THE DESTRUCTION OF CARTHAGE.
B.C. 146-145
Destruction.--The third Punic war.--Chronological table of the
Punic wars.--Character of the Punic wars.--Intervals between
them.--Animosities and dissensions.--Numidia.--Numidian
horsemen.--Masinissa.--Parties at Rome and Carthage.--Their
differences.--Masinissa prepares for war.--Hasdrubal.--Carthage
declares war.--Parallel between Hannibal and Hasdrubal.--Battle with
Masinissa.--Defeat of the Carthaginians.--The younger Scipio.--A
spectator of the battle.--Negotiations for peace.--Scipio
made umpire.--Hasdrubal surrenders.--Terms imposed by
Masinissa.--Carthaginian embassy to Rome.--Their mission
fruitless.--Another embassy.--The Romans declare war.--Negotiations
for peace.--The Romans demand hostages.--Cruelty of the hostage
system.--Return of the embassadors.--Consternation in Carthage.--Its
deplorable condition.--Selecting the hostages.--The hour of
parting.--The parting scene.--Grief and despair.--Advance of the
Roman army.--Surrender of Utica.--Demands of the Romans.--The
Carthaginians comply.--The Romans demand all the munitions of
war.--Their great number.--Brutal demands of the Romans.--Carthage
to be destroyed.--Desperation of the people.--Preparations for
defense.--Hasdrubal.--Destruction of the Roman fleet.--Horrors
of the siege.--Heroic valor of the Carthaginians.--Battering
engines.--Attempt to destroy them.--The city stormed.--A desperate
struggle.--The people retreat to the citadel.--The city
fired.--Hasdrubal's wife.--Hasdrubal surrenders.--The citadel
fired.--Resentment and despair of Hasdrubal's wife.--Carthage
destroyed.--Its present condition.--War and commerce.--Antagonistic
principles.--Hannibal's greatness as a military hero.
The consequences of Hannibal's reckless ambition, and of his wholly
unjustifiable aggression on Roman rights to gratify it, did not end
with his own personal ruin. The flame which he had kindled continued
to burn until at last it accomplished the entire and irretrievable
destruction of Carthage. This was effected in a third and final war
between the Carthaginians and the Romans, which is known in history as
the third Punic war. With a narrative of the events of this war,
ending, as it did, in the total destruction of the city, we shall
close this history of Hannibal.
It will be recollected that the war which Hannibal himself waged
against Rome was the second in the series, the contest in which
Regulus figured so prominently having been the first. The one whose
history is now to be given is the third. The reader will distinctly
understand the chronological relations of these contests by the
following table:
TABLE.
+------+--------------------------------------+-------------+
| Date | | |
| B.C. | Events. | Punic Wars. |
+------+--------------------------------------+-------------+
| | | |
| 264 | War commenced in Sicily } | |
| | } | |
| 262 | Naval battles in the Mediterranean } | I. |
| | } | |
| 249 | Regulus sent prisoner to Rome } | 24 years. |
| | } | |
| 241 | Peace concluded } | |
| | | |
| | | |
| | Peace for 24 years. | |
| | | |
| | | |
| 217 | Hannibal attacks Saguntum } | |
| | } | |
| 218 | Crosses the Alps } | II. |
| | } | |
| 216 | Battle of Cannae } | 17 years. |
| | } | |
| 205 | Is conquered by Scipio } | |
| | } | |
| 200 | Peace concluded } | |
| | | |
| | | |
| | Peace for 52 years | |
| | | |
| | | |
| 148 | War declared } | III. |
| | } | |
| 145 | Carthage destroyed } | 3 years. |
+------+--------------------------------------+-------------+
These three Punic wars extended, as the table shows, over a period of
more than a hundred years. Each successive contest in the series was
shorter, but more violent and desperate than its predecessor, while
the intervals of peace were longer. Thus the first Punic war continued
for twenty-four years, the second about seventeen, and the third only
three or four. The interval, too, between the first and second was
twenty-four years, while between the second and third there was a sort
of peace for about fifty years. These differences were caused, indeed,
in some degree, by the accidental circumstances on which the
successive ruptures depended, but they were not entirely owing to that
cause. The longer these belligerent relations between the two
countries continued, and the more they both experienced the awful
effects and consequences of their quarrels, the less disposed they
were to renew such dreadful struggles, and yet, when they did renew
them they engaged in them with redoubled energy of determination and
fresh intensity of hate. Thus the wars followed each other at greater
intervals, but the conflicts, when they came, though shorter in
duration, were more and more desperate and merciless in character.
