Hannibal (Civ4)/Civilopedia

Among the great captains of military history, few stand as high, and none higher, than Hannibal Barca. He was born the son of Hamilcar Barca in 247 BC, shortly before the Carthaginian defeat in the First Punic War. Hamilcar made it his mission to conquer new territory in Hispania (Spain) to make up for the loss of Sicily, Sardinia and Corsica to the Romans; when Hannibal grew old enough, he joined his father and learned the art of military command. According to legend, at this time Hannibal swore an oath of eternal vengeance on Rome.
After the death of his father and brother-in-law, Hannibal was acclaimed the commander of the Carthaginian forces in Hispania in 221 BC. He spent the next two years finishing the subjugation of the region, and then in 219 BC he attacked the town of Sagentum. Hannibal had been looking for a bigger fight: the city was under the protection of Rome and his attack was sure to spark a diplomatic incident. In fact, the situation boiled out of control and Rome declared war on Carthage, thus beginning the Second Punic War.
As soon as he heard that war had broken out, Hannibal resolved to embark on a daring raid into Italy itself. He gathered together his most reliable soldiers from Africa and Iberia and set out to the east. After crossing the Pyrenees and evading a Roman army in southern Gaul, in 218 BC Hannibal led his troops on a heroic crossing of the Alps, an astonishing feat that no one at the time thought possible and which caught the Romans totally by surprise.
Once he emerged on the other side of the mountains, Hannibal found shelter among the Gauls of the Po River. With these new allies replacing the many soldiers who had died in the difficult crossing, Hannibal fought a Roman army at the Trebia River, cutting it to pieces by a surprise flank attack. The following year in 217 BC, he crossed the Apennine Mountains and headed into central Italy, where at the Battle of Lake Trasimene he fought and destroyed the main Roman army. Now there was no force in all of Italy which could stand in his way.
The road to Rome was now open, but Hannibal had no siege weapons and he knew that he had no chance to take the city. Instead, he headed into the south of Italy and ravaged the countryside of Campania and Apulia, hoping to pull the southern Italian cities from their alliance with Rome. Despite their many defeats, in 216 the Romans assembled yet another army to face Hannibal at Cannae. Although heavily outnumbered, Hannibal used an elaborate envelopment maneuver to annihilate yet another Roman army. An estimated 50,000 Roman soldiers were killed, and the whole of southern Italy went into revolt against the Romans.
After this disaster, the Romans adopted a Fabian strategy (named after their commander Quintus Fabius Maximus) of avoiding battle with Hannibal and striking at his supplies. Despite receiving no assistance from Carthage, Hannibal continued to campaign across Italy holding together his ragtag army together in enemy territory for a decade. After his brothers Hasdrubal (207 BC) and Mago (205 - 203 BC) failed to relieve his army, however, any hope of successfully conquering Rome was lost.
Meanwhile, the Roman general Publius Cornelius Scipio had completed the Roman conquest of Hispania and invaded northern Africa. The Carthaginian government recalled Hannibal to Africa, where he was charged with defending the Carthage with untrained new levies. This was an all but impossible task, and after Hannibal's elephants failed to break the Roman lines at the Battle of Zama (202 BC), his infantry was routed and he had no choice but to surrender.
The Roman victory put an end to the war. Hannibal returned to Carthage, and was elected to be a "soffet," or one of the chief magistrates of the city-state. He was so effective in reorganizing the government that Carthage was able to pay back the heavy tribute Rome demanded earlier than expected and without exceptional taxation. Alarmed at this development and fearing Carthage's resurgence, the Roman Senate forced Hannibal into exile; he found refuge at the court of Antiochus III of the Seleucid Empire until the Romans demanded that he be surrendered to them. Rather than be given over to his enemies, Hannibal committed suicide in 183 BC.
Although Hannibal's campaigns have been endlessly studied by military historians, we know very little about the man himself. All of the surviving accounts of the Second Punic War were written by the Romans, who detested Hannibal and had nothing complimentary to say about him (Hannibal's name was literally used as a bogeyman to scare misbehaving Roman children). Reading between the lines of their accounts, however, it is clear that Hannibal treated his foes with respect and was greatly admired by his soldiers.
Hannibal proved himself to be a fine political as well as military leader, a distinction that few men in history can claim. His success in defeating much larger Roman armies time and time again while operating in enemy country unquestionably ranks him as one of the greatest military commanders of all time.