Count Hannibal

“ Kill!” And he fired a pistol among the rabble, who fled every way to escape his rearing, plunging charger.
“Kill! Kill!” cried his followers, cutting the air with their swords, and rolling to and fro on their horses in drunken emulation. “Bleed in August, bleed in May!”
“On! On!” cried the leader, as the crowd which beset the house fled every way before his reckless onset. “Bleed in August, bleed in May!”
The rabble fled, but not so quickly but that one or two were ridden down, and this for an instant checked the riders. Before they could pass on—
“Ohé!” cried Count Hannibal from his window. ”

“ In a twinkling he stood on the threshold of the house, face to face and foot to foot with Count Hannibal, who stood also on the threshold, but with his back to the door, which, unbarred and unbolted, gaped open behind him.
CHAPTER V. ROUGH WOOING.
The young man had caught the delirium that was abroad that night. The rage of the trapped beast was in his heart, his hand held a sword. To strike blindly, to strike without question the first who withstood him was the wild-beast instinct; and if Count Hannibal had not spoken on the instant, the Marshal’s brother had said his last word in the world. ”

“ Take my advice, brother. Have after Montgomery, if you please, ride with Nançay to Chatillon—he is mounting now—go where you please out of Paris, but don’t go there! Biron hates us, hates me. And for the King, if he do not see you for a few days, ’twill blow over in a week.”
Count Hannibal shrugged his shoulders. “No,” he said, “I shall go.”
The Marshal stared a moment. “Morbleu!” he said, “why? ’Tis not to please the King, I know. What do you think to find there, brother?”
“A minister,” Hannibal answered gently. “I want one with life in him, and they are scarce in the open. ”

“ As the cavalry, by troops and squadrons, filed off in succession after him, silence fell among their ranks. But the infantry soldiers and also the Gauls remaining behind in camp continued the shouts of enthusiasm. “Hannibal! Long live Hannibal!” For it was for him, the General alone, and his personal influence, more than for a Carthage which was to most of them but a name, that these troops, drawn from many mixed tribes and nations, were willing and ready to lay down their lives. And it was ever so; it was Hannibal’s army, not a Carthaginian army that so often defeated Rome. ”

“ Their armor is shattered and broken, their horses are lamed, and all their equipments worn [Pg 131] out and ruined, so that really what most I fear is that the world will refuse us the glory of the victory, and say that it was the Alps that conquered Hannibal, and not the Roman army.
"Easy as the victory is to be, however, we must remember that there is a great deal at stake in the contest. It is not merely for glory that we are now about to contend. If Hannibal conquers, he will march to Rome, and our wives, our children, and all that we hold dear will be at his mercy. ”

“ If it is true, which no one doubts, that the Roman people exceed all races in strength, it must not be denied that Hannibal surpassed other commanders in prudence by as much as the Roman people exceed all nations in fortitude. For whenever battle was met with him in Italy, he always came out on top. If he had not been debilitated by the envy of his own citizens at home, it seems that he could have overcome the Romans. ”

“ He was a noble, and at the same time a favourite with the people, but he had gained his influence and power by resorting to base practices. He happened to be chief magistrate in the year in which the defeat at Trasumennus occurred, and knowing the hatred which the populace had long felt towards the senate, he thought it highly probable that they would seize their opportunity, create a violent revolution, and, if Hannibal with his victorious army should visit their neighbourhood, murder the senators and hand over Capua to him. ”

“ Rich and poor among her citizens vied with each other in devotion to their country. The wealthy placed their stores, and all placed their lives, at the State's disposal. And though Hannibal could not be driven out of Italy, though every year brought its sufferings and sacrifices, Rome felt that her constancy had not been exerted in vain. If she was weakened by the continued strife, so was Hannibal also; and it was clear that the unaided resources of his army were unequal to the task of her destruction. ”

“ The emptiness of them is clearly shown by the inconsistency of Hannibal's pretensions as to what he has done, with the demands that he makes in respect to what he wishes us to do. He says he has conquered all his enemies, and yet he wants us to send him more soldiers. He has reduced all Italy—the most fertile country in the world—to subjection, and reigns over it at Capua, and yet he calls upon us for corn. And then, to crown all, he sends us bushels of gold rings as a specimen of the riches he has obtained by plunder, and accompanies the offering with a demand for new supplies of money. ”

“ The cavalry horses, wounded by the arrows and javelins of the mountaineers, plunged wildly about and doubled the confusion.
It was fortunate for Hannibal that he had taken the precaution of the night before. From the post he had taken with his light troops the whole scene of peril and disorder was visible to his eyes. Charging down the hill, he attacked the mountaineers and drove them from their prey. But it was a dearly bought victory, for the fight on the narrow road increased the confusion, and in seeking the relief of his army he caused the destruction of many of his own men. ”

“ But he could not get more soldiers,—the Romans had sent an army into Spain, and Hannibal's brother, Hasdrubal, was busy fighting the Romans there, and could not send any troops to Italy. The Carthaginians also would not send any, for they were becoming afraid of Hannibal, and they did not know anything about Italy. So they answered his letters, asking for more men, by saying, that if he had won such great battles, he ought not to want any more troops. {2677} At Cannæ, then, Hannibal had struck his greatest blow: he could do no more. ”

“ And what a single man can do, an army can do, for an army is only a large number of single men. In fact, to a soldier, who has nothing to carry with him but the implements of war, no way can be too difficult to be surmounted by courage and energy."
Its effects.
His army follows.
After finishing his speech, Hannibal, finding his men reanimated and encouraged by what he had said, ordered them to go to their tents and refresh themselves, and prepare to march on the following day. They made no further opposition to going on. Hannibal did not, however, proceed at once directly toward the Alps. ”

