Hannibal (10 page)

Despite the delay caused by this avalanche the head of the army was down in the plain three days after it had left the high pass, but it must be assumed that it was several days more before the tail-end of stragglers and worn-out beasts had completed their descent. Polybius, who is followed by Livy, says that the crossing of the Alps had taken fifteen days in all, a figure that is at variance with the number of days enumerated in his own narrative. The length of time between the beginning of their climb to the Alps and their assembly on the plains of the Po, as he gives it, adds up to eighteen days. This may be accounted for in two ways: the figure of fifteen days applies to the actual crossing of the Alps and not to the beginning of the ascent towards them, which probably took a further three days; or the difference may be made good between the arrival of the head of the army at their camp in Italy and the final assembly of all the troops and animals. One thing is certain: in spite of the lack of fodder in the higher reaches of the mountains, and the terrible conditions through which they had come, there is no mention of any of the elephants having been lost, while the losses of horses, pack-animals and men are recorded.

The exact pass through which Hannibal led his army down into the plains of the Po has excited much controversy over the centuries and has occasioned several volumes, quite apart from many monographs. Some passes, such as the Great St Bernard and the Little St Bernard, are comparatively easy to dismiss since they do not lead into the country inhabited by the Taurini—the tribe into whose territory Hannibal’s forces emerged on their descent from the Alps. What is quite clear from the accounts of Hannibal’s crossing of the Alps is that the pass he used was one of the high, dangerous ones, and that it led down steeply into Italy. The four best claimants after all the data, let alone the theories, have been digested, remain the Mont Cenis (made famous by Charlemagne and Napoleon), the Col du Clapier, the Montgenèvre, and the Traversette. The Mont Cenis pass and the Col du Clapier both afford places close to the summit where the army could have encamped, but the Col du Clapier has preference, being a high and awkward pass. It also has a projecting spur early in its descent into Italy, from which there is a dramatic view of the plain beneath. The Montgenèvre, which has had many supporters over the years, offers a good camping ground but it is the lowest of all the passes and does not accord with the portrait of the hazardous route taken by Hannibal. The highest pass of the four, the Col de la Traversette, fulfils nearly all the requirements of the narratives but lacks a suitable camping ground. Strong cases can, and have been, made for each of these four approach routes. The final choice seems to lie between the Clapier and Traversette passes, with the odds slightly in favour of the Col du Clapier.

Writing in the first century A.D. Juvenal shows here, and in several other references in his
Satires,
that even three hundred years after Hannibal’s death the memory of the great Carthaginian remained deep-etched in the Roman consciousness:

Now Spain swells his empire, now he surmounts

The Pyrenees. Nature throws in his path

High Alpine passes, blizzards of snow; but he splits

The very rocks asunder, moves mountains with vinegar.

Now Italy is his, yet still he forces on:

‘We have accomplished nothing,’ he cries, ‘till we have stormed

The gates of Rome, till our Carthaginian standard

Is set in the City’s heart.’

Juvenal also confirms that his astonishing exploit of crossing the Alps was a subject set for schoolboys’ essays and verses. Indeed, the cry ‘Hannibal ad portas!’ (‘Hannibal is at the gates!’) was used to frighten mischievous Roman children just as, centuries later in Britain, ‘Boney will have you!’ evoked the shadow of Napoleon and produced the silence of fear in British nurseries. The Roman historian Florus, writing even later than Juvenal, compares Hannibal’s descent into Italy with a thunderbolt launched from the skies above the horrendous Alps upon the fair land of Italy. For there can be no doubt that when the news first reached Rome that the impossible had happened—that Hannibal and his Carthaginian army had swooped like an eagle from the passes of the Alps—there was panic in the city. It was a bedraggled and emaciated eagle, however, that now preened its wings in the pale winter sunlight of northern Italy and tried to make good the damage from that horrific march.

