Hannibal (26 page)

XXIV

DEATH OF TWO CONSULS

It was ten years since Hannibal had swept down into Italy to shatter the Roman armies, and cause the first doubts to grow among their allies that Rome was the master and future ruler of the Mediterranean. By 208, however, with the impetus of his assault long since spent and the cracks in the Latin confederation made good, Hannibal looked upon a very different scene.

Capua was lost, and Tarentum too. The towns in Samnium and Campania that had forsworn the Roman alliance and turned to what had seemed to be the rising star of Carthage were now denied to him, and such others as had at one time thought of following their example were taking due note of the way in which Rome punished any backsliders. He had no ports worthy of the name to maintain sea-links with Carthage, and the all-important island of Sicily was irretrievably lost. Sardinia had never managed to break free of Rome and all the approaches to Italy were watched and guarded by triumphant Roman fleets. Philip V of Macedon, who had been almost convinced after Cannae that it would be worth his while to lend assistance to the conquering Carthaginians, had long since been reminded of the Roman control of the Adriatic. (He was now heavily engaged in Greece against the Aetolians who, with the support of Rome, were to keep him occupied at home until the threat from Hannibal was over.) Hannibal could certainly derive no comfort in the news from Spain, where his brother Hasdrubal was to be mauled at Baecula that year by the young Scipio. He had little to sustain him and his troops but the knowledge that he was still in Italy after so many years—and still undefeated. Yet the year 208, which must have looked ominous to the Carthaginian, was to close with an extraordinary reversal of Roman fortunes.
 

The consuls for the year 208 were the tough old soldier Marcellus, now in his fifth consulship, and Titus Quinctius Crispinus, who had been Marcellus’ right-hand man in the capture of Syracuse. Each was in command of two legions. Crispinus began that year’s campaigning with an attack on Locri, one of the few ports remaining to Hannibal in the south, where he might still have hoped to receive reinforcements by sea from Carthage. Forced to give up the siege by Hannibal, he retreated northwards to the town of Venusia where he and Marcellus encamped with their armies only a few miles apart. Willing to bring them to battle if, as he had grounds to suspect, the Romans might have sufficiently recovered their nerve to meet him on the open field, Hannibal set off north after them. On his way he heard that a legion from Tarentum had been sent out to march down to Locri and renew the siege, with the hope of capturing the city-port in his absence. He set a typical Hannibalic trap beneath the 1,000-foot high hill of Petelia, concealing his horsemen and infantry on either side of the route—the kind of snare into which he had earlier hoped to lure the troops of Fabius. The Romans, presuming that Hannibal was away to the north, advanced carelessly and without any scouts sent ahead, and learned the lesson which it might have been thought had long been absorbed by all intelligent commanders—‘Never underestimate the Carthaginian.’ The trap was sprung; 2,000 Romans were killed, 1,500 were taken prisoner; and the rest fled back to Tarentum, happy to see the gates of the city opened to let them in.

When Hannibal finally reached a position not far from Venusia and the Roman armies he pitched camp and prepared for what promised to be a set engagement. As Livy puts it, ‘both consuls were alike in a fierce spirit and went out daily into the battle-line with no uncertain hope that, if the enemy should risk battle, with two united consular armies, it would be possible to finish the war.’ Between the two armies lay a small wooded hill which the Romans, who had been in position long before Hannibal’s arrival, should certainly have seized. The master of warfare wasted no time; overnight he sent forward a number of squadrons of his Numidian cavalry to see if the hill was occupied and, if not, to conceal themselves there and lie up without making a move during daylight hours. He had already decided from its shape and size that the hill was more suitable for some form of ambush than as a camp for the army.

