Hannibal (14 page)

Held in the front, and taken from flank and rear, the consular army had not even time to take up battle order when the waves of attackers hit them. The lake on their right, gradually emerging luminous and still as the sun rose, gave the legions no promise of hope. Through the wavering mists the wild Gauls, the heavy cavalry, and the gadfly Numidians came charging in again and again. The Romans were killed where they stood, or forced back, step by reluctant step, towards the shallow margins of the lake. All order—that disciplined order upon which the yeoman soldiery of Rome relied for their strength—was lost, or never even asserted, so sudden had been the attack. While the advance ranks, true to that stubborn courage which distinguished the Romans, fought their way steadily up the slopes towards the Carthaginian camp, the main body of the army and the rear were cut down in swathes. ‘It was no ordered battle,’ writes Livy, ‘with the troops marshalled in triple line, nor did the vanguard fight before the standards and the rest of the army behind them, neither did each soldier keep to his proper legion cohort and maniple: it was chance that grouped them, and every man’s own valour assigned him his post in van or rear; and such was the frenzy of their eagerness and so absorbed were they in fighting, that an earthquake, violent enough to overthrow large portions of many of the towns of Italy, turn swift streams from their courses, carry the sea up rivers, and bring down mountains with great landslides, was not even felt by any of the combatants.’

For three hours the battle raged in that small U-shaped stretch of land to the north of Lake Trasimene. Polybius, with memories no doubt of ancient Greece in his mind (the Spartans at Thermopylae, perhaps), records with fitting words the destruction of the Roman army: ‘So there fell in the valley about fifteen thousand of the Romans, unable either to yield to circumstances, or to achieve anything, but deeming it, as they had been brought up to do, their supreme duty not to fly or quit the ranks.’ The consul himself was killed by an Insubrian Gaul who recognised him from his armour and, remembering Flaminius’ campaign against his fellows, took his revenge upon the man who had devastated his homeland.

The remnants of the decimated army, driven inexorably back before the onrush of Africans, Spaniards and Gauls, were massacred at the edge, or in the very waters, of the lake. Some 6,000 men who had been in the vanguard fought their way out of the trap and made their way to high ground, where they were able to see, as the mist lifted, the utter devastation of Roman arms. (The following day they were rounded up and captured by the Numidian horse under their leader Maharbal.) Hannibal, courteous as always in the rituals of war, ordered a search to be made for the body of Flaminius in order to give it decent burial, but, doubtless already stripped of his distinguishing armour, the consul was never found. Fifteen thousand Romans and their allies died in the battle of Lake Trasimene, and a similar number were taken prisoner. The Carthaginians lost 1,500-one tenth of the enemy-mostly Gauls. True to his political aim of upsetting the allegiance of the allies with Rome, Hannibal sent the former to their homes with the message that his war was not against them, but only against the Romans. The latter were distributed among the army as prisoners and slaves.

The battle of Lake Trasimene was the greatest reversal of Roman arms that had yet occurred. So absolute was it, and coming so soon after their defeat at the river Trebia, that when the news of the disaster reached Rome, it could in no way be concealed. As the first rumours spread throughout the city, the people swarmed, like ants whose nest has been callously disturbed, around the main public buildings. The praetor, the senior Roman magistrate, a dignified figure respected above all partisan politics, consulted with the senate and summoned a meeting of the commons. ‘There has been a great battle,’ he said. ‘We have been defeated.’
 

XIII

A PAUSE FOR THOUGHT

The spring of 217 B.C., which had begun for Hannibal with what seemed near-disaster in the swampy marshland around the Arno, had turned into a triumph. It was one that was engineered by his willingness to take the risk of approaching Etruria by an unexpected route, and then by his military genius at Lake Trasimene. This new victory was to be followed up by a further blow to Rome, when an advance force of 4,000 horse sent ahead by the other consul, Servilius, was met by Maharbal and the Carthaginian cavalry. The Romans had just crossed the Apennines and emerged into Umbria when they were sighted by Maharbal who was scouting ahead of the main body of Hannibal’s army. In the ensuing battle all the Romans were either killed or captured, thus depriving Servilius of his scouting force as well as an essential part of his army. Since Servilius could no longer safely move his legions, Rome was to all intents and purposes deprived of both her consular armies and left defenceless.

