Chapter X: Part I: Concluded (2)

[Footnote 19: "_Hailstone choruses._"--I need not tell any lover of Handel that his oratorio of "Israel in Egypt" contains a chorus familiarly known by this name. The words are--"And he gave them hailstones for rain; fire, mingled with the hail, ran along upon the ground."]

HANNIBAL.[20]

Two thousand one hundred years ago[21] a boy was born at Carthage, whose name and exploits have rendered his country immortal. His character stands forth with unparalleled lustre even on the bright pages of ancient story. It is hard to say whether he was greater as a patriot, statesman, or a general. Invincible in determination, inexhaustible in resources, fertile in stratagem, patient of fatigue, cautious in council, bold in action, he possessed also that singleness of purpose, that unity of object, which more than all is the foundation of great achievements. Love of his country was his one and ruling principle. Hatred of its enemies his lasting and indelible passion. To these objects he devoted throughout life his great capacity: for this he lived, for this he died. From the time that he swore hatred to the Romans, while yet a boy, on the altars of Carthage, he never ceased to watch their designs, to contend with their forces, to resist their ambition. Alone of all his countrymen he measured the extent of the danger with which his fatherland was threatened by the progress of their power. Alone he stood forth with the strength of a giant to combat it. But for the shameful desertion of his victorious army, by the jealousy of the rival faction at Carthage, he would have crushed the power of the legions, and given to Carthage, not Rome, the empire of the world. As it was, he brought them to the brink of ruin, and achieved triumphs over their armies greater than all other nations put together. After he was overthrown, it was comparatively an easy task to conquer the world. For this he received in life exile, disgrace, and death: for this he has since obtained immortality. At his name the heart of the patriot has thrilled through every subsequent age. To illustrate his virtues, genius and learning have striven in every succeeding country; and the greatest praise which the world can yet bestow on warriors is to compare them to Hannibal.

No name, even in the majestic annals of Roman victories, stands forth with lustre equal to that of the Carthaginian hero. They were made by their countrymen, but his countrymen were made by him. Scipio, Pompey, Caesar himself, did not evince equal capacity: they had lesser difficulties to contend with; they owed more to the support of others, and did not do so much by the strength of their individual arm, by the energy of their individual will. The institutions, the laws, the ideas, the manners, the very language of the Romans, were made for conquest: they sprang up from the earth a race of armed men. Virtue with them was derived from "manly valour:" an army was designated by a word which signified "exercised:"[22] their generals were borne aloft to conquest on the shields of the legions. Such was the spirit of the soldiers, that they were fairly compelled to victory by the presence which urged them on; such the determination of the people, that the armies were pressed forward to the conquest of the world as by a supernatural power. The purposes of Providence, mysterious at the time, apparent afterwards, never were more clearly evinced than in the peculiar impress communicated to the Roman institutions. But the Carthaginians were a race, not of warriors, but of colonists. They rose to greatness, not by their military spirit, but by their commercial prosperity; their outposts were, not the fortified camp, but the smiling seaport. Extending as far as the waters of the Mediterranean roll, they spread inwards from the sea-coast, not outwards from the camp; the navy was the arm of their strength, not their land forces. Their institutions, habits, national spirit, and government, were all adapted to the extension of commerce, to the growth of manufactures, to the spread of a colonial empire. What, then, must have been the capacity of the man who could, by his single efforts, alter the character of a whole people; chain victory at land to the standards of a maritime republic; and bow down to the earth, on their own territory, that rival power, whose legions erelong triumphed over the armies of all the military monarchies of the world?

The auxiliaries formed a considerable part, in point of numbers, of the Roman forces; but the strength of the legions was to be found in the Roman citizens. It was that indomitable body of men, ever flowing out, yet ever full, animated with fiery passions, but directed by consummate prudence, panting for rapine and conquest, but patient of all the toils by which they were to be attained, which constituted the strength of the armies which conquered the world. But the Carthaginians had no body of citizens capable of forming such a force. They were nothing but a great and powerful seaport town, with its adjacent villas spreading along the coast of Africa. The people of Dido had not, like those of Romulus, established off-shoots in the interior. No three-and-thirty colonies awaited the commands of the senate of Carthage, as they did of the consuls in the time of Fabius, to recruit the national armies. Twenty thousand native citizens was all, at its last extremity at Zama, that this mighty republic, which had so nearly achieved the conquest of the Capitol, could fit out to defend their country. The strength of the Punic armies consisted in what was merely an accessory to the Roman, the auxiliaries. It was the Numidian horse, the Balearic slingers, the Spanish infantry, the Gaulish broadswords, which proved so formidable in the ranks of Hannibal. It was literally, as Livy says, a "colluvies omnium gentium," which rolled down from the Alps, under his direction, to overwhelm the Romans on their own hearths. Twenty different languages, Polybius tells us, were not unfrequently spoken at the same time in the Carthaginian camp. What, then, must have been the capacity of the general who could still the jealousies, and overcome the animosities, and give unity to the operations of a vast army, composed of so many different tribes and people, and mould them all into so perfect a form, that, for fifteen years that he remained in Italy after the first great defeats, the consuls never once ventured to measure their strength with him in a pitched battle?

