Reflections on the Rise and Fall of the Ancient Republicks / Adapted to the Present State of Great Britain

by Edward Wortley Montagu

I have here pointed out one capital error of the Carthaginians as a maritime power, I mean their engaging in too frequent, and too extensive wars on the continent of Europe, and their neglect of their marine. I shall now mention another, which more than once brought them to the very brink of destruction. This was ... their constantly employing such a vast number of foreign mercenary troops, and not trusting the defence of their country, nay not even Carthage itself wholly, to their own native subjects.

The Carthaginians were so entirely devoted to commerce, that they seem to have looked upon every native employed in their armies as a member lost to the community; and their wealth enabled them to buy whatever number of soldiers they pleased from their neighbouring states in Greece and Africa, who traded (as I may term it) in war as much as the Swiss and Germans do now, and were equally ready to sell the blood and lives of their subjects to the best bidder. From hence they drew such inexhaustible supplies of men, both to form and recruit their armies, whilst their own natives were at leisure to follow the more lucrative occupations of navigation, husbandry, and mechanick trades. For the number of native Carthaginians, which we read of, in any of their armies, was so extremely small as to bear no proportion to that of their foreign mercenaries. This kind of policy, which prevails so generally in all mercantile states, does, I confess, at first sight appear extremely plausible. The Carthaginians, by this method, spared their own people, and purchased all their conquests by the venal blood of foreigners: and, in case of a defeat, they could with great ease and expedition recruit their broken armies with any number of good troops, ready trained up to their hands in military discipline. But alas, these advantages were greatly over-balanced by very fatal inconveniences. The foreign troops were attached to the Carthaginians by no tie, but that of their pay. Upon the least failure of that, or if they were not humoured in all their licentious demands, they were just as ready to turn their arms against the throats of their masters. Strangers to that heartfelt affection, that enthusiastick love of their country which warms the hearts of free citizens, and fires them with the glorious emulation of fighting to the last drop of blood in defence of their common mother; these sordid hirelings were always ripe for mutiny and sedition, and ever ready to revolt and change sides upon the least prospect of greater advantages.

But a short detail of the calamities, which they drew upon themselves by this mistaken policy, will better show the dangers which attend the admission of foreign mercenaries into any country, where the natives are unaccustomed to the use of arms. A practice which is too apt to prevail in commercial nations.

At the conclusion of the first Punick war the Carthaginians were compelled, by their treaty with the Romans, to evacuate Sicily. Gesco therefore, who then commanded in that island, to prevent the disorders which might be committed by such a multitude of desperate fellows, composed of so many different nations, and so long inured to blood and rapine, sent them over gradually in small bodies, that his countrymen might have time to pay off their arrears, and send them home to their respective countries. But either the lowness of their finances, or the ill timed parsimony of the Carthaginians totally defeated this salutary measure,[206] though the wisest that, as their affairs were at that time circumstanced, could possibly have been taken. The Carthaginians deferred their payment until the arrival of the whole body, in hopes of obtaining some abatement in their demands by fairly laying before them the necessities of the publick. But the mercenaries were deaf to every representation and proposal of that nature. They felt their own strength, and saw too plainly the weakness of their masters. As fast as one demand was agreed to, a more unreasonable one was started; and they threatened to do themselves justice by military execution if their exorbitant demands were not immediately complied with. At last, when they were just at the point of an accommodation with their masters, by the mediation and address of Gesco, two desperate ruffians, named Speudius and Mathos,[207] raised such a flame amongst this unruly multitude as broke out instantly into the most bloody, and destructive war ever yet recorded in history. The account we have of it from the Greek historians must strike the most callous breast with horror; and though it was at last happily terminated by the superior conduct of Hamilcar Barcas, the father of the great Hannibal, yet it continued near four years, and left the territories around Carthage a most shocking scene of blood and devastation. Such was, and ever will be the consequence, when a large body of mercenary troops is admitted into the heart of a rich and fertile country, where the bulk of the people are denied the use of arms by the mistaken policy of their governors. For this was actually the case with the Carthaginians, where the total disuse of arms amongst the lower class of people, laid that opulent country open, an easy and tempting prey to every invader. This was another capital error, and consequently another cause which contributed to their ruin.