No longer able to communicate with the surviving consul, for no one knew where the army or the cavalry of Hannibal was from one day to the next, the news of this further disaster reduced Rome to a state of deepest shock. Yet it is interesting to note that, even at this moment, despair did not enter into the Roman consciousness. Defeat was so little known to them, and for so long had they been masters of their chosen battlefields, that, as the historians confirm, they do not seem to have realised the full danger of their position. Other states at that period of history only needed one major defeat on the battlefield to abandon hope and sue for peace. The Romans, however, did realise that the situation called for a drastic change in the constitution. ‘They did what had never been done until that day,’ writes Livy, "and created a dictator by popular election. Their choice fell on Quintus Fabius Maximus, and Marcus Minucius Rufus they made master of the horse. To them the senate entrusted the task of strengthening the walls and towers of the City, of disposing its defences as seemed good to them, and of breaking down the bridges over the rivers [the Anio and the Tiber]: they would have to fight for their City and their homes, since they had not been able to save Italy.’

Hannibal was now the undisputed master of the land, free to ravage and roam wherever the inclination took him. But his army, reconstituted though it was, remained an army of conquest, with no capacity for conducting siege warfare. He had no siege train—with its storming towers, its battering rams and its catapults, nor indeed any technicians for this kind of work—all of which were essential in order to reduce cities and garrisons and hold down a countryside. Already, at what seemed a point of triumph, the essential weakness of Hannibal’s position was made clear: he could conquer but not consolidate.

But the greatest weakness of the Carthaginian lay in his lack of a political aim of any consequence. His immediate political aim was to seduce from Rome the allies within her confederacy, restoring to them their freedom. But freedom for what? They had known the advantage of living under Roman rule and law, and they were hardly likely to put these aside in order to return to the condition of something like the old Greek city-states. Hannibal was not proposing that Carthage should take over the dominant role now held by Rome and substitute Carthaginian laws, manners and financial control. His ultimate aim, it would seem, was no more than a return to the
status quo
before the First Punic War. If Rome and her allies and dependencies were content to stay within the sphere of Italy, even conceding Sicily to them, then all would be well. Carthage would continue trading throughout the Mediterranean and elsewhere, and the Mediterranean would carry on snugly divided into Carthaginian and Roman spheres of influence.

One may sympathise with Hannibal, but the lesson of history—if there is one—is that ‘one cannot go back’. The world before the First Punic War, the world that his father Hamilcar had remembered and had pledged him to make new again, was far lost and gone. The collapse of Greece in the East, and the decadence of the Greek states that had come under the control of Alexander’s generals and their successors, had left a power vacuum that must one day be filled. The very lack of territorial ambition on the part of Carthage—her lack of manpower in itself—meant that the energetic and expanding power of Rome would ultimately fill it.

The man who was chosen to act as dictator and rally Rome and the Latin allies at this hour of need was a Roman of the old type—one of those whose clean-shaven tough faces stare out from many a bust depicting the men of the Republic. Quintus Fabius Maximus, to be nicknamed from his caution ‘cunctator’, ‘the delayer’, was to prove the right man at the right time. Unlike the consuls, he was tied to no term of office and he had no name to make’. The family of Fabius was so well established in the history of Rome that it would have been difficult for an individual to have added to its lustre. Descended from Fabius Vibulanus, who had on three occasions been made consul in the fifth century B.C.—despite the fact that he had opposed the patricians—the Fabius who was elected to the supreme office to oppose Hannibal was a man who could command the support of the old aristocratic families as well as of the populace. Conservative by nature, Fabius was the first to appreciate that the Romans had been neglecting a number of religious ceremonies, and that others had been incorrectly performed. He made sure that in all respects the divine element was not neglected, thereby to a great extent restoring the morale of the citizens, while his practical efforts to ensure the defence of the city reassured both the religious and the pragmatic.

