Hannibal (7 page)

The two consuls in Italy had been freed by midsummer from their attention to the uprising in the north and had returned to their original enterprises—Tiberius Sempronius making lavish preparations in Sicily for the invasion of North Africa and Publius Cornelius Scipio preparing to embark troops for the coastal voyage to Massilia. If Hannibal was behindhand with his march, so equally were the consuls. Scipio, having set out from Italy with sixty warships, reached Massilia five days after leaving Pisa and went into camp at the mouth of the Rhône near the city. Here information reached him that Hannibal was already crossing the Pyrenees but, confident that the difficulties of the terrain and the hostility of the Gauls would make for very slow progress, the Consul did not feel that there was any immediate urgency. His men and their horses needed a rest after the sea voyage and he could, as yet, only imagine that Hannibal was bent on stirring up trouble among the Gauls—with possibly Massilia as a target once he had gathered sufficient forces together. ‘Hannibal, however, who had bribed some of the Celts and forced others to give him a passage, unexpectedly appeared with his army at the crossing of the Rhône….’

Hannibal’s speed of advance seems to have averaged about fourteen kilometres a day. According to Polybius, he now halted to make his Rhône crossing at a distance of about four days’ march from the sea. Scarcely fifty miles of swampland and river estuary separated Scipio from Hannibal, but so poor were communications in the area that the Carthaginian moved his army of fifty thousand men together with cavalry and elephants up to a suitable crossing-place before any news reached the Consul in Massilia. Hannibal’s forces now came into an area inhabited by a tribe called the Volcae, who seem to have been in command of both banks of the Rhône and clearly made a large part of their living out of transporting goods and people from one side to the other. The Volcae who were on the western bank, either unable or unwilling to leave their homes and their boat-building activities, were to provide the answer to Hannibal’s transportation problems. But the majority of the tribe, seeing in the arrival of this large foreign army a threat to their liberties, had gathered on the eastern side and, using the Rhône as their moat, were preparing to give battle. Four days’ march from the sea, as Polybius tells us, ‘the stream is single’. At about sixty kilometres lies Fourques, where the river is indeed single, wide and smooth-flowing to this day (although the Rhône has changed considerably since the great dam was built at Donzères), and very probably, to judge from the lie of the land around, always with a gentle approach from the western banks.

It is possible that echoes of Sosilos (Hannibal’s Greek tutor) who later wrote his life, or of another Greek, Silenos, who accompanied him on the march and whose account was translated into Latin, may be found in Polybius. Certainly there is an eye-witness feel about some of the passages describing the Rhône crossing:

Doing his best to make friends with the inhabitants of the bank, he bought up all their canoes and boats—a considerable number since many of the people on the banks of the Rhône engage in maritime traffic. He also got from them logs suitable for making canoes, so that in two days he had a very large number of ferry boats, every one doing his best to dispense with any assistance and relying on himself for his chance of getting across.

Meanwhile, a great number of Gauls had gathered on the opposite bank and it was clear that their army would never be able to land in face of such determined opposition. The problem of transporting fifty thousand infantrymen and nine thousand horses and their riders-let alone thirty-seven elephants—would have been daunting enough in itself, but to get them over in face of a hostile force would have been almost impossible. On the third night, having carefully weighed up the situation, Hannibal called for Hanno, a fellow nobleman and son of the suffete Bomilcar, and put him in command of part of the army. These troops were mostly Spaniards, the reason they were chosen being that the Spaniards were the best swimmers. Their task was to cross the Rhône at some suitable point to the north and remain concealed.

‘Advancing up the bank of the river for two hundred stades [about thirty-five kilometres] they reached a place at which the stream divides, forming an island, and here they stopped.’ They used timber ready to hand to make rafts and made the crossing safely. There was no opposition, for the Gauls, too preoccupied with the army that was facing them down the river, had omitted to post any scouts or lookouts beyond their camp. (As Hannibal had no doubt already discovered, the Gauls were brave in battle but unskilled in even the rudiments of warfare’s disciplines.) Polybius continues: ‘Occupying a post of some natural strength, they remained there for that day to rest after their exertions and at the same time to prepare for the movement which they had been ordered to execute.’

