The Rest Is History - 569. Hannibal: Elephants Cross the Alps (Part 2)

Episode Date: May 28, 2025

Why did Hannibal choose to cross the Alps with his elephants in 218 BC, when invading Rome? Was it a brilliant stratagem or a military disaster? What was the secret to the Roman Republic’s growing military success at this time? And, why did Carthage, under Hannibal’s formidable generalship, believe they were more than capable of taking on the might of Rome?  Join Tom and Dominic as they charge into one of the most legendary military clashes of all time: the outbreak of the Second Punic War, which saw Carthage under Hannibal Barka, take on the Roman Republic, by leading his army all the way over the snowbound Alps, atop elephants…. The Rest Is History Club: Become a member for exclusive bonus content, early access to full series and live show tickets, ad-free listening, our exclusive newsletter, discount book prices on titles mentioned on the pod, and our members’ chatroom on Discord. Just head to therestishistory.com to sign up, or start a free trial today on Apple Podcasts: apple.co/therestishistory. For more Goalhanger Podcasts, head to www.goalhanger.com _______ Twitter: @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Producer: Theo Young-Smith Assistant Producer: Tabby Syrett + Aaliyah Akude  Executive Producers: Jack Davenport + Tony Pastor Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thank you for listening to The Rest is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com and join the club. That is the restishistory.com. Did you know that our Sunday Times bestselling book, The Rest is History Returns, is now out in paperback. From finding out who British history's biggest lad was, to tracing the admittedly hazy ancient origins of Raiders of the Lost Ark, it's filled cover to cover with more curious historical moments than you can crack a lasso at.

Plus puzzles and a pub quiz, The Rest Is History Return, available now in all good bookshops. Way Hannibal in the scales, how many pounds will that peerless general mark up today? This is the man, for whom Africa was too small a continent, though it stretched from the surf-beaten ocean shores of Morocco east to the steamy Nile, to Ethiopian tribesmen and the uncharted habitats of elephants. Now Spain swells his empire, now he surmounts the Pyrenees. Nature throws in his path, high alpine passes, blizzards of snow. But he splits the very rocks asunder, moves mountains with vinegar. Now Italy is his, yet still he drives himself on. So that was the Roman poet Juvenal and he wrote a satire on the vanity

of human wishes. So a classic case of hubris followed by nemesis. We actually heard a version of that, didn't we Tom, a few weeks ago when we did our series about Peter the Great and the rise of Russia. So that was Dr. Johnson that we heard from in 1748. And he was turning juveniles Latin into English and updating the characters. So it was all about Charles the 12th. That's right. Yes. So juvenile there in that passage, very famous, describes Hannibal

crossing the Alps, dissolving boulders and rock with vinegar, invading Italy, but in the long run, he will lose the war to the Romans and end up a defeated fugitive. And Dr. Johnson, in his updating of it, his equivalent of Hannibal was, as you said, Charles XII, the heroic king of Sweden, whose career followed a very similar trajectory to Hannibal's. The greatest general of his age but ultimately defeated by Peter the Great. So on one level, you know, an excellent parallel and a parallel that I hope our listeners will enjoy. However, on another level, I think it doesn't work at all because essentially there are very few people except perhaps you and the Swedes who really really remember Charles XII,

but Hannibal is one of the great brand names of history. So we've already mentioned Vin Diesel, Denzel Washington, they both want to play him, Ian Botham, the great England cricketer who crossed the Alps with an elephant for a charity walk. And that thing of Botham doing his charity walk with an elephant, it's pinpointing the single most famous thing about Hannibal, which is the episode highlighted by Juvenal, which is that he crosses the Alps. And even though Juvenal doesn't mention it, he crosses the Alps with elephants. And I would say, I mean, wouldn't you?

It's not just probably the most famous scene in ancient history. It's one of the most famous scene in ancient history. It's one of the most famous scenes in all of history. Definitely. I can remember having a children's book when I was seven. I can picture where I was when I read this book, where I was in Mrs. Mason's classroom and the illustrations showing Hannibal crossing the Alps with the elephants. They stuck in my mind forever because it's the incongruity of it. And the sort of lurid, extraordinary, colorfulness of this episode. Who would dare to do this to take on the Romans?

March all the way with elephants over the Alps. An incredible scene. Yeah. And so that is what we're going to be looking at today. We will be asking why Hannibal wanted to invade Italy, why he chose to take his army with his elephants and everything across the Alps. I mean, is it the obvious way to go? And you know, is it a brilliant stratagem or is it a disaster? So that's what we'll be finding out today. But before we do that, Tom, remind us where we got to last time. So we ended last time in remind us where we got to last time. So we ended last time in 218 BC on a cliffhanger because after years, months of gathering tension, Carthage and Rome are once again at war. And

the trigger was the city in Spain called Saguntum, which Hannibal as the commander of the Carthage unions in Spain had taken and sacked and the Romans had gone ballistic, hadn't they? Yes. So Hannibal would say this city is within the area of Spain that the Romans have agreed should be Carthaginian and the Romans say yes, but Saguntum is an exception because it was an ally of ours and Hannibal has now sacked it. A Roman embassy goes to Carthage to complain to demand that Hannibal be handed over to them and the Carthaginians refuse. And so the Romans declare war and the Carthaginians say, fine, if you want war, then let's go for it. And the obvious point to make about that is that you don't opt for war unless you think you can win it. So the fact that both sides are happy to return to this Titanic conflict,