Fabius expected Hannibal to march on Rome, and concentrated his efforts on preparing the city and its citizens for such an event, but he may have been aware that the Carthaginian did not yet have a siege train with which to invest the capital. The non-appearance of his enemy may have suggested that the latter was away preparing his troops and making the mechanical and technical preparations necessary for the siege. Fabius had time, meanwhile, to consider his approach to this Carthaginian general who had invaded Italy—something no one had thought possible—and who had already displayed an aptitude for warfare that had shown up harshly the deficiencies of the Republican system. Fabius, as defender of the land, had time on his hands and he also had manpower. He took over the two legions of the consul Gnaeus Servilius and added a further two legions to the army that now lay at his disposal. At the same time he gave orders for all the people who lay ahead of Hannibal’s line of march to abandon their farms, burn the buildings, and destroy the crops. (Centuries later his basic strategy was to be adopted by the Russian general Kutusov against Napoleon.) The people of Italy should withdraw into their land, leaving as little behind them as possible, and he himself—as commander of the only organised army—should avoid a pitched battle at any costs. Guerrilla tactics, harassing the flanks of the enemy, cutting off his foraging parties and gradually bleeding the invader to death, were the methods that Fabius was to employ against the general whom, very wisely, he was unwilling to meet on normal terms.

The one thing that Fabius had to do, he realised, was avoid defeat. The victory that he must aim for was not the traditional one upon the battlefield—something that the genius of his opponent rendered unlikely—but success achieved over a very long period of time, if need be. The presence of his troops must be used to reassure the allies and their cities that Rome was watching over them. Time and the extent of the land itself must be made to work for him. The Carthaginian’s army must be reduced slowly, its morale snapped, and its opportunities for engaging him in a straightforward battle reduced to the minimum.

Hannibal had decided against an attempt on Rome itself and had moved his troops through Umbria and Picenum to the eastern coast of Italy. His army laden with booty and driving cattle before them reached the Adriatic and settled down to enjoy the fruits of their success, while Hannibal waited for the climate and the good living to restore the health of men who had endured a hard winter, had then been taxed to the utmost through the swamps of the Arno, and had finally gone on to win a great and decisive victory. Among their spoils were arms and armour captured at Trasimene and he began to re-equip his own men and the Gauls, training the latter in the use of the new arms and trying to instil into them some of the discipline of the professional soldier. The scorbutic, disorders of the troops were relieved by fresh fruit and oil, while the horses which had been suffering from mange were restored by good fodder and by alcohol (wine) rubs. While the horses grew glossy and the tired men strong and healthy, he sent messengers by sea, possibly using vessels captured on the coast, to report on the state of affairs to Carthage. At no time did he make the mistake of thinking that his own campaigns alone could bring his city a conclusive victory. He would need support by sea or overland by the Alps, and it was all-important that the security of the empire in Spain should be preserved.

When Hannibal moved south Fabius followed him, keeping his men in the foothills of the Apennines whence he could send out raiding parties to cut off foragers and to harass the enemy’s flanks. He made it clear from the start he would avoid any pitched battle and, whenever Hannibal seemed to offer him the opportunity, he carefully ignored it. The Carthaginian now recrossed the Apennines and made for the plain of Capua, ‘the most celebrated in all Italy, both for its fertility and beauty’. But this was not the only reason, as Polybius observes, why Hannibal had decided to transfer his attentions from the east coast to the south-west: it was because ‘it is served by those seaports at which voyagers to Italy from nearly all parts of the world disembark’. Hannibal hoped not only to terrorise some of the major cities into deserting the Roman alliance but also to open sea communications with Carthage. It is very likely that at this moment the only man in the Carthaginian army who felt any tremor of concern was Hannibal himself. Although he had been careful to point out to his troops that the Romans avoided battle because they were afraid, and that their spirit was broken, he was too intelligent to be deceived. Hannibal had taken the measure of his opponent and, as Livy tells us, ‘in the silence of his heart he was troubled by the thought that he had a general to deal with by no means like Flaminius or Sempronius.’