Hannibal (9 page)

Determined to allow the army plenty of time to reorganise and, with restored morale, to continue the march, Hannibal and the troops with him pressed on until they reached ‘the town from which the enemy had issued to make their onslaught’. He found it abandoned and, as well as recovering a number of men, pack animals and horses that had been captured, he found enough cattle and wheat to feed the army for two or three days. He gave them all twenty-four hours in which to recover and take their ease (morale must have been shaken by this first attack at the beginning of their approach to the haunted Alps). Ahead lay the first major pass through the mountain chain, probably the Col de Grimone which leads into the upper valley of the river Durance (
Druentia
, in Livy). After leaving this Gallic settlement the army had the pleasure of marching for three days through clear, open country with no enemy in sight and no geographical hazards. They needed their respite, for they were not finished with the Gauls and there was an infinity of mountains ahead.

Hannibal was now about half way on his march, on that crossing of the Alps which no one had ever thought before could be made by a large army by nomad Gauls, yes, but not by a sophisticated army with all its weaponry, the need for provisions, and with thousands of horses, let alone ponderous elephants. Hannibal was coming down from the north-west, from the Col de Grimone, and was in the area occupied by the Tricorii tribe, whose headquarters was the town of Gap. He now had to cross the Durance in the river’s middle reaches. Livy, who incorrectly has Hannibal crossing the Durance near its mouth—rather than high up, somewhere before it is joined by the Guil tributary—nevertheless gives a description that must reflect something of the conditions that the army now encountered: ‘…by far the most difficult of all the rivers of Gaul to cross; for, though it brings down a vast volume of water, it does not admit of navigation, since, not being confined within any banks, but flowing at once in several channels, not always the same, it is ever forming new shallows and new pools—a fact that makes it dangerous for foot-passengers as well—besides which it rolls down jagged stones and affords no sure or stable footing to one who enters it….’ The sight and sound of that army, with elephants, horses, and thousands of foot soldiers, all at the command of the one indomitable Carthaginian, crossing the Durance in spate (as Livy tells us), against the crisp background of the mountains, provides one of the most durable images of antiquity.

If the soldiers now felt that they had put behind them the hostile Gauls and were entering an area where few men dwelt, and where they might pass in peace, they were to be disillusioned. On the fourth day of their march since leaving the township of the Allobroges, they were met by a group of natives who came towards them holding out olive branches as a sign of friendship, (It is worth noting that the olive, that symbol of fertility and peace, is to be found in the upper valley of the Durance.) Hannibal had no reason to believe in them, even though they brought him gifts of cattle and provided hostages as a pledge of their good faith, yet he was wise enough not to antagonise them by showing his distrust. They told him that they knew of his capture of the township and the rout of his attackers, and that they came to him as friends willing to help him through the mountains. Since they were prepared to provide guides, Hannibal, although always keeping a wary eye on these unlikely friends, thought the risk worth taking. It is clear that the Gauls who were already with him were as ignorant of the mountains and passes that lay ahead as were the Carthaginians themselves. If he kept a close watch on these supposedly ‘friendly’ natives it was possible that they would see him through—even at the risk of some attempted treachery.

In order not to leave a dangerously indefensible train of pack animals and baggage in the rear, Hannibal carefully positioned them immediately behind the main body of the cavalry, in the van; next came the bulk of the army; and then the cream of the heavy infantry as rearguard. If he had not made these wise dispositions it is almost certain that he would have lost the whole of his army. After two days’ further march, the Gauls, who had been quietly gathering in the mountains around, prepared to strike. The army was passing through a narrow gorge, the track they were following running alongside a fast-running small river (possibly the Guil) which fed into the Durance that they had left behind them. It was October and in that late season of the year the Carthaginians can have had little sense of basic direction—let alone of the specific lie of the land. Hannibal knew that Italy lay somewhere to the south-east, but even such elementary co-ordinates as the rising and the setting of the sun were masked by mountains. The guides, as he had all along suspected, proved treacherous.