If there is any thing more astonishing than another in the history of the Roman Republic, it is the unconquerable spirit, the persevering energy, the invincible determination with which, under every calamity, and often in the very extremity of adverse fortune, they combined to struggle for the superiority, and at length attained it--not so much by conquering as by wearing out their adversaries. In no period of their long and glorious annals was this transcendent quality more strikingly evinced than in the second Punic War, when, after the battle of Cannae, Capua, the second city of Italy, yielded to the influence of Hannibal, and nearly a half of the Roman colonies, worn out by endless exactions in men and money, refused to send any further succours. The heroic spirit the Roman senate then evinced, the extraordinary sacrifices they made, may, without exaggeration, be pronounced without parallel in the annals of mankind, if we reflect on the length of time during which these sacrifices were required. But while this invincible spirit augments our admiration of the Roman character, and makes us feel that they indeed deserved that mighty dominion which they afterwards attained, it takes much from the merit of their individual commanders. It was almost impossible to avoid ultimate success with such armies to lead, and so heroic a people to sustain the efforts and furnish the muniments of war. But the case was very different at Carthage. So vehement was the spirit of party which had seized upon its inhabitants, in consequence of the great accession of democratic power which had been conceded, fatally for the state, as Polybius tells us, a short time before to the people, that Hannibal could rely on no assistance on his own government. Though he brought the Romans to the very brink of ruin, and placed final victory within the grasp, as it were, of his country, yet they would not put out their hand to snatch it. They were more jealous of him than afraid of their enemies. Though he descended to the southern extremity of Italy, and drew near to Sicily, in order to obtain from the African shores the necessary succours to recruit his armies, wasted by the very number of his victories; and though they had during great part of the time the superiority at sea--yet he received no supplies of men or money from home during the fifteen years he carried on the war in Italy, with the exception of the army which his brother Hamilcar raised in Spain, and led across the Pyrenees and the Alps to perish on the Metaurus. What he did, he did by himself, and by his own unaided efforts. It was the contributions levied on the cities he conquered, which furnished his supplies; it was the troops who flocked to his standard from the provinces he wrested from the Romans, which filled up the chasms in the ranks he led from Saguntum. Not more than twenty-six thousand men descended with him from the Alps; of forty-eight thousand who fought at Cannae, thirty thousand were Gaulish auxiliaries. There is no example recorded in history of a general doing things so great with means so small, and support from home so inconsiderable.

Every great commander of whom we read in military annals, possessed in a considerable degree the art of securing the affections and inspiring the confidence of his soldiers. Alexander the Great, Caesar, Charles XII., Napoleon, exercised this ascendancy in the highest degree. The anecdotes preserved in the pages of Plutarch, and which every schoolboy knows by heart, prove this beyond a doubt of the heroes of the ancient world; the annals of the last century and our own times demonstrate that their mantle had descended to the Swedish and French heroes. The secret of this marvellous power is always to be found in one mental quality. It is magnanimity which entrances the soldier's heart. The rudest breasts are accessible to emotion, from the display of generosity, self-denial, and loftiness of purpose in their commanders. When Alexander in the deserts of Arabia, on his return from India, poured the untasted water on the sand, he assuaged the thirst of a whole army; when Caesar addressed the Tenth Legion in mutiny by the title of "Quirites," the very word, which told them they were no longer the comrades of their general, subdued every heart; when Charles XII., on his officers declaring themselves unable to undergo the fatigue of further watching, desired them to retire to rest, for he would go the rounds himself, he silenced every murmur in his army; when Napoleon yielded up his carriages to the wounded in the Russian retreat, or drew aside his suite to salute, uncovered, the Austrian wounded conveyed from Austerlitz, and said, "Honour to the brave in misfortune!" he struck a chord which vibrated in every heart of his vast array. No general, ancient or modern, possessed this key to the generous affections in a higher degree than Hannibal; and none ever stood so much, or so long, in need of its aid. In truth, it was the secret of his success; the magic power which so long held together his multifarious array. We have few anecdotes indicating this ascendancy; for the historians of the Romans, or their subjects the Greeks, were in no hurry to collect traits to illustrate the character of their enemy. But decisive evidence of its existence, and almost supernatural power, is to be found in the fact, that without the aid of reinforcements, and scarce any remittances, from Carthage, he maintained the war in the heart of Italy with mercenary troops collected from every country of the earth, against the native soldiers of the bravest and most warlike people on the earth. We read of no mutinies or disobedience of orders among his followers. It were hard to say whether the fiery Numidian, the proud and desultory Spaniard, the brave but inconstant Gaul, or the covetous Balearic, was most docile to his direction, or obedient to his will. Great indeed must have been the ascendency acquired by one man over such various and opposite races of men, usually the prey of such jealousies and divisions; and whom the most powerful coalition in general finds so much difficulty in retaining in subjection.

