023a - The War With Hannibal

Hello, and welcome to the History of Rome, episode 23a, The War with Hannibal. Rome had laid its ultimatum at the feet of the Carthaginian Senate after Hannibal had laid siege to Saguntum in Spain. If the Carthaginians did not immediately recall Hannibal from the field and cease their aggressive operations, Rome would declare war. The Carthaginians declined to do as the Romans asked, and both sides immediately began to prepare for battle. The Roman consuls for the year, Cornelius Scipio, father of the famous Scipio Africanus, and Sempronius Longus, began to raise legions with the intention of simultaneously attacking both Spain and North Africa. But in Spain, Hannibal was making preparations of his own that would throw the Roman war plan into complete disarray. He formulated a bold strategy to break the Romans by way of a direct invasion of Italy. The Romans were worried about Gallic opportunism on their northern border, but did not anticipate a full-fledged Carthaginian invasion at all. Hannibal amassed a force of 90,000 infantry, 12,000 cavalry, and 67 war elephants at New Carthage and in April of 218 BC set out on a campaign that would ultimately last 17 years.

His first task was to simply make it out of Spain. The Carthaginians only controlled about half the country, and the march to the Pyrenees was a difficult one. Hannibal had no time for prolonged sieges and was forced to directly assault the cities he passed, suffering heavy casualties as a result. Before passing into modern-day France, Hannibal released the less reliable elements of his Spanish infantry and passed into Gaul with a force of about 50,000.

In Rome, Hannibal's movements passed without notice. Sempronius Longus was in Sicily preparing a fleet for the invasion of Africa, and Scipio was in north Italy raising a fleet of his own for the attack on Spain, neither suspecting that in a matter of months they would both be fighting for their lives in the icy sleet of the Po Valley. Scipio set out for Rome with two legions, and after five days at sea put into port at Massilia on the eastern banks of the Rhone River. As soon as he put in, though, he received word that not only had Hannibal broken out of Spain, but he had already reached the Rhone himself and was just a few miles up the road. Scipio was shocked by this development and immediately sent a cavalry unit out to investigate. Sure enough, they found Hannibal on the west bank of the river.

A light skirmish of no consequence ensued that served only to alert Hannibal to the fact that the Romans were now officially on to him. He moved with all haste to cross the thousand-yard wide river, and was not helped by the army of angry Gauls on the opposite shore, who were not inclined to allow this foreign army into their territory. But Hannibal, flashing the first signs of his tactical brilliance, lured the Gauls into a trap and broke them apart with little difficulty. The way clear, he quickly crossed the remainder of his army and marched on towards the Alps, which were the only thing standing between him and Italy.

When Scipio arrived with his legions, the fires of the Carthaginian camp were still smoldering, but the army was gone. The consul decided against a pursuit, which would have taken his two legions into an unknown and unfriendly territory to catch a much larger Carthaginian army. The odds were against Scipio, so he made the decision to send the legions on to their initial objective in Spain, while he himself returned to Italy to brace the northern border for Hannibal's invasion. The Roman plan to fight the war in Spain and Africa would move forward, but Scipio knew that the war was about to reach an early, decisive moment, and wanted to be on hand to ensure a favorable outcome.

Hannibal's passage through the Alps is one of the most famous events in world history, and with good reason. Not only did the 15-day crossing come as the snow was beginning to set in, making traversing the peaks difficult and nearly impossible, but Hannibal's army was forced to constantly fend off bands of hostile natives. The passage would have been hard enough in a small, self-contained party, but Hannibal had to oversee 50,000 men and a supply train of pack animals, and did I mention that he had 67 elephants in tow? The logistical nightmares alone were enough to dissuade even the most daring of generals from even contemplating the attempt, and that's why the Romans were in disbelief when reports began to arrive that a Carthaginian army would shortly be emerging from the mountains.

