# Heresies of Sea Power/Part 1/Chapter 3

III
THE SECOND PUNIC WAR
In the seventeen years that followed the peace, Carthage had first to cope with revolted mercenaries, whose rebellious instincts had led largely to peace being made. Those at home were eventually crushed, but others in Sardinia transferred their allegiance to Rome, and the expostulations of Carthage led to nothing but a threat of renewed war and the exaction of a still further indemnity. Hamilcar Barca, now at the head of affairs, was instrumental in this demand being complied with, and Sardinia was ceded; but the exaction was never forgiven by him. From that day onward he steadily prepared for a renewal of the war, and he made his son Hannibal, then but nine years old, swear an oath of eternal hatred against the Romans.
Hamilcar was a man of genius. Seeing that war was inevitable he cast about for the best means to conduct that war with success, when it should come about.
​As one who had seen the successful use of Sea Power in the late war, he might have been expected to concentrate all efforts upon a powerful navy. This, however, he did not do. Either from lack of confidence in Carthaginian naval prowess, or from a recognition of the uncertainties of sea warfare, or because he recognised that it was impossible to equal Rome in a shipbuilding contest he directed comparatively few Carthaginian resources to naval use. Instead he made a plan in which Sea Power had very little part. In Spain he saw a compensation for the loss of Sicily and Sardinia, and free action for himself in a rich and as yet unexploited country, with Celtic and Iberic inhabitants eminently suitable for soldiers. Invested with dictatorial power, he began to build up a new empire in Spain and upon his death the work was carried on by his son-in-law Hasdrubal, and then by the great Hannibal himself, now twenty-eight years old. Always the aim was the conquest of Rome and when all was ready Hannibal threw down the gage and began that famous campaign which will live in history through all time.
He commenced operations by allowing Carthaginian interests to clash with Roman ones, as they had clashed on the eve of the first war. This time, however, Carthage was alive to the need of action and Hannibal moved forward so swiftly that Roman troops sent by sea to dispute his passage of the Rhone, arrived too late. These forces went to Spain and carried on ​operations behind his back. There is every indication that he had allowed for, and perhaps courted this. His objective was Rome; the more soldiers Rome dispatched to Spain or Sicily, the fewer would she have to defend the heart of her empire.
With heavy, and perhaps unanticipated, loss, Hannibal crossed the Alps. It has been surmised that he expected to find friends there instead of the enemies that he actually encountered: since his whole plan rested upon appearing as the saviour of Italy and adjacent lands from Rome. Certainly in Italy he expected to find recruits, and his failure to do so considerably hampered him. Still, with his well-trained army he easily inflicted crushing disasters upon the Romans.
Lack of troops and siege engines prevented him from attempting to take Rome: instead he passed to the south and communicated with Carthage by sea, asking for reinforcements. These he failed to secure. Their non-arrival is attributed by Captain Mahan to the influence of Roman Sea Power, but the evidence of this is entirely negative. On the other hand it is a known fact that a party in Carthage regarded him with jealousy and suspicion, and opposed his being reinforced.
Before the battle of Cannae also he had not had reinforcements for certain definite reasons:
1. He was in no pressing need, the Spanish army was strong in itself and he hardly asked for more ​troops. The fleet of Carthage was employed to keep Africa free from invasion and so leave him a free hand.
2. A party at Carthage were opposed to making Hannibal too strong, for political reasons.
3. Uncertainty as to his whereabouts and the risk of reinforcements landed in Italy being cut off before they could join him.
Before the battle of Cannse, the only effect of Roman Sea Power is to be found in the last difficulty, and that can more easily be attributed to military causes than to naval ones.
After Cannoe, Hannibal needed men, for since Italy failed to join him it became necessary for him to annihilate Eome with his own army. To this one party in the Carthaginian Senate demurred.
Eventually, however, 12,000 men, a quite insufficient reinforcement, were collected by his youngest brother Mago, and these were under orders to proceed by sea to Italy, when events in Spain necessitated the diversion of the force thither. Success was achieved and the brothers, Hasdrubal first and Mago subsequently, proceeded to Italy by way of the Alps, neither meeting with much loss on the march. At the Metaurus Hasdrubal was out-manoeuvred and entirely defeated Hannibal was then left isolated pending the arrival of Mago.