“ The most striking proof of the genius of Hannibal is the fact of his having remained sixteen years in Italy, left almost to his own forces, reduced to the necessity of recruiting his army solely among his new allies, and of subsisting at their expense, ill seconded by the Senate of his own country, having always to face at least two consular armies, and, lastly, shut up in the peninsula by the Roman fleets, which guarded its coasts to intercept reinforcements from Carthage. ”

“ Hannibal would not have been the great general and leader of men that he was if he had not been remarkably astute. His intuition was so great, that he could, so to speak, see the end of a book before another man had finished reading the title-page. In all the years he warred in Iberia, Gaul, Italy, and Carthage, and in all the alliances he made with tribes once hostile to him, never was there a single conspiracy made against his life, though assassination and treachery were common ”

“ But the general was wiser than the fiery captain of the horse. It has been common to censure Hannibal for neglecting to march on Rome after the battle of Cannæ. But his dazzling triumph did not for a moment unsettle his clear judgment. He knew that his forces were unequal to the task of storming a walled city garrisoned by a population of fighting men. An attack which he had made on Spoletium had proved the inadequacy of the small Carthaginian army to carry a strongly fortified town. ”

“ My promised amends are these: if thou wilt but assent to become for me thus the one woman in the world whose sweet companionship shall make earth heaven, I will bind myself in turn, by solemn treaties before the gods, to help Hannibal, thy father, with all my forces by land and by sea. I will bind myself to attack the Romans wherever I can find them, to fall upon and destroy their cities and their colonies, and, moreover, to send a large body of troops to reinforce Hannibal himself. ”

“ When the rest of the army was safe on the left bank a camp was pitched, and orders given for the morrow. Hannibal's great anxiety was for the passage of the elephants, still on the other side, for the great creatures on whose help he counted, perhaps more than he should, were terribly afraid of water. But no man ever lived who was cleverer at forming schemes than Hannibal, and at last he hit on one which he thought would do. ”

“ They ascended the bank after crossing the river, and when they had formed again there, and were moving forward in pursuit of their still flying enemy, suddenly the whole force of Hannibal's reserves, strong and vigorous, just from their tents and their fires, burst upon them. They had scarcely recovered from the astonishment and the shock of this unexpected onset, when the two thousand concealed in the ambuscade came sallying forth in the storm, and assailed the Romans in the rear with frightful shouts and outcries. ”

“ At the battle of Cannae (216) he suffered the most terrible defeat of Roman history. More than seventy thousand men were killed. Hannibal was master of all Italy.
He marched from one end of the peninsula to the other, proclaiming himself the "deliverer from the yoke of Rome" and asking the different provinces to join him in warfare upon the mother city. Then once more the wisdom of Rome bore noble fruit. With the exceptions of Capua and Syracuse, all Roman cities remained loyal. Hannibal, the deliverer, found himself opposed by the people whose friend he pretended to be. ”

“ Hannibal is ranked by common consent among the greatest generals of the world. If Rome could have been overthrown by any enemy, it would have been by him, so brilliant was his strategy, so great his capacity for leadership—nothing is [Pg 178] more remarkable in his career than his power of giving unity to the varied components of a mercenary army—and so resolute his hostility to Rome. He himself narrated towards the close of his life the incident which seems to have made this feeling the dominant motive of his life. He was then in exile, and the guest of Antiochus the Great, King of Syria. ”

“ A large Roman army advanced into Apulia in order to crush him, and accepted battle on the site of Cannae. Thanks mainly to brilliant cavalry tactics, Hannibal, with much inferior numbers, managed to surround and cut to pieces the whole of this force; moreover, the moral effect of this victory was such that all the south of Italy joined his cause. Had Hannibal now received proper material reinforcements from his countrymen at Carthage he might have made a direct attack upon Rome ”

“ Hannibal was right in his suspicions. The embassage was a stratagem. The men who sent it had laid an ambuscade in a very narrow pass, concealing their forces in thickets and in chasms, and in nooks and corners among the rugged rocks, and when the guides had led the army well into the danger, a sudden signal was given, and these concealed enemies rushed down upon them in great numbers, breaking into their ranks, and renewing the scene of terrible uproar, tumult, and destruction which had been witnessed in the other defile. ”

“ The Romans possessed the great advantage over him of having magazines in their rear constantly replenished by their allies, and move where they might, they were sure of obtaining subsistence without difficulty. Thus, upon the march, they were unembarrassed by the necessity of taking a great baggage train with them, and, when halted, their general could keep his army together in readiness to strike a blow whenever an opportunity offered; while Hannibal, on the other hand, was forced to scatter a considerable portion of the army in search of provisions. ”

“ The men in the smaller camp, which was on the other side of the river, had less difficulty in obtaining it, as that bank was not held by the enemy. Hannibal now saw his hopes fulfilled, that the consuls would give him an opportunity of fighting on ground naturally adapted for the movements of cavalry, the arm in which he had so far been invincible, and accordingly he placed his army in order of battle, and tried to provoke his foe to action by repeated charges of his Numidians. ”

“ Hannibal went on.
"If he does," said the mahout resignedly, "he will assuredly kill me. If he does not kill me you will know that he does not blame me. I think he blames only you."
"Will he remember me?" the scout demanded.
"As long as he lives he will remember you. If you go near him again you are a dead man."
"Will he chase me?" Hannibal pursued.
"That will he," the mahout ejaculated; "to the ends of the world will he pursue."
"How far off am I safe?" the scout continued.
"Only when out of his sight," the mahout affirmed, "and an elephant can see further than men would believe." ”