Riding at the head along with the cavalry, Hannibal heard the great thunder in the rear, the cries of men and of wounded animals, and the wild shouts that echoed back and forth off the barren crags. ‘The rear-guard bore the brunt of the attack,’ wrote Livy, ‘and as the infantry faced about to meet it, it was very evident that if the column had not been strengthened at that point, it must have suffered a great disaster in this pass….’ Great boulders came roaring down the cliff-sides, tearing their way through the lines of men and beasts while, hot on their heels, following the tumbling path of these rocky battering-rams, the Gauls came charging down on the stricken troops. The river roared below and gaps appeared in the long column as men and animals were swept away by the thundering boulders.

The Gauls had been counting largely on the element of surprise, but this, fortunately for the Carthaginian army, was lacking—Hannibal’s foresight in his new disposition of his forces having put the hard core of his best infantry in the tail, where the enemy had expected to find the ‘soft’ baggage-train. Despite this, a great many men, pack-animals and horses were lost, and the enemy managed to throw ‘the Carthaginians into such extreme peril and confusion that Hannibal was compelled to pass the night with half his force at a certain place defended by a bare rock and separated from his horses and pack-train, whose advance he waited to cover, until after a whole night’s labour they managed to extricate themselves from the defile.’ On the morning of the eighth day of his passage through the Alps, the army was reunited and, despite their losses, advanced with good heart towards the highest passes. (It is possible that the ‘bare’ or ‘white’ rock where Hannibal and his half of the army encamped for that night was the vast isolated rock from which the Chateau Queyras now keeps watch over the Queyras valley.) Throughout this day, although there was no coordinated attack made by the enemy, the labouring columns were subjected to sporadic raids, and the steady toll of men and animals continued relentlessly. The army with which he crossed the Rhône, its hardened veterans full of confidence, its horses, elephants and pack-animals strong and well fed, was gradually being whittled away with every day that passed. Disease and accident, as well as enemy action, must by now have considerably thinned its ranks.

The following day, advancing steadily through the pass, above the tree line as they were, the army moved almost unmolested: the mountain-men disappearing since it was now clear that these strangers were no threat to their territory. Hannibal also discovered that they were terrified of the elephants, and never dared to approach that part of the column in which these animals were. So at long last, ‘after an ascent of nine days, Hannibal reached the summit….’ On his right loomed the giant bulk of Monte Viso and ahead, as in the vee-sight of a rifle, the sky was visible, unencumbered by further mountains—a promise of hope after days of seeming despair. The horsemen at the head of the column reached the place where the great barrier of mountains, lying like a protective wall to the north of Italy, suddenly burst open. Far below was revealed the dark green of Italy—their land of promise. For this many had died, and only the impossibility of return and the fierce inspiration of their leader had kept this multi-racial, polyglot army moving through the hazardous immensity of the Alps. Surely a cheer started from the ice-dry throats of the leaders, to be taken up uncomprehendingly by rank after toiling rank until it died far away among those for whom the cause was unknown and unrelated to their present sufferings.
 

IX

LIKE A THUNDERBOLT

Hannibal waited for two days at the point where the track climbed no higher. Those barren heights provided no welcome resting-place, but it was essential for the army to remain there while stragglers, both men and beasts, moved up to join them, as Livy describes:

The soldiers, worn with toil and fighting, were permitted to rest; a number of baggage animals, which had fallen among the rocks, made their way to the camp by following the tracks of the army. Exhausted and discouraged as the soldiers were by many hardships, a snowstorm—for the constellation of the Pleiades was now setting—threw them into a great fear. The ground was everywhere covered deep with snow when at dawn [on the 12th day since the ascent of the Alps] they began to march, and as the column moved slowly on, dejection and despair were to be £ read on every countenance. Then Hannibal, who had gone on before the standards, made the army halt on a certain promontory which commanded an extensive prospect, and pointing out Italy to them, and just under the Alps the plains about the Po, he told them that they were now scaling the ramparts not only of Italy, but of Rome itself; the rest of the way would be level or downhill; and after one, or at the most two battles, they would have in their hands and in their power the citadel and capital of Italy.