The Roman victory on the Metaurus is attributed by Captain Mahan to the fact that Scipio sent some ​troops from Spain by sea to reinforce the army opposing Hasdrubal: but the more reasonable version, surely, is that the large force detached from the army confronting Hannibal was responsible for the crushing nature of the Carthaginian defeat. Rome also had the good fortune to intercept the messengers between the Carthaginian brothers, and so was able to make the necessary arrangements. It is surely improbable that Scipio's 12,000 men sent by sea from Spain would of themselves have contributed much to the victory of the Metaurus. Indeed nothing seems clearer than the impotence of Roman Sea Power in affecting the issues. The real causes appear to be: —
1. The success of the Scipios in Spain, thus ' containing ' Hasdrubal.
2. The delay in the completion of the Macedonian alliance and Philip's subsequent inactivity.
3. The action of the peace party at Carthage in restricting reinforcements.
4. The activity of Roman troops in Sicily, which kept Hiero of Syracuse occupied.
Lack of reinforcements and the demoralisation of his army at Capua reduced Hannibal to severe straits and he ceased to be a danger. Then, and not till then was Rome able to consider the invasion of Africa. As soldiers and sailors were to some degree convertible, the fact that this obvious 'counter-irritant' was not earlier employed negatives the theory that Rome had much available Sea Power in this war. Any important ​sea force could have been turned into an army to harass Africa. Yet Africa save for a very early raid was left untouched till the battle of the Metaurus broke the Carthaginian power in Italy. Then Scipio sailed in Etruscan ships, and attacked Utica and Tunis. Here his fleet was defeated by the Carthaginian ships, though his invasion was not affected thereby, since he subsequently defeated the Carthaginian home army. This led to the recall of Hannibal and his veterans who returned by sea.
In the following year Hannibal in command of a mixed force of his veterans and raw levies was defeated in the battle of Zama, and by his advice Carthage subsequently secured the best peace terms she could.
Let us now examine the action of Sea Power on this war.
The entire series of naval operations was as follows: —
At the outbreak of war Rome had a fleet of 160 quinqueremes. Of these sixty, under Sempronius, were sent to raid Africa: and sixty under Scipio to Spain. The Carthaginians meanwhile sent twenty ships to raid the Italian coast, but these were dispersed by a tempest off Messana. Some of them were captured by Hiero of Syracuse who was then at Messana, and he, suspecting that Lilybaeuni was the Carthaginian objective, ​hastened thither with some ships of his own and some Roman vessels. When the Carthaginians arrived they found Lilybæum on guard, so drew up in battle order off the harbour. Here, attacked by Romans using the corvi, they lost seven ships: the rest gained the open sea.
Meanwhile the main Carthaginian fleet of seventy ships was ravaging the coast of Bruttium (Calabria). Sempronius was preparing to deal with these, when the news of Hannibal's descent into Italy arrived, and he was at once recalled, leaving only a few ships for the defence of Sicily,—an instance of the influence of Land Power on naval history.
At Carthagena in Spain the Carthaginians had forty ships, which the Romans under Scipio surprised while the crews were ashore; and shortly afterwards a Roman fleet a hundred strong dispersed the main Carthaginian fleet off Italy, compelling it to retire to Africa. This, however, does not seem to have inconvenienced Hannibal.
In B.C. 214 Rome raised 150 ships, but found some difficulty in manning them. The defection of Syracuse to Carthage occupied the attention of these vessels till the famous siege was over. Naval operations on a small scale were also conducted against Macedonia; but nothing further of importance occurred till Scipio invaded Africa, after the battle of the Metaurus. At the time of Scipio' s invasion the Roman fleet ​consisted altogether of about 160 important warships, disposed as follows:
Forty ships defending Sardinia.
Forty cruising off Sicily.
Eighty coastguard service off the Italian coast.
Of how the Carthaginian fleet was disposed we know very little. At least a hundred ships were at Carthage or thereabouts: while the defensive dispositions of the Romans suggest that many more Carthaginian vessels were engaged in raiding the coast of Italy or at the service of Hannibal at Tarentum. There is much to suggest that, at any rate at this period, Carthage had the sea command rather than Rome. In any case Scipio's fleet contained only twenty large warships to defend his fleet of transports. As there were a hundred warships at Carthage, Scipio, at any rate, displayed a fine disregard for the 'fleet in being' and all present-day conceptions of Sea Power.
Scipio reached Africa and landed quite unopposed. He besieged Utica and had advanced on Tunis, before the Carthaginian ships appeared. His naval position was then so desperate that he chained his transports together, crammed them with soldiers, and put his warships behind them,—certainly not the action of dominant Sea Power.