We have said that, after the close of the second Punic war, there was
a sort of peace for about fifty years. Of course, during this time,
one generation after another of public men arose, both in Rome and
Carthage, each successive group, on both sides, inheriting the
suppressed animosity and hatred which had been cherished by their
predecessors. Of course, as long as Hannibal had lived, and had
continued his plots and schemes in Syria, he was the means of keeping
up a continual irritation among the people of Rome against the
Carthaginian name. It is true that the government at Carthage
disavowed his acts, and professed to be wholly opposed to his designs;
but then it was, of course, very well known at Rome that this was only
because they thought he was not able to execute them. They had no
confidence whatever in Carthaginian faith or honesty, and, of course,
there could be no real harmony or stable peace.
There arose gradually, also, another source of dissension. By
referring to the map, the reader will perceive that there lies, to the
westward of Carthage, a country called Numidia. This country was a
hundred miles or more in breadth, and extended back several hundred
miles into the interior. It was a very rich and fertile region, and
contained many powerful and wealthy cities. The inhabitants were
warlike, too, and were particularly celebrated for their cavalry. The
ancient historians say that they used to ride their horses into the
field without saddles, and often without bridles, guiding and
controlling them by their voices, and keeping their seats securely by
the exercise of great personal strength and consummate skill. These
Numidian horsemen are often alluded to in the narratives of Hannibal's
campaigns, and, in fact, in all the military histories of the times.
Among the kings who reigned in Numidia was one who had taken sides
with the Romans in the second Punic war. His name was Masinissa. He
became involved in some struggle for power with a neighboring monarch
named Syphax, and while he, that is, Masinissa, had allied himself to
the Romans, Syphax had joined the Carthaginians, each chieftain
hoping, by this means, to gain assistance from his allies in
conquering the other. Masinissa's patrons proved to be the strongest,
and at the end of the second Punic war, when the conditions of peace
were made, Masinissa's dominions were enlarged, and the undisturbed
possession of them confirmed to him, the Carthaginians being bound by
express stipulations not to molest him in any way.
In commonwealths like those of Rome and Carthage, there will always be
two great parties struggling against each other for the possession of
power. Each wishes to avail itself of every opportunity to oppose and
thwart the other, and they consequently almost always take different
sides in all the great questions of public policy that arise. There
were two such parties at Rome, and they disagreed in respect to the
course which should be pursued in regard to Carthage, one being
generally in favor of peace, the other perpetually calling for war. In
the same manner there was at Carthage a similar dissension, the one
side in the contest being desirous to propitiate the Romans and avoid
collisions with them, while the other party were very restless and
uneasy under the pressure of the Roman power upon them, and were
endeavoring continually to foment feelings of hostility against their
ancient enemies, as if they wished that war should break out again.
The latter party were not strong enough to bring the Carthaginian
state into an open rupture with Rome itself, but they succeeded at
last in getting their government involved in a dispute with Masinissa,
and in leading out an army to give him battle.
Fifty years had passed away, as has already been remarked, since the
close of Hannibal's war. During this time, Scipio--that is, the Scipio
who conquered Hannibal--had disappeared from the stage. Masinissa
himself was very far advanced in life, being over eighty years of age.
He, however, still retained the strength and energy which had
characterized him in his prime. He drew together an immense army, and
mounting, like his soldiers, bare-back upon his horse, he rode from
rank to rank, gave the necessary commands, and matured the
arrangements for battle.
The name of the Carthaginian general on this occasion was Hasdrubal.
This was a very common name at Carthage, especially among the friends
and family of Hannibal. The bearer of it, in this case, may possibly
have received it from his parents in commemoration of the brother of
Hannibal, who lost his head in descending into Italy from the Alps,
inasmuch as during the fifty years of peace which had elapsed, there
was ample time for a child born after that event to grow up to full
maturity. At any rate, the new Hasdrubal inherited the inveterate
hatred to Rome which characterized his namesake, and he and his party
had contrived to gain a temporary ascendency in Carthage, and they
availed themselves of their brief possession of power to renew,
indirectly at least, the contest with Rome. They sent the rival
leaders into banishment, raised an army, and Hasdrubal himself taking
the command of it, they went forth in great force to encounter
Masinissa.