both sides think, yeah, you know, we can win this. So we should probably just look at the two sides to kind of work out why first the Romans and then the Carthaginians think that they're going to emerge triumphant from it. So the Romans first, it's important to emphasize that to a degree that is exceptional, even by the standards of ancient states in the Mediterranean, they love a war. I mean, there's a sense that war is the purpose of the Roman Republic. They are used to winning, they expect to win, and they are looking forward when they declare war on Carthage to the consequent profits. And this combines with a sense, kind of almost a mafiosi sense, that they should never accept being disrespected. And I think if you think of the Roman Republic as a kind of massive extortion racket, you're not so

far removed from the truth. So to quote Simon Hornblough, a very distinguished scholar of antiquity in his wonderful book Hannibal and Scipio, modern analysis suggests that the cause of the change attitude towards Carthage was that the Roman officer class needed fresh outlets and theatres for aggression now that control of peninsula Italy was secure So essentially the Republic depends on the oiling of their wheels with money with cash with loot And that's why so many of them are prepared to say yes Let's go to war with Carthage, even though you know, the costs may be Enormous and one reason why they're so keen to do this presumably, you said they think they can win.

I mean, they've got very good reasons that they can win because they have arguably the single most effective and most ruthless killing machine in the ancient world, which is their Roman infantry, right? Well, they definitely have the most formidable infantry. And it's formidable because it's the expression of a highly militarized civic society. A legion, a legio, is the levy of the entire mass of male Roman citizens. And these legions are highly drilled, well armed. They have immense esprit de corps. They go into battle pretty confident that they're going to win.

So very high morale, they're very, very intimidating and frightening. But on top of that, there are just, you know, there are loads of them. The Romans have huge reserves of manpower. And the reason for that is the way that their empire has kind of emerged because the Romans are very generous to defeated enemies who acknowledge their defeat in the way that a mafia boss is generous to the shopkeeper who hands over a proportion of his takings. They are offered protection. So some of the cities in Italy who've been defeated, some are enrolled as Roman citizens, which obviously then swells the numbers of men who can serve in the legions. Others are granted kind of associate forms of citizenship, which again accrue kind of benefits. So the number of citizens that the Romans command are not just the people who

live in Rome, they're increasingly scattered in colonies and allied cities across Italy. And more citizens obviously means larger armies, and larger armies mean more conquests, and more conquests mean more citizens. So it's a very, very virtuous circle. So infantry, very, very proficient. But of course, there's now an added dimension to Roman power, which hadn't previously existed, which is that they've defeated Carthage at sea. So essentially they have control of the shipping lanes, which had never happened before. Carthage's traditional naval supremacy had been destroyed in the first great war with Rome. And remember also that the Romans have extorted control not just of Sicily, which is the obvious launch pad for any Roman invasion of Africa and Carthage, but they've also taken Sardinia and Corsica,

which are the stepping stones to Spain. So the Roman strategy effectively is pretty obvious. It's a two pronged attack. You move legions to Sicily where they can potentially threaten Carthage, and you have Sardinia, you have Corsica, they can be used to launch attacks on Hannibal in Spain. So kind of two pronged, and that requires two commanders. And this is where the Roman constitution kicks in because Rome is a republic. And instead of a monarch, which had been kicked out in 506 BC, there

are now two heads of state. So the powers of the king divided up between two magistrates, each one elected for a year and these magistrates are the consuls. And to have these two consuls, these two elected leaders who officiate in peace, but also in war, obviously suits Rome's military purposes absolutely ideally. And in 218, the first consul is a guy called Tiberius Sempronius Longus, and he is sent south to Sicily. He has 24,000 infantry, he has 2,400 cavalry, he has 160 warships. This is very, very menacing for Carthage across the Straits from Sicily. And so this is what he's doing in the summer of 218. He is preparing essentially to invade Africa. Then there's a second consul, a guy called Publius Cornelius

Scipio, and he is given responsibility for handling Hannibal and potentially launching an invasion of Spain. So he's preparing for that, but then there is another Gallic uprising in northern Italy, the Gauls, who are either side of the Alps and have always been a very menacing foe. They've just recently been pacified by the Romans, but they don't like the Roman yoke, want to throw it off, and there is a rebellion in the early months of 218. Scipio manages to defeat the Gauls and he then sets about raising an expeditionary force that is almost as large as Sempronius is down in Sicily. So Scipio has 22,000 infantry, 2,200 cavalry, 60 ships, but he is delayed in setting off westwards towards Spain and he doesn't leave until August. But you have a definite sense that the wheels of this Roman war machine

are really starting to grind here of just how intimidating a state it is. So delay or no delay, when you list all those things, it seems inevitable that Rome will win. They have the land power of their infantry, they have sea power, they have unparalleled manpower, they have the kind of resources of their civic culture, their militarized civic culture, which is more formidable than that of any other comparable state. So against all that, when you look at all that, you might well say listeners may well be thinking, why would he be so reckless as to take on what is clearly this as history will demonstrate the superpower of the age?

I think partly because he doesn't want to give the Romans an opening in Spain. And partly the reason he doesn't want to give the Romans an opening in Spain is because Spain is the key to his power and to his city's power. So it has provided him with mineral riches. And as the Romans famously know the sinews of war are gold. Hannibal has lots of precious metal. He has probably the most highly trained, the most battle seasoned army anywhere in the Mediterranean. You know, he's absolutely honed it. The other thing he has honed is his own capacities as a general, which he has been in the saddle since childhood. And basically he's backing himself. So he genuinely thinks all this is enough to outweigh the institutional advantages that Rome has. Yes, because he has a strategy and this is a strategy

