Hannibal was a Carthaginian general and statesman of the third century BC. He was one of the most outstanding strategists of the history. He extended the conquests of Amílcar, his father, in the Iberian peninsula and led his armies through the Alps to invade the Italic territories. During the Second Punic War, due to the defeats it inflicted on the Roman Republic, it was about to change the destinies of the world. He died defeated without being able to carry out the purpose that had animated all his life: to defeat Rome and to recover for Carthage the dominion of the Mediterranean.
Han-Baal or Aníbal, is a Punic name that means Don of Baal,
He was born in 247 a.C. In the great African metropolis where all the races and Mediterranean strains were fused: Carthage. He was the firstborn son of Amílcar Barca, the great Carthaginian captain who undertook the conquest of Spain after being defeated by the Romans in the first Punic war. The Barca family, despite belonging to the nobility - descended from Queen Dido, founder of Carthage - was supported in the Senate by the popular party and was a staunch defender of the war against Rome. That is why Hamilcar brought up his children, the "lion cubs" - The other brothers who followed him were Hasdrubal and Magon - in the dangers of war and the abhorrence of the Romans.
Hannibal was only nine years old when his father wanted to accompany him to Spain to learn the office of strategist, and made him swear eternal hatred to Rome. In Hispanic lands he spent his first youth, made his first arms and received an ample education.
After the death of Amílcar's successor, Asdrúbal Janto, the founder of Carthage, Hannibal was elected general of the army and governor of Spain. He was then twenty-six, when he married Himilce, a Spanish princess who would give him his only son, Aspar. Despite the reluctance of the Carthaginian Senate, which was not favorable to his designs and not at all generous to men and money, the young general set out to finish his father's truncated work and annihilate Rome. First he had to consolidate the Punic domain south of the Ebro, conquering several tribes: he dominated the Olcades, crossed the Tagus, subdued the vacceos, and in 219 laid siege to Sagunto, an allied city of Rome, whose capture, after a heroic resistance, meant the beginning of the second Punic war.
Encouraged by the hope of allying himself with the people he encountered in his wake, Hannibal decided to lead his army through a land route. At the head of his Iberian and North African mercenaries-twelve nations and nine different languages-he crossed the Pyrenees, where the Gallic emissaries joined him to guide him through the Alpine mountains. With its 90,000 men, 12,000 horsemen and 40 elephants, it spent 36 days crossing the Alps, one of the most famous military marches of all time, which historians described in legendary tones: the mountain ambushes, the lack of grass in The summits and, above all, the snow that hid the road and made men and cavalry go.
Hannibal crossing the Alps.
Already in the Italian peninsula, on his march through the marshy plains of the center, with an army decimated and demoralized, Hannibal lost an eye and the only elephant that had survived. Even so he succeeded in remaking his hosts, and after defeating the Romans at Trebia and Trasimeno, he defeated them widely in Cannas, despite the numerical inferiority of his men. But Hannibal did not take advantage of the victory: as the Senate continued denying reinforcements, he decided not to attack Rome and retire to Capua. His cause had begun to sink, the alliances he hoped for did not come and his brother Hasdrubal, who was going to succed him with 50,000 men, was defeated. He then dismissed the company and returned to Carthage after thirty-six years of absence. There he tried to negotiate an honorable peace with the Romans, but he was defeated in Zama by Scipio the African in 202, and the treaty that ended the war was very onerous for the Carthaginians.
During the last years of his life, Hannibal proved that he was a statesman as remarkable as a military genius. In his position of sufeta ("magistrate"), he reorganized the hacienda and the recovery of his city. But Rome demanded his head and was forced to flee, first to Syria, to the court of King Antiochus, and finally to Bithynia, where he helped King Prusias. In the face of the strong pressures of the Romans, and fearing to be delivered by the weak Prusias, the great Carthaginian committed suicide with the poison that, according to Livy, had hidden in the barrel of his pen. He was sixty-four years old, and before eating it, the historians say, he said: "Let us free Rome from her fears, since she can not wait for the death of an old man." It was the year 183. Four decades later, their homeland was attacked and devastated by the Roman legions. The fires burned for weeks, and salt was sprinkled on the ashes so that Carthage would not rise again.