It was in a way very similar to this that Hannibal had commenced his
war with Rome, by seeking first a quarrel with a Roman ally. Hannibal,
it is true, had commenced his aggressions at Saguntum, in Spain.
Hasdrubal begins in Numidia, in Africa, but, with the exception of the
difference of geographical locality, all seems the same, and Hasdrubal
very probably supposed that he was about to enter himself upon the
same glorious career which had immortalized his great ancestor's name.
There was another analogy between the two cases, viz., that both
Hannibal and Hasdrubal had strong parties opposed to them in Carthage
in the incipient stages of their undertakings. In the present
instance, the opposition had been violently suppressed, and the
leaders of it sent into banishment; but still the elements remained,
ready, in case of any disaster to Hasdrubal's arms, or any other
occurrence tending to diminish his power, to rise at once and put him
down. Hasdrubal had therefore a double enemy to contend against: one
before him, on the battle-field, and the other, perhaps still more
formidable, in the city behind him.
The parallel, however, ends here. Hannibal conquered at Saguntum, but
Hasdrubal was entirely defeated in the battle in Numidia. The battle
was fought long and desperately on both sides, but the Carthaginians
were obliged to yield, and they retreated at length in confusion to
seek shelter in their camp. The battle was witnessed by a Roman
officer who stood upon a neighboring hill, and looked down upon the
scene with intense interest all the day. It was Scipio--the younger
Scipio--who became afterward the principal actor in the terrible
scenes which were enacted in the war which followed. He was then a
distinguished officer in the Roman army, and was on duty in Spain. His
commanding general there had sent him to Africa to procure some
elephants from Masinissa for the use of the army. He came to Numidia,
accordingly, for this purpose, and as the battle between Masinissa and
Hasdrubal came on while he was there, he remained to witness it.
This second Scipio was not, by blood, any relative of the other, but
he had been adopted by the elder Scipio's son, and thus received his
name; so that he was, by adoption, a grandson. He was, even at this
time, a man of high consideration among all who knew him, for his
great energy and efficiency of character, as well as for his sound
judgment and practical good sense. He occupied a very singular
position at the time of this battle, such as very few great commanders
have ever been placed in; for, as he himself was attached to a Roman
army in Spain, having been sent merely as a military messenger to
Numidia, he was a neutral in this contest, and could not, properly,
take part on either side. He had, accordingly, only to take his place
upon the hill, and look down upon the awful scene as upon a spectacle
arranged for his special gratification. He speaks of it as if he were
highly gratified with the opportunity he enjoyed, saying that only two
such cases had ever occurred before, where a general could look down,
in such a way, upon a great battle-field, and witness the whole
progress of the fight, himself a cool and disinterested spectator. He
was greatly excited by the scene and he speaks particularly of the
appearance of the veteran Masinissa, then eighty-four years old, who
rode all day from rank to rank, on a wild and impetuous charger,
without a saddle, to give his orders to his men, and to encourage and
animate them by his voice and his example.
Hasdrubal retreated with his forces to his camp as soon as the battle
was over, and intrenched himself there, while Masinissa advanced with
his army, surrounded the encampment, and hemmed the imprisoned
fugitives in. Finding himself in extreme and imminent danger,
Hasdrubal sent to Masinissa to open negotiations for peace, and he
proposed that Scipio should act as a sort of umpire or mediator
between the two parties, to arrange the terms. Scipio was not likely
to be a very impartial umpire; but still, his interposition would
afford him, as Hasdrubal thought, some protection against any
excessive and extreme exorbitancy on the part of his conqueror. The
plan, however, did not succeed. Even Scipio's terms were found by
Hasdrubal to be inadmissible. He required that the Carthaginians
should accord to Masinissa a certain extension of territory. Hasdrubal
was willing to assent to this. They were to pay him, also, a large sum
of money. He agreed, also to this. They were, moreover, to allow
Hasdrubal's banished opponents to return to Carthage. This, by putting
the party opposed to Hasdrubal once more into power in Carthage, would
have been followed by his own fall and ruin; he could not consent to
it. He remained, therefore, shut up in his camp, and Scipio, giving up
the hope of effecting an accommodation, took the elephants which had
been provided for him, and returned across the Mediterranean to Spain.