that I think has clearly been informed by himself, by his father Hamilcar, by all the officer corps in Spain reflecting on the reasons for Carthage's defeat in the first Punic War. They've obviously worked out what the issue is, and they have realized that the key to Rome's military success, the reason that she can grind on no matter how many defeats she suffers, is these incredible reserves of manpower, which are dependent on her control of Italy. And the only way to stop and cut off the Hydra's head, if you like, is to persuade the states and the cities in Italy that are allied to Rome to abandon their alliance, to throw off their subordination to Rome. And the only way that Hannibal has any prospect of doing that is to attack

the Romans where it will hurt, namely in Italy itself, which the Carthaginians had not done or even thought to do in the first Punic war. It's a strategy that is immediately bolder than anything that the Carthaginians have attempted before. And of course, the other benefit of it is that if Hannibal is able to launch a successful invasion of Italy, then it will distract the Romans from invading Spain and crucially Africa. Because even if Hannibal defeats the Roman invasion of Spain, he won't be able

to stop the Romans from invading Africa and blockading Carthage and possibly kind of bringing her to defeat. So I think he, he settled on this as being the only way that he can win. But obviously that's raised a massive problem, which is how is he actually going to get to Italy when Rome controls the seas and has occupied Corsica and Sardinia, because it's not going to be safe for Hannibal to ferry his troops on ships to Italy. So he's got to travel by land.

So now we're approaching the issue of the Alps and the elephants, because if he's going by land, he's going to have to go through Gaul. He's going to have to go across the top of the Pyrenees through Gaul and then back down across the Alps into Italy. So this raises the issue of Gaul, right, which is in between his possession, the Carthaginian possessions in Spain and the Roman Empire in Italy. Who do the Gallic tribes support? They're independent, right? They're not pledged to one side or the other. Well, there are some Gauls in Northern Italy who have been conquered by the Romans. And

obviously the Gauls can read the runes. They know that the Romans are very expansionist. So they're nervous. And so Hannibal thinks, well, there's something here to play with. And so he sends ambassadors early in 218 to negotiate with the various tribes and say, look, can you give me safe passage? I'm on your side.

I'm gonna help defeat the Romans. And a number of his agents do come back and say, yes, the Gauls are kind of interested in this, you know, various tribes, not all of them, but various tribes will offer you help. And they've been scattering, you know, gold and silver to try and facilitate safety of passage. And at the same time, Hannibal has spies in Rome, so he's keeping track of the kind of the various developments there. And this reflects the fact that obviously launching a land invasion of Italy is clearly a massive gamble. And he's reluctant to do it without all the information that he can get. And he goes to great lengths to get that information. And this again,

will be a theme of his strategy. And it's one of the reasons why Roman historians, which Livy is the exemplar later, will basically say he cheats because he's always on top of information. You know, he has this kind of almost supernatural ability to know what is going on. And the Romans see this as basically not being fair, really. I don't think that's really cheating. I think that's just good intelligence, but that's by the by. And he must know that this is a massive gamble, right? He's staking everything, all his, the power that he's built up in Spain. If he's going to launch this attack on Italy through Gaul, you know,

it could go horribly wrong for him. It could. And so not only is it important to get as many kind of neutral tribes to come over to him as possible, but just as importantly, he needs the backing of the gods. So we mentioned in the previous episode, Livy's accusation against Hannibal that he disrespects the gods, he has no time for them, that he scorns them. I mean, this is absolutely not true at all. And in fact, Livy himself records a very momentous example of Hannibal's readiness to show respect to the gods, because he writes about how soon after the fall of Saguntum, so probably in the spring of 218, Hannibal

stages a great review of all his troops. And then having done that, quote Livy, he went to Gardez, which is Cadiz, there to discharge his vows to the Tyrian Hercules and bound himself with further vows for the continued success of his venture. So the Tyrian Hercules is a god called Melkart. Gardez is one of the oldest Phoenician settlements, so Melkart is a god who's been brought there from Tyre in what's now Lebanon. Melkart is the divine patron of Tyre, but also of Hannibal's dynasty. And he probably goes there in the spring, which is a time when Melkart, a bit like Jesus, is supposed to have risen from

the dead. So it's this idea of the great hero coming back to life and the parallels with Carthage returning to her ancient hegemony in the Western Mediterranean is kind of very, very obvious. But there's a further reason why Hannibal would have wanted to identify himself with Melchart and to get Melchart's backing is because there's enormous propaganda value, not just for the Carthaginians, but for the Romans and for the broader Greek world, because Melchart, across the Mediterranean, is universally identified with perhaps the most famous and formidable of all the Greek heroes, who is Hercules. So the strong man with the club and the lion skin. And of course, Hercules is a great slayer of monsters. That's what he does. He roams the world killing monsters.

And one of these adventures, according to Greek mythology, had brought him all the way from Greece to the Atlantic. And this is why the Straits of Gibraltar are known to the Greeks as the Pillars of Hercules. Hercules is meant to have set up pillars there. And then from the Pillars of Hercules, he travels back through Spain, across the Pyrenees, through southern Gaul, over the Alps, and he comes down into Italy

and imposes himself on the Italians and conquers Italy. So you can see why this idea of there being a road of Hercules taken by an ancient hero who travels from Spain to Italy and is a great conqueror. You can see why Hannibal would want to identify himself with that. And I think that although we don't have Carthaginian direct propaganda, there is a garbled story in Livy that enables you to kind of get a handle on what Hannibal might have been doing with these kind of stories and myths. So the story in Livy is that Hannibal is coming back from Gardez where he's been making sacrifice to Melchart, aka Hercules, and he's leading his army along the road of Hercules from New

Carthage up towards the Ebro, which is the frontier of Carthaginian Spain. And then he has a dream. In this dream, he saw a man of godlike appearance who claimed he had been sent by Jupiter, the king of the gods, to guide Hannibal to Italy. And this godlike man tells Hannibal, don't look behind you, but Hannibal can't help himself. And he sees behind him a snake of an amazing size sliding along and causing massive destruction to trees and bushes, a deafening thunderstorm following in its wake.

