Welcome back! Let’s have some more Roman history shall we?
When we left off last time, Hamilcar’s son Hannibal controlled a powerful army
expanding the Carthaginian territory in the Iberian Peninsula.
Today, we begin the second Punic war itself.
Hannibal’s campaign in Iberia was slowly taking his army ever northward.
Eventually, his territory expanded dangerously near to the Ebro River,
which the previous Carthaginian ruler in Spain had established as the border
where Carthaginian influence ended and Roman influence began.
Obviously, the Romans were not fans of this development…
but here’s where it gets murky: to this day, historians can’t agree
on which river the Ebro River referred to in the treaty actually is,
which makes interpreting what happens next
simply a matter of deciding who you believe.
You see, there was a Greek colony in northern Spain called Saguntum.
It was a prosperous trading city and they had recently signed a treaty with Rome.
The Romans claimed that - according to the Ebro River treaty -
this city was sacrosanct and under their protection, but Hannibal claimed
it was on the wrong side of the river and therefore part of his territory.
The year is 219 BC, Hannibal is 26 years,
and he remembers the oath his father made him take:
“Never be a friend to Rome”.
So he attacks, laying siege to the city, rebuking the Roman embassies
that come to him for all the wrongs Rome has done Carthage.
For eight months, the Saguntines hold out, all the while pleading to Rome for help,
begging their ally to come save them from what, without aid, is their certain doom.
But Rome sent no troops.
They had recently become embroiled in a war in Illyria,
the Balkan region north of Greece,
so never sent the aid the Seguntines were counting on,
figuring that Saguntum could hold out on its own until their own Balkan war was done.
But Hannibal’s forces were too much for them.
At long last, with the Saguntum population starving and the defenders
falling back from outer wall to inner wall to the citadel of the city itself,
Hannibal emerged victorious and his army pillaged the city,
selling into slavery everybody they didn't kill.
Now this is the point where Rome might have been able to prevent the Second Punic War,
might have nipped it in the bud, but
- by not acting on their treaty and not rescuing their ally -
they brought twenty years of unimaginable war upon the Mediterranean.
When Saguntum fell, Rome sent an emissary to Carthage to offer them a choice:
surrender Hannibal to Rome or face war.
The emissary stood before the Carthaginian senate,
surrounded by all the great men of Carthage, and said to them:
“I hold before you both peace and war.”
The leader of the senate spat back: “Choose what you will.”
The envoy replied: “I choose war.”
And the entire chamber exploded with shouts of: “We accept it!”
And now it’s on. Hannibal’s off the leash. The Second Punic War has begun.
The Romans begin to prepare for war.
They send an army down to Sicily with one of their consuls
to get ready for an invasion of Carthage in North Africa
and they send their other consul off with an army to invade Iberia
and capture Carthaginian holdings there, leaving a small force of recruits
to make sure that the Gauls in northern Italy don’t take this as an opportunity
to cause mischief while the bulk of the military is away.
And…Now’s probably a good time to take a moment
to talk a little bit about Roman politics,
because it’s gonna become very important in a second.
You see, in Rome, each year they would elect two Consuls to be the heads of state.
These guys would function more or less like the US President
except that they each had veto power over the other and, unlike the President
who is supreme commander of the US Military but doesn’t actually fight on the ground,
these guys would also be the ones to lead the Roman armies into battle.
They were very much the generals on the ground,
choosing the strategies and directing the battles.
Of course, they weren’t amateurs in this, you had to have 10 years
of military service to even be eligible for the lowest political office in Rome;
nonetheless we’re gonna see how politics effect this war pretty soon.
For now, back to Hannibal... Hannibal is a clever guy.
He realizes that trying to defend North Africa is a losing proposition,
and he knows that fighting on his own turf in Iberia will only result a slow defeat,
so he plans to do the unthinkable and invade Italy by crossing the Alps.
Now, of course, that's the one thing the Romans didn’t plan for.
The army they left in northern Italy is nothing but raw recruits
and the dregs of their former forces
(all of their real soldiers are either heading south to prepare for an African invasion
or making the trek across what is now France to invade Spain).