Of Hannibal's political wisdom and far-seeing sagacity, ancient history is full. Alone of all his contemporaries, he clearly, and from his very infancy, perceived the extent of the danger which threatened his country from the insatiable ambition and growing power of the Romans; alone he pointed out the only mode in which it could be successfully combated. He was at once the Burke, the Pitt, and the Wellington of his country. Beyond all doubt, if his advice had been followed, and his enterprises duly supported, Carthage would have been victorious in the second Punic War. It was because his countrymen were not animated with his heroic spirit, nor inspired with his prophetic foresight, that they failed. They were looking after gain, or actuated by selfish ambition, while he was straining every nerve to avert danger. When he swore hatred to the Roman on the altar at nine years of age, he imbibed a principle which the judgment of his maturer years told him was the only means of saving his country. To the prosecution of this object he devoted his life. From his first entrance into public duty till his last hour, when he swallowed poison to avoid being delivered up to the Romans, he never ceased to combat their ambition with all the powers of his gigantic intellect. If history had preserved no other proof of his profound political discernment, it would be sufficiently established by the memorable words he addressed to the senate of Carthage on the probable fate of Rome:--"Nulla magna civitas diu quiescere potest. Si fores hostem non habet, domi invenit; ut praevalida corpora ab externis causis tutae videntur, sed suis ipsa viribus conficiuntur. Tantum nimirum ex publicis malis sentimus quantum ad res privatas attinet, nec in eis quidquam acrius quam pecuniae damnum stimulat." If anyone doubts the truth and profound wisdom of these remarks, let him reflect on the exact demonstration of these truths which was afforded two thousand years after, in the British empire. "Si monumentum quaeris, circumspice."

He constantly affirmed that it was in Italy alone that Rome was vulnerable, and that by striking hard and often there, she might be conquered. He did not despair of effecting the deliverance of the world by a conflict on their own shores, even after the battle of Zama had to all appearance decisively settled the conflict in favour of the Capitol, and nothing remained to combat the legions but the unwarlike soldiers of the Eastern monarch. His own campaigns demonstrate that he was right: the Gauls and the Carthaginians in different ages brought the Romans to the brink of ruin; but it was by victories on the Tiber that Brennus and Hannibal penetrated to their gates. Nor is it difficult to see to what cause this comparative weakness at home of so great a military power was owing. Rome was not merely a powerful state, but the head of a great military confederacy; the resources which, partly by force, partly by inclination, and the natural appetite of mankind for victory and plunder, were ranged on her side, were in great part derived from foreign states. When she carried the war into foreign states, this formidable mass of auxiliaries doubled the strength of her legions; when she was assailed at home, one half of them were lost, or appeared in the ranks of her enemies. The same cause appeared at a subsequent period in the campaigns of Napoleon: his armies were innumerable, his force irresistible, as long as he headed the forced confederacy of western Europe, and he invaded Russia with five hundred thousand men; but when the disaster of Moscow, and the resurrection of Germany, brought the Russians into France, the boasted strength of the empire disappeared, its allies passed over to the other side, and the mighty conqueror was reduced to a painful defensive with fifty thousand men on the plains of Champagne.

The Roman historians affirm that these great military virtues were balanced by corresponding vices. Every scholar knows the inimitable description of his character drawn by Livy. "Has tantas viri virtutes ingentia vitia aequabant:--inhumana crudelitas; perfidia plusquam Punica; nihil veri, nihil sancti; nullus deoram metus, nullum jusjurandum, nulla religio." This, however, was his character as drawn by his enemies; and by enemies who had suffered so much from his ability, that they were incapable of forming a correct judgment on the subject. But the truth of modern history has dispelled the illusion, and gathered facts sufficient even from their prejudiced sources to demonstrate that the moral virtues of Hannibal equalled his intellectual capacity. Certain it is, by their own admission, that his generosity on several important occasions afforded a example which the Romans would have done well to imitate, but which they shewed themselves incapable of following. It was the judicious clemency which he showed to the allies, which at length won over so many of the Italian states to his side; and if this is to be ascribed to policy, what are we to say to the chivalrous courtesy which prompted him to send back the dead body of his inveterate enemy Marcellus, surprised and slain by his Numidian horsemen, to obtain the honours of sepulture from his countrymen? The Romans complained of his cruelty; but men feel cruelty keenly when it is exercised on themselves; and there are no instances recorded of his exceeding the established and universal customs, ruthless as they were, of ancient warfare. Certain it is, that nothing he ever did equalled the savage and cold-blooded atrocity with which they tortured and massacred the citizens of Capua and Syracuse, when they were again subdued by their arms. Hannibal's disposition appears to have been gay and cheerful; there are many instances recorded of his indulgence, in presence of danger, in a gaiety of temper more akin to that of Henry IV. than the usual stern determination of ancient warriors. On one memorable occasion, when his army was in danger, and the spirit of his troops unusually depressed, he indulged in mirth and jests to such an extent in his tent, that he set his whole officers in a roar of laughter; and these joyful sounds, heard by the soldiers without, restored confidence to the army, from the belief that no anxious thoughts clouded the brows of their chiefs. Hannibal, it is known, preserved a diary, and wrote a history of his campaigns, which was extant at a very late period in the ancient world. What an inestimable treasure would the journal of the private thoughts of such a man have been! Modern times have no more irreparable loss to mourn.

