Hannibal (23 page)

Hannibal started back to Tarentum, where the Roman garrison in the citadel was still holding out; he was hoping, no doubt, that over the winter months he could succeed in dislodging them where the Tarentines had failed. The Tarentines! The Capuans! The great Carthaginian must have despaired of the quality of these wartime allies…. It was so evidently true that only the weak-spirited, only those with a grudge against Rome, ever came over to him. No members of the Latin confederacy deserted their old alliance and, if the Gauls and the Bruttians fought well on his side, they were undisciplined and semi-savage peoples who could not be used against Rome until they had been honed by training with his Carthaginian officers and men—and then only in a rough fashion to provide ‘cannon fodder’ while the real infantry and cavalry did the professional work.

Hannibal rounded off a year which, if it had not been very satisfactory for him, had certainly been an unhappy one for Rome. On his route back to Tarentum he came across a Roman army barring his path. Superior in cavalry—and superior largely because of the quality of his Numidians—he deployed them carefully on the wings. The Romans, advancing in their old-fashioned (as it had now become) manner, confident in the strength of their armoured legions, were cut to pieces, and the general, Marcus Sentenius Paenula, was killed. As if this was not sufficient for a foreign invader on his march back to winter quarters after the conclusion of a successful campaigning season, Hannibal heard that Herdonia, on the east coast in Apulia, was being besieged by the brother of the consul, Fulvius Flaccus, and turned his army north-eastwards across the breadth of Italy. He arrived to catch the unsuspecting Romans in the rear and, having laid a typical Hannibalic trap on the flank towards which he reckoned the Romans might turn, annihilated the enemy. Two thousand—or less—of this army escaped, and Hannibal secured his territorial position, then turned south again to ensure his troops adequate supplies and good quarters for the winter. Two Roman armies had been destroyed and two generals killed—all in a cursory campaign. Could any country, could even the senate of Carthage, have demanded more of one man—unsupported and far from home?

The following year 211 was to prove one of the strangest and most alarming in Roman history. Hannibal was torn between his desire to capture the citadel at Tarentum, which was still preventing the Carthaginians from using the port as their supply and fleet base for the Italian campaign, and the need to hold Capua. As Livy writes:

However, regard for Capua prevailed, a city on which he saw that the attention of all his allies and enemies was concentrated, and one destined to be a striking example, whatever might be the result of its revolt from the Romans. Accordingly, leaving in the land of the Bruttii a large part of his baggage and all the heavy-armed, with picked infantry and cavalry he hastened into Campania in the best possible condition for a rapid march. In spite of his swift movement thirty-three elephants managed to follow him. [He had managed the same thing before, in his march up the east bank of the Rhône.] He encamped in a closed valley behind Tifata…. As he approached, he first captured the stronghold of Galatia, overpowering its garrison, and then directed his march against the besiegers of Capua. And sending word in advance to Capua, stating at what time he proposed to attack the Roman camp, so that they also, making ready for a sally, might at the same time burst out of all the gates, he inspired great alarm. For on one side he himself attacked, on the other all the Capuans, cavalry and infantry, sallied out, and with them the Carthaginian garrison commanded by Bostar and Hanno.

In the ensuing battle the weakness of Hannibal’s overall position was clearly demonstrated: he could not carry a defended position. Although his hardy Spanish infantrymen broke through the Roman lines they were unable to force their way into Capua, and were cut off and killed. The Carthaginian cavalry remained, as it always had been, supreme in the field but this was insufficient when it came to attacking Roman legionaries in their entrenchments. Hannibal did all that he could to provoke the Romans out into an open battle, but they were not to be drawn. They had learned their lesson in the first two years of his campaigns in Italy. Polybius, himself a cavalry commander, acknowledges at this point that even this powerful arm was useless when it came to dislodging a tough and dug-in enemy. Furthermore, the coordinated operation with the Capuans proved a dismal failure, his allies being easily repulsed by the Romans, who were determined to make this renegade city pay the price for its desertion from the Latin alliance. Hannibal threw all the forces at his disposal into his attack on the Roman lines, quite apart from his Numidians and Spaniards who ‘burst into the Roman camp unexpectedly’. The elephants charged with them and ‘on their way straight through the camp were wrecking the tents with a terrible noise, and making the beasts of burden break their halters and flee.’ Livy concludes: ‘…the elephants were driven out of the positions by the use of fire. However it began or ended, this was the last battle before the surrender of Capua.’ As the Romans had found out, the elephants had their weaknesses; fire was one, and the other was to let them blunder through the lines and then attack them in the hindquarters.

