Part 5

Cannæ was the last great victory of Hannibal, but the beginning of his most masterly work. He had up to this moment conducted a brilliant offensive. There is nothing in the annals of war which surpasses his crossing of the Alps, his victories at the Ticinus and Trebia, his march through the Arnus marshes, his victory at Lake Trasymene, his manœuvres up to Cannæ, and that wonderful battle. But this splendid record had not helped his cause. Yet, against all hope, he stuck to his task for thirteen long years more, waiting for reënforcements from Carthage, or for some lucky accident which might turn the tide in his favor. Up to Cannæ Fortune had smiled upon him. After Cannæ she turned her back on him, never again to lend him aid.

Livy asserts that Hannibal’s want of success came from his exposing his troops to a winter in Capua, where debauch destroyed their discipline. Many historians have followed this theory. But the soldier who looks at the remarkable work done by Hannibal from this time on, knows that nothing short of the most exemplary discipline can possibly account for it, and seeks his reasons elsewhere. Livy’s statements will bear watching.

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.

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.

Hannibal had remarkable control over men. Reaching Cisalpine Gaul, it was but a few weeks before the whole province became his sworn allies, and they remained true and faithful to his cause, and bore their heavy burden with cheerful alacrity,--though then, as now, the most unstable of peoples. Hannibal possessed a keen knowledge of human nature, as well as an unbounded individual power over men. Unfortunately, only a few anecdotes remain to us as the portrait of this extraordinary man; but we cannot doubt that he carried that personal magnetism with him which lent a wonderful strength to what he said or did.

His victories were as brilliant as any ever won; but on these does not rest his chief glory. When he won Trebia, Trasymene, Cannæ, he had opposed to him generals ignorant of the art of war, which art the genius of Hannibal enabled him to use in a manner beyond all others, and which his experience in many arduous campaigns had taught him to the bottom. But Hannibal instructed these same Romans in this very art of war,--and his later opponents fought him on his own system, and with wonderful aptness at learning what he had instilled into them with such vast pains. These scholars of Hannibal, however, able as they became, never in any sense grew to their master’s stature. They were strong in numbers and courage, they surrounded him on all sides, they cut off his reënforcements and victuals, they harassed his outposts and foragers, they embarrassed his marches,--all in the superb style he had shown them how to use. But, for all that, though outnumbering him many to one, not one or several of them could ever prevent his coming or going, at his own good time or pleasure, whithersoever he listed, and never was more than a momentary advantage gained over him in a pitched battle till the fatal day of Zama. Even after Hasdrubal’s death, his aggressors dared not attack him. Like a pack of bloodhounds around the boar at bay, none ventured to close in on him for a final struggle. Even when he embarked for Carthage,--the most dangerous of operations possible for an army,--it was not attempted to hamper his progress. Even Scipio, in Italy, seemed by no means anxious to encounter him,--except at a disadvantage,--and in Africa did not meet him until he could do so on his own conditions, and under the very best of auspices.

By some, Scipio has been thought equal to Hannibal. But great soldier as Scipio was, he falls very far short of the rank attained by Hannibal. The list of generals of a lesser grade numbers many great names, among them that of Scipio, linked with commanders like Brasidas, Epaminondas, Xenophon, Prince Eugene, Turenne, Marlborough, Montecuculi. But between these and men of the stamp of Hannibal there is a great gulf fixed.

Like all great captains, Hannibal not infrequently violated what we now call the maxims of war; but when he did so, it was always with that admirable calculation of the power or weakness of the men and forces opposed to him, which, of itself, is the excuse for the act by that man who is able to take advantage of as well as to make circumstances. All great captains have a common likeness in this respect.

Napoleon aptly says: “The principles of Cæsar were the same as those of Alexander or Hannibal: to hold his forces in hand; to be vulnerable on several points only when it is unavoidable; to march rapidly upon the important points; to make use to a great extent of all moral means, such as the reputation of his arms, the fear he inspires, the political measures calculated to preserve the attachment of allies, and the submission of conquered provinces.”

