nemy's column; so that, being
already drawn up with too narrow a front by their original
formation, they now became compressed still more by their own
movements, the right and left converging towards the centre,
till the whole army became one dense column, which forced its
way onwards by the weight of its charge, and drove back the
Gauls and Spaniards into the rear of their own line. Meanwhile,
its victorious advance had carried it, like the English column
at Fontenoy, into the midst of Hannibal's army; it had passed
between the African infantry on its right and left, and now,
whilst its head was struggling against the Gauls and Spaniards,
its long flanks were fiercely assailed by the Africans, who,
facing about to the right and left, charged it home, and threw
it into utter disorder. In this state, when they were forced
together into one unwieldy crowd, and already falling by
thousands, whilst the Gauls and Spaniards, now advancing in
their turn, were barring further progress in front, and whilst
the Africans were tearing their mass to pieces on both flanks,
Hasdrubal, with his victorious Gaulish and Spanish horsemen,
broke with thundering fury upon their rear. Then followed a
butchery such as has no recorded equal, except the slaughter of
the Persians in their camp, when the Greeks forced it after
the battle of Plataea. Unable to fight or fly, with no quarter
asked or given, the Romans and Italians fell before the swords
of their enemies, till, when the sun set upon the field, there
were left, out of that vast multitude, no more than three
thousand men alive and unwounded, and these fled in straggling
parties, under cover of the darkness, and found a refuge in the
neighbouring towns. The consul AEmilius, the proconsul Cn.
Servilius, the late master of the horse M. Minucius, two
quaestors, twenty-one military tribunes, eighty senators, and
eighty thousand men, lay dead on the field of battle. The
consul Varro, with seventy horsemen, had escaped from the rout
of the allied cavalry on the right. The loss of the victors was
only six thousand men."--ARNOLD, iii. 140-143.

The dreadful battle of Cannae bears a close resemblance in many important
particulars to two of the most important which have been fought in
modern times--those of Agincourt and Aspern.