Hannibal's daughter

by Andrew Haggard

The men were now in a deplorable condition, and their spirits at the lowest possible ebb. Therefore, assembling as many of them as possible around him, and pointing to the panorama of the fair plains of Italy below, Hannibal addressed them as follows:

“My gallant troops, difficulty, danger, and death now lie behind us, but before us lie Italy and Rome. Gaze, therefore, before and below ye as conquerors, for all that fair country shall be ours. The tribes below are our friends, and will welcome us heartily. Therefore keep ye up your courage, for soon the spoils of Rome shall reward ye for all your hardships.”

The courage of the troops was roused by these words; but alas! if the ascent had been difficult, harder by far was the descent of the mountain slopes. For owing to new snow having fallen upon the old, there was no foothold. Thus men and horses in numbers slipped and fell headlong down the slopes and precipices, rolling over and over, and bounding from rock to rock, to finally land, battered into pulp, thousands of feet below. And then they came to a place where, for a great distance, two land slides and avalanches had carried away the whole mountain-side, and the road with it. Never daunted, however, Hannibal, Monomachus, and Hasdrubal, his pioneer captain, built in two days, with the Numidian troops, an entirely new road over the mountain-side, over which first the infantry, then the cavalry and baggage animals, and lastly, even the elephants themselves were passed in safety. But all the survivors, both men and animals alike, were nearly dead from starvation, when at length, after fifteen days in the terrible mountains, the snow was left behind, and the land of the Taurini, bordering that of the friendly Insubrian Gauls, was entered on the plains.

But, whereas Hannibal had started to cross the Alps with nearly double that number, when the muster was taken round the camp fires on the first night after the awful journey over the mountains, only twelve thousand Libyans, eight thousand Iberians, and six thousand cavalry of all kinds, were present to answer the roll-call.

And with this small force of starving and disheartened troops Hannibal now prepared to meet all the might of Rome.

So wretched, indeed, were the troops, that not even the fact of their having at length reached the Italian side of the mountains in Cis-Alpine Gaul could at first put any heart into them. It was now the commencement of the month of November, the oak trees were shedding their leaves, and the grass and herbage losing rapidly the succulent qualities necessary to sustain the animals. All traces of cultivation had long since been removed from the fields, while the wind sighed and moaned sadly through those vast forests of pine, the home of the wolf and the wild boar, the shelter of whose gloomy recesses the half-starved army was glad enough to seek.

Biting showers of rain and sleet added to the discomfort of the troops, and at first the Insubrian Gauls showed but little alacrity in bringing in the much-needed provisions. Altogether, now that this remnant of the Carthaginian army had at length reached, after five and a half months’ marching, this land of promise, it fell far below their expectations. The whole outlook was indeed so gloomy that there was not an officer nor man in the whole army who did not heartily wish himself back again in his own home in the sunny lands and olive groves of Spain or Libya.

To make things even yet worse, one or two Gallic towns in the neighbourhood, among them notably the city of the Taurini, which might have accorded shelter to the half-famished troops, being fearful of Roman retribution, flatly refused to open their gates to the wayworn wanderers. This was scarcely to be wondered at, seeing that the Consul Flaminius had but a short time before defeated the Boii, the Insubres, and other Gallic tribes repeatedly, and treated the survivors with the greatest severity, taking many hostages, who were now entirely at the mercy of the Romans; and founding two Roman colonies, named respectively Placentia and Cremona, one on either bank of the river Padus or Po, right in the midst of Cis-Alpine Gaul.

As Hannibal, accompanied by Silenus and by all his principal officers, marched round and made a thorough inspection of the camp a day or two after arriving in the Italian plains, it must be owned that even he himself felt utterly discouraged. For wherever he looked, whether at man or beast, he saw nothing but misery and starvation. The thirty-seven elephants with which he had started were already considerably diminished in number, many having fallen down the Alpine precipices, and the remainder were now but gaunt mountains of skin and bone. The horses tethered in rows showed distinctly every rib in their carcases, and hung down their heads with fatigue while patient misery was expressed in their lack-lustre eyes. Among the men, not the slightest element of discipline had been relaxed; but, as they stood in their ranks before their tents for the inspection of their Commander-in-chief, looking like phantoms of their former selves, utter dejection could clearly be read in every countenance. Except for the want of a little food they were in hard enough condition, but there was not sufficient food to be obtained by fair means, and the men did not look either strong enough or in good enough spirits to obtain it by force of arms. That, however, was what Hannibal intended that they should do, and he took, therefore, very good care neither to show by his face the disappointment which he felt at their miserable plight, nor the fact that he had received alarming news, which, had it been known publicly, would have made the men more disheartened still.

Instead of doing anything likely to keep the troops in a despondent state, he spoke, as he went along the ranks, words of commendation and encouragement to all. He praised their valour, told them that their names would live in history, informed them that he had received ambassadors with promises of assistance from the Boii, and generally tried to cheer their waning hopes. After this, he held before the army some gladiatorial contests among the young Gallic captives, whose condition was so miserable from the ill-treatment and blows they had received in crossing the Alps, that the army would have pitied the survivors even more than the slain had not their Commander rewarded the conquerors liberally with horses, cloaks, and suits of armour.