The just pride and elegant flattery of the French historians has often led them to compare Napoleon's passage of the Great St Bernard to Hannibal's passage of the Pennine Alps: but without detracting from the well-earned fame of the French general, it may safely be affirmed that his achievement will bear no sort of comparison with that of the Carthaginian hero. When Napoleon began the ascent of the Alps from Martigny, on the shores of the Rhone, above the lake of Geneva, he found the passage of the mountains cleared by the incessant transit of two thousand years. The road, impracticable for carriages, was very good for horsemen and foot passengers, and was daily traversed by great numbers of both in every season of the year. Comfortable villages, on the ascent and the descent, afforded easy accommodation to the wearied soldiers both by night and by day; the ample stores of the monks at the summit, and the provident foresight of the French generals, had provided a meal to every man and horse that passed. No hostile troops opposed their passage: the guns were drawn up in sledges made of hollowed firs; and in four days from the time that they began the ascent from the banks of the Rhone, the French troops, without losing a man, stood on the Doria Baltea, the increasing waters of which flowed towards the Po, amidst the gardens and vineyards, and under the sun of Italy. But the case was very different, when Hannibal crossed from the shores of the Durance to the banks of the Po. The mountain sides, not yet cleared by centuries of laborious industry, presented a continual forest, furrowed at every hollow by headlong Alpine torrents; bridges there were none to cross these perpetually recurring obstacles; provisions, scanty at all times in those elevated solitudes, were then nowhere to be found, having been hid by the affrighted inhabitants on the approach of the invaders; and a powerful army of mountaineers occupied the entrance of the defiles, defended with desperate valour the gates of their country, and, when dispersed by the superior discipline and arms of Hannibal's soldiers, still beset the ridges above their line of march, and harassed his troops by continual hostility. When the woody region was passed, and the vanguard emerged into the open mountain pastures, which lead to the verge of perpetual snow, fresh difficulties awaited them. The turf, from the gliding down of newly fallen snow on those steep declivities, was so slippery, that it was often scarcely possible for the men to keep their feet; the beasts of burden lost their footing at every step, and rolled down in great numbers into the abysses beneath; the elephants became restive amidst privations and a climate to which they were totally unaccustomed; and the strength of the soldiers, worn out with incessant marching and fighting, began to sink before the continued toil of the ascent. Horrors, formidable to all, but in an especial manner terrible to African soldiers, awaited them at the summit. It was now the end of October; winter in all its severity had already set in on those lofty solitudes; the mountain sides, silent and melancholy even at the height of summer, when enamelled with flowers and dotted with flocks, presented then an unbroken sheet of snow; the blue lakes which are interspersed over the level valley at their feet, were frozen over, and undistinguishable from the rest of the dreary expanse, and a boundless mass of snowy peaks arose on all sides, presenting apparently an impassable barrier to their further progress.

But it was then that the greatness of Hannibal shone forth in all its lustre. "That great general," says Arnold, "who felt that he now stood victorious on the ramparts of Italy, and that the torrent which rolled before him was carrying its waters to the rich plains of Cisalpine Gaul, endeavoured to kindle his soldiers with his own spirit of hope. He called them together; he pointed out the valley beneath, to which the descent seemed the work of a moment. 'That valley,' he said, 'is Italy; it leads us to the country of our friends the Gauls, and yonder is our way to Rome!' His eyes were eagerly fixed on that point of the horizon, and as he gazed, the distance between seemed to vanish, till he could almost fancy that he was crossing the Tiber and assailing the Capitol[23]." Such were the difficulties of the passage and the descent on the other side, that Hannibal lost thirty-three thousand men from the time he left the Pyrenees till he entered the plains of Northern Italy; and he arrived on the Po with only twelve thousand Africans, eight thousand Spanish infantry, and six thousand horse. Napoleon's army which fought at Marengo was only twenty-nine thousand, but he had lost no men in the passage of the Alps, and only a few in the difficult passage across the precipices of Mont Albaredo, opposite the fort of Bard, in the valley of the Doria Baltea. It is ridiculous, after this, to compare the passages of the Alps by Napoleon to their crossing by Hannibal. The French emperor has many other titles, too well founded, to warrant a comparison with the Carthaginian hero, to render it necessary to recur to one which is obviously chimerical.