Hannibal had calculated that on the morning of the sixth day the army would be ready at the crossing-point. The fifth night, therefore, was devoted to getting all the boats into place for the assault. His attention to detail in this amphibious landing is shown by the fact that, although the transport had been swiftly assembled, much of it made on the spot, and under the view of the enemy, there was no question of the crossing being carried out in a haphazard manner: ‘He had filled the boats with his light horse and the canoes with his lightest infantry. The large boats were placed highest up stream and the lighter ferry-boats farther down, so that the heavier vessels receiving the chief force of the current the canoes should be less exposed to risk in crossing.’ The horses were to be towed swimming astern of the boats, with a man on each side of the stern holding the reins of three or four horses so that a considerable number of them could be got across at the same time. Others were saddled and bridled and put on board the larger ferries so that their riders would be ready for instant action when they reached the far side. The elephants presented a very different problem but, as will be seen, one that would be dealt with efficiently when the time came. On the fifth night, while the main body was making ready for the morning, the troops under Hanno began to move southward. As soon as they were in position to the rear of the Gauls, they made a smoke signal as pre-arranged with Hannibal.

On the morning of the sixth day, seeing the smoke lift in the sky to the east, Hannibal gave the order for the crossing to begin. Boats large and small, ferries, dugout canoes, and individuals paddling their own logs now launched themselves on the silky sweep of the great river. All the Gauls at once left their encampment and joined the throng on the bank shouting war cries, clashing their shields, and brandishing their spears. On the other bank, the Carthaginians who had not embarked shouted encouragement as their vanguard swept across; some managing to stem the current, while others were swept down to make a landing south of the enemy. The heavier craft carrying the horses and their riders were on the point of touching down when the troops under Hanno struck in the rear of the Gauls. At once there was a great outcry as the Gauls saw their tents and their encampment going up in flames. Caught between two fires, they ran wildly back and forth—their willingness to fight no compensation for their disorder. Hannibal took the measure of these people quickly enough, and it is significant that in his campaigns he used Gallic manpower quite cynically, exploiting their bravery but never putting them in a position where they were not flanked by trained troops, nor without a rearguard that would hold them if they tried to break and run.

As the full weight of the Carthaginian landing began to make itself felt the Gauls took to their heels. Hannibal had established his beachhead on the eastern bank of the Rhône, and the other troops were swift to follow as a regular ferry-service was established. By sunset that night they were fully encamped on the eastern bank. The following morning grave news reached them: a Roman army had disembarked and was assembled near the eastern mouth of the Rhône. If Scipio was astonished to hear that Hannibal was across the Pyrenees, Hannibal was hardly less surprised to hear of the Romans at so short a distance from him. Five hundred of the Numidian horse were immediately sent off to observe the whereabouts of the, enemy and to take stock of their numbers. Hannibal had no wish to fight in Gaul—however successful the outcome might be—for his aim was to get his army into Italy. Owing to the delay in Spain, he was already far behind in his timetable, and the crossing of the Rhône, which should have been in midsummer, or earlier, almost certainly took place towards the end of September. If he delayed any longer the mountain passes of the Alps would be irrevocably closed.

Meanwhile large piers had been built out into the river with rafts attached to them at the far end, for the transport of the elephants. To these in their turn were fastened towing-lines for the boats that were to pull them across. ‘After this they piled up a quantity of earth on all the line of the rafts, until the whole was on the same level and of the same appearance as the path on shore leading to the crossing.’ One senses again in Polybius’ account the long-lost manuscript of that Greek eye-witness.

