Fabian Strategy: Fabian Strategy - The Art of Deliberate Delay in Warfare

By Fouad Sabry

What is Fabian Strategy

The Fabian strategy is a military strategy where pitched battles and frontal assaults are avoided in favor of wearing down an opponent through a war of attrition and indirection. While avoiding decisive battles, the side employing this strategy harasses its enemy through skirmishes to cause attrition, disrupt supply and affect morale. Employment of this strategy implies that the side adopting this strategy believes time is on its side, usually because the side employing the strategy is fighting in, or close to, their homeland and the enemy is far from home and by necessity has long and costly supply lines. It may also be adopted when no feasible alternative strategy can be devised.

How you will benefit

(I) Insights, and validations about the following topics:

Chapter 1: Fabian strategy

Chapter 2: Quintus Fabius Maximus Verrucosus

Chapter 3: Hannibal

Chapter 4: Punic Wars

Chapter 5: Second Punic War

Chapter 6: 210s BC

Chapter 7: 203 BC

Chapter 8: Hamilcar Barca

Chapter 9: Marcus Claudius Marcellus

Chapter 10: Battle of Cannae

(II) Answering the public top questions about fabian strategy.

Who this book is for

Professionals, undergraduate and graduate students, enthusiasts, hobbyists, and those who want to go beyond basic knowledge or information for any kind of Fabian Strategy.

• Language: English
• Publisher: One Billion Knowledgeable
• Release date: May 27, 2024

Book preview

Chapter 1: Fabian strategy

In the Fabian strategy, frontal assaults and pitched battles are eschewed in favor of waging an indirect and attritional war that wears down the opposition. This side harasses its adversary through skirmishes to inflict attrition, disrupt supply, and damage morale while avoiding decisive battles. The employment of this tactic means that the party using it believes time is on its side, typically because they are fighting in or near their home country while the enemy is far away and must have expensive and lengthy supply lines. When no workable alternative plan can be developed, it may also be used.

By extension, the phrase is used to describe other circumstances in which a big, ambitious objective is thought to be out of reach but could be achieved in little increments.

Quintus Fabius Maximus Verrucosus, who deployed inner lines to prevent Hannibal from marching directly on Rome without first abandoning his Mediterranean ports, is credited with the invention of this tactic (supply lines). At the same time, Fabius started handing the North Africans continual, minor defeats that crippled them. This, according to Fabius, would exhaust the invaders' resolve and deter Rome's allies from switching sides without engaging the Carthaginians in significant combat. In order to finally defeat the Carthaginians, Fabius and his well-fed soldiers would engage them in a decisive battle once they had been sufficiently weakened and demoralized by a shortage of food and supplies.

The fact that a large portion of Hannibal's army was composed of Gaulish allies and Spanish mercenaries was his second weakness. Although they didn't like Rome, they were only superficially loyal to Hannibal and mostly wanted to engage in fast fights and raids for loot. They lacked the equipment and the patience necessary for such strategies, making them unfit for protracted sieges. Their morale was damaged by the monotony of numerous small-skirmish losses, and they started to desert.

Hannibal's army posed almost no threat to Rome, a walled city that needed a protracted siege to be taken, as there was no primary Roman force to attack. The strategy employed by Fabius struck at the source of Hannibal's frailty. Time would be Hannibal's downfall, not huge conflicts.

Although Fabius' plan was a military success and acceptable to more experienced members of the Roman Senate, it was unpopular since the Romans were used to directly engaging and defeating their adversaries in combat. A split in the Roman army's command contributed to the failure of the Fabian strategy. Marcus Minucius Rufus, a political rival of Fabius and the magister equitum, is renowned for saying:

Are we coming here to watch while our allies are slaughtered and their property is set on fire as a spectacle? If we are not struck with shame over these countrymen, then why should we be over the adjacent Samnite who now burns them with fire but a Carthaginian foreigner who has come even this far from the furthest reaches of the world due to our inaction and dithering?

