Hannibal is universally ranked as one of the greatest military commanders and tacticians in history. His most famous achievement was at the outbreak of the , when he marched an army, which included war elephants, from Iberia over the Pyrenees and the Alps into northern Italy.

Algeria (1992) 500 Dinars (front) - Hannibal And His Army, War Elephants, Battle of Cannae

Hannibal crossed the Alps, surmounting the difficulties of climate and terrain, and the guerrilla tactics of the native tribes. His exact route is disputed. Hannibal arrived with at least 28,000 infantry , 6,000 cavalry and 30 elephants in the territory of the Taurini in Italy. His crossing of the Alps was expected by the enemy, but not such an early arrival, while the Roman forces were still in their winter quarters. This crossing is usually credited as a great achievement since no army before had crossed the Alps in winter with elephants and it led to the termination of Rome's main intended thrust, an invasion of Africa.

The Battle of Cannae was a major battle of the Second Punic War, taking place on August 2, 216 BC near the town of Cannae in Apulia in southeast Italy. The Carthaginian army under Hannibal decisively defeated a numerically superior Roman army under command of the consuls Lucius Aemilius Paullus and Gaius Terentius Varro. Following the Battle of Cannae, Capua and several other Italian city-states defected from the Roman Republic. Although the battle failed to decide the outcome of the war in favour of Carthage, it is regarded as one of the greatest tactical feats in military history and the greatest defeat of Rome.

Use of War Elephants
The Romans eventually developed tactics to neutralize the dangerous elephant charges. In Hannibal's last battle (Zama, 202 BCE), his elephant charge was ineffective because the Roman maniples simply made way for them to pass. More than a century later, in the battle of Thapsus (February 6, 46 BCE), Julius Caesar armed his fifth legion (Alaudae) with axes and commanded his legionaries to strike at the elephant's legs. The legion withstood the charge, and the elephant became its symbol. Thapsus was the last significant use of elephants in the West.

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia articles "Hannibal", "War Elephant", "Battle of Cannae" and "Second Punic War".

Note: Tunisia also pays tribute to Hannibal, see here