Soon after this, Hasdrubal's army, worn out with hunger and misery in
their camp, compelled him to surrender on Masinissa's own terms. The
men were allowed to go free, but most of them perished on the way to
Carthage. Hasdrubal himself succeeded in reaching some place of
safety, but the influence of his party was destroyed by the disastrous
result of his enterprise, and his exiled enemies being recalled in
accordance with the treaty of surrender, the opposing party were
immediately restored to power.
Under these new councils, the first measure of the Carthaginians was
to impeach Hasdrubal on a charge of treason, for having involved his
country in these difficulties, and the next was to send a solemn
embassy to Rome, to acknowledge the fault of which their nation had
been guilty, to offer to surrender Hasdrubal into their hands, as the
principal author of the deed, and to ask what further satisfaction the
Romans demanded.
In the mean time, before these messengers arrived, the Romans had been
deliberating what to do. The strongest party were in favor of urging
on the quarrel with Carthage and declaring war. They had not, however,
come to any positive decision. They received the deputation,
therefore, very coolly, and made them no direct reply. As to the
satisfaction which the Carthaginians ought to render to the Romans for
having made war upon their ally contrary to the solemn covenants of
the treaty, they said that that was a question for the Carthaginians
themselves to consider. They had nothing at present to say upon the
subject. The deputies returned to Carthage with this reply, which, of
course, produced great uneasiness and anxiety.
The Carthaginians were more and more desirous now to do every thing in
their power to avert the threatened danger of Roman hostility. They
sent a new embassy to Rome, with still more humble professions than
before. The embassy set sail from Carthage with very little hope,
however, of accomplishing the object of their mission. They were
authorized, nevertheless, to make the most unlimited concessions, and
to submit to any conditions whatever to avert the calamity of another
war.
But the Romans had been furnished with a pretext for commencing
hostilities again, and there was a very strong party among them now
who were determined to avail themselves of this opportunity to
extinguish entirely the Carthaginian power. War had, accordingly, been
declared by the Roman senate very soon after the first embassy had
returned, a fleet and army had been raised and equipped, and the
expedition had sailed. When, therefore, the embassy arrived in Rome,
they found that the war, which it was the object of their mission to
avert, had been declared.
The Romans, however, gave them audience. The embassadors expressed
their willingness to submit to any terms that the senate might propose
for arresting the war. The senate replied that they were willing to
make a treaty with the Carthaginians, on condition that the latter
were to surrender themselves entirely to the Roman power, and bind
themselves to obey such orders as the consuls, on their arrival in
Africa with the army, should issue; the Romans, on their part,
guarantying that they should continue in the enjoyment of their
liberty, of their territorial possessions, and of their laws. As
proof, however, of the Carthaginian honesty of purpose in making the
treaty, and security for their future submission, they were required
to give up to the Romans three hundred hostages. These hostages were
to be young persons from the first families in Carthage, the sons of
the men who were most prominent in society there, and whose influence
might be supposed to control the action of the nation.
The embassadors could not but consider these as very onerous terms.
They did not know what orders the consuls would give them on their
arrival in Africa, and they were required to put the commonwealth
wholly into their power. Besides, in the guarantee which the Romans
offered them, their _territories_ and their _laws_ were to be
protected, but nothing was said of their cities, their ships, or their
arms and munitions of war. The agreement there, if executed, would put
the Carthaginian commonwealth wholly at the mercy of their masters, in
respect to all those things which were in those days most valuable to
a nation as elements of power. Still, the embassadors had been
instructed to make peace with the Romans on any terms, and they
accordingly acceded to these, though with great reluctance. They were
especially averse to the agreement in respect to the hostages.
This system, which prevailed universally in ancient times, of having
the government of one nation surrender the children of the most
distinguished citizens to that of another, as security for the
fulfillment of its treaty stipulations, was a very cruel hardship to
those who had to suffer the separation; but it would seem that there
was no other security strong enough to hold such lawless powers as
governments were in those days, to their word. Stern and rough as the
men of those warlike nations often were, mothers were the same then as
now, and they suffered quite as keenly in seeing their children sent
away from them, to pine in a foreign land, in hopeless exile, for many
years; in danger, too, continually, of the most cruel treatment, and
even of death itself, to revenge some alleged governmental wrong.