Assembled together once more in a land that provided grazing and grain, and beasts for slaughter, the troops, who ‘resembled in appearance and condition animals rather than men’, were able for the first time in many months to take their ease—though not for long—and regain their strength. Hannibal could now take careful count and see just what his unbelievably hazardous venture had cost him. For the advantage of surprise, and for securing the attachment to his cause of the Gauls in Italy, he had paid so dearly that most generals would have considered the campaign already lost. According to Polybius, our best authority, he had crossed the Rhône with about 50,000 foot and 9,000 horse and, since there is no record of any losses after that or during the Rhône crossing, one must assume that it was with something approaching this number—allowing for natural wastage from accident and disease—that he had begun his ascent towards the Alps. Livy gives conflicting figures as to the number of men who started out and the number lost in the crossing. Some of these are so exaggerated that they were clearly part of later Roman propaganda, designed to inflate the Roman ego as to the size of the army that their forefathers had faced. For instance, one of the Latin sources which he quotes has Hannibal arriving in Italy with 100,000 foot and 20,000 horse—far more than he started out with. Polybius is more trustworthy since, as he tells us, he had seen the inscription at Lacinium in which Hannibal himself had set down the facts and figures of his campaigns. His account reveals Hannibal reaching Italian soil at the foot of the Alps with 12,000 African and 8,000 Iberian foot, and not more than 6,000 horse. Between the Pyrenees and Italy, therefore, he had lost—mostly in the Alps—some 30,000 foot and 3,000 horse. This more or less confirms one statement of Livy’s, that a Roman who had been a captive of Hannibal left it on record that Hannibal had told him that ‘after crossing the Rhône he lost thirty-six thousand men and a vast number of horses and other animals’.

Quintus Fabius Pictor, earliest of Latin historians and known as the Father of Roman History, fought against Hannibal in the war which was about to begin and reckoned that at this period the Romans and their allied states could field 750,000 men. Hannibal knew from previous communications with the Gauls in Italy that many thousands of them would rise, hailing him as liberator, and would join his forces in the war against Rome. He knew their bravery (as well as their lack of discipline), but what he cannot have known, as he contemplated his bedraggled army recuperating at the foot of the Alps, was exactly how many of them would join his standard. He had subdued the tribes of northern Spain, and as much of the Iberian peninsula as they could ever need was now a Carthaginian colony; he had crossed the Pyrenees and the Rhône; and he could look back towards the lucent Alpine peaks, which he had conquered with so severe a loss, as the last great natural hazard between him and his goal. But now he must face the tough and disciplined armies of Rome—and at that moment he had no more than 20,000 half-starved soldiers, 6,000 cavalrymen on bony horses, and 37 emaciated elephants. It was little enough with which to try conclusions with the greatest power in the Mediterranean world.
 

X

FIRST BLOOD IN ITALY

Publius Cornelius Scipio, the consul who had failed to arrest Hannibal’s advance at the Rhône and who had returned to Italy after sending his army under his brother into Spain, was appalled to learn that the army of Carthage was now encamped at the foot of the Alps. When Hannibal had evaded him by marching north along the bank of the Rhône he had scarcely found it credible that he would attempt the passes of the Alps so late in the year—let alone that he would succeed. His fellow consul, Tiberius Sempronius Longus, was still in Sicily with the army which had been readied for the attack on Carthage. He had taken the Lipari islands as well as the Carthaginian trading post of Malta when the news reached him that the enemy was in Italy, and he was to return with all possible speed to join Scipio. The latter, having taken command of the legions in the north, had marched to the plain of the Po where he encamped, ready to give battle the moment that Hannibal moved southward. His troops had suffered a severe mauling during the Gallic revolt at the hands of the Boii, and their morale was consequently very low. Scipio did his best to put spirit into them by reminding them that the Romans had defeated the Carthaginians before; that Hannibal’s army must be in a sorry condition after the crossing of the Alps; and that it was with them alone that there rested the ultimate defence of their city and their land.
 

