My father started it, marching his army across Northern Africa and across the strait of Gibraltar to take on the tribes of the Iberian Peninsula and when he died in battle, my brother-in-law took over and made a deal with the Romans that we would not expand North into their domain if they did not expand south into ours.
We were merrily dicing and slicing Spaniards and Portuguese until he also died which left me in charge and i upped our conquest game which spooked the Romans who began claiming lands in our patch so i sent a delegation which said either get out or face war.
They chose the latter but i had a plan, turned out it was a massively stupid plan which ended up killing most of my army, but my plan was to sneakily attack the Romans from the Alps which was considered damn near impossible.
With 38,000 infantry, 8,000 cavalry and 38 elephants, we started the march from Iberia over the Pyrenees and the Alps into Northern Italy but we got stuck at a narrow, snowy pass and my men were concerned that the elephants would trigger an avalanche and kill them all so i tried to demonstrate to them that it was perfectly safe to pass along.
I chose to do this by ramming my cane into the snow, which in turn triggered an avalanche, which wiped out almost half my infantry, a quarter of my cavalry and most of the elephants but the rest made it across okay and we went to Italy and even with my depleted resources, fought Rome in their own backyard for 15 years.
The use of elephants was a masterstroke, the Romans had never seen them before and sending one of those rampaging through a town and into the Romans ranks caused mayhem until one of them worked out that blowing a horn at the elephants would cause them to turn tail and run straight back at us.
The Romans invaded North Africa and i had to return to defend my homeland but by time i got there the Roman's had taken over so i made peace with them but they heard i was plotting with the Greeks to kick them out so i ran off to Greece to act as a general in their own war against Rome but died from an infection after i cut my finger on my own sword whilst mounting my horse.
You may ask how someone who ended up killing more of his men than the Romans ever did and ended up being killed by an accident with his own sword can be considered one of the greatest strategists ever but i took on Rome with only half of my fighting force so if i had not accidentally killed them i would have taken Rome and history would be very different, the art, literature, laws and architecture would be a lot more Tunisian for a start.
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