Of course, the embassadors knew, when they returned to Carthage with
these terms, that they were bringing heavy tidings. The news, in fact,
when it came, threw the community into the most extreme distress. It
is said that the whole city was filled with cries and lamentations.
The mothers, who felt that they were about to be bereaved, beat their
breasts, and tore their hair, and manifested by every other sign their
extreme and unmitigated woe. They begged and entreated their husbands
and fathers not to consent to such cruel and intolerable conditions.
They could not, and they would not give up their children.
The husbands and the fathers, however, felt compelled to resist all
these entreaties. They could not now undertake to resist the Roman
will. Their army had been well-nigh destroyed in the battle with
Masinissa; their city was consequently defenseless, and the Roman
fleet had already reached its African port, and the troops were
landed. There was no possible way, it appeared, of saving themselves
and their city from absolute destruction, but entire submission to the
terms which their stern conquerors had imposed upon them.
The hostages were required to be sent, within thirty days, to the
island of Sicily, to a port on the western extremity of the island,
called Lilybaeum. Lilybaeum was the port in Sicily nearest to Carthage,
being perhaps at a distance of a hundred miles across the waters of
the Mediterranean Sea. A Roman escort was to be ready to receive them
there and conduct them to Rome. Although thirty days were allowed to
the Carthaginians to select and send forward the hostages, they
determined not to avail themselves of this offered delay, but to send
the unhappy children forward at once, that they might testify to the
Roman senate, by this their promptness, that they were very earnestly
desirous to propitiate their favor.
The children were accordingly designated, one from each of the leading
families in the city, and three hundred in all. The reader must
imagine the heart-rending scenes of suffering which must have
desolated these three hundred families and homes, when the stern and
inexorable edict came to each of them that one loved member of the
household must be selected to go. And when, at last, the hour arrived
for their departure, and they assembled upon the pier, the picture was
one of intense and unmingled suffering. The poor exiles stood
bewildered with terror and grief, about to part with all that they
ever held dear--their parents, their brothers and sisters, and their
native land--to go they knew not whither, under the care of
iron-hearted soldiers, who seemed to know no feelings of tenderness or
compassion for their woes. Their disconsolate mothers wept and groaned
aloud, clasping the loved ones who were about to be torn forever from
them in their arms, in a delirium of maternal affection and
irrepressible grief; their brothers and sisters, and their youthful
friends stood by, some almost frantic with emotions which they did not
attempt to suppress, others mute and motionless in their sorrow,
shedding bitter tears of anguish, or gazing wildly on the scene with
looks of despair; while the fathers, whose stern duty it was to pass
through this scene unmoved, walked to and fro restlessly, in deep but
silent distress, spoke in broken and incoherent words to one another,
and finally aided, by a mixture of persuasion and gentle force, in
drawing the children away from their mothers' arms, and getting them
on board the vessels which were to convey them away. The vessels made
sail, and passed off slowly from the shore. The mothers watched them
till they could no longer be seen, and then returned, disconsolate and
wretched, to their homes; and then the grief and agitation of this
parting scene was succeeded by the anxious suspense which now
pervaded the whole city to learn what new dangers and indignities
they were to suffer from the approaching Roman army, which they knew
must now be well on its way.
The Roman army landed at Utica. Utica was a large city to the north of
Carthage, not far from it, and upon the same bay. When the people of
Utica found that another serious collision was to take place between
Rome and Carthage, they had foreseen what would probably be the end of
the contest, and they had decided that, in order to save themselves
from the ruin which was plainly impending over the sister city, they
must abandon her to her fate, and make common cause with Rome. They
had, accordingly, sent deputies to the Roman senate, offering to
surrender Utica to their power. The Romans had accepted the
submission, and had made this city, in consequence, the port of
debarkation for their army.
As soon as the news arrived at Carthage that the Roman army had landed
at Utica, the people sent deputies to inquire what were the orders of
the consuls, for it will be recollected they had bound themselves by
the treaty to obey the orders which the consuls were to bring. They
found, when they arrived there, that the bay was covered with the
Roman shipping. There were fifty vessels of war, of three banks of
oars each, and a vast number of transports besides. There was, too, in
the camp upon the shore, a force of eighty thousand foot soldiers and
four thousand horse, all armed and equipped in the most perfect
manner.