Hannibal asked the young man what the monstrous apparition was and what the portent meant. He was informed that it was the destruction of Italy and that he should simply proceed on his journey, asking no further questions and leaving destiny shrouded in darkness. And people may be wondering, well, you know, what on earth is all this about? There's a brilliant essay by Richard Miles who demonstrates, I think conclusively, that the story originated with Hannibal and his propagandists and that the unnamed supernatural guide, this young man who appears to Hannibal in the dream is Hercules and that the monster that he sees is the Hydra and the Hydra has these great necks, you cut off the neck and another one grows back. And it's very like

the Roman legions. And in fact, Pyrrhus, the king of Epirus, who had invaded Italy and introduced the Romans and the Carthaginians to elephants, so a few decades before the first Punic War, he had explicitly compared the Roman Republic to the Hydra. And I think Hannibal and his propagandists are making kind of play with that. Hannibal is being told, you will kill the Hydra, you will be able to cut off all its necks and it will become just a kind of bleeding stump. Okay, so with that kind of propaganda, you get a sense of Hannibal's mission, his kind of ideological enterprise. But we also have some sense of the logistics, don't we? The kind of muscle

with which he thinks he can win. Because some decades later, a Greek historian, Polybius, saw a tablet on which it was written how many troops Hannibal had brought with him. 90,000 infantry, 12,000 cavalry, and 37 elephants. So this is a pretty formidable force by, I mean, a very formidable force by the standards of the ancient world. And this is the sort of the, this is the cream of the kind of Carthaginian military elite who are traveling with him, right? Yes. So these men, most of them are not actually Carthaginians.

As you said, the highest ranking officers are, they're very loyal to Hannibal. They've been battle forged by serving alongside him. They've been encouraged by Hannibal and by Hannibal's predecessors, always to show initiative, always to show independence of action. There's a legacy there, I think, of Hannibal's early record as a cavalry commander, you know, an emphasis on seizing the moment by the scruff of the neck and always taking opportunities where they arise. And I guess the most celebrated of these officers is a man called Mahabal, who at the siege of Surguntum after Hannibal got wounded in the thigh, he deputized for him. He may have been Hannibal's nephew. He seems to have kind of, if not maybe

married into the barked family, and he will prove himself a very great cavalry commander like Hannibal himself. And so too will Hannibal's youngest brother, Mago, who like Hannibal has been raised by his father to be a very, very proficient military operator. So again, it's like the cadre of young men around Alexander. Hannibal's officers are incredibly battle-hardened. I mean, very, very effective as time will prove. But the mass of Hannibal's army, these are not as Rome's is a kind of citizen army. They are by and large either people conscripted from native peoples, so Libyans from Africa, Iberians from Spain, or mercenaries. So very, very multicultural. And traditionally,

I mean I always remember the books I read about this as a child, that this was cast as a real problem. That the Carthaginian army was a babel of different tongues, unlike the Romans who all spoke the same language and shared the same civic ideals. But I think it's pretty clear that actually the multicultural quality of Hannibal's army is actually, it helps him. Diversity is its strength in that sense, because it's so much more varied. And because all the various troops that he's recording from the various elements of the Western Mediterranean, they each have specializations.

So the Iberian infantry, for instance, very famed for their swordsmanship. And the Romans actually, in the long run, will adopt the Spanish sword, the gladius, stabbing sword, used to eviscerate, cut open the guts. The Iberians also have the Falcata, which is a kind of elegant curved sword used for cutting and again for thrusting. So very, very fearsome bodies of swordsmen.

Then you have the Balearic slingers. And when I was a child, I was obsessed by Balearic slingers. I just loved the word Balearic. And I guess for lots of people listening, Balearic will kind of sum up images of Bitha and clubs and things. Probably not you Dominic. And then you have cavalry from Numidia in North Africa, kind of Berbers, I guess. So they live in what today would be Morocco, Algeria.

And they essentially, a bit like the Mongols, live on horseback. And it was noted of them that they use no bridle or bit and rode bareback, but they almost like centaurs, they just kind of live on their horses. And these are easily the best like cavalry in the world. So you have incredible variety there, much more varied military forces than the Romans can command. And of course, most famously of all, Hannibal's expedition has elephants. And we mentioned how Pyrrhus, the king of the Pyrrhus, the Greek king, had brought them

over to Italy, but he's inspired by the example of Alexander who had met them in India. He had when he was fighting Porus. When he's fighting Porus, yes. And since that time, elephants have become the most fashionable thing that any self-respecting kind of Greek warlord would want. I think the reason for that is that they are so expressive of sheer power. They terrorize. You're an infantry man standing there, you have a massive great elephant rushing at you. I mean, it's overwhelming. And so if you have kind of gargantuan ambitions as Greek generals and kings tend to you can see why an elephant is the perfect embodiment of that. And on that it's interesting

that Rome, which is a Republic, never really, they never employ elephants. It doesn't really seem to have meshed with their tactics, but the Carthaginians do use them because their armies are much more kind of mix and match. You take a bit of this, you take a bit of that. And they have been using them since at least the 260s BC. So by Hannibal's time, they're pretty used to, you know, deploying them tactically. They know how they can be used. And people may be wondering, where do these elephants come from? There is certainly one elephant in Hannibal's expedition that comes from India because he is called Cyrus.

He has one tusk, apparently kind of a real bruiser and he's called Cyrus, which means the Syrian, obviously, because he's come from the East, so ultimately from India. But most of the elephants in Hannibal's train seem to have been brought from the Atlas mountains, from the coast of Morocco. And they obviously there were no elephants there now, they've gone extinct. But back then there were quite a lot.

