They had a flexibility which mounted Romans and Italians could not match. His Numidians, from north Africa, were brilliant horsemen, able to direct their horses without any bridles by their clever use of a neck-rein. Hannibal’s crack troops were his cavalry, of which he had many thousands.
A big day in history: Hannibal smashes his foes "at the very gates of Rome". How many elephants did Hannibal take over the Alps?. The Alps towered in his way, but Hannibal turned east and took them on, probably crossing Mont Cenis (arguably by the Savine Coche pass, around 7,500 feet high) in late October. His troops were vastly fewer than Rome’s potential manpower, and as he headed northwards up the Rhone’s far bank, the watching Roman general, Scipio, cannot have given him much chance of reaching Italy at all. He then crossed the Pyrenees and by mid-August he had also crossed the broad river Rhone north of Avignon by ferrying the elephants across on camouflaged rafts. And it was from Spain that Rome’s greatest opponent emerged: the young Hannibal crossed the river Ebro in June 218 BC with 40,000 troops and 37 elephants. In the 20 years preceding the war, Carthage had been slowly making up for the losses it suffered in the First Punic War by campaigning in Spain. The greater heroes turned out to be Roman: the noble Fabius Maximus, who turned defeat gradually into victory by a campaign of painful delay and devastation, and the brilliant young Scipio who ended by invading Africa and winning a last great battle near Zama in 202 BC.Īn 18th-century print of Hannibal's forces in 210 BC. 
The rate of killing during the battle has been estimated at 500 lives a minute. His supreme victory at Cannae killed 48,000 enemy troops and is still studied in Western military academies. Yet Hannibal was also remembered for destroying 400 towns and costing 300,000 Italian lives.
No wonder his name was evoked later by Napoleon during a similar transalpine campaign to “liberate” Italy. To us, the hero is the Carthaginian general Hannibal, 29 years old at the outset, who astonished the Romans by crossing the Alps with his elephants and offering freedom to Italians throughout the peninsula. It strained Rome to the very limit, wracked Italy and ended by transforming Rome’s resources, range and ambitions. The Second Punic War pitted Rome against Carthage from 218 to 202 BC.
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