With the benefit of hindsight, it would seem that Hannibal had made a strategic mistake in his attempts to relieve Capua. He had brought against the Roman positions a weight of forces that would have better been deployed against the garrison at Tarentum, thus freeing that great harbour for the Carthaginian fleet. On the other hand, elephants and numerical superiority meant little against a fortified citadel, with an internal water supply and a good store of grain. This was why citadels, garrisons and castles survived for thousands of years in the history of war. Only explosive projectiles and scientific mining methods put paid to the ‘strong point’. Quick enough to sense his mistake after this failed combined operation to relieve Capua, Hannibal withdrew. There was only one strategic move left to him, one that has been used by many great captains, including Napoleon (who learned so much from Hannibal). This was to take his forces away and threaten the major piece upon the chessboard—Rome. He must have known, in view of his failure against lesser walled cities, that it could only be a threat and no more, but could the Roman legions surrounding Capua be completely confident that the capital would survive the attack of the great Carthaginian?

Hannibal’s march on Rome, an event so terrifying that it was still being recalled by poets and historians centuries later, raises the interesting question as to what route he took. Livy is confusing, saying that he used the great Via Latina on the later stages of his march, while he has Fulvius Flaccus taking the more westerly Via Appia and reaching Rome before him. Polybius—often more trustworthy when it comes to military matters—shows Hannibal taking his army right up through Samnium to the east and descending on Rome from the north-east. Knowing from his other manoeuvres Hannibal’s fondness for doing the unexpected, this route seems the more likely. Sir Gavin de Beer makes a further point: ‘Marching through Samnium to Sulmo, and then through regions hostile to Rome, Hannibal passed by Alba Fucens where his passage is reflected by two rough-carved stone elephants, unmistakably African from the large size of their ears.’ Burning and pillaging as he went, and with the Numidians harrying the countryside in advance of his army, Hannibal created a panic such as the city had never known before. He finally encamped on the right bank of the river Anio, only three miles from Rome—the desert horsemen, the Carthaginian heavy infantry, the wild Gauls and Bruttians, all visible to watchers on the walls.

After an inconclusive cavalry skirmish, in which Flaccus seems to have come off best, the two armies confronted one another, with the city as the prize at stake. But, as Livy tells the story, ‘after the armies had been drawn up…a great downpour mingled with hail so confused the battle lines that, holding on to their arms with difficulty, they returned to camp.’ It happened that the land on which the Carthaginian was encamped was up for sale and, even while Hannibal’s army was occupying it, it is said that the deal went through—and with no reduction in price. Such tales may have been untrue—they flatter Romans of later generations by displaying the confidence of their ancestors—but the fact remained that at no time can the Roman defence have felt that the city was in any great danger. It was always the same story—without siege equipment Hannibal could not take Cumae or Neapolis, so it was impossible for him to capture what was then probably the most heavily-fortified and well-defended capital in the Mediterranean world. After a further delay, when violent weather again caused both armies to withdraw to their camps, Hannibal moved back to a position six miles away. He had seen Rome; it is just possible, as legend has it, that he had hurled a javelin at the Collina Gate to mock the impotence of its defenders. But he never entered the city of his enemies, and he was never to see it again. (An unlikely enthusiast for Hannibal was Sigmund Freud, who idolised the Carthaginian so deeply that for many years he was unable to enter Rome—because Hannibal had never set foot there.)