They were native back then, they're not brought from across the Sahara. No, so they're from North Africa. And they're slightly smaller than the Indian elephants. So eight feet tall rather than nine feet tall. And they unlike Cyrus where you can strap it, so like the elephant and castle, you can put a castle on the back, like in return of the king, those massive elephants. An elephant. I mean, they're not quite as big as that. But Hannibal is able to ride on Cyrus, you

know, because you can put a kind of great castle on Cyrus's back, but you can't put them on the backs of the smaller North African elephants. So in a sense, the elephants themselves are the towers. They are kind of great. They're like tanks, I suppose. And again, I think one of the reasons why Hannibal is so keen to take them is for the propagandistic purposes as well as the purely military ones, because it's expressive of kind of a divine ambition. I

mean, who would think of taking elephants across the Pyrenees, across the Alps? I mean, you know, unheard of. Well, Hercules would. That's the kind of thing he would do. Yes. So Hannibal wants to, he wants to, to awe as well as shock, I think. So the question, Tom, can he actually do it? Now Hercules had done it, but he was the son of Zeus. He was, yes. Hannibal is only the son of Hamilcar Barker. So the big question is, can he actually get all these elephants and all of these troops

and all of these slingers paid with women and these people with their elaborate swords. Can he get them across school, up into the Alps and down again the other side? It's one of the most extraordinary enterprises in all history. And after the break, we will find out whether or not he does it. It's Truck Month at GMC. Tackle the open road with added confidence in a 2025 Sierra 1500 Pro Graphite at 0% financing for up to 72 months. With an available 5.3 liter V8 engine, 20 inch high gloss black painted aluminum wheels, off-road suspension with available 2 inch factory installed lift kit, plus a towing capacity of up to 13,200 pounds, you'll be ready for anything this Truck Month. Truck Month is on now. Ask your GMC dealer

for details. Welcome back to The Rest Is History. So we're in the late summer of 218 BC. Hannibal has set off from Spain across the Pyrenees with this mighty army and he has crossed into Gaul and Tom, by the time the summer is nearing its end, he is halfway to Italy. But by this point he's already started to lose a lot of his men, hasn't he? What's going on? Why are they falling away? Yeah, so it's estimated by ancient sources and I think they're generally held to be pretty reliable. So the 90,000 who had infantry who'd left new Carthage, about 50,000 remain. And of the 12,000 cavalry, about 9,000 remain.

And the reason for that is that the going has been quite tough. So Carthage's rule extends to the Ebro, but from the Ebro up to the Pyrenees is, you know, it's quite a tough journey. So they've got to defeat people along their way. There's obviously casualties, then you need to set up garrisons. There have probably also been desertions, you know, if there are people from Iberia who don't particularly want to go, they can just kind of melt away. And this is kind of potentially alarming, not just because the numbers have been depleted, but also because as you said, it's now kind

of later than Hannibal would ideally want. It's a kind of invading, you know, Russia in early September kind of thing. Probably not what you want to be doing. However, the reason that Hannibal carries on isn't just kind of mad recklessness. It's because he still has confidence in his ability to execute his plan. The forces that he has with him now, those who have not deserted, those who have not been kind of set up to secure his communication links with Spain, these are the best of the best. These are absolutely committed and loyal to him. And so he says, let's go for it. So he's crossed the Pyrenees. He's now into into southern Gaul, southern France, and there are two immediate challenges

confronting him. The first is where are the Romans? So what's happened to Scipio? Scipio has got his legions, he's got his cavalry, he's got his ships. Hannibal knows that he'll be sailing westwards. Will he be going to Sardinia? Will he be going to Spain? Will he be going to South Gaul? What's he going to be doing? No news of him as yet. Then there's the other issue, which is how do you cross the river Rhone, which is massive? There are no bridges. It's a real problem.

It's a very, very broad river. And its lower reaches are controlled by the Greek city of Massilia. So this is what will become Marseille. And Massilia is an ally of Rome. And so Hannibal can't rely on the Massilians to allow him to use their bridges. So he has to go up river to find a

suitable crossing point. And this is very difficult because it's the land around the lower reaches of the Rhône, it's a combination of marsh and scrub, so not pleasant at all. So they keep going up the river Rhône for four days from the sea and finally he arrives at a place where he thinks, yeah, this might be possible, we could probably make a crossing here. And it's probably near the site of what a century later will be the Roman foundation of Arles. Very handsome city. Fantastic amphitheatre. Yes. So very, very Roman, but there's nothing there at this point. And it's still pretty tricky because the river is still very wide, the current

is quite swift. And worst of all, on the opposite side, there is a Gallic tribe called the Volcae, who have not pocketed Hannibal's gold, or if they have pocketed Hannibal's gold, they have betrayed their promise that they will give him a safe crossing and they have massed along the far bank and are determined not to give the Carthaginians a welcome at all when they make the crossing. So these are real challenges and we have fortunately what is probably an eyewitness account, probably from the Spartan Sossilus who was accompanying Hannibal on his trip and if it is Sossilus he writes, Hannibal used every resource to make friends

with the natives living by the bank, and he bought up all their canoes and boats, of which there were a large number, since many of the inhabitants of the Rhone Valley are engaged in seaborne trade. He also obtained from them the kind of logs which are suitable for building canoes so that within two days he had mustered an innumerable quantity of small ferry boats. And you can see there that on this side of the bank, clearly his gold and his agents have worked because he's, he's being provided with the way with all to get across the river, but he's still got this problem of the Volcae. How's you going to deal with them?