And that’s where the first skirmish of the war happens: that Spain-invasion force
runs into Hannibal as he’s making his way to the Alps and their scouts clash.
A few hundred cavalry from each side run into each other
unexpectedly and come to blows.
The Roman scouts manage to push back the Carthaginians;
it’s nothing decisive,
the important thing is that they live to report this news back to their commander:
Publius Cornelius Scipio.
You’re gonna wanna remember that name: Scipio.
You know how on the Carthaginian side
you have the sons of the great general Hamilcar from the last war,
fighting together on a blood oath they swore to their father
to avenge the shame Carthage suffered at the hands of the Romans?
Well this guy is their Roman equivalent.
This Scipio we just met will eventually die on the field,
slain by Hannibal’s armies,
but his son will later crush Hannibal and turn the tide of the war…
and his great grandson will go on to sack Carthage and wipe them out forever,
seventy years after the story we’re telling.
See, that’s part of what makes the second Punic war so epic,
blood oaths and vengeance, rivalry from two great houses,
a war passed down from father to son,
two bloodlines vying for the fate of the world…
it’s awesome.
And this battle is their first meeting, where the whole rivalry begins.
Scipio, now aware of Hannibal’s invasion force,
tries to give chase but Hannibal manages to slip away.
Without the resources or the logistics in place to do otherwise,
Scipio makes the fateful decision to have his army press on toward Spain as planned
while he himself speeds back with all haste to rally the forces in Northern Italy.
Hannibal, meanwhile, continues his march across France.
The Romans expected him to be slowed down by hostile tribes
just like they always were when they try to cross Gaul,
but Hannibal’s planned ahead and he already offered the tribes generous gifts
and the promise that his fury has only one target: Rome.
The plan works. Mostly. He does still get halted by the local forces once.
At the Rhone River, a band of Gauls with Roman allegiances
assemble an army on the far side, intending to prevent his crossing.
However, unbeknownst to them, Hannibal has already sent one of his officers, Hanno,
known as Hanno son of Bomilcar, to differentiate him from Hannibal’s own son,
also named Hanno (just to be perfectly confusing)… Anyway,
Hannibal already sent Hanno with some handpicked troops to cross the river upstream.
So Hannibal makes to cross,
the Gauls assemble on the opposite bank to stop him and then, just as planned,
Hanno comes bursting out of hiding and assaults their forces from the rear,
scattering the Gaul force and leaving the way open for Hannibal’s army to continue their march.
And haste was essential for Hannibal as it was already September
and he had to get his army across the Alps before it got any colder.
Even at this pace, the conditions they faced in the Alps were brutal.
There is a reason why this march is one of the most famous events in military history
and why its audacity caught the Romans entirely by surprise,
and that’s because everyone thought it was impossible.
There was no way you could march an army
through the treacherous peaks of the Alps in the beginning of winter.
It simply could not be done. And yet Hannibal went and did it.
He dismissed the less reliable members of his army at the foot of the Alps,
and began his ascent.
The weather was brutal, men froze to death,
mules fell from the frozen cliffs still laden with the army’s food and supplies.
Hill tribes attacked them, and rolled boulders onto the narrow paths.
Ice and snow beset them the whole way
and at times men had to crawl to make it along the tiny mountain track.
But they did it. In the end they made it to Italy…
But the cost?
By some accounts, Hannibal had 98,000 men when he started the climb,
and only 26,000 when he set foot into Italy on the other side.
Upon reaching Italy, Hannibal gives his troops time to rest from the arduous crossing
and tries to recruit the local Gauls to his cause,
as they have no love for the Romans either. Meanwhile,
Scipio is racing towards them with whatever handful of troops he can assemble,
knowing full well what Hannibal intends.
They meet and come to blows in a whirlwind cavalry engagement by the Tincino.
The larger, better trained Carthaginian cavalry
dances circles around the Roman infantry and the few cavalry Scipio could muster.
