Hannibal, when he found that his soldiers were afraid to proceed, called the
leading portions of his army together, and made them an address. He remonstrated with them for yielding now to unworthy fears, after having successfully met and triumphed over such dangers as they had already incurred.
"You have surmounted the Pyrenees," said he, "you have crossed the Rhone. You are now actually in sight of the Alps, which are the very gates of access to the country of the enemy. What do you conceive the Alps to be? They are nothing
but high mountains, after all. Suppose they are higher than the Pyrenees, they do not reach to the skies; and, since they do not, they can not be insurmountable.
They are surmounted, in fact, every day; they are even inhabited and cultivated, and travelers continually pass over them to and fro. And what a single man can
do, an army can do, for an army is only a large number of single men. In fact, to a soldier, who has nothing to carry with him but the implements of war, no way
can be too difficult to be surmounted by courage and energy."
Its effects.
His army follows.
After finishing his speech, Hannibal, finding his men reanimated and encouraged
by what he had said, ordered them to go to their tents and refresh themselves, and prepare to march on the following day. They made no further opposition to
going on. Hannibal did not, however, proceed at once directly toward the Alps.
He did not know what the plans of Scipio might be, who, it will be recollected,
was below him, on the Rhone, with the Roman army. He did not wish to waste
his time and his strength in a contest with Scipio in Gaul, but to press on and get across the Alps into Italy as soon as possible. And so, fearing lest Scipio should strike across the country, and intercept him if he should attempt to go by the most direct route, he determined to move northwardly, up the River Rhone, till
he should get well into the interior, with a view of reaching the Alps ultimately by a more circuitous journey.
Scipio moves after Hannibal.
Sad vestiges.
It was, in fact, the plan of Scipio to come up with Hannibal and attack him as soon as possible; and, accordingly, as soon as his horsemen, or, rather, those who were left alive after the battle had returned and informed him that Hannibal and his army were near, he put his camp in motion and moved rapidly up the river.
He arrived at the place where the Carthaginians had crossed a few days after they had gone. The spot was in a terrible state of ruin and confusion. The grass and herbage were trampled down for the circuit of a mile, and all over the space
were spots of black and smouldering remains, where the camp-fires had been kindled. The tops and branches of trees lay every where around, their leaves withering in the sun, and the groves and forests were encumbered with limbs, and rejected trunks, and trees felled and left where they lay. The shore was lined far down the stream with ruins of boats and rafts, with weapons which had been
lost or abandoned, and with the bodies of those who had been drowned in the passage, or killed in the contest on the shore. These and numerous other vestiges remained but the army was gone.
Perplexity of Scipio.
He sails back to Italy.
There were, however, upon the ground groups of natives and other visitors, who
had come to look at the spot now destined to become so memorable in history.
From these men Scipio learned when and where Hannibal had gone. He decided
that it was useless to attempt to pursue him. He was greatly perplexed to know
what to do. In the casting of lots, Spain had fallen to him, but now that the great enemy whom he had come forth to meet had left Spain altogether, his only hope
of intercepting his progress was to sail back into Italy, and meet him as he came down from the Alps into the great valley of the Po. Still, as Spain had been assigned to him as his province, he could not well entirely abandon it. He accordingly sent forward the largest part of his army into Spain, to attack the forces that Hannibal had left there, while he himself, with a smaller force, went down to the sea-shore and sailed back to Italy again. He expected to find Roman
forces in the valley of the Po, with which he hoped to be strong enough to meet
Hannibal as he descended from the mountains, if he should succeed in effecting
a passage over them.
Hannibal approaches the Alps.
In the mean time Hannibal went on, drawing nearer and nearer to the ranges of
snowy summits which his soldiers had seen for many days in their eastern horizon. These ranges were very resplendent and grand when the sun went down
in the west, for then it shone directly upon them. As the army approached nearer and nearer to them, they gradually withdrew from sight and disappeared, being
concealed by intervening summits less lofty, but nearer. As the soldiers went on, however, and began to penetrate the valleys, and draw near to the awful chasms
and precipices among the mountains, and saw the turbid torrents descending from them, their fears revived. It was, however, now too late to retreat. They
pressed forward, ascending continually, till their road grew extremely precipitous and insecure, threading its way through almost impassable defiles, with rugged