Such men have used the maxims of war only so far as they fitted into their plans and combinations. Success justifies them, but the failure of the lesser lights who infringe these maxims only proves them to be maxims indeed.

What has Hannibal done for the art of war? First and foremost he taught the Romans what war really is; that there is something beyond merely marching out, fighting a battle, and marching home again. He showed them that with but a small part of their numerical force, with less good material, with less good arms, with but a few allies, he could keep Rome on the brink of ruin and despair for two-thirds of a generation. He showed them for thirteen years that he could accomplish more than they could, despite their numbers, and without battle. And while battle should be always the legitimate outcome of all military manœuvres, Hannibal taught the Romans that there was something far higher in war than mere brute weight, and through the Romans he has taught us.

Hannibal was as typically a fighter as even Alexander, though he preferred to prescribe his own time and conditions. But all through Alexander’s campaigns it happened that the results he aimed at could be accomplished only by hammering. And he had the power to hammer. Hannibal, on the contrary, found that he could not stand attrition; that he must save men. Alexander was constantly seeking conquests; Hannibal, like Frederick, only to keep what he had won, and in doing this he showed the world the first series of examples of intellectual war. Alexander’s strategy, in its larger aspect, was as far-seeing and far-reaching as that of any of the great captains, and he was the first to show it. But Alexander’s strategic movements had not been understood, and ran danger of being lost. Hannibal was, probably, the only man who understood what Alexander had done, and he impressed his own strategy so thoroughly upon the Romans that it modified their whole method of waging war. Alexander’s strategy was equally marked. Like Cæsar’s, his strategic field was the whole known world. But he did not exhibit that more useful phase of strategy, on a smaller theatre, which Hannibal has given us.

While Hannibal’s movement into Italy was offensive, the years after Cannæ partook largely of the defensive. He was holding his own till he could get reënforcements from home, or the help of the Roman allies. And yet it was he who was the main-spring which furnished the action, the centre about which everything revolved. Perhaps there is no surer test of who is the foremost soldier of a campaign than to determine who it is upon whose action everything waits; who it is that forces the others to gauge their own by his movements. And this Hannibal always did. It made no odds whether it was in his weak or his strong years. It was Hannibal’s marching to and fro, Hannibal’s manœuvres, offensive or defensive, which predetermined the movements of the Roman armies.

We know little about the personal appearance of Hannibal. We only know that in the march through the Arnus swamps he lost an eye. In the British Museum is an ancient bust of a soldier with but one eye--by some supposed to be Hannibal. But there is no authentic likeness of the man. It is improbable that he possessed Alexander’s charm of beauty. But in all his other qualities, mental and physical, he was distinctly his equal; and in his life he was simple, pure and self-contained.

Alexander did brilliant things for their own sake. Hannibal always forgot self in his work. Alexander needed adulation. Hannibal was far above such weakness. Alexander was open, hasty, violent. His fiery nature often ran away with his discretion. Hannibal was singularly self-poised. From his face you could never divine his thought or intention. So marked was this ability to keep his own counsel, never to betray his purpose, that the Roman historians talked of deception when he did unexpected things. But Punic faith was distinctly as good as Roman faith. The Romans promised and did not perform; Hannibal never promised. Hannibal’s mind was broad, delicate, clear. His Greek training made him intellectually the superior of any of the Roman generals. His conception of operations and discrimination in means were equalled by his boldness--even obstinacy--of execution.

Hannibal’s influence over men is perhaps his most wonderful trait. Alexander commanded fealty as a king, as well as won it as a man; Hannibal earned the fidelity and love of his men by his personal qualities alone. When we consider the heterogeneous elements of which his army was composed, the extraordinary hardships it underwent, the hoping against hope, the struggling against certain defeat and eventual annihilation, the toils and privation, and remember that there was never a murmur in his camp, or a desertion from his ranks, and that eventually he was able to carry his army, composed almost entirely of Italians, over to Africa on the most dangerous of tasks, and to fight them as he did at Zama, it may be said that Hannibal’s ability to keep this body together and fit for work shows the most wonderful influence over men ever possessed by man.

