The tragedy of mankind

The Battle of Cannae

The roman empire one of the greatest empires of its day 80,000 strong lead by consuls Lucius Aemilius Paullus and Gaius Terentius Varro. They came to the city of Cannae to do battle with the relatively tiny forces of Hannibal and where destroyed by his tactical genius but there where many who will never be remembered by anyone but us.We are the ones most feared on the battle field we are your enemy's blade the infection in your leg we are the wild hoarse who ran you over we are death and we have come to reap.Now do not confuse us with the evil being u think of as death we are merely doing our job a job we hate i am Azrael The leader of my kind and the first and here is the first of my stories for you .This is a story about a man who you will never here about from a history book but without him the battle of Cannae would have gone much differently. His name was Manius around 19 at the time he was a good man he had a loving wife and son who would grow up much like him.This man was a fairly proficient solder but the real importance to him is this he was the One of the 32,000 heavy infantry. His life and death may have gone by unnoticed by the majority of history but not by us we seen him we seen his sacrifice and its events it affected. He was born January 4 225 bc and grew up as many children of his age did as a common peasant born into the farmers life he lived on his parents farm until he was 16 and joined the the army by this time he had a wife and 2 years later there child would be born eventually he was called to be in hannibles army soon after that he rose through the ranks becoming a officer .By this point the battle of Cannae was not far off this is where he really his importance stems from .# days before the battle he had orders to prepare his force and move 2 miles north to support the Spanish cavalry but going against order he stayed to reinforce the African infantry .Had he not chosen to do this the battle would have gone much worse as the left flank of the army would have been broken apart by the roman baristas and there for broken through Hannibles layer of man killed him and won the battle .but because he chose to stay and fight there the roman army splashed against the wall of heavy infantry. Sadly the only reward he would get was the release of death because a large ballistic bolt shattered against another man shield and part of it got stuck in his neck. Because of this man forgotten to history the roman army was smashed to pieces and that battle was now thought of as the greatest feats of military tactic but without Manus none of it would have happened.