The deputies were convinced that this was a force which it was in vain
for their countrymen to think of resisting. They asked, trembling, for
the consuls' orders. The consuls informed them that the orders of the
Roman senate were, first, that the Carthaginians should furnish them
with a supply of corn for the subsistence of their troops. The
deputies went back to Carthage with the demand.
The Carthaginians resolved to comply. They were bound by their treaty
and by the hostages they had given, as well as intimidated by the
presence of the Roman force. They furnished the corn.
The consuls, soon after this, made another demand of the
Carthaginians. It was, that they should surrender to them all their
vessels of war. They were more unwilling to comply with this
requisition than with the other; but they assented at last. They hoped
that the demands of their enemies would stop here, and that,
satisfied with having weakened them thus far, they would go away and
leave them; they could then build new ships again when better times
should return.
But the Romans were not satisfied yet. They sent a third order, that
the Carthaginians should deliver up all their arms, military stores,
and warlike machines of every kind, by sending them into the Roman
camp. The Carthaginians were rendered almost desperate by this
requisition. Many were determined that they would not submit to it,
but would resist at all hazards. Others despaired of all possibility
of resisting now, and gave up all as lost; while the three hundred
families from which the hostages had gone, trembled for the safety of
the captive children, and urged compliance with the demand. The
advocates for submission finally gained the day. The arms were
collected, and carried in an immensely long train of wagons to the
Roman camp. There were two hundred thousand complete suits of armor,
with darts and javelins without number, and two thousand military
engines for hurling beams of wood and stones. Thus Carthage was
disarmed.
All these demands, however unreasonable and cruel as the
Carthaginians deemed them, were only preliminary to the great final
determination, the announcement of which the consuls had reserved for
the end. When the arms had all been delivered, the consuls announced
to their now defenseless victims that the Roman senate had come to the
determination that Carthage was to be destroyed. They gave orders,
accordingly, that the inhabitants should all leave the city, which, as
soon as it should be thus vacated, was to be burned. They might take
with them such property as they could carry; and they were at liberty
to build, in lieu of this their fortified sea-port, an inland town,
not less than ten miles' distance from the sea, only it must have no
walls or fortifications of any kind. As soon as the inhabitants were
gone, Carthage, the consuls said, was to be destroyed.
The announcement of this entirely unparalleled and intolerable
requisition threw the whole city into a phrensy of desperation. They
could not, and would not submit to this. The entreaties and
remonstrances of the friends of the hostages were all silenced or
overborne in the burst of indignation and anger which arose from the
whole city. The gates were closed. The pavements of the streets were
torn up, and buildings demolished to obtain stones, which were
carried up upon the ramparts to serve instead of weapons. The slaves
were all liberated, and stationed on the walls to aid in the defense.
Every body that could work at a forge was employed in fabricating
swords, spear-heads, pikes, and such other weapons as could be formed
with the greatest facility and dispatch. They used all the iron and
brass that could be obtained, and then melted down vases and statues
of the precious metals, and tipped their spears with an inferior
pointing of silver and gold. In the same manner, when the supplies of
flax and hempen twine for cordage for their bows failed, the beautiful
sisters and mothers of the hostages cut off their long hair, and
twisted and braided it into cords to be used as bow-strings for
propelling the arrows which their husbands and brothers made. In a
word, the wretched Carthaginians had been pushed beyond the last limit
of human endurance, and had aroused themselves to a hopeless
resistance in a sort of phrensy of despair.
The reader will recollect that, after the battle with Masinissa,
Hasdrubal lost all his influence in Carthage, and was, to all
appearance, hopelessly ruined. He had not, however, then given up the
struggle. He had contrived to assemble the remnant of his army in the
neighborhood of Carthage. His forces had been gradually increasing
during these transactions, as those who were opposed to these
concessions to the Romans naturally gathered around him. He was now in
his camp, not far from the city, at the head of twenty thousand men.