The engagement is small but a decisive defeat for the Romans,
a defeat in which Scipio is gravely wounded and would have lost his life
if it weren’t for a heroic rescue by his then 18 year old son fighting by his side…
a man we will later know as Scipio Africanus.
So Scipio withdraws to recover and regroup.
This skirmish may not have been a major victory for the Carthaginians
but its an enormous boost to their moral after such a grueling journey
and the local Gauls, upon hearing of the battle
start to think Hannibal’s army might have a chance and they begin defecting en masse.
Now Rome is worried. The other consul, Sempronius Longus, is recalled from Sicily,
and he and his legions start marching north to join Scipio’s battered command.
When he arrives, Sempronius immediately starts pressing for an attack.
But Scipio, having already seen Hannibal’s army in action, cautions against it.
Sempronius is eager, though; hot headed and looking to brawl.
He believes Scipio’s caution is born of his wounds,
and thinks him cowardly to not attempt to drive this invader from Roman soil.
Scipio advises they use winter for training (as you’ll remember the men left
in north Italy were raw recruits or the remnants of a previously defeated army),
but here’s where the Roman politics come in…
the next year’s elections are drawing near and Sempronius wants a glorious victory
for his faction and his family before this term's done.
He is not gonna be denied this opportunity.
Now, while each Roman consul is actually the supreme commander of his army,
when two consuls are together, they alternate days for who is in charge of the whole thing;
Hannibal knows this and he also knows about Sempronius’ temperament,
which he uses to bait a trap.
Early one morning, after sending his brother Mago
with two thousand handpicked men to hide behind a small hill,
Hannibal sends out a detachment of cavalry to harass the Roman army,
who are camped just across the river Trebia.
It’s the winter solstice, one of the coldest days of the year,
sleet is pouring down and the sun's just barely
beginning to rise when this detachment is spotted.
Sempronius orders the chase and his men leap out of bed,
throwing on their armor and prepare to engage.
The Carthaginian cavalry retreats across the river and Sempronius gives chase.
He orders his men to wade across the river.
The men drag themselves to the other side in full armor,
sometimes up to their necks in the freezing water.
Once across, it’s clear that Hannibal is willing to meet them in battle,
so the troops are ordered to form up.
Think about how long it would take to get 50,000 men organized
and in formation with nothing but shouting and some flags…
It takes hours, so here the men are, standing in the sleet,
soaked from head to toe with frigid water,
roused before dawn and launched into a chase without even time for meal…
it’s probably been half a day since any of them have eaten.
Meanwhile, Hannibal let his men sleep in and had them around big roaring fires
eating a hearty meal before forming up.
Now to add to that put yourself in the Romans’ shoes for a moment.
Imagine you’re a provincial Roman farmer. The most you’ve seen of the world
is maybe the length of Italy if you’re really well-traveled.
Now imagine that through the sleet and the mist,
you see a great Grey lumbering bulk begin to emerge.
Imagine you see this creature two and a half times as tall as you,
at least a chariot length long, with glistening white tusks and a distended snout,
its eerie trumpeting carrying across to you faintly on the wind.
This is probably the closest that human beings ever got to legit fighting monsters,
fighting something so alien and gargantuan that there was no frame of reference for them.
The average Italian had probably never even heard of an elephant,
much less seen one before, so imagine lining up against that and knowing
that you’ll have to fight such a thing with just your short spear and your sword…
Now despite all of those disadvantages, the Roman infantry fared pretty well at first,
more than holding their own against the hodgepodge of Numidians,
Celts and Spaniards that faced them,
but the exhausted roman cavalry is driven off the field.
The Numidian cavalry then wheels around and attacks the Roman flanks.
At the same time, Mago’s forces (that have been so patiently laying in ambush)
spring onto the Roman rear and everything starts to collapse.
Though Sempronius escapes with his life,
the Romans’ retreat leaves more than 25,000 dead.
For the first time, the Romans see this is gonna be no easy war.
Join us next time for the continuation of the Second Punic War.
Thanks for watching!
Subtitled by: Louis Lenders (louislenders@hotmail.com)