It is a question which has divided the learned since the revival of letters, by what pass Hannibal crossed the Alps. The general opinion of those who have studied the subject, inclines to the opinion that he crossed by the Little St Bernard; and to this opinion Arnold inclines. He admits, however, with his usual candour, that, "in some respects, also, Mont Cenis suits the description of the march better than any other pass[24]." After having visited and traversed on foot both passes, the author of this paper has no hesitation in expressing his decided conviction, that he passed by Mont Cenis. His reasons for this opinion are these:--1. It is mentioned by Polybius, that Hannibal reached the summit of the Alps on the _ninth_ day after he had left the plains of Dauphine. This period coincides well with what might have then been required to ascend, as the country was, on the neighbourhood of Grenoble or Echelles; while the ascent to the summit of the Little St Bernard, would not require more than half the time. 2. The narrow defile of St Jean de Maurienne, which leads from the plain of Montmelian to the foot of Mont Cenis, corresponds much more closely with the description, given both in Livy[25] and Polybius[26], of that in which the first serious engagement took place between Hannibal and the Mountaineers, two days after they had left the plains of Dauphine, than the comparatively open valley which leads to the foot of the Little St Bernard. 3. From the summit of the Little St Bernard you can see nothing of Italy, nor any thing approaching to it; a confused sea of mountains alone meets the eye on every side. Whereas, from the southern front of the summit of Mont Cenis, _not only the plains of Piedmont are distinctly visible_ at the opening of the lower end of the valley of Susa, which lies at your feet, _but the Appenines beyond them can be seen_. To settle this important point, the author made a sketch of both on the spot, on the 24th October, the very time of Hannibal's passage, which is still in his possession. How precisely does this coincide with the emphatic words of Hannibal, as recorded by Polybius, showing to them the plains around the Po, ([Greek: "ta peri ton Padon pedia,"]) and, reminding them of the good disposition of the Gauls who dwelt there, he further showed them the situation of Rome itself.[27] The Appenines, beyond the plain of Piedmont, seen from Mont Cenis, might correctly be taken as the direction, at least, where Rome lay. 4. The steep and rocky declivity by which the _old_ road formerly descended to the valley of Susa, and where the travellers descended in sledges, till Napoleon's magnificent _chaussee_ was formed, which makes great circuit to the westward, corresponds perfectly to the famous places mentioned both by Livy and Polybius, where the path had been torn away by a recent avalanche, and the fabulous story of the vinegar was placed. This place in Mont Cenis is immediately below the summit of the pass, and may now be seen furrowed by a roaring torrent, amidst dark ledges of rock; the corresponding chasm on the southern side of the Little St Bernard is _below_ the reach of avalanches.[28] 5. On the summit of Mont Cenis is still to be seen a "_white_ rock" called the "Roche Blanche," which answers to the [Greek: "leuchopetron,"] mentioned by Polybius, on the summit of the Alps which Hannibal crossed, whereas there is nothing like it on the Little St Bernard, at least of such magnitude as to have formed a place of night refuge to Hannibal. 6. What is perhaps most important of all, it is expressly mentioned by Polybius, that "_in one day's time_ the chasm in the mountain sides was repaired, so that there was room for the horses and beasts of burden to descend. They were immediately conducted down, _and having gained_ the plains, were sent away to pasture in places where no snow had fallen. * * * * * Hannibal then descended last, with all the army, and thus, on the _third day_, gained the plains[29]." This description of the distances tallies perfectly with the passage by Mont Cenis, for it is only half a day's journey to descend from the summit of that pass to Susa, at the head of the wide and open valley of the same name, where ample pasturage is to be found; and short day's journey more brings the traveller to the plain of Piedmont. But it is utterly irreconcilable with the idea that the Carthaginians passed by the Little St Bernard; for from its summit to the plains of Ivrea is four days' hard marching for an army, through the narrow valley of Aosta, destitute for the most part of forage. 7. This valley of Aosta is very rocky and narrow, and affords many positions where a handful of men can arrest an army; in one of which, that of Bard, a small Austrian garrison stopped Napoleon for twenty-four hours; yet Polybius and Livy concur in stating, that after he descended the mountains, the Carthaginians experienced no molestation on their way to the Insubrians, their allies, on the banks of the Po. This is inexplicable if they were struggling for three days through the narrow and rocky defiles of the valley of Aosta, but perfectly intelligible if they were traversing in half a day the broad and open valley of Susa, offering no facilities to the attacks of the mountaineers.

But if Napoleon's passage of the St Bernard can never be compared to that of Hannibal over Mont Cenis, it is impossible to deny that there is a marked and striking similarity, in some respects, between the career of the two heroes. Both rose to eminence, for the first time, by the lustre of their Italian campaigns; the most brilliant strokes of both were delivered almost on the same ground, immediately after having surmounted the Alps; both headed the forces of the democratic party in the country whose warriors they led, and were aided by it in those which they conquered; both had a thorough aversion for that party in their hearts; both continued, by their single genius, for nineteen years in hostility against a host of enemies; both were overthrown at last, in a single battle, on a distant shore, far from the scene of their former triumphs; both were driven into exile by the hatred or apprehensions of their enemies; both, after having reached the summit of glory, died alone and unbefriended in a distant land; both have left names immortal in the rolls of fame. It is no wonder that such striking similarities should have forcibly struck the imaginations of men in every land. It is remarkable that many of the greatest patriots who ever existed have died in exile, after having rendered inestimable services to their country, by which they were persecuted or betrayed. Themistocles, Hannibal, Scipio Africanus, Belisarius, Napoleon, belong to this bright band. It is not difficult to see that the cause of it is to be found in their very greatness itself. They were too powerful to be tolerated by their countrymen: they were too formidable to be endured by their enemies.