So he waits five days past since he's arrived on the bank, the Volcae lined up on the far bank. And then on the morning of the sixth day, Hannibal standing on the bank, the Volcae lined up on the far bank, and then on the morning of the sixth day Hannibal standing on the bank and he's looking upriver and he sees rising from there, from a point upriver, a plume of smoke. And this is clearly a signal because he then gives orders for his troops to start making the crossing. And again to quote this eyewitness, the large boats were placed the furthest upstream and directly against the current and the lighter ones below them so that the heavier craft should absorb the main force of the water and the canoes be less exposed to risk in crossing. So very, very kind of sensible. And the horses have to swim on either side of the large boats with a man on each side kind of keeping

hold of the reins to stop them from kind of being swept away on the currents. And it's all very exciting. The boats are racing each other. There's kind of lots of cheering, lots of military banter, Dominic. Right. Love it. And meanwhile, of course, the Volcae are waiting. So very, very tense. What is going to happen when the prowess of the Carthaginian boats and canoes start crunching up against the gravel of the far shore. Yeah, exciting. Very exciting. Well, what happens is a stunning twist of the kind that will increasingly come to be associated with Hannibal's campaigns.

Because just as the Carthaginian vessels start landing on the far bank, the Volcae are alarmed to hear on their right flank, a sudden pounding of hooves and wild Numidian war cries. Because what Hannibal has done is he has sent his Numidian cavalry, the best light cavalry in the world upriver to make a secret crossing higher up. Because of course they can gallop up there, make the crossing and then gallop back down. And that plume of smoke that he'd seen was the signal that the Numidians were ready to pounce.

And the Volcae are taken completely by surprise. Their camp is burnt. They they they run away. The Carthaginian army is able to make to forge a bridgehead and the men are able to get across. And you know how good I am on bridges. A bridge is going too far and all that kind of thing. Here, there's no need for a bridge because they've got

rafts and boats and things. There is of course one final challenge, which is how do you get an elephant onto a boat? Not something I've ever really contemplated, but how do you do it? I'm curious. Well, you build a succession of massive rafts and you then lash them together and you kind of push them out into the river and then you cover them with earth so that they seem to just be part of the river bank so that the elephants don't realise as they're being led from the bank onto the rafts that

they're moving onto something that is floating on the river. And then having done that, you get them onto the kind of the far rafts, you cut the moorings, the rafts start going across the river and the elephants at this point, they panic, but they're calmed by their mahouts, the guys who steer them. And some of these are thrown off into the river and they drown, which is very sad. The elephants, all 34 of them, they make it across. That's good news because no one really cares about the mahouts, but everybody cares about the elephants. Of course. So this is great drama. They've made their way across the Rhone. That's another

physical barrier crossed. And then the next day there's further drama because news reaches Hannibal that Scipio and his legions have docked in Massilia in Marseille. And so Hannibal sends a squad of Numidians down the river to Reconnoiter to find out the lay of the land. Scipio has sent a squad of horsemen up the river to find out what Hannibal is doing. The two forces of cavalry meet, the Numidians get the worst of it, but most of them manage to get away. And they come back to Hannibal and say, the Romans are, they're just down the river.

What do you want to do? And this is a crucial decision for Hannibal. Does he fight the Romans in Gaul or does he carry on over the Alps? He knows that he outnumbers Scipio. Scipio doesn't have as many troops and also Hannibal would back himself to defeat Scipio, I think.

But the danger obviously is that if he fights a battle and it's already getting late in the summer, then it will be very difficult for him having done that to advance into Italy and secure winter quarters before the end of the campaigning season. And he can't risk being stranded in hostile territory that isn't even Italy or winter. I mean, that would be a disaster for him.

What would be so terrible about being in Gaul though? Because Gaul, would he not be the master of Gaul then? No, he wouldn't be the master of Gaul because he's not interested in conquering it. His reason for going to Italy is to get the backing of the subject peoples there to Rome. So he needs to be on the spot, his agents working, getting the Gauls in Northern Italy, hopefully getting some of the cities in lower down Italy, to start moving over to him. Because if that doesn't work, then the whole strategy is not going to work. He can't defeat Rome on his own. He needs to win, get Italian and Gallic backing.

So he has to be physically on Italian soil. And so essentially this makes his mind up for him. But what finally I think kind of sways him is that ambassadors come from a Gallic tribe called the Boii who live on the far side of the Alps. So in Italy, who was subject to the Romans, and they're desperate for his support. And this is a really good sign because it suggests that his strategy, you know, has a good prospect of working. And the Boii, these Gallicum envoys, they say, we can show you a way up over the Alps so that you won't have to, you know, go on the Roman roads that skirt the Alps. You'll be able to come down in the Romans

rear. And of course, this is what Hercules had done. And I think Hannibal recognizes that the propagandistic impact of taking his army, taking his elephants over the Alps, of emerging in the Romans rear is going to be stupefying. And again, this has to be part of his strategy because he has to overwhelm and awe the Italians as well as the Romans. He needs to win them over. So he thinks, yeah, let's go for it. Hell of a risk though, Tom. I mean, hell of a risk. It absolutely is a risk, but he's the heir of Hercules. He's a gambler.

But it's not an unreasonable gamble, I think. I mean, it's playing for high stakes, but it's not a wholly mad gamble. And so three days after Scipio's cavalry have had the brush with the Numidians, Scipio himself at the head of his army arrives at the place where Hannibal had crossed the Rhône and he discovers that the Carthaginians have gone. And to quote Polybius, this Greek historian who you mentioned earlier, Scipio was astounded to find that the enemy had already pressed on as he had felt certain that they would never venture to advance into Italy

by this route, partly because of their numbers and partly because of the fickle nature of the barbarians who inhabited the region. However, when he learned that they had taken this risk, he hurried back to his ships and immediately began to embark his forces. So he's gonna take his ships back to Italy so that he will be ready to meet Hannibal when Hannibal comes down from the Alps, if he comes down from the Alps.