Hannibal fought one major pitched battle against the Gauls near the summit, and on the descent was forced to literally carve a path out of the rocks to accommodate the pack animals and elephants. His men spent nights simply huddled around each other on the ground, trying not to drop dead from exhaustion or freeze to death. Supplies were low and hunger was high, but through it all, the personal magnetism of Hannibal kept his army together. For the most part, anyway, the army that emerged on the far side had been considerably reduced in numbers. Entering with 50,000, they came out the other side with a mere 25,000 remaining. A considerable chunk of those lost were casualties of the environment, and is a testament to how difficult the journey really was, but the majority were almost certainly deserters. Certainly the force of Hannibal's personality was only so strong.

Hannibal was able to briefly rest his troops, but the two Roman legions ostensibly in place to ward off the Gauls were on their way with Scipio at their head. It would not be long before the war would begin in earnest. The Romans had pressed for the war and were chomping at the bit to take on the Carthaginians, but at least initially, the Second Punic War turned out to be a series of shocking defeats for Rome. The first battle was fought on the banks of the Ticinus, the largest tributary of the Po River. Scipio, eager to engage the invading Carthaginians, built a bridge across the river and crossed over to meet Hannibal. In the battle that ensued, the Romans matched up just fine with their infantry, but their cavalry was woefully inadequate in the face of their far superior Numidian counterparts. The Romans were outflanked and driven back to the bridge they had built. In the withdrawal, Scipio himself was wounded and was saved either by a slave girl or, as Livy recounts, his 18-year-old son Scipio Africanus. Whether the younger Scipio saved his father or not is debatable, but there is no doubt that he was at the battle that opened the war he would ultimately win 16 years later.

The Romans crossed back over the bridge and burned it to prevent the Carthaginians from pursuing. Scipio's goal had been to stop the invasion right then and there, but all he accomplished was demonstrating to the local Gauls that Hannibal was for real and caused them to begin actively supporting the Carthaginian general. Scipio returned to his base on the far side of the north-south running Trebia River and sent out the call for reinforcements. Hannibal did not immediately press his advantage, but instead used the breathing space he had for himself to re-provision, rest his exhausted troops, and accept Gallic reinforcements into his ranks. Sempronius Longus was called from his yet-to-be-launched invasion and ordered to take his army north to join with Scipio and engage Hannibal. It would be another decade plus before the Romans revisited the idea of invading Africa.

The next month, Longus arrived with his army and combined it with the existing troops. Scipio cautioned rutching out into battle, having seen first-hand what a devastating force Hannibal was in the field, but Longus, impatient and no doubt suspecting that his colleagues' injuries were behind his wariness for further battle, ordered the legions out to find and destroy the Carthaginians. It was now December and the weather had turned from bad to worse. Wind, sleet, snow, and rain combined in a mixture of all the worst possible conditions you can imagine. The kind of weather that makes you not even want to check your mail, let alone fight a war. But Sempronius Longus was determined to end the invasion before the next consular elections. And just as in the case with Regulus in the First Punic War, the pressing need for battle was driven more by personal vanity than careful calculation.

Hannibal played the Romans like a fiddle and he manipulated Longus into a battle in which the legions were in the worst possible position to win. Catching wind of the change in leadership and the impatience of the newly arrived consul, Hannibal baited the Romans into a trap. Early in the morning of a particularly horrible day, Hannibal sent out a large contingent of his cavalry to attack the Roman camp. As soon as they appeared, Longus ordered the full force of his infantry out in pursuit. This hasty decision left the Romans without something Hannibal had hoped to deny them, a good warm breakfast. The Romans essentially rolled out of bed and charged off to fight. Compounding their hunger, Longus ordered them to immediately cross the Trebia, which in December is a swollen and freezing river. When they reached the other side, they found Hannibal waiting for them at the head of a well-fed, dry army. And as if this wasn't bad enough, Hannibal had hidden a thousand cavalry behind an outcrop of rocks and brush.

The Carthaginians drew the soaking and exhausted Romans away from the river, and as soon as there was enough space, Hannibal ordered the hidden troops onto the Roman rear. The battle was an unmitigated disaster for Rome. The only thing that allowed them to even salvage their dignity was the unquestioned superiority of the legions as a fighting force. About 10,000 managed to break through the Carthaginian line and make for Placentia, but the rest of the army was destroyed, either caught between the two Carthaginian lines or killed trying to recross the Trebia. Sempronius Longus escaped with his life but left his reputation lying dead on the battlefield.