As usual his thinking was somewhat in advance of his opponents’. ‘In the Roman camp’, writes Livy, ‘there was a general outcry that the hill must be occupied and defended by a fort, in order that they might not have the enemy upon their necks, as it were, if the hill should be occupied by Hannibal.’ Not knowing what had already happened to the legion out of Tarentum, nor aware that the troops under Hannibal were full of fight and confidence, nor remembering from the past that only the ignorant or the foolish ever treated the presence of Hannibal without considerable care, Marcellus and his fellow consul Crispinus decided to ride out and take a personal look at the hill. Perhaps the news from Spain and the general situation in the Mediterranean had buoyed them up with careless confidence. Taking no more than 220 horsemen with them, along with a few infantrymen and some staff officers including Marcus Marcellus, the son of the consul, they rode out of camp. As they left the earthwork Marcellus gave orders for the soldiers to be ready and, if the hill was found suitable for establishing a camp or lookout post, they were to move up immediately. The signal to do so never came.

The Numidians, who had been waiting in case they might be able to catch a few men who had gone in search of fodder or firewood, were astonished to see the red military cloaks and the glittering armour of senior officers moving across the small plain towards them and entering the wooden slopes. Immaculately-disciplined, they waited until the whole party was within their grasp and then, like dark shadows, from the rear of the Romans and on each side of them the horsemen from North Africa made their move. "Those who, facing the enemy, had to rise up from the hillside itself, did not show themselves before those who were to cut off the road in the rear turned the enemy’s flanks. Then they all sprang up from every side and, raising a great shout, made their attack.’ Marcellus was almost immediately struck by a spear and fell dying from his horse, Crispinus, wounded by two javelins, just managed to escape, while the young son of Marcellus, also wounded, joined him in the flight of the survivors—a few staff officers and a handful of Etruscan cavalry who seem to have had little heart for the engagement.

The sudden outcry from the wooded hill had brought both armies to the alert, the Romans being the first to know from the bloodstained survivors what had taken place on that bright summer day. Hannibal, as soon as he was told the news by one of the Numidians, moved his army forward and occupied the hill. He himself rode through the wood until he found the body of Marcellus; he had it cremated with due honours and sent the ashes to the dead man’s son in a silver urn. He had respected Marcellus as an opponent when alive and he paid him, when dead, as was always his custom with fallen opponents, the marks of respect due to a man worthy of honour.

While the severely wounded Crispinus took charge of the consular armies and moved up into the mountains ‘to a high place that was safe on every side’, Hannibal considered his next move. He now had in his possession the ring of the dead consul: his seal and authority for any message that might be sent. Hannibal at once thought of Salapia on the Adriatic coast of Apulia; Salapia which had broken away from its Carthaginian alliance and reverted to Rome. He needed a secure garrison on the east coast, for it would seem that he had heard from his brother Hasdrubal in Spain that the latter intended to break out, cross the Alps, and join him for a final onslaught on Rome. The events of that year were to confirm Hasdrubal in his pessimism about the Carthaginian position in Spain and he saw clearly that only a combination of Hannibal and himself, and their two armies, the one full of fresh blood and eager for conquest, the other wise in experience, could save Carthage by striking direct at the heart of Rome.

To Salapia, then, Hannibal addressed a message, authenticated by the seal of Marcellus, saying that Marcellus would arrive on the following night and that the gates of the city were to be open to receive him. It was an ingenious ruse and might have worked, but for the fact that Crispinus, dying though he was, had anticipated him and had sent messengers to all the nearby city-states telling them that Marcellus was dead, and to trust no message that came bearing his seal. The men of Salapia sent back Hannibal’s messenger, a Roman deserter, saying that all would be ready for Marcellus when he arrived. When Hannibal neared Salapia by night he sent forward an advance party of Roman deserters, all speaking Latin and all bearing Roman arms, marching like the legionaries they had once been and designed to convince the people of Salapia that the consul was following. The sentries on I the gate, hearing them call out, pretended to be ready to welcome them, and i raised the portcullis. But when several hundreds of the deserters had entered the town, the portcullis was dropped behind them and the advance party was massacred.

Foiled for once by an intelligence as sharp as his own, Hannibal abandoned the attempt to secure the city for the long-awaited arrival of his brother from Spain, and withdrew to the south. He had learned that Locri was once again under siege and it was all-important to him that he should keep this communication-link with Carthage open. The ever-versatile Numidian horse arrived in advance of Hannibal’s marching columns, took the besieging Roman army in the rear, and Locri was saved.