It is hard to say whether Hannibal's military capacity appeared most strongly in strategy, that is, the general direction of a campaign, or in tactics, that is, the management of troops on the field of battle. In both he was unrivalled in ancient times. His wonderful ability in strategy, and in preparing his multifarious forces for the grand enterprise for which they were destined, appears from the very outset of his military career. Devoted to the destruction of Rome from his youth upwards, and steady in the determination to over-throw that inveterate enemy to his country, he had yet the difficult and apparently hopeless task of accomplishing this by land warfare, when Carthage had no native born army in the slightest degree commensurate to its execution. To form such an army was his first object, and this he accomplished by his successes in Spain, before the second Punic War began. In the interval between the first and the second of those dire contests, he was assiduously employed in conquering, organizing, and disciplining the forces by which his great object was to be effected; and such was his capacity, that, notwithstanding the untoward issue of the first Punic War, the Carthaginians gradually regained the ascendant in the Peninsula, while his manners were so winning, that erelong he attracted all its military strength to his standard. The Roman influence was limited to the narrow and broken territory which lies between the Ebro and the Pyrenees, and forms the modern province of Catalonia, while all the rest of the Peninsula obeyed the orders of Hannibal. It was in Spain that he formed that great military force which so soon after shook to its foundation the solid fabric of Roman power; he there erected the platform on which his engines of assault were placed. When he began his triumphant march from Saguntum to attempt the conquest of Rome, after surmounting both the Pyrenees and the Alps, he was at the head of a splendid army of ninety thousand foot, and twelve thousand horse, with forty elephants; the most powerful array, if the quality and discipline of the troops is taken into account, which Europe had yet seen. Of this great force, not more than a fourth part were Carthaginian soldiers; so mightily had the military force of Hannibal increased with the prosperous issue of his Peninsular campaigns.

Had the Carthaginian general succeeded in reaching the banks of the Tiber with the half even of this force, the fate of Rome was sealed, and the glories of the Capitol were extinguished for ever. But he had innumerable difficulties to contend with--physical, warlike, and moral--before he reached the Italian plains. His march from the Ebro to the Po was a continued combat. The mountain tribes of Catalonia, celebrated in every age for their obstinate and persisting hostility, were then firm in the Roman interest. The mountain strength of the Pyrenees; the rapid currents of the Rhone; the cruel warfare, and yet more dangerous peace of the Gauls; the desperate valour of the inhabitants of the Alps; the inclemency of the weather on their snowy summits, all required to be overcome, and they thinned his ranks more than all the swords of the legions. Instead of ninety thousand foot, and twelve thousand horse, with which he broke up from Saguntum, he brought only twenty thousand infantry, and six thousand horse to the fields of Piedmont. No less than seventy-six thousand men had been lost or left to preserve the communications, since they left the Valencian plains. So slender was the force with which this great commander commenced, on its own territory, the conflict with a power which ere three years had elapsed, carried on the war with fourteen legions, numbering an hundred and seventy thousand combatants, between the auxiliaries and Roman soldiers. It is in the magnitude of this disproportion, and the extremely small amount of the reinforcement which he received from home during the next fifteen years that the war lasted, that the decisive proof of the marvellous capacity of the Carthaginian general is to be found. It is a similar disproportion which has marked the campaigns of Napoleon in Italy in 1796, and in France in 1814, with immortality.

The first necessity was to augment his numbers, and fill up the wide chasm in his ranks, by fresh enrolments in the territory in which he had entered. The warlike habits and predatory dispositions of the Cisalpine Gauls afforded the means of obtaining this necessary succour. The victory over the Roman horse on the Ticino, when the superiority of the Numidian cavalry was first decisively displayed, had an immediate effect in bringing a crowd of Gaulish recruits to his standard. The Carthaginian general was careful in his first engagement to hazard only his cavalry, in which arm he was certain of his superiority. The battle of the Trebia which followed, and which first broke the strength of the legions, excited an unbounded ferment in Lombardy, and brought the Gaulish youths in crowds, to follow the career of plunder and revenge under his victorious standards. Recruits speedily were not awanting; the only difficulty was to select from the crowds which presented themselves for enrolment. It was like the resurrection of Prussia in 1813, against the tyrannic domination of the French emperor. Winter was spent in organizing these rude auxiliaries, and reducing them to something like military discipline; and so effective was their co-operation, and so numerous the reinforcements which their zeal brought to his standard, that in the following spring he crossed the Apennines, and traversed the marshes of Volterra, at the head of nearly fifty thousand men, of whom above one half were Gaulish recruits. And when the Consul Flaminius attempted to stop him on the margin of the Thrasymene Lake, where the stream still called "_Sanguinetto_" murmurs among the old oaks, the children of the soil, the total defeat of his army with the loss of thirty thousand men, lost the Romans the whole north of Italy, and carried consternation to the gates of the Capitol.

After so great a victory within a few days' march of the Tiber, and no considerable army intervening to arrest the advance of the conqueror, it may seem extraordinary that Hannibal did not advance straight to the capital, and terminate the war by its destruction: still more inexplicable does it at first sight appear, that, instead of doing so, he should have turned to the left, and passing Rome, moved into the south of Italy; thus losing in a great measure his communication with Lombardy, which had hitherto proved so invaluable a nursery for his army. But it was in these very movements, more perhaps than in any others of his life, that the wisdom and judgment of this great general's conduct were conspicuous. The chief difficulty he had now to contend with in Italy was the reduction of its fortified towns. The innumerable wars which had so long prevailed in the southern parts of the Peninsula, between the Etruscans, the Romans, and the Samnites, had studded the declivities of the Apennines with castles and fortified burghs, the walls of which in great part still remain, and constitute not the least of the many interesting objects which Italy presents to the traveller. Towards the reduction of those cities, the tumultuary array of the Gauls, numerous and efficient as they were in the field, could not afford any assistance. Engines for assault or the reduction of walls they had none; funds for the maintenance of a protracted methodical warfare were not to be looked for, in their savage and half-cultivated plains. The communication with Spain by the circuitous route of the Pyrenees and Alps, had been found, by dear-bought experience, to be difficult in the extreme. It could only be opened again, by an army nearly as powerful as that which had first penetrated through it, under the guidance of his energetic will. It was in the south of the Peninsula, amidst its opulent cities and long-established civilization, that the resources for a war of sieges could alone be looked for. It was there, too, that the most direct, the shortest, and in fact the only secure channel of communication with Carthage could be opened: to a Punic as to a British army, the true base of operations is the sea, the worst possible base for that of any other military power. Beyond all question, it was to the judicious choice of the south of Italy as his stronghold, and the combined skill and policy by which he contrived to detach a large part of its rich republics, with their harbours and places of strength, from the Roman alliance, that the subsequent protraction of the war for fifteen years is to be ascribed.