So Hannibal has gone up into the Alps. Now here we come to the kind of question that military historians and people of that ilk spend decades investigating. They really care. You know, it's like the classic thing we said in our 1066 series, which side of the field were they standing on? And some people really care about this. And I think one of the defining things about the rest is history is that ultimately we couldn't care less. What route he takes to the Alps. He goes up into the Alps anyway, and there are all kinds of strange things that people have done, particularly to do with horse manure, that they study to try to work out which way Hannibal went.

Yeah, so there's a kind of microbe, which is found in horse and, interestingly, elephant manure, and it can survive for thousands of years in soil. So there are scientists going through mountain passes in the Alps, looking basically for elephant shit. Somewhere in the Alps right now, there's a man on his hands and knees desperately trying to find incredibly old horse manure, right? Personally, I don't think it particularly matters which route Hannibal takes, the precise route. And you don't need to know to feel awed by the scale of what he attempts.

Right. So when Vin Diesel takes you on as the historical consultant for his film, and you say, oh, it doesn't matter. Yeah, you can do whatever you like. And I think it doesn't matter because it doesn't matter which precisely they are because the basic outline we know we can be fairly confident is accurate because again, I think it derives from eyewitness accounts. And again, chiefly this guy, Sosilis of Sparta, Hannibal's Greek tutor. And they were used by this guy, Polybius, who we've already mentioned, this Greek historian, who is by far the best and most reliable historian of Hannibal's campaigns. And he himself went to the Alps, he tried to trace Hannibal's route. So Polybius by the standards of ancient

history, certainly compared to Livy, is very reliable. And so we will be drawing on Polybius by the standards of ancient history, certainly compared to Livy, is very reliable and so we will be drawing on Polybius' account of Hannibal's crossing the Alps essentially to tell the story of what then happens. So according to Polybius, Hannibal's crossed the Rhône and he continues kind of northwards along its eastern bank. so he's still heading upwards into Gaul. And four days after leaving the crossing point, he arrives in a territory where there's a kind of fratricidal squabble between two brothers who were trying to make themselves king of this tribe. Hannibal backs one of the two brothers,

puts him on the throne of the tribe, and wins the gratitude of the victor unsurprisingly and so Hannibal is then able to rest his men to source food to source new weapons to to get alpine clothing you know go to the the alpine shops and get ski gear and all that all that kind of stuff and then having done that he then swings eastwards towards the alps. And it's here that he first runs into trouble because he is now passing into the lands of a very hostile and very aggressive Gallic tribe called the Alabrogues. And to begin with, because the Alabrogues are terrified of the Carthaginian cavalry and elephants, they merely shadow the intruders. So you can

imagine Hannibal and his men riding along and looking up and seeing shadowy figures of Gallic horsemen up on the heights. But then 10 days into his Eastwards march from the Rhône, they start to climb and ahead of them lie the Alps. And Polybius describes the Alps as seeming to rise above the landscape like a walled citadel above a city. So this sense of mighty natural battlements blocking their path, I mean very, very intimidating. And as they climb following the road, so they find that they're being funneled along a valley. I mean, obviously to climb the Alps, you almost inevitably going to be finding yourself funneling along a valley.

And the more it closes in, so obviously the longer Hannibal's line starts to become, because there's less and less space for people to march abreast. So ultimately it's maybe five miles, six miles long. And in due course the valley tapers and Hannibal finds himself at the gateways of what is now a very narrow gorge. And unsurprisingly, he pauses here because narrow gorges and hostile tribesmen are not a good combination. And of course, Hannibal is a great man for intelligence, so he sent scouts ahead of him. And these scouts now come back. And they bring very alarming news, namely that the alabrogues have taken up position along the heights overlooking the gorge because it's a perfect spot for an ambush. And Polybius comments, if the alabrogues had only kept their plan secret, they would have

completely destroyed the Carthaginian army, but they haven't because Hannibal is too good a man at sourcing intelligence for that to happen. Unfortunately, as ever, Hannibal has a stratagem. So as soon as it's dark, he gives orders for masses of campfires to be lit all over the kind of the terrain that the army is occupying to make it as big a show as possible. And so the Alabrogues see this, they assume, okay, well, they've bedded down for the night, we don't need to worry about this. And so they clock off and go back home for the night. Hannibal, meanwhile, has a crack squad of handpicked men. And up they go into the heights and they seize control of the very heights that the Alabrogues had been occupying. And this means that when the Alabrogues come back in the morning, oh no, duh,

we've been tricked by this great general. And obviously, as Polybius says, this means that Hannibal has spared his army from the absolute worst of the ambush that otherwise would have happened. But it doesn't mean that the Carthaginian army is entirely safe because essentially the baggage train is just too tempting.