The animals were always accustomed to obey their mahouts up to the water, but would never enter it on any account, and they now drove them along over the earth with two females in front, whom they obediently followed. As soon as they set foot on the last rafts the ropes which held these fast to the others were cut, and the boats pulling taut, the towing lines rapidly tugged away from the pile of earth the elephants and the rafts on which they stood. Hereupon the animals becoming very alarmed at first turned round and ran about in all directions, but as they were shut in on all sides by the stream they finally grew afraid and were compelled to keep quiet. In this manner, by continuing to attach two rafts to the end of the structure, they managed to get most of them over on these, but some were so frightened that they threw themselves into the river when halfway across. The mahouts of these were all drowned, but the elephants were saved, for owing to the power and length of their trunks they kept them above the water and breathed through them, at the same time spouting out any water that got into their mouths and so held out, most of them passing through the water on their feet.

While the last of the arrangements were being made and the crossing of the elephants engineered, Hannibal had been joined by a number of chieftains from the plains of Po, men who had fought against the Romans and who now urged him not to delay his passage into Italy. Hannibal was aware that many of his troops were concerned about the journey that lay ahead. They had had to fight hard after leaving the Ebro: they had tasted the Pyrenees—but under good conditions—and they had crossed this formidable river after several days in delta land that was strange and alarming to them. Now they were confronted by these mysterious and frightening Alps. It was hardly surprising that an army of so many races—let alone tribes—should feel divided and uncertain. Hannibal used the presence of these Boii and in particular one chieftain, Magol, who was perhaps their senior, to point out that the Alps were far from insurmountable: these men had just come from Italy through the passes. They need not fear the Romans either, for men like these had often defeated them. (He must have hoped that the point was taken: ‘You have just defeated a large number of Gauls so, if Gauls can defeat Romans, who should you fear?’)

Both Polybius and Livy (and, of course, all subsequent historians) have pictured Hannibal, on this and other occasions, addressing the assembled army in the rhetoric so dear to the classical heart. But, one must ask, in what language or dialect was he speaking? Hannibal was from childhood acquainted with the Semitic Punic (some words of which may still be found in the Lebanon and the Maltese islands), his second language was Greek, his third almost certainly the tongue spoken by the Spanish tribes south of the Ebro, and the fourth was Latin. He had a quick and agile mind and undoubtedly mastered some basic Gallic (different dialects again). One must imagine that on this and other similar occasions he used a number of interpreters in order to get his message over to the assembled troops. At the same time he, the general, speaking in person to them all, was a very necessary element in his maintaining a grasp upon his multi-racial force—Hannibal, the brother in-law of Hasdrubal, the son of the great Hamilcar, the victor of Saguntum, their leader…. Since his senior officers were Carthaginians, and since the heart of the army itself was composed of Carthaginians and Libyans (the latter of necessity had to learn their rulers’ language) it is most probable that he spoke in Punic. It may have sounded a little like the Arabic still to be heard in Libya and Tunisia.

‘[He] began by reminding them of their achievements in the past: though, he said, they had undertaken many hazardous enterprises and fought many a battle they had never met with ill success when they followed his plans and counsels. Next he bade them be of good heart considering that the hardest part of their task was now accomplished, since they had forced the passage of the river and had the testimony of their own ears and eyes to the friendly sentiments and readiness to help of their allies….’ It was up to him—and they knew his worth—to attend to the details. What was required of them was to obey orders and show themselves brave men. There was to be no delay. They would strike camp in the morning and begin the great march.

The return of the Numidian horse would have been sufficient to confirm Hannibal in his haste. On their reconnaissance sortie they had run into a force of three hundred of Scipio’s cavalry, sent out on a similar mission. After a savage encounter, in which the Numidians had come off badly, they had retreated with the Romans in hot pursuit. It is worth noting that this is the only time in the long campaign that the Numidians seem to have been worsted, and one can only assume that they had come up against heavy cavalry—an arm against which they were not designed to operate. Hannibal and his great cavalry commander Maharbal were always careful to use them in the future for harassment, keeping their own heavy brigade to deal with the Roman equivalent. On this occasion the Roman cavalry was able to sweep within sight of the Carthaginian camp, calculate the number of men in it, and report back to Scipio.