Finding themselves in so desperate an emergency, the Carthaginians
sent to him to come to their succor. He very gladly obeyed the
summons. He sent around to all the territories still subject to
Carthage, and gathered fresh troops, and collected supplies of arms
and of food. He advanced to the relief of the city. He compelled the
Romans, who were equally astonished at the resistance they met with
from within the walls, and at this formidable onset from without, to
retire a little, and intrench themselves in their camp, in order to
secure their own safety. He sent supplies of food into the city. He
also contrived to fit up, secretly, a great many fire-ships in the
harbor, and, setting them in flames, let them drift down upon the
Roman fleet, which was anchored in supposed security in the bay. The
plan was so skillfully managed that the Roman ships were almost all
destroyed. Thus the face of affairs was changed. The Romans found
themselves disappointed for the present of their prey. They confined
themselves to their encampment, and sent home to the Roman senate for
new re-enforcements and supplies.
In a word, the Romans found that, instead of having only to effect,
unresisted, the simple destruction of a city, they were involved in
what would, perhaps, prove a serious and a protracted war. The war
did, in fact, continue for two or three years--a horrible war, almost
of extermination, on both sides. Scipio came with the Roman army, at
first as a subordinate officer; but his bravery, his sagacity, and the
success of some of his almost romantic exploits, soon made him an
object of universal regard. At one time, a detachment of the army,
which he succeeded in releasing from a situation of great peril in
which they had been placed, testified their gratitude by platting a
crown of _grass_, and placing it upon his brow with great ceremony and
loud acclamations.
The Carthaginians did every thing in the prosecution of this war that
the most desperate valor could do; but Scipio's cool, steady, and
well-calculated plans made irresistible progress, and hemmed them in
at last, within narrower and narrower limits, by a steadily-increasing
pressure, from which they found it impossible to break away.
Scipio had erected a sort of mole or pier upon the water near the
city, on which he had erected many large and powerful engines to
assault the walls. One night a large company of Carthaginians took
torches, not lighted, in their hands, together with some sort of
apparatus for striking fire, and partly by wading and partly by
swimming, they made their way through the water of the harbor toward
these machines. When they were sufficiently near, they struck their
lights and set their torches on fire. The Roman soldiers who had been
stationed to guard the machines were seized with terror at seeing all
these flashing fires burst out suddenly over the surface of the water,
and fled in dismay. The Carthaginians set the abandoned engines on
fire, and then, throwing their now useless torches into the flames,
plunged into the water again, and swam back in safety. But all this
desperate bravery did very little good. Scipio quietly repaired the
engines, and the siege went on as before.
But we can not describe in detail all the particulars of this
protracted and terrible struggle. We must pass on to the closing
scene, which as related by the historians of the day, is an almost
incredible series of horrors. After an immense number had been killed
in the assaults which had been made upon the city, besides the
thousands and thousands which had died of famine, and of the exposures
and hardships incident to such a siege, the army of Scipio succeeded
in breaking their way through the gates, and gaining admission to the
city. Some of the inhabitants were now disposed to contend no longer,
but to cast themselves at the mercy of the conqueror. Others, furious
in their despair, were determined to fight to the last, not willing to
give up the pleasure of killing all they could of their hated enemies,
even to save their lives. They fought, therefore, from street to
street, retreating gradually as the Romans advanced, till they found
refuge in the citadel. One band of Scipio's soldiers mounted to the
tops of the houses, the roofs being flat, and fought their way there,
while another column advanced in the same manner in the streets below.
No imagination can conceive the uproar and din of such an assault upon
a populous city--a horrid mingling of the vociferated commands of the
officers, and of the shouts of the advancing and victorious
assailants, with the screams of terror from affrighted women and
children, and dreadful groans and imprecations from men dying maddened
with unsatisfied revenge, and biting the dust in an agony of pain.
The more determined of the combatants, with Hasdrubal at their head,
took possession of the citadel, which was a quarter of the city
situated upon an eminence, and strongly fortified. Scipio advanced to
the walls of this fortification, and set that part of the city on fire
which lay nearest to it. The fire burned for six days, and opened a
large area, which afforded the Roman troops room to act. When the
troops were brought up to the area thus left vacant by the fire, and
the people within the citadel saw that their condition was hopeless,
there arose, as there always does in such cases, the desperate
struggle within the walls whether to persist in resistance or to
surrender in despair. There was an immense mass, not far from sixty
thousand, half women and children, who were determined on going out to
surrender themselves to Scipio's mercy, and beg for their lives.
Hasdrubal's wife, leading her two children by her side, earnestly
entreated her husband to allow her to go with them. But he refused.