Through this defence the Carthaginians ultimately broke and destroyed half the Roman fleet—after which, for reasons unknown they retired to Carthage, allowed Tunis to surrender, and never more appeared in the ​war. To know why, would be invaluable to us, but no reason is vouchsafed. It is to be presumed that they subsequently co-operated in the return of Hannibal's army to Carthage—a task accomplished without any interference from Rornan ships—but their failure to take the offensive is inexplicable, unless it be that the Carthaginians, having in mind the invasion of Regulus in the first Punic War, anticipated that, with Hannibal in command, a land victory would be easy, and kept their ships in hand against the arrival of Roman reinforcements, and for cutting off all retreat when the anticipated rout of Scipio should occur.
Roman Sea Power landed troops in Spain, intended to cut off Hannibal. This it failed to do, but under the two Scipios it carried on war in Spain behind Hannibal's back and delayed his overland reinforcements. This action had another result also. Mago, Hannibal's brother, who was sailing with 12,000 troops to Italy to reinforce his brother directly from Carthage, was ordered to land in Spain instead. In a word the Carthaginians were able to use the sea when they chose. Hannibal, too, was in constant communication with his home government and had his demands for reinforcements been complied with, no Sea Power that she possessed could have saved Rome. Carthage having elected to make the issue a land one, Rome did the like, and neither nation relied much upon Sea Power. Indeed, when Scipio invaded Africa, ​Etruscan ships were chiefly employed; and the only instance of a naval action in the final stages was the defeat of the Roman fleet by the Carthaginian vessels. Such Sea Power as existed at the time of the invasion was Carthaginian. Hannibal when recalled had no difficulty whatever in returning to Africa with his army by sea, being molested neither when he embarked nor when he landed in Africa, and there is no evidence whatever that Rome won by use of Sea Power. By the absence of it Carthage was unable to repel the Roman invasion by blockade of the Italian coast,—but blockades of that nature were impossible in those days. She also made no attempt to defeat the force of Scipio while on the sea, but here the difficulties of intercepting the force and the lack of certain knowledge as to his destination may have been the reason why. Ancient fleets were quite unfitted to cruise 'observing.' Also it may well be that Carthage, adhering to the military policy laid down by Hamilcar Barca, decided to await the issue on land, much as the Russians so decided in the Crimean War of 1854. There is no doubt that in that war the Russian squadron should have been able easily to annihilate the allied fleet, crowded as it was with troops and hampered with transports and store-ships. Russia preferred the land, and Sebastopol fell. As when fifty years later Japan invaded Korea, so also in the Crimean War certain cardinal doctrines of Sea Power were to all appearance ignored, but the ignorers won.
​Such evidence as there is points to the fact that Scipio, so far from being an example of the use of Sea Power is an example of complete ignorance of it—also without suffering for it. It is true that luck was with him: it was a series of misfortunes rather than Scipio's genius which compelled Carthage to recall Hannibal and his veterans—for the incidents that led to the defeat of Syphax and the contest with the whole force of Numidia could hardly have been anticipated. Otherwise, and had Hannibal been properly reinforced before the invasion of Africa, the pressure of the Carthaginians outside Rome would probably have rendered Scipio's invasion abortive. Zama made it completely successful, but no ships of Scipio or of anybody else contributed to the victory of Zama.
We may note, then, two salient facts in these Punic Wars.
In the first, Rome, having Sea Power, invaded Africa and met disaster.
In the second she had probably not got the Sea Power. She invaded and succeeded completely. In the first war the defeat of the Carthaginian fleet and the consequent isolation of Lilybaeum and Drepanum, may be cited as an instance of Sea Power and its effects: but even here it is well to remember that the Carthaginian ships were cumbered with stores and apparently not expecting attack. That, however, is somewhat of a side issue: Rome had the ships to win with and she won.
​In the second war Sea Power, despite Captain Mahan's classical instance, surely had no part; and such sea advantage as there was lay with the side that was defeated by over-sea operations. Unpalatable as the fact may be to the due recognition of pretty theories, should it not be frankly recognised? It may not be well to deduce therefrom that Sea Power theories are 'merely theories'; yet it is surely fair to deduce from these wars that neither numbers of ships nor ability to handle them can alone confer victory. The real secret of success must be sought in other and more intangible things—things that can only be vaguely classed under the general heading of 'Fitness to win.' This fitness is neither ships nor skill at handling them, neither great leaders nor willing obedience, but the sum of the sentiment of each individual combatant.
* ↑ Polybius, I. 79–80; Appian, VI. 1; Polybius, III. 10, 28.
* ↑ Polybius, III. 11; Livy, XXI. 1.
* ↑ Carthage had, according to Livy (XXI. 49) twenty ships to raid Italy, nine at Lipari, eight at Stroniboli, three off Messana; Hiero had twelve ships at Messana.
* ↑ Polybius, III. 95-96.