The Roman populace gradually began to doubt the logic of the Fabian plan, the very thing that had allowed them time to recover, as the memory of the shock of Hannibal's victory faded. The vast majority of people, who were eager to see the war end quickly, found it immensely frustrating. Furthermore, it was commonly feared that if Hannibal continued to pillage Italy unchallenged, the allies may turn against Rome and join the Carthaginians since they would believe that Rome was unable to defend them.

The Senate removed Fabius from command because he had not achieved any significant wins. Gaius Terentius Varro, their replacement of choice, led the Roman army into a disaster in the Battle of Cannae. The Romans had by this time learned their lesson after suffering this devastating setback and losing several other battles. They used the tactics that Fabius had taught them, realizing that this was the only practical way to expel Hannibal from Italy.

Fabius was given the title Cunctator for using this attrition-based tactic (The Delayer).

The main Persian army under Shapur II allowed the numerically superior Romans to march deep into their land during the Roman invasion against Persia led by Julian in 363 AD, avoiding a full-scale conflict at the cost of the destruction of their castles. They were enticed into the heartland of Persia, where the Persians used scorched earth tactics, because the fortified Persian city appeared to be impenetrable. When Shapur II's army finally arrived and began fighting after the famished Romans had fled, the result was a crushing Roman loss.

Following a string of devastating losses in close combat against Edward, the Black Prince, the French commander Bertrand du Guesclin employed the tactic during the Hundred Years' War against the English. Eventually, de Guesclin was successful in regaining the majority of the lost land.

George Washington, who was sometimes referred to as the American Fabius for his adoption of the Fabian strategy during the first year of the American Revolutionary War, is the Fabian approach's most notable user in American history. Although Washington had initially advocated for traditional direct engagements using battle lines, he was eventually persuaded of the advantages of using his army to harass the British rather than engage them. This was due to the advice of his generals in his councils of war as well as the disastrous pitched-battle events of 1776, particularly the Battle of Long Island. In addition, Washington believed that this approach would help defeat the British Army's conventional strategies given his experience as a colonial officer who had taken part in asymmetric wars against Native Americans.

The Viet Minh employed the strategy during the First Indochina War by employing hit-and-run and scorched-earth tactics against the better-equipped French forces, extending the conflict and making the French high command and home front weary of the fighting, which led to the end of the war with the decisive Vietnamese victory at Dien Bien Phu. Later, during the Vietnam War, the Viet Cong and the NVA would employ similar tactic against American and ARVN units.

The Fabian Society, which was established in 1884, promoted the idea of fabian socialism, which had a big impact on the British Labour Party. In order to achieve the society's goal of creating a socialist state, it employs the same war of attrition method. This form of socialism was distinguished from others who urge revolutionary action by its advocacy of gradualism.

{End Chapter 1}

Chapter 2: Quintus Fabius Maximus Verrucosus

Roman senator and general Quintus Fabius Maximus Verrucosus, sometimes known by his given name Cunctator (c. 280–203 BC), lived in the third century BC. In addition to being named dictator in 221 and 217 BC, he served as consul five times (in 233, 228, 215, 214, and 209 BC). In 230 BC, he served as censor. Cunctator, which is commonly translated as the delayer, is his agnomen, and it references to the tactics he used to defeat Hannibal's army during the Second Punic War. In order to avoid risking his entire army in a direct confrontation with Hannibal, he pursued a then-novel strategy of focusing on the enemy's supply lines and allowing only limited skirmishes on advantageous terrain. He is hence credited with developing numerous guerilla warfare techniques.

Fabius was a descendant of the ancient patrician Fabia gens and was born in Rome in 280 BC. He was the son or grandson of Fabius's most formidable political adversary, who eventually served as Fabius's deputy (see below). Of course, it is conceivable that Flaminius served as both dictators' succeeding deputy after Minucius was purportedly ousted prematurely due to unfavorable omens; it is also conceivable that neither dictatorship achieved much of note (other than perhaps holding elections in the absence of consuls).

Fabius reportedly participated in an embassy to Carthage in 218 BC that was despatched to