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.
[Illustration: 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.
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.
[Illustration: GAUL]
Cæsar’s object in Gaul was not merely to protect Roman interests. He
needed war to further his schemes of centralization. On reaching the
Province, as was called the territory at that time held by Rome in Gaul
(B.C. 58), he encountered an armed migration of the Helvetii, moving
from the Alps, by way of Geneva, towards the fertile lowlands. This
was a dangerous threat to the Province, and, moreover, to attack this
tribe would serve as initiation to Cæsar and his men. He commanded
the Helvetii to return to their homes, which being refused, he first
outwitted them in negotiations, until he assembled troops, followed,
surprised, and attacked them while crossing the Arar, and annihilated
a third of their force. Then following them up with a cautious
inexperience, but, though making mistakes, with extraordinary foresight
and skill, he finally, in the battle of Bibracte, after grave danger
and against heroic resistance, utterly worsted them, and obliged the
relics of the tribe to obey his mandate. Of the entire body, numbering
three hundred and sixty-eight thousand souls, but one hundred and ten
thousand lived to return home. Thus began what will always be a blot on
Cæsar’s fame as a soldier,--his disregard for human life, however brave
his enemies, however unnecessary its sacrifice. Alexander, on several
occasions, devastated provinces. But in his case the military necessity
was less doubtful; and the number of Alexander’s victims never rises to
the awful sum of Cæsar’s, nor was the law of nations as definite in his
day as it had become fifty years before the Christian era.
Cæsar next moved against Ariovistus, a German chief who was bringing
numbers of his countrymen across the Rhine to seize the lands of the
friendly Gauls. Cæsar saw that to conquer Gaul he must eliminate this
migratory element from the problem; for the Germans would be pouring in
on his flank during any advance he might make into the heart of the
country. Moreover, Cæsar’s actions always sought to forward Cæsar’s
plans; only as a second consideration to protect the Roman territory.
To place Cæsar at the head of the Roman state would best serve the
Commonwealth. War he must have, and anything would serve as _casus
belli_. But, though far from faultless as a statesman, Cæsar grew to be
all but faultless as a soldier, and his present military object, the
conquest of Gaul, he carried out in the most brilliant and methodical
manner.
Cæsar ordered Ariovistus to return across the Rhine. Ariovistus
declined. Cæsar moved by forced marches against him. After a useless
conference, Ariovistus, who was a man of marked native ability,
made a handsome manœuvre around Cæsar’s flank, which the latter
was not quick enough to check, and deliberately sat down on his
line of communications. Cæsar was thunderstruck. He endeavored to
lure Ariovistus to battle, as an outlet to the dilemma, for he was
compromised. But Ariovistus was well satisfied with his position, to
hold which would soon starve the Romans out. Cæsar, not unwilling
to learn from even a barbarian, resorted, after these failures, to
a similar manœuvre around Ariovistus’ flank, which he made with
consummate skill, and regained his line of retreat. Then, having
learned that the German soothsayers had presaged defeat, if Ariovistus
should fight before the new moon, he forced a battle on the Germans,
and, after a terrible contest, defeated them, destroyed substantially
the whole tribe, and drove the few survivors across the Rhine.
Cæsar had shown the decision, activity, courage, and quickness of
apprehension which were his birthright. But underlying these was a
caution bred of lack of that self-reliance which in after years grew
so marked. He made blunders which in later campaigns he would not
have made, nor was he opposed to such forces as he later encountered.
Ariovistus had no great preponderance over Cæsar’s fifty thousand
men. One rather admires in this year’s campaigns the Helvetii and the
Germans for their noble gallantry in facing Roman discipline and so
nearly succeeding in their struggle.
Next year (B.C. 57) Cæsar conducted a campaign against the Belgæ, whose
joint tribes had raised a force of three hundred and fifty thousand
men. By prompt action and concessions he seduced one tribe from the
coalition, and by a well-timed diversion into the land of another,
weakened the aggressiveness of the latter. He had won a number of
Gallic allies. Curiously enough, all his cavalry throughout the war was
native, the Roman cavalry being neither numerous nor good. All told, he
had some seventy thousand men.
The Belgæ attacked him at the River Axona, but by dexterous management
Cæsar held his own, inflicted enormous losses on them, and finally,
from lack of rations, they dispersed, thus enabling Cæsar to handle
them in detail. Many gave in their submission; others were reduced by
force; disunited they were weak.