Hannibal’s attempt to relieve Capua by threatening Rome had failed. No Roman army had moved up from Capua to check his threat; the two consuls were in Rome and with them two, and possibly more, legions behind those strong fortifications. He made the most of his march, however, plundering all the countryside around, ransacking the ancient shrine of Feronia, where gold and silver offerings dating from immemorial times went to pay for the service of his mercenaries. (It has always to be remembered that Hannibal’s magnificent polyglot army had to be paid; it was no citizen body like that of Rome and had no allegiance except to one man.) Capua, it was clear, was lost, and Hannibal knew that well when he turned back from Rome. Inevitably he was followed on his march, and some of his ‘tail’ loaded with baggage and plunder was cut off. Failing at Rome, he maintained his usual indomitable spirit, turning back on the Romans and, in a night attack, mauling them so severely that they never harassed him again on his march. In many respects he resembled a great and noble animal out of Africa which was always strong enough to swing back and savage the predators at its heels.

Hannibal moved eastward towards the Adriatic and then made a feint at Tarentum, where the indomitable Roman garrison was still holding out, before moving rapidly south-east, right through Bruttium and arriving quite unexpectedly at Rhegium. It is probable that he had picked up some fresh troops who had wintered in Bruttium, yet his march remains one of the fastest and most memorable in the history of warfare. Nevertheless, even though he arrived so suddenly at the city that he captured a number of the inhabitants still working outside in the fields, treating them with kindness in the hope of making a favourable impression, Rhegium closed its gates, and remained faithful to Rome. Despite his astonishing series of marches, despite his trouncing of the Romans in the night action and the rapidity of his movements, which had them always confused as to his intentions, the spring campaign of 211 had achieved nothing. Capua was doomed to fall, and with it Hannibal’s dream of an Italian federation independent of Rome. Politically he had failed, and the Carthaginian hopes of isolating Rome and then destroying her almost at leisure were shattered.

Once the Capuans heard that Hannibal had withdrawn from Rome and moved south they recognised their fate. A decree of the Roman senate that the lives of any Capuans who surrendered to Rome would be spared was disbelieved, those who had been active in the conspiracy realising that nothing but death awaited them. Surrounded by the legions, on the verge of starvation, there was nothing for them to do but open the gates. Twenty-eight of the senators who had voted against the resolution committed suicide by poison and the sword. They were right in their estimation of the Roman desire for vengeance, and seventy who had been compromised in the decision to receive Hannibal were executed, along with many other leading citizens. The secession from Rome was viewed as what indeed it was, collusion with the enemy. Although Capua was not sacked, all its public buildings and lands were pronounced the property of the Roman people. Capua as an independent entity ceased to exist, and the Roman masters of Campania would from now on see that those rich and fertile lands were worked for the benefit of its Roman masters. All Italy, save for the deep south and Bruttium, trembled; and the cities and farming towns that had received the Carthaginian forces, in some of which Hannibal had placed small garrisons, became pro-Roman once more and rededicated to hostility against the invader. At a blow Hannibal was deprived of his connecting links with Samnium and Apulia and more or less confined to Bruttium and the southern coastline. Even here, with his failure before Rhegium and his inability to reduce the garrison at Tarentum, he was left with little scope for manoeuvre. Without an adequate port and with the Romans controlling the sea, he had little hope of ever receiving reinforcements.

The fall of Capua and the capture of Syracuse seemed to signal a disastrous year for Carthaginian fortunes. The only good news that can have reached Hannibal in the area that was to become his ultimate fortress in Italy was the triumph of his brother Hasdrubal in Spain—a triumph so great that it almost eclipsed these other losses. The two Scipios had advanced into the heart of Spain, far south of the Ebro, at first achieving considerable success. Publius Cornelius Scipio in particular was adept at winning the allegiance of many Spaniards and incorporating them into an alliance with Rome. But the return of Hasdrubal, after dealing with the Moroccan revolt, and his linking up with Hasdrubal Gisgo and Mago was fatal for the Scipio brothers’ fortunes. Hasdrubal’s influence over the Celtiberians soon proved its worth and the Scipios found themselves with overextended lines of communications, and more or less abandoned by their new Spanish allies. Apparently unable to join forces, the two Roman generals were engaged in separate actions. Their armies were cut to pieces and both the Scipios were killed. The disaster to Roman arms and the death of these two distinguished generals did much to reverse the balance in the overall pattern of the great Hannibalic war against Rome. Meanwhile Hannibal himself, although unsupported, remained undefeated in the Italian homeland. A constant threat to Rome and a constant concern to her generals, he was to remain there for a further seven years.