Polybius puts the address to the assembled army on the day
before
they began their descent, but he too mentions that the season was ‘close on the setting of the Pleiades’. This double reference provides an all-important clue to the time that Hannibal breasted the Alps before descending upon Italy. The setting of the Pleiades refers to the time when the constellation is visible declining out of sight in the west at the same moment that the sun is rising in the east. It was a very important date in ancient times, for it was the signal to begin the ploughing and sowing for the next year’s harvest. Some northern commentators have been led sadly astray by forgetting that in Mediterranean latitudes such activity in late autumn is still the case—as distinct, say, from England or Germany where winter has the land in its grip.

Hannibal seems to have set out from Cartagena about mid-June in 218 B.C. and to have been five months between Cartagena and the plains of the Po. It was, therefore, mid-October at the earliest when he halted at the watershed above Italy and gazed southward. Undoubtedly he had not intended to cross the Alps so late, having hoped, perhaps, to make a start in May. He had been delayed, as has been suggested, by the late arrival of many of his troops from their winter quarters, and delayed again, as we know, by unexpected heavy fighting throughout northern Spain. It would seem, in fact, that his arrival at this point was even later than October, for the setting of the Pleiades would have been visible in the latitude in which he stood during the first fortnight in November in the year 218 B.C.

Contrary to the optimism expressed in Hannibal’s speech, the descent from the watershed was even worse than had been the long climb towards it. The enemy was no longer the mountain Gaul but the wintry conditions—the snow falling on earlier snows of that year, beneath which at those heights lay the hard, impacted snow of the year before. ‘The descending path was very narrow and steep, and as both men and beasts could not tell on what they were treading owing to the snow, all that stepped wide of the path or stumbled were dashed down the precipice.’ Livy takes up from Polybius with the account of their perilous descent, both historians depicting similar scenes and events which they may well have drawn from a common source ‘They then came to a much narrower cliff, and with rocks so perpendicular that it was difficult for an unencumbered soldier to manage the descent, though he felt his way and clung with his hands to the bushes and roots that projected here and there. The place had been precipitous before, and a recent landslip had carried it away to the depth of a good thousand feet.’

The cavalry came to a halt—it seemed that they had at last reached the end of the road and the final inextricable position—and word was sent back to Hannibal that the route was impassable. It was not only this landslip that had checked the army but also the nature of the snowdrifts. The fresh snow concealing the old hardened layers meant that when the animals broke through the surface, their feet went on down to the lower layer while the soft snow above closed around them, holding them in an icy grasp. The men were little better
off,
for when they tried to raise themselves on hands and knees they could get no purchase on the old, deeply-frozen snow, and slipped further downwards on the steep slopes. Hannibal realised that there was no way of making any detour but that the narrow mountain pass must be built up and the whole track levelled off. It says a great deal for the expertise of his engineers and for the sheer courage of his men (he appears to have used Numidians for this road-building task) that a passage sufficient to allow the horses and baggage animals to proceed had been constructed within three days.

Livy adds another famous detail to the story of the army’s descent into Italy—the cracking of the rock-fall that barred their path by the application of liquid and heat. It was fortunate that the fall had taken place at a point below the tree-line, for if it had taken place where there was no wood available their situation might indeed have been hopeless: ‘Since they had to cut through the rock, they felled some huge trees that grew near at hand, and lopping off their branches, made an enormous pile of logs. This they set on fire, as soon as the wind blew fresh enough to make it burn, and pouring vinegar over the glowing rocks, caused them to crumble.’ The rock-fall was clearly more than half way down the pass, where ‘the slopes are grassy and wooded’. The reference to vinegar has produced much ridicule over the ages, but accords with an ancient belief that vinegar helped to make stones friable (Hannibal’s ‘vinegar’ would undoubtedly have been sour wine, but he would hardly have had enough left at this stage of the journey to make much impact). The fact is that, on certain kinds of stone, a douche of water would have been quite sufficient, when they were red hot, to help split them and make them disintegrate under the pickaxes of the pioneers.