and recross the river, and Hannibal hoped that Sempronius would follow, excited
by the ardor of pursuit. Hannibal was then to have a strong reserve of the army, that had remained all the time in warmth and safety, to come out and attack the
Romans with unimpaired strength and vigor, while the Romans themselves
would be benumbed by the cold and wet, and disorganized by the confusion produced in crossing the stream.
The ambuscade.
Two thousand chosen men.
A part of Hannibal's reserve were to be placed in an ambuscade. There were some meadows near the water, which were covered in many places with tall grass and bushes. Hannibal went to examine the spot, and found that this shrubbery was high enough for even horsemen to be concealed in it. He determined to place a thousand foot soldiers and a thousand horsemen here, the
most efficient and courageous in the army. He selected them in the following manner:
Hannibal's manner of choosing them.
He called one of his lieutenant generals to the spot, explained somewhat of his
design to him, and then asked him to go and choose from the cavalry and the infantry, a hundred each, the best soldiers he could find. This two hundred were then assembled, and Hannibal, after surveying them with looks of approbation and pleasure, said, "Yes, you are the men I want, only, instead of two hundred, I
need two thousand. Go back to the army, and select and bring to me, each of you, nine men like yourselves." It is easy to be imagined that the soldiers were pleased with this commission, and that they executed it faithfully. The whole force thus chosen was soon assembled, and stationed in the thickets above described, where they lay in ambush ready to attack the Romans after they should pass the river.
Hannibal also made arrangements for leaving a large part of his army in his own
camp, ready for battle, with orders that they should partake of food and refreshments, and keep themselves warm by the fires until they should be called
upon. All things being thus ready, he detached a body of horsemen to cross the
river, and see if they could provoke the Romans to come out of their camp and
pursue them.
"Go," said Hannibal, to the commander of this detachment, "pass the stream, advance to the Roman camp, assail the guards, and when the army forms and comes out to attack you, retreat slowly before them back across the river."
Attack on the Roman camp.
Success of Hannibal's stratagem.
Sempronius crosses the river.
Impetuous attack of Hannibal.
The detachment did as it was ordered to do. When they arrived at the camp, which was soon after break of day—for it was a part of Hannibal's plan to bring
the Romans out before they should have had time to breakfast—Sempronius, at
the first alarm, called all the soldiers to arms, supposing that the whole Carthaginian force was attacking them. It was a cold and stormy morning, and the atmosphere being filled with rain and snow, but little could be seen. Column after column of horsemen and of infantry marched out of the camp. The Carthaginians retreated. Sempronius was greatly excited at the idea of so easily driving back the assailants, and, as they retreated, he pressed on in pursuit of them. As Hannibal had anticipated, he became so excited in the pursuit that he
did not stop at the banks of the river. The Carthaginian horsemen plunged into the stream in their retreat, and the Romans, foot soldiers and horsemen together, followed on. The stream was usually small, but it was now swelled by the rain
which had been falling all the night. The water was, of course, intensely cold.
The horsemen got through tolerably well, but the foot soldiers were all thoroughly drenched and benumbed; and as they had not taken any food that morning, and had come forth on a very sudden call, and without any sufficient
preparation, they felt the effects of the exposure in the strongest degree. Still they pressed on. They ascended the bank after crossing the river, and when they
had formed again there, and were moving forward in pursuit of their still flying enemy, suddenly the whole force of Hannibal's reserves, strong and vigorous, just from their tents and their fires, burst upon them. They had scarcely recovered from the astonishment and the shock of this unexpected onset, when
the two thousand concealed in the ambuscade came sallying forth in the storm,
and assailed the Romans in the rear with frightful shouts and outcries.
Situation of the Roman army.
Terrible conflict.
All these movements took place very rapidly. Only a very short period elapsed from the time that the Roman army, officers and soldiers, were quietly sleeping
in their camp, or rising slowly to prepare for the routine of an ordinary day, before they found themselves all drawn out in battle array some miles from their encampment, and surrounded and hemmed in by their foes. The events
succeeded each other so rapidly as to appear to the soldiers like a dream; but very soon their wet and freezing clothes, their limbs benumbed and stiffened, the sleet which was driving along the plain, the endless lines of Carthaginian infantry, hemming them in on all sides, and the columns of horsemen and of elephants charging upon them, convinced them that their situation was one of dreadful reality. The calamity, too, which threatened them was of vast extent, as well as imminent and terrible; for, though the stratagem of Hannibal was very simple in its plan and management, still he had executed it on a great scale, and had brought out the whole Roman army. There were, it is said, about forty thousand that crossed the river, and about an equal number in the Carthaginian
army to oppose them. Such a body of combatants covered, of course, a large extent of ground, and the conflict that ensued was one of the most terrible scenes of the many that Hannibal assisted in enacting.
Utter defeat of the Romans.
The conflict continued for many hours, the Romans getting more and more into