Rome was now in a complete panic. According to the frantic rumors, the Carthaginians would come pouring into the city in a matter of days and nothing could stop them. But luckily the winter, despite Hannibal's cunning use of the weather to his advantage, was no time to launch a siege of Rome. And besides, launching a siege of Rome was not what Hannibal had in mind anyway. The Carthaginian army settled in for the winter and the war was put on hold until the following spring.

When spring arrived, the Romans raised fresh legions and sent them out to man the frontier and prevent Hannibal from making it any further south. The dominant consul for the year was Gaius Flaminius, a popular Plebeian leader whose only major flaw was a maverick streak that did not endear him to the leading aristocrats or, by some accounts, to the gods of Rome. When Flaminius was elected in 217, he did not return to Rome to oversee the religious ceremonies that accompanied the transfer of power, which speaks either to his noble disdain for the trappings of power or a foolish irreverence that would lose him the favor of the gods. Whether it was luck, stupidity, or the active intervention of displeased gods, Flaminius was about to lead the legions to their greatest defeat, a defeat that shook the Romans to their very core and would leave them almost insane with fear. Luckily for Flaminius' legacy, though, the Battle of Lake Trasimene would only stand as the worst defeat in Roman history for a year, and Flaminius' failure would be overshadowed by Varro's far greater display of incompetence at Cannae.

Sticking to his strategy of picking the most difficult routes of approach in order to surprise his enemy, Hannibal began 217 BC by marching through a swamp. The Romans had the roads covered, so Hannibal simply abandoned them. The four-day march through the flooded slog was an understandably miserable experience, and in many ways was more difficult than the passage through the Alps. There was literally no dry ground anywhere, and sleeping was a matter of sitting in muddy water and trying not to drown. Hannibal brought up the rear riding an elephant and making sure that the army understood the only way to move was forward. The general shared the pain of his men, though, his eyes having succumbed to an infection that would eventually lead to the removal of one of them. But because of the horrid swamp march, Hannibal accomplished his goal and successfully outmaneuvered the Romans. He was now deep in Etruria and no army stood between the Carthaginians and Rome.

Flaminius had no doubt that Hannibal's goal was to march uncontested on Rome, and immediately sent out at double time to catch the Carthaginians. But Hannibal, as I said, had no intention of attacking Rome. But he did have every intention of luring Flaminius into a trap, and he chose Lake Trasimene as the perfect site. Lake Trasimene is about 150 miles north of Rome, and its northern bank butts up against steep hills. Hannibal placed his infantry on the thin strip of land between the banks and the hills and waited for Flaminius to come charging in the narrow entrance to the north bank. In the hills above and around the lake, Hannibal hid his cavalry and a good portion of his ground troops.

When Flaminius arrived, he passed through the narrow entrance without a second thought, intent only on engaging Hannibal in battle. But as soon as his forces were through, the Carthaginian cavalry appeared and sealed up the entrance, trapping the legions. Flaminius was caught completely by surprise, and was just wrapping his head around the fact that he was now fighting on two fronts when the rest of the hidden Carthaginian army came pouring down the slopes from above. The Romans didn't stand a chance. Of the 40,000 who entered, it is estimated that 30,000 were killed or captured, including the ill-fated Gaius Flaminius. Many drowned in a vain attempt to swim away from the slaughter.

Hannibal stood over the dead, and must have wondered to himself how the Romans could ever have conquered anything. Sure they were strong, but from what Hannibal had seen over the last year, they were about as savvy as a rock. The way to beat the Romans, clearly, was not to out-fight them, but to out-think them. Hannibal now held Italy in the palm of his hand, but his coup d'etat was yet to come.

Next week, we will begin with the worst disaster in Roman military history, the Battle of Cannae. The Romans, shocked by the succession of defeats at the hand of this emerging national nightmare called Hannibal, will be left nearly catatonic when they get word of what happened to the legions at Cannae.