Such, however, was the terror of the Roman arms, and the influence acquired by the combined steadiness and severity of their rule, that this irruption into the south of Italy was not at first attended with the desired effect. In vain he had, in all preceding engagements sent back all the prisoners from the allies without any ransom, and treated them in the most generous manner; in vain, in all preceding marches, he had cautiously abstained from pillaging or laying waste their lands. Still the Roman influence was predominant. Not one state in alliance had revolted: not one Roman colony had failed in its duty to the parent state. The Gauls alone, who now formed half his army, had repaired in crowds to his standard since he had descended from the Alps. A long season of inactivity followed, during which the Romans were too prudent to hazard a conflict with Hannibal in the field, and he was too weak in siege artillery to attempt the reduction of any of their fortified cities. But the time was not lost by that indefatigable commander, and the following passage from Arnold will both show how it was employed, and serve as a fair specimen of the style of that powerful and lamented writer:--

"Never was Hannibal's genius more displayed than during this
long period of inactivity. More than half of his army consisted
of Gauls, of all barbarians the most impatient and uncertain in
their humour, whose fidelity, it was said, could only be
secured by an ever open hand; no man was their friend any
longer than he could gorge them with pay or plunder. Those of
his soldiers who were not Gauls, were either Spaniards or
Africans; the Spaniards were the newly conquered subjects of
Carthage, strangers to her race and language, and accustomed to
divide their lives between actual battle and the most listless
bodily indolence; so that when one of their tribes first saw
the habits of a Roman camp, and observed the centurions walking
up and down before the praetorium for exercise, the Spaniards
thought them mad, and ran up to guide them to their tents,
thinking that he who was not fighting could do nothing but lie
at his ease and enjoy himself. Even the Africans were
foreigners to Carthage; they were subjects harshly governed,
and had been engaged within the last twenty years in a war of
extermination with their masters. Yet the long inactivity of
winter quarters, trying to the discipline of the best national
armies, was borne patiently by Hannibal's soldiers; there was
neither desertion nor mutiny amongst them; even the fickleness
of the Gauls seemed spell-bound; they remained steadily in
their camp in Apulia, neither going home to their own country,
nor over to the enemy. On the contrary, it seems that fresh
bands of Gauls must have joined the Carthaginian army after the
battle of Thrasymenus, and the retreat of the Roman army from
Ariminum. For the Gauls and the Spaniards and the Africans were
overpowered by the ascendancy of Hannibal's character; under
his guidance they felt themselves invincible; with such a
general the yoke of Carthage might seem to the Africans and
Spaniards the natural dominion of superior beings; in such a
champion the Gauls beheld the appointed instrument of their
country's gods to lead them once more to assault the
Capitol."--Vol. iii. 131-132.

It was the battle of Cannae which first shook the fidelity of the Roman allies, and by opening to the Carthaginians the gates of Capua, gave them the command of a city in the south of Italy, second only to Rome herself in wealth and consideration. Of this great and memorable battle, when upwards of eighty thousand Romans fell, and their power was, to all appearance, irrecoverably broken, Arnold give the following interesting account:--

"The skirmishing of the light-armed troops preluded as usual to
the battle; the Balearian slingers slung their stones like hail
into the ranks of the Roman line, and severely wounded the
consul AEmilius himself. Then the Spanish and Gaulish horse
charged the Romans front to front, and maintained a standing
fight with them, many leaping off their horses and fighting on
foot, till the Romans, outnumbered and badly armed, without
cuirasses, with light and brittle spears, and with shields made
only of ox-hide, were totally routed and driven off the field.
Hasdrubal, who commanded the Gauls and Spaniards, followed up
his work effectually; he chased the Romans along the river,
till he had almost destroyed them, and then, riding off to the
right, he came up to aid the Numidians, who, after their
manner, had been skirmishing indecisively with the cavalry of
the Italian allies. These, on seeing the Gauls and Spaniards
advancing, broke away and fled; the Numidians, most effective
in pursuing a flying enemy, chased them with unweariable speed,
and slaughtered them unsparingly; while Hasdrubal, to complete
his signal services on this day, charged fiercely upon the rear
of the Roman infantry.