And so various warriors start kind of making swoops down, pouncing down and Polybius has a very vivid account of what it was like. He says the road leading up to the pass was not any narrow and uneven but flanked with precipices and so the least movement of disorder in the line caused many of the animals to be forced over the edge with their loads. So these aren't the elephants, it's the mules and also the horses and the pack animals. And Polybius writes that in their fear, they would wheel around and collide with the baggage mules. These are the cavalry horses while others rushing on ahead with thrust aside anything that stood in their way on the narrow path and so through the whole line into disarray. So you're starting to get men falling off

the precipice as well. Ah, splat. Is that what the noise they make? That's exactly what it sounded like. Right. But fortunately, Hannibal is up on the heights. He's got his elite squad of hand-picked men. They're able to swoop down and stabilize the situation to inflict slaughter on the, uh, the Alabrogas who are doing the ambush. And so finally, when they emerge from the gorge, the disaster isn't as total as it might have been. And Hannibal is able to lead a

squad of cavalry onwards up the roads and they find the the deserted stronghold of the Alabrogues and it's deserted because they've all gone off to kind of nick, you know, stuff from the Carthaginian baggage train. And here he finds lots of his own men. He finds pack animals who've been taken prisoner and he is able again to boost the number of cattle and crops. And also, you know, there are large storehouses, cattle, crops, all this kind of stuff. So again, he's able to kind of boost his supplies. So it's not all bad. So they rest for a day, then they keep going and they meet another tribe who are a little bit more friendly, who bring them wreaths and stuff. They give him some hostages

and then they keep going for another couple of days and then I mean this is all very reminiscent of Alexander the Great actually marching through Persia through the Zagros mountains and stuff endless kind of gorges and defiles and people waiting for you at the top. Or Cortes in Mexico. Yeah. And once again, there is another ambush prepared. But this time they're going to be attacked from behind, right? The Gauls are going to attack them in the rear. So talk us through that. Yeah. So again, to quote Polybius. So again, he says that if this ambush had been successful, then Hannibal's army would have been

wiped out. But that Hannibal, you know, he's nervous of what might happen. And so he'd stationed his mule train in his cavalry at the head of the column and he'd put the heavy infantry at the rear. So that means that when the barbarians, the Gauls, attack in the rear, they're not able to plunder, they're met with the stabbing swords of the Spaniards and the spears of the Libyans. And so Polybius writes, the disaster was less serious than it might have been, but even so a great number of men pack animals and horses perished in the attack. And the other thing that enables Hannibal to stabilize the situation is that the elephants come into their own at this point. The ghouls have never

seen anything like them. They're much too scared to approach the stretch of the column where the elephants are marching. So actually, the presence of the elephants on this march over the Alps, it redounds to Hannibal's benefit. It does turn out to have been militarily advantageous. And in time, the attacks of these Gallic warriors start to fade away. The sallies by their warriors cease and the boulders that every so often had been kind of rolling down the side of the hill pushed down by the people ambushing the Carthaginians, they stop dropping and the attacks by the natives of the Alps essentially come to an end.

But clearly this has been a hell of a, you know, Alpine walks go. This has been a horror show. Hannibal's men are in a miserable state. They're shattered. They're demoralized. They've lost friends and it's starting to get cold because it's autumn by now. They've been climbing the Alps for nine days. So the altitude's about 2000 feet. And so it starts to snow. And this is very bad news for Hannibal's men, some of whom may, you know, start getting frostbite, but it's also bad news for the horses and particularly for the elephants, because there's nothing really for them to eat up there. So it's a terrible situation. But then at last, Hannibal is able to say, we have reached the summit.

And he pitches camp on the summit of the pass and he waits there for two days for all the various stragglers to join him. And they camp out amid the snow, gales screaming all around them. It must have been terrible. But Hannibal is so tough, he doesn't care and obviously sets an example for the rest of his men in a way that Vin Diesel, Denzel Washington, that would do as well. Or Vince Vaughan. Yeah, or Vince Vaughan or indeed Ian Botham. But he knows it's not enough for him just to kind of sleep out in the open like everyone else is. He knows he also needs to pep his men up. And so the way he does this according to Polybius is that

he gathers all his men around him and he gestures out to the Po Valley, Italy, northern Italy, stretching out below him and he says, there it is, Rome awaits us. And there is a problem with this, which actually there isn't a pass from which it's possible to look out from the summit and see Italy. That's terrible pedantry from you, Tom. That's shocking pedantry. When you have your meeting with Vin Diesel, don't say this to him. No, I'm not going to say it. He will want to hear that there is such a pass.

But I think the gist of the story is true. What Hannibal is telling his men is that down there in Italy, we don't have to climb anymore. We can go down now. We have allies waiting to flock to our cause. The lands down there are rich in gold and food and women. And then Polybius tells us he pointed in the direction of Rome itself. So Italy awaits, but obviously there are all kinds of questions still hanging over this expedition. How easy will the descent be? Because often, you know, a descent can be at least as challenging as an ascent. What are the Romans? Where have they gone? What battles will Hannibal face? Will he make it to Rome? And Dominic, how can people find out about that?

Well, there's only one way to have those questions answered and that is to hear the next episode right away. Now the extraordinary innovation that we are pioneering, rolling out, aren't we? Yeah, we're rolling it out, I think it's fair to say, is we've founded a club, would you believe, it's called the Rest is History Club. And the great benefit of this club, well one benefit among many, is that you can hear all the episodes of this series right now. So if you're not already a member of the Rest is History Club, if you're not an early adopter,

then you can sign up at therestishistory.com and you can hear right now what happened when Hannibal came out of the Alps, the great battles, the great dramas that followed. If for some peculiar and perverse reason of your own you don't want to join this club, then you can hear what happened on Monday. But why would Earth would you wait? Join the Restless History Club and find out what happened next in the extraordinary story of Hannibal. Bye bye. Bye bye. Hi everybody, you're still here. Right at the end of the episode, I'm very impressed by your commitment. But listen, I have a question for you. I want to ask you something in confidence.

Do you sometimes listen to the adverts on these episodes? And do you sometimes think, do you know what, I wish that the listeners to this podcast, I wish they were listening to an advert about my brand rather than the other stuff that Tom and Dominic are promoting on here. If you have thought that, there is of course only one way to find out what that would be like. You can disrupt the procession of adverts. You could be the next HSBC premiere or the many other tremendous

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