unusual interest. The expedient of calling out successive contingents
from the different tribes, in order to ensure continuity in military
operations, should, however, be noticed. David and Solomon possessed
numerous permanent troops which served as guards and garrisons; in
principle this organization was identical with that of the Persians, and
that of Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries. Particular interest
attaches to the Carthaginian military forces of the 3rd century B.C.
Rarely has any army achieved such renown in the short space of sixty
years (264-202 B.C.). Carthage produced a series of great generals,
culminating in Hannibal, who is marked out, even by the little that is
known of him, as the equal of Napoleon. But Napoleon was supported by a
national army, Hannibal and his predecessors were condemned to work with
armies of mercenaries. For the first time in the world's history war is
a matter with which the civil population has no concern. The merchants
of Carthage fought only in the last extremity; the wars in which their
markets were extended were conducted by non-national forces and directed
by the few Carthaginian citizens who possessed military aptitudes. The
civil authorities displayed towards their instruments a spirit of hatred
for which it is difficult to find a parallel. Unsuccessful leaders were
crucified, the mercenary soldiers were cheated of their pay, and broke
out into a mutiny which shook the empire of Carthage to its foundations.
But the magnetism of a leader's personality infused a corporate military
spirit into these heterogeneous Punic armies, and history has never
witnessed so complete an illustration of the power of pure and unaided
_esprit de corps_ as in the case of Hannibal's army in Italy, which,
composed as it was of Spaniards, Africans, Gauls, Numidians, Italians
and soldiers of fortune of every country, was yet welded by him into
thorough efficiency. The army of Italy was as great in its last fight at
Zama as the army of Spain at Rocroi; its victories of the Trebia,
Trasimene and Cannae were so appalling that, two hundred years later,
the leader to whom these soldiers devoted their lives was still, to a
Roman, the "dire" Hannibal.
In their formal organization the Carthaginian armies resembled the new
Greek model, and indeed they were created in the first instance by
Xanthippus, a Spartan soldier in the service of Carthage, who was called
upon to raise and train an army when the Romans were actually at the
gates of Carthage, and justified his methods in the brilliant victory of
Tunis (255 B.C.). For the solid Macedonian phalanx of 16,000 spears
Xanthippus substituted a line of heavy battalions equal in its aggregate
power of resistance to the older form, and far more flexible. The
triumphs of the cavalry arm in Hannibal's battles far excelled those of
Alexander's horsemen. Hannibal chose his fighting ground whenever
possible with a view to using their full power, first to defeat the
hostile cavalry, then to ride down the shaken infantry masses, and
finally to pursue _au fond_. At Cannae, the greatest disaster ever
suffered by the Romans, the decisive blow and the slaughter were the
work of Hannibal's line cavalry, the relentless pursuit that of his
light horse. But a professional long-service army has always the
greatest difficulty in making good its losses, and in the present case
it was wholly unable to do so. Even Hannibal failed at last before the
sustained efforts of the citizen army of Rome.