Titus Quinctius Crispinus died shortly afterwards of the wounds he had received in that fatal ambush on the wooded hill. ‘So two consuls—and this had happened in no previous war-losing their lives without a notable battle, had left the state as it were bereft.’ At Trasimene and at Cannae ‘ Hannibal had killed one of the consuls then in office, and he had killed many Roman generals, knights, innumerable staff officers and other valuable citizens of Rome. But now, in the year that had seemed to open with the gloomiest of prospects, he still bestrode the landscape of Italy—an implacable, avenging figure whom the Romans had never defeated.

Across the Mediterranean in Spain his brother Hasdrubal, who had been eager to join Hannibal in Italy for several years, had his choice resolved for him. If he had wavered in the past, torn between the necessity of preserving the Carthaginian empire and of helping Hannibal strike the enemy in his heart, he was now to receive the blow that produced decision. At Baecula (Baelen), guarding the all-important silver mines of Castulo, Hasdrubal was brought to bay by Scipio. The Hannibalic War, like all others, revolved around metals and money—metals for war materials and money with which to keep troops in the field and to pay for the support of allies. Hamilcar had founded his Spanish empire to replenish the treasury of Carthage after the disastrous peace following the First Punic War, and it was the mineral wealth of Spain that had emboldened Carthage to support Hannibal’s astonishing venture against the Roman state. Hasdrubal’s last battle in Spain was significant for the reason that he was defeated by Scipio’s use of a tactical approach that no Roman commander in the past would have thought of, nor possibly even Scipio himself if he had not been present at Cannae.

Hasdrubal had taken up a position beneath the town of Baecula on a ridge which had a small river below it. To get at his enemy Scipio had to ford the river and then make a frontal assault up a slope: two disadvantages which earlier Roman commanders would have accepted, relying on the weight of the legions to steamroller their way through the enemy’s defences. Scipio, however, had observed that on either side of the plateau there were dried gulleys descending from the top. After his troops were across the river he suddenly shifted the main weight of his attack, sending a large body of lightly-armed troops up the slope to meet the enemy head on, while he and his second-in-command took the heavily-armed legions up the gulleys on either side. In doing this he emulated Hannibal at Cannae, having his light troops and his Spanish allies bear the brunt in the centre, while his heavy veterans closed in on the sides for the kill. ‘And no longer’, writes Livy, ‘was space left open even for flight…the gate of the camp was obstructed by the flight of the general and chief officers, while in addition there was the panic of the elephants, of which, when terrified, they were as much afraid as of the enemy. About eight thousand men were slain.’ The fact remained that Hasdrubal, who had proven himself on many a battlefield, managed to get away with the hard core of his army—all his heavily-armed troops, as well as his cavalry, and 32 elephants besides. Like Hannibal himself, and like Scipio, he was ruthless in sacrificing his local troops when it came to the major issues. And for Hasdrubal, having decided that Spain must be at long last abandoned, even if only in the short-term—the all-important goal was to move his forces to Italy.

In the autumn of 208 Hasdrubal took his troops over into Gaul, having evaded the Romans in eastern Spain by following the upper valleys of the Tagus and the Ebro. The subsequent fame of Scipio seems to have eclipsed the fact that he let Hasdrubal escape and thereby allowed his country to be more exposed to danger than at any time since Hannibal himself had crossed the Alps. To quote O’Connor Morris: ‘He must have known—for the rumour had spread far and wide—that Hasdrubal’s object was to leave Spain and to cooperate with his brother in Italy: the Roman general’s first object should therefore have been to take care that Hasdrubal should not elude him; if he was not sufficiently strong to strike his enemy down, he should certainly have dogged his advance to the Pyrenees, and not have let him reach Gaul unobserved and intact. He did nothing of the kind, and made an immense mistake and it is simply untrue that he was obliged to confront the Carthaginians in great force on the Ebro, for Mago and Hasdrubal Gisgo, when Hasdrubal had gone, betook themselves, the one to the Balearic islands, the other to Portugal, hundreds of miles distant; they were clearly unable to face the Romans in Spain.’