Alexander always had luck running in his favor. Hannibal is essentially the captain of misfortune. Alexander was always victorious; Hannibal rarely so in battle in the last twelve years in Italy. Alexander fought against a huge but unwieldy opponent, brave, but without discipline, and top-heavy. Hannibal’s work was against the most compact and able nation of the world, at its best period, the very type of a fighting machine. Not that all this in any sense makes Hannibal greater than Alexander, but it serves to heighten the real greatness of Hannibal.

Hannibal’s marches were quick, secret, crafty. He was singularly apt at guessing what his enemy would do, and could act on it with speed and effect. He was unsurpassed in logistics. The Romans learned all they ever knew of this branch of the art from Hannibal. Despite the tax upon him, his men always had bread. He utilized his victories well, but was not led astray by apparent though delusive chances. As a besieger Hannibal was not Alexander’s equal. Only Demetrius and Cæsar, perhaps, were. In this matter Hannibal and Frederick were alike. Both disliked siege-work.

But as a man, so far as we can know him,--and if he had any vices, his enemies, the Roman historians, would have dilated upon them,--Hannibal was perhaps, excepting Gustavus Adolphus, the most admirable of all. As a captain he holds equal rank with the others. As a distinguishing mark, we may well call him “The Father of Strategy.”

LECTURE III.

CÆSAR.

Caius Julius Cæsar is the only one of the great captains who trained himself to arms. Alexander, Hannibal, Gustavus Adolphus, Frederick, owed their early military training to their fathers, though, indeed, Frederick’s was but the pipe-clay of war. Napoleon got his in the best school in France. Every Roman citizen was, to be sure, trained as a soldier, and Cæsar had had a slight experience in some minor campaigns. But the drilling of the soldier cannot produce the captain. And Cæsar began his military career at an age when that of the others--except Frederick--had ceased.

A comparison of ages is interesting. Alexander made his marvellous campaigns between twenty-one and thirty-three years of age. Gustavus Adolphus’ independent military career was from seventeen to thirty-eight, the last two years being those which entitle him to rank with the great captains. Hannibal began at twenty-six and never left the harness till he was forty-five. Napoleon’s wonderful wars began at twenty-seven and ended at forty-six. Frederick opened his Silesian struggles at twenty-nine and closed them at fifty-one; the Seven Years’ War ran from his forty-fifth to his fifty-second year. Cæsar began at forty-two and ended at fifty-five. Thus the only two of the great captains whose best work was done near the fifties were Cæsar and Frederick. Of the others, Hannibal and Gustavus Adolphus were most admirable in the thirties, Napoleon between twenty-seven and thirty-nine, Alexander in the twenties. To take the age of each in the middle of his military career, Alexander and Gustavus were twenty-seven, Hannibal thirty-six, Napoleon thirty-seven, Frederick forty, and Cæsar forty-eight. Or, to place each at the height of his ability, Alexander was twenty-five, Hannibal thirty-four, Gustavus thirty-seven, Napoleon thirty-nine, Frederick forty-five, Cæsar fifty-two.

Cæsar’s youth had been that of a young man of the upper-tendom, with a not unusual mixture of high breeding and vices, and was rather inclined to be a dandy,--but one of whom Sulla remarked that “it would be well to have an eye to yonder dandy.” In manhood he can socially be best described as a thorough man of the world, able and attractive; in stirring political life always remarkable for what he did and the way in which he did it.

When Cæsar was forty-two he was chosen Consul and received Gaul as his province (B.C. 58). Pompey, Crassus and he divided the power of the Roman state. Cæsar proposed to himself, eventually, to monopolize it. His reasons do not here concern us. For this purpose he needed a thorough knowledge of war and an army devoted to his interests. He had neither, but he made Gaul furnish him both. Let us follow Cæsar in a cursory way through all his campaigns and see what the grain of the man does to make the general; for here we have the remarkable spectacle of a man entering middle life, who, beginning without military knowledge or experience, by his own unaided efforts rises to be one of the few great captains. I shall speak more of the Gallic War, because its grand strategy is not often pointed out.