intent so as to adapt to a changing environment. History Early examples of maneuver For most of history, armies were slower than a marching soldier, making it possible for opposing armies to march around each other as long as they wished. Supply conditions often decided where and when the battle would finally start. Prehistorically, that began to change with the domestication of the horse, the invention of chariots, and increasing military use of cavalry. It had two major uses: to attack and use its momentum to break infantry formations and to use the advantage of speed to cut communications and isolate formations for later defeat in detail. One of the most famous early maneuver tactics was the double envelopment. It was used by Hannibal, against the Romans, at the Battle of Cannae in 216 BC, and by Khalid ibn al-Walid, against the Persian Empire at the Battle of Walaja in 633 AD. The retreat of the center of the Athenian and Platean citizen-soldiers (Hoplites) at the battle of Marathon against the forces of Datis in 490 BC, and subsequent pincer movements by Athenian forces on the flanks, used a similar tactic. The intention was to bring the Persian core forces forward—Persian and Saka axemen. The Hoplite flanks would then drive off their opposite numbers and enveloped the Persian center. Before the battle, Datis had re-embarked his cavalry—to which the hoplite formations had little real defense—which substantially weakened his position. Khalid's invasion of Roman Syria in July 634—by invading Syria from an unexpected direction, the Syrian desert—is another example of taking enemy defenses by surprise. While the Byzantine army held the Muslim forces in southern Syria and had expected reinforcement from the conventional Syria-Arabia road in the south, Khalid, who was in Iraq, marched through the Syrian desert and entered northern Syria, completely taking the Byzantines by surprise and cutting off their communications with northern Syria. Mongol use of maneuver warfare The Mongol emperor Genghis Khan used a military system of maneuver warfare that focused on rapid, decisive maneuver, utilizing the skill and endurance of his Mongol horsemen. He used operational maneuver, command and control, deception, and precise battlefield tactics which were vastly superior to those of his opponents in China, Russia, Persia, and Eastern Europe and defeated virtually every enemy army that he faced. An example of his usage of maneuver warfare was the defeat and annexation of the Khwarazmian