Sunday's huge battle on 'Game of Thrones' was partially inspired by a real Roman fight
Warning: There are spoilers ahead for "Game of Thrones."
Sunday's "Game of Thrones" converged in an enormous battle that fans have been waiting to see all season. Jon Snow and Lady Sansa finally went up against Ramsay Bolton to take back their home, Winterfell.
As the battle waged, things weren't looking good for Jon and his small, but fierce, army as they became encircled by Ramsay's forces.
If you're a history buff, the setup may have felt familiar. That's because it was inspired by a battle from the Second Punic War.
"We went back to the Roman fight against the Carthaginians in the Battle of Cannae where the Romans got caught in a encirclement by Hannibal and just slaughtered," explained "Game of Thrones" showrunner D.B. Weiss in a behind-the-scenes featurette on the episode. "We used that as sort of our model."
"The Battle of the Bastards becomes incredibly compact and all these men, all these combatants, crammed into this incredibly tight space on the battlefield," added showrunner David Benioff. "You read accounts of the battles in the Civil War where the bodies were piled so thick it actually became an obstruction on the battlefield."
The Battle of Cannae, which took place in 216 BC, involved general Hannibal's army of Carthage — about 50,000 men in total — taking on a much larger Roman Republic army estimated at over 80,000. While Jon Snow may be comparable to Hannibal in this situation, it was Hannibal's army who used the double-envelopment strategy, which we saw in episode nine Sunday evening, to gain the upperhand over the Roman army and their allies.
The major difference in the two fights is that Hannibal's strategy helped lead him to a devastatingly brutal victory over the Roman army. It's estimated that the Romans lost anywhere from 55,000 to 70,000 men. The tactic probably would have worked for Ramsay's army if it hadn't been for the last-minute arrival of the Knights of the Vale to save the day.
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