Hannibal soon became too weak to afford the attrition of great battles. He had sought to impose on the allies by brilliant deeds. He had failed, and must put into practice whatever system would best carry out his purpose. From this time on he avoided fighting unless it was forced upon him, but resorted to manœuvring to accomplish his ends. He seized important towns, he marched on the Roman communications, he harassed the enemy with small war. He did the most unexpected and surprising things. He appeared at one end of southern Italy before the enemy had any idea that he had left the other. He was teaching the Romans the trade of war. They were not slow to see wherein Hannibal’s superiority lay, and profited by it. He educated their best generals, and these now came to the front.
The Romans raised annually from one hundred and fifty thousand to two hundred and forty thousand men, of which one-half to two-thirds were in Hannibal’s own front, and they were of the bone and sinew of Rome. He himself never had more than thirty-five thousand to forty thousand effective, and these far from as good. The Carthaginian Senate, under lead of the Hanno faction, forsook him, nor sent him men nor money, except one small reënforcement. He was cast on his own resources in the enemy’s country. While the Roman legions grew in numbers and experience, his own veterans gradually disappeared and left but a ragged force behind. And yet, during most of this time, he marched over the length and breadth of Italy, ravaging and destroying, and not one nor all the Roman armies could prevent him from acting out his pleasure.
Among all the brilliant lessons in strategy which Hannibal gave the Romans, there is time but to mention one more. Capua, one of the large cities of Italy, had embraced Hannibal’s cause as the coming man. But Hannibal had—in B.C. 211—been crowded back into southern Italy, and the Romans were besieging Capua. He was called upon for aid. The Capuans were in sorry plight. Hannibal, who was blockading the citadel at Tarentum, left this pressing affair to answer their appeal, made a secret forced march, eluding the four consular legions in Apulia and at Beneventum, and suddenly appeared before the astonished Roman army at Capua,—intent on raising the siege. The Capuans and Carthaginians attacked the Roman lines at the same time, but both recoiled from superior numbers and entrenched position. Hannibal, seeing that he could not raise the siege by direct means, tried, for the first time in the history of strategy, an indirect means, hoping to effect by moral weight what he could not by weight of men. He marched straight on Rome. He counted on the proconsuls, from fear for their capital, to raise the siege of Capua and follow him. He knew he could not capture Rome, where were forces much larger than his own. But he ravaged the land to its very gates and filled the city with affright. Hannibal had, however, taught his pupils much too well. Rome was terribly demoralized, and called lustily for the proconsuls’ armies to come from Capua to its aid. But these generals were not to be misled; they by no means relaxed their grip, and Hannibal lost the game. At an earlier stage of the war this brilliant movement would certainly have raised the siege of Capua.
Capua B.C. 211
Finally, Hannibal became so reduced in numbers that he was compelled to remain in the extreme south of Italy. He could not move out of Brutium. His forces were quite unequal to fighting, or even campaigning. He was hoping against hope for some kind of recognition from home, some aid in men and material. He could undertake nothing, but clung to what he held with a despairing grasp. Weak as he was, however, no Roman consul chose to come within reach of his arm. His patience and constancy under these trials, and the dread his name still inspired, show him up in far greater measure than any of his triumphs. Even Livy, who is full of depreciation of Hannibal’s abilities, says, “The Romans did not provoke him while he remained quiet, such power did they consider that single general possessed, though everything else around him was falling into ruin,” and is compelled to follow up this statement with a panegyric.
For a dozen years Hannibal had held more or less territory in the midst of the Roman Empire, far from home and his natural base. His old army had quite disappeared, and a motley array of the most heterogeneous materials had taken its place. He had for three or four years past had nothing which he could oppose to the Roman legions without danger of—without actual defeat. His troops had often neither pay nor clothing; rations were scant; their arms were far from good; they must have foreseen eventual disaster, as did Hannibal. And yet the tie between leader and men never ceased to hold; the few soldiers he had were all devotion to his cause. Driven into a corner where he must subsist his army on a limited area, which he could only hold by forcing under his standard every man possibly fit for service; among a people whose greed for gold and plunder was their chief characteristic,—he was still able not only to keep his phalanxes together, but to subject them to excellent discipline. The Carthaginians, meanwhile, were only dreaming of holding on to Spain; their one useful captain, with all his possibilities, they were blindly neglecting. He was left absolutely to his own resources. And yet,—it is so wonderful that one can but repeat it again and again,—though there were several armies of Roman veteran legions—for nearly all Roman soldiers were veterans now—around him on every side, such was the majesty which hedged his name, that neither one singly, nor all together, dared to come to the final conflict with him, brave and able though their leaders were. Even after the Metaurus, when the Romans knew what the effect of his brother’s defeat must be on the morale of Hannibal’s army, if not on himself, this dread of the very name of Hannibal, even by the best of the Roman generals, is almost inexplicable. They must each and all have recognized that it needed but one joint effort to crush out his weakened and depleted semblance of an army, and yet none of them was apparently willing to undertake the task. Whatever the Roman historians may tell us about these years, is not here really a great and stubborn fact, which testifies to more than a thousand pages penned by his detractors?
Finally, long after Hasdrubal had made his way to Italy, and had been defeated by the consul Nero, Rome carried the war into Africa, and Hannibal was recalled from Italy and defeated at Zama by Scipio. It was, however, neither Scipio nor Zama that defeated Hannibal. The Carthaginian cause had been doomed years before. It was inanition, pure and simple, which brought Hannibal’s career to a close,—the lack of support of the Carthaginian Senate. He all but won Zama, even with the wretched material he had brought from Italy, and without cavalry, against the best army Rome had so far had, the most skilful general, and every fair chance. Had he won Zama, he must have lost the next battle. The Semitic cause against the Aryan was bound to fail.
This battle ended the war. Hannibal lived nineteen years after the defeat, for six years in Carthage,—thirteen in exile. Rome never felt secure until his death.
Hannibal ranks with the few great captains of the world. Alexander, Cæsar, Gustavus Adolphus, Frederick, Napoleon, alone can stand beside him. In this galaxy the stars are equal. His self-reliant courage, which prompted him to undertake the conquest of Italy with twenty thousand foot and six thousand horse, without a definite base, and with uncertain confederates, is the mark which stamps the genius—or the fool. Without the ability and iron resolution to do so vast a thing, no great man ever accomplished results. Upon such a rock have been shattered many reputations.