"He found its huge masses already weltering in helpless
confusion, crowded upon one another, totally disorganized, and
fighting each man as he best could, but struggling on against
all hope, by mere indomitable courage. For the Roman columns on
the right and left, finding the Gaulish and Spanish foot
advancing in a convex line or wedge, pressed forwards to assail
what seemed the flanks of the enemy's column; so that, being
already drawn up with too narrow a front by their original
formation, they now became compressed still more by their own
movements, the right and left converging towards the centre,
till the whole army became one dense column, which forced its
way onwards by the weight of its charge, and drove back the
Gauls and Spaniards into the rear of their own line. Meanwhile,
its victorious advance had carried it, like the English column
at Fontenoy, into the midst of Hannibal's army; it had passed
between the African infantry on its right and left, and now,
whilst its head was struggling against the Gauls and Spaniards,
its long flanks were fiercely assailed by the Africans, who,
facing about to the right and left, charged it home, and threw
it into utter disorder. In this state, when they were forced
together into one unwieldy crowd, and already falling by
thousands, whilst the Gauls and Spaniards, now advancing in
their turn, were barring further progress in front, and whilst
the Africans were tearing their mass to pieces on both flanks,
Hasdrubal, with his victorious Gaulish and Spanish horsemen,
broke with thundering fury upon their rear. Then followed a
butchery such as has no recorded equal, except the slaughter of
the Persians in their camp, when the Greeks forced it after
the battle of Plataea. Unable to fight or fly, with no quarter
asked or given, the Romans and Italians fell before the swords
of their enemies, till, when the sun set upon the field, there
were left, out of that vast multitude, no more than three
thousand men alive and unwounded, and these fled in straggling
parties, under cover of the darkness, and found a refuge in the
neighbouring towns. The consul AEmilius, the proconsul Cn.
Servilius, the late master of the horse M. Minucius, two
quaestors, twenty-one military tribunes, eighty senators, and
eighty thousand men, lay dead on the field of battle. The
consul Varro, with seventy horsemen, had escaped from the rout
of the allied cavalry on the right. The loss of the victors was
only six thousand men."--ARNOLD, iii. 140-143.

The dreadful battle of Cannae bears a close resemblance in many important particulars to two of the most important which have been fought in modern times--those of Agincourt and Aspern. The close agglomeration of legionary soldiers in the Roman centre, the tempest of stones which fell on their ranks from the slings of the Balearic marksmen, and the laying bare of the huge unwieldy mass by the defeat of the cavalry on their flanks was precisely the counterpart of what occurred in the army of Philippe of Valois in the first of these memorable fields, when the French men-at-arms, thirty-two deep, were thrown into confusion by the incessant discharges of the English archers, their flanks laid open by the repulse of the vehement charge of their horse by Henry V., and their dense columns slaughtered where they stood, unable alike to fight or to fly, by the general advance of the English billmen. Still closer, perhaps, is the resemblance to the defeat of the French centre under Lannes, which penetrated in a solid column into the centre of the Austrian army at Aspern. Its weight, and the gallantry of the leading files, brought the huge mass even to the reserves of the Archduke; but that gallant prince at length stopped their advance by six regiments of Hungarian grenadiers; the German artillery and musketry tore their flanks by an incessant discharge on either side; and at length the formidable column was forced back like an immense wild beast bleeding at every pore, but still combating and unsubdued, to the banks of the Danube. The repulse of the formidable English column, fourteen thousand strong, which defeated in succession every regiment in the French army except the last reserve of two regiments of guards at Fontenoy, and the still more momentous defeat of the last attack of the Imperial Guard at Waterloo, also bear a striking and interesting resemblance to the rout of the Roman centre after it had penetrated the Carthaginian line at the battle of Cannae. In truth, the attack in column, formidable beyond measure if not met by valour and combated with skill, is exposed to the most serious dangers if the line in its front is strong and resolute enough to withstand the impulse, till its flanks are overlapped and enveloped by a cross fire from the enemies' lines, converging inwards, as Colborne and Maitland did at Waterloo on the flank of the Old Guard; and thence it is that the French attack in column, so often victorious over the other troops in Europe, has never succeeded against the close and destructive fire of the English infantry; guided by the admirable dispositions with which Wellington first repelled that formidable onset.

Arnold, whose account of Hannibal's campaigns in Italy is by much the best which has been given in modern times to the world, and more scientific and discriminating than either of the immortal narratives of the ancient historians, has clearly brought out two important truths from their examination. The first is, that it was Hannibal's superiority in cavalry, and, above all, the incomparable skill and hardihood of his Numidian horse, which gave him what erelong proved an undisputed superiority in the field; the second, that it was the strength of the towns in the Roman alliance in the south of Italy, and the want of siege artillery on the side of the Carthaginian general, which proved their salvation. So undisputed did the superiority of the invading army become, that, after the battle of Cannae, it was a fixed principle with the Roman generals, during the thirteen subsequent campaigns that ensued in Italy, never on any occasion, or with any superority of force whatever, to hazard a general battle. Such was their terror of the African horse, that the sight of a few Numidian uniforms in the fields was sufficient to make a whole consular army stand to its arms. So paralysed was the strength of Rome by the slaughter of Cannae, that Capua soon after revolted and became the headquarters of Hannibal's army; and, out of the thirty Roman colonies, no less than twelve sent in answer to the requisitions of the consuls, that they had not a man or a penny more to send, and that Rome must depend on its own resources. Never, not even when the disasters of Thrasymene and Cannae were first heard, was such consternation apparent in Rome, as when that mournful resolution was communicated in the Forum.