[Here, Scipio Africanus makes a successful night raid on the two allied camps of the Carthaginian faction towards the end of the Second Punic War. First he attacks Syphax and his Numidians in one camp, and then Hasdrubal’s Carthaginian camp less than a mile away. Both of the allied camps had built housing made of sticks and reeds, and were closely packed together, so Scipio placed troops at all the exits of the camp and set fire. The attack crushed their forces, who were mostly burned to death or died screaming when they ran out of the camp. It was a slaughter.]
Laelius and [Masinissa](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/94/MASSINISSA_-_MAA_23_-_87000716.jpg had meanwhile divided their force into two parts which attacked Syphax’s camp simultaneously. The enemy’s huts, as I mentioned above, might have been expressly constructed to catch fire. As soon as the front ranks of the roman troops had set light to them, the flames instantly spread along the first row, and because the huts were placed so close to one another and contained so much inflammable material the blaze quickly became uncontrollable. Laelius remained in the rear to cover the operation, while Masinissa knew exactly the points at which the men who were trying to escape from the flames would have to leave the camp, and posted his men to cover these exits.
None of the Numidians, not even Syphax, had any idea of what had really happened. Instead everybody supposed that the camp had caught fire by accident and so, all unsuspecting, some men starting up out of their sleep, and others taken by surprise while they were still carousing, cup in hand, they rushed out of their huts. Many were trampled by their own comrades in the exits from the camp, many were surrounded by the flames and burned to death, while all those who escaped from the blaze ran straight into the enemy and were slaughtered before they knew what they were doing or what fate had overtaken them.
While all this was happening, the Carthaginians on seeing the extent of the fire and the huge conflagration that rose into the sky, supposed that the Numidian camp had caught fire by accident. Some of them hurried to give assistance, while all the rest rushed out of their camp unarmed and stood in front of it gazing with horror at the spectacle. Thereupon Scipio, finding that the whole operation had gone precisely as he had planned, attacked the troops who had wandered out. He killed some, pursued others, and proceeded to fire their huts, so that the general conflagration and destruction which I have described in the Numidian camp was now repeated in the Carthaginian.
Source:
Polybius, et al. “Affairs in Africa.” The Rise of the Roman Empire. Penguin, 2003. 456-57. Print.
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