The Republican army was destined within three centuries (from 350 B.C.) to conquer first Italy and then the known world. ‘This army broke in succession the stout native soldiers of Italy and the mountaineers of Spain and overthrew the trained Macedonian phalanx,’ wrote F. J. Haverfield. ‘Once only did it fail—against Hannibal. But not even Hannibal could oust it from its entrenchments, and not even his victories could permanently break its morale.’ And it was upon her legions—the principal unit of her army—that Rome depended most. The legion usually consisted of a division of 4,500 men—3,000 heavy infantry, 1,200 lighter-armed, and 300 horse—although sometimes it might include as many as 6,000 men. The backbone of the legion was the heavily-armed infantrymen, equipped with a large shield, metal helmet, leather cuirass, and a short sword for cutting or thrusting. Levied from the whole body of Romans who possessed some private means (maybe no more than a small farm plot), they were above all a citizen army. In many respects they resembled the Puritan army of Cromwell—of excellent character, rigidly disciplined, and highly trained. When drawn up for battle they formed into three lines: first the
hastati
, 120 young men armed with swords and two short throwing-spears; secondly, the
principes,
slightly older men, similarly armed, and also 120 in number; thirdly, the
triarii,
60 veterans, armed with swords and a long spear or pike. These subdivisions of the legion, known as maniples, were arranged in chess-board fashion (
quincunx
) so that the first row could retire through the second without disorganising it, while the second in its turn advanced; the
triarii
formed a reserve. This formation gave the legion considerable flexibility and was an improvement upon the solid phalanx with which the Greeks since Alexander had dominated the ancient world, and which the Carthaginians had adopted. Hannibal was not slow to perceive the advantages of such tactical units and to modify his own dispositions accordingly.

Apart from the legions, the Roman army contained contingents drawn from the Italian ‘allies’, subjects of Rome, who were armed and drilled like legionaries and often appear to have equalled the latter in number. In these days the cavalry attached to each legion seems to have been of little account—a fact of which Hannibal and his well-organised Numidians and Iberians took great advantage—and it was not until Scipio Africanus, the son of the Scipio who now advanced to meet Hannibal, learned from his enemy how to handle cavalry that the balance was redressed. The centurions were the backbone of the legions, professional long-service soldiers who took the name of Rome from India to Scotland—the finest N.C.O.s in history. Above them there were six tribunes to a legion, either veteran officers or young noblemen at the beginning of their careers.

The normal practice was that when a consul took the field he had with him an army of two legions, together with an appropriate number of ‘allies’. When two consuls took the field together they had, accordingly, four legions, allied infantry, legionary cavalry, and allied cavalry. According to Polybius, in the first major engagement between the Carthaginians and Romans in 218 B.C. at the river Trebia the two consuls with their combined forces had an army of 16,000 legionaries and 20,000 allied infantry. The great disadvantage under which the Romans laboured—at any rate in the early phases of the war—was that the consuls were changed every year and, when the two were together, they commanded the combined force in rotation. Such a ‘democratic’ Republican procedure was almost certain to come to grief when matched against the military intelligence, command and will-power of one man—particularly when that man was a genius of warfare.

Roman tactics in battle were comparatively simple and, since they had proved so successful in previous wars, were used against the Carthaginians until the latter demonstrated, by a flexibility designed to match each new occasion, that what had triumphed over Latins and Greeks and Gallic tribes needed adaptation. First of all, the Roman front line would open fire with their throwing spears, following this up with a charge with their swords—somewhat akin to the musket volley and bayonet charge of later wars. If this failed to break the enemy front, the second line, passing through the first on their chess-board principle, would repeat the procedure. The veterans held as reserve could then be used if necessary, while all the time the lightly-armed infantry were skirmishing on the flanks of the enemy, aided by the cavalry. These tactics had served the Romans well in the past—and were to do so in the future—but proved inadequate to deal with a general who modified his own tactics to suit each new battlefield, and who used elements of surprise and carefully laid traps, into which the Romans more often than not were prone to blunder. Some of the accusations of Punic perfidy and bad faith which were made against Hannibal by later Roman writers undoubtedly stemmed from the fact that he did not make war according to the established rules. He was unconventional. It was with somewhat similar unconventional genius that Napoleon was to destroy the eighteenth century armies of Europe, who marched in careful order to the chosen battlefield, and were dismayed to find that their enemy was not ‘playing the game’ according to the well-known rules, but was fighting to win by any available means.