How must any nation but our own, which with respect to the bulk of the people, lies in the same defenceless situation; how, I say, must they censure the mighty state of Carthage, spreading terror, and giving law to the most distant nations by her powerful fleets, when they see her at the same time trembling, and giving herself up for lost at the landing of any invader in her own territories?

The conduct of that petty prince Agathocles, affords us a striking instance of the defenceless state of the territories of Carthage. The Carthaginians were at that very time masters of all Sicily, except the single city of Syracuse, in which they had cooped up that tyrant both by land and sea. Agathocles, reduced to the last extremity, struck perhaps the boldest stroke ever yet met with in history.[208] He was perfectly well acquainted with the weak side of Carthage, and knew that he could meet with little opposition from a people who were strangers to the use of arms, and enervated by a life of ease and plenty. On this defect of their policy he founded his hopes; and the event proved that he was not mistaken in his judgment. He embarked with only thirteen thousand men on board the few ships he had remaining, eluded the vigilance of the Carthaginian fleet by stratagem, landed safely in Africa, plundered and ravaged that rich country up to the very gates of Carthage, which he closely blocked up, and reduced nearly to the situation in which he had left his own Syracuse. Nothing could equal the terror into which the city of Carthage was thrown at that time, but the panick which, in the late rebellion, struck the much larger, and more populous city of London, at the approach of a poor handful of Highlanders, as much inferior even to the small army of Agathocles in number, as they were in arms and discipline. The success of that able leader compelled the Carthaginians to recall part of their forces out of Sicily to the immediate defence of Carthage itself; and this occasioned the raising of the siege of Syracuse, and ended in the total defeat of their army, and death of their general in that country. Thus Agathocles, by this daring measure, saved his own petty state, and, after a variety of good and ill fortune, concluded a treaty with the Carthaginians, and died at Syracuse at a time when, from a thorough experience of their defenceless state at home, he was preparing for a fresh invasion.

Livy informs us, that this very measure of Agathocles set the precedent which Scipio followed with so much success in the second Punick war, when that able general, by a similar descent in Africa, compelled the Carthaginians to recall Hannibal out of Italy to their immediate assistance, and reduced them to that impotent state, from which they never afterwards were able to recover.[209] How successfully the French played the same game upon us, when they obliged us to recall our forces out of Flanders to crush the rebellion, which they had spirited up with that very view, is a fact too recent to need any mention of particulars. How lately did they drive us to the expense, and I may say the ignominy, of fetching over a large body of foreign mercenaries for the immediate defence of this nation, which plumes herself so much upon her power and bravery? How greatly did they cramp all our measures, how much did they confine all our military operations to our own immediate self-defence, and prevent us from sending sufficient succours to our colonies by the perpetual alarm of an invasion?

Though we may in part truly ascribe the ruin of Carthage to the two above-mentioned errors in their policy, yet the cause which was productive of the greatest evils, and consequently the more immediate object of our attention at this dangerous juncture, was party disunion; that bane of every free state, from which our own country has equal reason to apprehend the same direful effects, as the republicks of Greece, Rome, and Carthage experienced formerly.

By all the lights, which we receive from history, the state of Carthage was divided into two opposite factions; the Hannonian and the Barcan, so denominated from the respective leaders, who were heads of the two most powerful families in Carthage. The Hannonian family seems to have made the greatest figure in the senate; the Barcan in the field. Both were strongly actuated by ambition, but ambition of a different kind. The Barcan family seems to have had no other object in view but the glory of their country, and were always ready to give up their private animosities, and even their passion for military glory to the publick good. The Hannonian family acted from quite opposite principles, constantly aiming at one point; the supporting themselves in power, and that only. Ever jealous of the glory acquired by the Barcan family, they perpetually thwarted every measure proposed from that quarter, and were equally ready to sacrifice the honour and real interest of their country to that selfish view. In short, the one family seems to have produced a race of heroes, the other of ambitious statesmen.

The chiefs of these two jarring families, best known to us in history, were Hanno and Hamilcar Barcas, who was succeeded by his son Hannibal, that terror of the Romans. The opposition between these two parties was so flagrant, that Appian does not scruple to call the party of Hanno, the Roman faction;[210] and that of Barcas, the popular, or the Carthaginian, from the different interests which each party espoused.