 Strategies of War

by Robert Greene

In studying ancient warfare, the great nineteenth-century military writer Colonel Ardant du Picq noticed a peculiar phenomenon: in some of the most celebrated battles (Hannibal’s victory over the Romans at Cannae and Julius Caesar’s over Pompey at Pharsalus, for example), the losses on each side were fantastically disproportionate—a few hundred for the victors, thousands upon thousands among the vanquished. According to du Picq, what had happened in these cases was that through maneuver the ultimately victorious army had managed to surprise the enemy and splinter its lines into parts. Seeing their ranks breaking up, losing their sense of solidarity and support, and feeling isolated, soldiers panicked, dropped their weapons, and fled—and a soldier who turned his back on the enemy was an easy soldier to kill. Thousands were slaughtered this way. These great victories, then, were essentially psychological. Hannibal was vastly outnumbered at Cannae, but by making the Romans feel vulnerable and isolated, he made them overreact and retreat in confusion: easy pickings.