The Rising Son; or, the Antecedents and Advancement of the Colored Race

by William Wells Brown

While Carthage possessed the dominion of the seas, a rival State was growing up on the opposite side of the Mediterranean, distant about seven hundred miles, under whose arms she was destined to fall. This was Rome, the foundation of which was commenced one hundred years after that of Carthage. These two powerful nations engaged in wars against each other that lasted nearly two hundred years. In these conflicts the Carthaginians showed great bravery.

In the first Punic war, the defeat and capture of Regulus, the Roman general, by the Carthaginians, and their allies, the Greeks, humiliated the Romans, and for a time gave the former great advantage over the latter. The war, however, which lasted twenty-four years, was concluded by some agreement, which after all, was favorable to the Romans. The conclusion of the first Punic war (B. C. 249) was not satisfactory to the more republican portion of the ruling spirits among the Carthaginians, and especially Hamilcar, the father of Hannibal, who, at that time occupied a very prominent position, both on account of his rank, wealth, and high family connections at Carthage; also on account of the great military energy which he displayed in the command of the armies abroad. Hamilcar had carried on the wars which the Carthaginians waged in Africa and Spain after the conclusion of the war with the Romans, and he was anxious to begin hostilities with the Romans again. On Hamilcar’s leaving Carthage the last time to join his army in Spain, he took his son Hannibal, then a boy of nine years, and made him swear on the altar of his country eternal hatred to the Romans, an oath that he kept to the day of his death.

When not yet twenty years of age, Hannibal was placed second in command of the army, then in Spain, where he at once attracted the attention and the admiration of all, by the plainness of his living, his abstinence from strong drink, and the gentlemanly treatment that he meted out to the soldiers, as well as his fellow-officers.

He slept in his military cloak on the ground, in the midst of his soldiers on guard; and in a battle he was always the last to leave the field after a fight, as he was foremost to press forward in every contest with the enemy. The death of Hasdrubal placed Hannibal in supreme command of the army, and inheriting his father’s hatred to Rome, he resolved to take revenge upon his ancient enemy, and at once invaded the Roman possessions in Spain, and laid siege to the city of Saguntum, which, after heroic resistance, yielded to his victorious arms. Thus commenced the second Punic war, in which Hannibal was to show to the world his genius as a general.

Leaving a large force in Africa, and also in Spain, to defend these points, Hannibal set out in the spring of the year B. C. 218, with a large army to fulfill his project against Rome.

His course lay along the Mediterranean; the whole distance to Rome being about one thousand miles by the land route which he contemplated. When he had traversed Spain, he came to the Pyrenees, a range of mountains separating that country from Gaul, now France. He was here attacked by wild tribes of brave barbarians, but he easily drove them back. He crossed the Pyrenees, traversed Gaul, and came at last to the Alps, which threw up their frowning battlements, interposing a formidable obstacle between him and the object of his expedition.

No warrior had then crossed these snowy peaks with such an army; and none but a man of that degree of resolution and self-reliance which could not be baffled, would have hazarded the fearful enterprise. Indeed, we turn with amazement to Hannibal’s passage of the Alps; that great and daring feat surpasses in magnitude anything of the kind ever attempted by man. The pride of the French historians have often led them to compare Napoleon’s passage of the Great St. Bernard to Hannibal’s passage of the Alps; but without detracting from the well-earned fame of the French Emperor, it may safely be affirmed that his achievements will bear no comparison whatever with the Carthaginian hero. When Napoleon began the ascent of the Alps from Martigny, on the shores of the Rhone, and above the Lake of Geneva, he found the passage of the mountains cleared by the incessant transit of two thousand years. The road, impracticable for carriages, was very good for horsemen and foot passengers, and was traversed by great numbers of both at every season of the year.

Comfortable villages on the ascent and descent afforded easy accommodation to the wearied soldiers by day and by night; the ample stores of the monks at the summit, and the provident foresight of the French generals had provided a meal for every man and horse that passed. No hostile troops opposed their passage; the guns were drawn up in sleds made of hollowed firs; and in four days from the time they began the ascent from the banks of the Rhone, the French troops, without losing a man, stood on the Doria Baltea, the increasing waters of which flowed towards the Po, amidst the gardens and vineyards, and under the sun of Italy. But the case was very different when Hannibal crossed from the shores of the Durance to the banks of the Po.

The mountain sides, which had not yet been cleared by centuries of laborious industry, presented a continual forest, furrowed at every hollow by headlong Alpine torrents. There were no bridges to cross the perpetually recurring obstacles; provisions, scanty at all times in those elevated solitudes, were then nowhere to be found, having been hidden away by the natives, and a powerful army of mountaineers occupied the entrance of the defiles, defended with desperate valor the gates of their country, and when dispersed by the superior discipline and arms of Hannibal’s soldiers, still beset the ridges about their line of march, and harassed his troops with continual hostility. When the woody region was passed, and the vanguard emerged in the open mountain pastures, which led to the verge of perpetual snow, fresh difficulties awaited them.

The turf, from the gliding down of the newly-fallen snow on those steep declivities, was so slippery that it was often scarcely possible for the men to keep their feet; the beasts of burden lost their footing at every step, and rolled down in great numbers into the abyss beneath; the elephants became restive amidst privation and a climate to which they were totally unaccustomed; and the strength of the soldiers, worn out by incessant marching and fighting, began to sink before the continued toil of the ascent. Horrors formidable to all, but in an especial manner terrible to African soldiers, awaited them at the summit.