There was a body of deserters from the Roman camp in the citadel, who,
having no possible hope of escaping destruction except by desperate
resistance to the last, Hasdrubal supposed would never yield. He
committed his wife and children, therefore, to their charge, and these
deserters, seeking refuge in a great temple within the citadel, bore
the frantic mother with them to share their fate.
Hasdrubal's determination, however, to resist the Romans to the last,
soon after this gave way, and he determined to surrender. He is
accused of the most atrocious treachery in attempting thus to save
himself, after excluding his wife and children from all possibility of
escaping destruction. But the confusion and din of such a scene, the
suddenness and violence with which the events succeed each other, and
the tumultuous and uncontrollable mental agitation to which they give
rise, deprive a man who is called to act in it of all sense and
reason, and exonerate him, almost as much, from moral responsibility
for what he does, as if he were insane. At any rate, Hasdrubal, after
shutting up his wife and children with a furious gang of desperadoes
who could not possibly surrender, surrendered himself, perhaps hoping
that he might save them after all.
The Carthaginian soldiers, following Hasdrubal's example, opened the
gates of the citadel, and let the conqueror in. The deserters were now
made absolutely desperate by their danger, and some of them, more
furious than the rest, preferring to die by their own hands rather
than to give their hated enemies the pleasure of killing them, set the
building in which they were shut up in on fire. The miserable inmates
ran to and fro, half suffocated by the smoke and scorched by the
flames. Many of them reached the roof. Hasdrubal's wife and children
were among the number. She looked down from this elevation, the
volumes of smoke and flame rolling up around her, and saw her husband
standing below with the Roman general--perhaps looking, in
consternation, for his wife and children, amid this scene of horror.
The sight of the husband and father in a position of safety made the
wife and mother perfectly furious with resentment and anger. "Wretch!"
she screamed, in a voice which raised itself above the universal din,
"is it thus you seek to save your own life while you sacrifice ours? I
can not reach you in your own person, but I kill you hereby in the
persons of your children." So saying, she stabbed her affrighted sons
with a dagger, and hurled them down, struggling all the time against
their insane mother's phrensy, into the nearest opening from which
flames were ascending, and then leaped in after them herself to share
their awful doom.
The Romans, when they had gained possession of the city, took most
effectual measures for its complete destruction. The inhabitants were
scattered into the surrounding country, and the whole territory was
converted into a Roman province. Some attempts were afterward made to
rebuild the city, and it was for a long time a place of some resort,
as men lingered mournfully there in huts that they built among the
ruins. It, however, was gradually forsaken, the stones crumbled and
decayed, vegetation regained possession of the soil, and now there is
nothing whatever to mark the spot where the city lay.
* * * * *
War and commerce are the two great antagonistic principles which
struggle for the mastery of the human race, the function of the one
being to preserve, and that of the other to destroy. Commerce causes
cities to be built and fields to be cultivated, and diffuses comfort
and plenty, and all the blessings of industry and peace. It carries
organization and order every where; it protects property and life; it
disarms pestilence, and it prohibits famine. War, on the other hand,
_destroys_. It disorganizes the social state. It ruins cities,
depopulates fields, condemns men to idleness and want, and the only
remedy it knows for the evils which it brings upon man is to shorten
the miseries of its victims by giving pestilence and famine the most
ample commission to destroy their lives. Thus war is the great enemy,
while commerce is the great friend of humanity. They are antagonistic
principles, contending continually for the mastery among all the
organizations of men.
When Hannibal appeared upon the stage, he found his country engaged
peacefully and prosperously in exchanging the productions of the
various countries of the then known world, and promoting every where
the comfort and happiness of mankind. He contrived to turn all these
energies into the new current of military aggression, conquest, and
war. He perfectly succeeded. We certainly have in his person and
history all the marks and characteristics of a great military hero. He
gained the most splendid victories, devastated many lands,
embarrassed and stopped the commercial intercourse which was carrying
the comforts of life to so many thousand homes, and spread, instead of
them, every where, privation, want, and terror, with pestilence and
famine in their train. He kept the country of his enemies in a state
of incessant anxiety, suffering, and alarm for many years, and
overwhelmed his own native land, in the end, in absolute and
irresistible ruin. In a word, he was one of the greatest military
heroes that the world has ever known.
THE END.