After crossing the Rhone, did Hannibal really need to cross over the Alps instead of fighting Scipio's force stationed at Massalia (Marseille), advancing along the coast to get to Italy?

[Roma_Victrix]

This has probably been beaten to death in some thread somewhere on TWC, but I don't believe in raising necros from the dead just for this.

Hannibal easily brushed aside the Gallic Volcae allies of Rome at the Battle of Rhone Crossing in autumn of 218 BC and after doing so still had a larger army than that commanded by the consul Publius Cornelius Scipio (father of Scipio Africanus). The latter was stationed at the nearby Greek city-state of Massalia (modern Marseille, France), an ally of Rome, from where they planned to march out and block Hannibal from marching comfortably into northern Italy near or along the Mediterranean coast. So why, then, did Hannibal not face the relatively outnumbered Romans here when he had no qualms facing significantly larger Roman forces in Italy, in battles such as Trebia and Cannae?

Was he afraid that the terrain of the region somehow didn't favor him, or that it would have delayed him long enough for Roman reinforcements to arrive? Was crossing the Alps and appearing from the mountains used purely for the shock factor, akin to Caesar a century-and-a-half later throwing up temporary bridges across the Rhine to intimidate his Germanic Suebi enemies? It just doesn't make sense considering the logistical nightmare he put his army in by going into the mountains. Was this a wise decision considering how, by some estimates, he lost something like a quarter of all his troops to desertion, starvation, skirmishing with local tribes, and frostbite while traversing the difficult Alpine terrain? Do you think he would have lost as many men (and basically all his elephants) had he simply fought Scipio's army outside of Massalia in what is now the French region of Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur?

And just for fun, an illustration of Hannibal crossing the Rhone River in France:



Take that France. Time for you to speak that Punic.

[Roma_Victrix]

Oops! Could a mod kindly transfer this to the VV forum? I accidentally posted this in the Thema Devia.

[Condottiere 40K]

Hindsight says no, but he wanted that Toblerone.

[Roma_Victrix]

Hindsight says no, but he wanted that Toblerone.

It's impressive, then, that the Swiss were producing Toblerone centuries before chocolate was imported to Europe from Spanish colonies in the Americas (New Spain, i.e. Mexico). Apparently there wasn't enough Toblerone to go around to keep Hannibal's army well-fed, if he lost something like 25% of all his troops. Considering the far smaller numbers he lost in single battles with the Romans, one has to wonder if this choice to cross the Alps was actually a mistake (even if it is one of the most celebrated events in military history).

[Condottiere 40K]

Probably too much in love with his brilliant plan to out manoeuvre the Romans, which you'll note he stopped being elaborate and just kept to sneaky.

[Roma_Victrix]

Probably too much in love with his brilliant plan to out manoeuvre the Romans, which you'll note he stopped being elaborate and just kept to sneaky.

Sneaky as in goading and fooling the Romans into leaving their flanks unprotected?

[Dromikaites]

I have asked the same question about the coastal route a few years ago and SpartanJKM was kind enough to point out that at the time Liguria was a very dangerous place.

Even though during the First Punic War most of the Ligurian tribes had sided with Carthage, after that they had opted to stay out of the conflict. Their lands were covered with forests and they had a reputation of fearsome warriors (hence their popularity as mercenaries for Carthaginians and the Italian and Sicilian Greeks). Their decision to stay out of the war combined with the reputation of their martial skills convinced both Hannibal and Scipio to avoid passing through their lands without permission.

The Alps were a different story, because the ambassadors of the Gauls had guaranteed the Carthaginians a smooth crossing. It turned out they didn't deliver, but at the time Hannibal decided to cross, he operated under the assumption everything would go as planned.

As for why he didn't engage the Romans near Massalia, I believe it had to do with how Hannibal actually thought.

The battles of Trebia and Canae have created the wrong impression Hannibal was more than happy to take on a much larger Roman force. The actual records of the campaign (basically that is Livy and Polybius) paint a different story: Hannibal actually avoided meeting the Romans head on, for as much as he could help it.

Polybius explains that at the time it was obvious for everybody that Rome had a much vaster pool of manpower than Carthage. The key to winning the war, as Hannibal and everybody else involved saw it, was to deprive Rome of most of that manpower, by persuading the Roman allies/vassals to switch allegiances.

We know for sure those directly involved saw the things that way by looking what the [much later unjustly blamed] consul Gaius Terentius Varro did after he was defeated at Canae. Right after the battle he energetically rallied the survivors. After doing that he blocked the way to the South. He wasn't concerned about the possibility of a Carthaginian attack on Rome, nor was he particularly interested in saving his own skin, else he would have placed his surviving troops on the road leading to Rome.

His choice to fight again Hannibal right after Canae, had Hannibal opted to continue Southward, shows how important was at the time for the Romans to prevent the Carthaginians from getting to Lucania and Bruttia.

It also shows what were the true priorities of Hannibal. Had he been in the mood to fight the Romans wherever he found them, his logical choice would have been to fight Gaus Terrentius Varro for a second time, crushing him for good. However, by doing so, he would have incurred more loses than he could afford, given his goals. By reaching Lucania and Bruttia with a small army his promise "I will protect you in case of a Roman retaliation" would have lacked credibility.

This is why he preferred to go to Capua, which had sided with him, and to rebuild his strength over the winter. Chances are that if he would have fought Varro a second time right after Cannae, his own army would have been in such a bad shape the Capuans would have switched sides again.

Quite likely that was the main reason he avoided fighting Publius Cornelius Scipio near Massalia: he doubted the Gauls would take him seriously if he would have arrived in the Po river valley with a handful of troops. With the benefit of hindsight we see he had made the right decision. Imagine the effect of losing 25% of the troops crossing the Alps, for an army which had already sustain casualties after fighting Scipio Sr.

[Roma_Victrix]

As always, Dromy, you have swayed me to your way of thinking. You should use those skills to become a politician or even president of Romania. Why not even Permanent Reichsfuhrer of the EU? You're totally right, though, about the importance to Hannibal of convincing potential allies that Carthage was the better option to follow than Rome. Incurring major defeats would serve to undermine that narrative immediately. Rome's inability to defeat Hannibal decisively in the field cost them, obviously, with the temporary loss of such important allies as Capua (as you mention) and Tarentum further south. In addition to keeping Hannibal far away from Rome's allies in the south, wasn't Rome also gravely concerned about ensuring enough wheat and other foodstuffs grown in the south would be delivered unimpeded to their city, so they wouldn't starve? Southern Italy and especially Sicily were the breadbaskets for the Republic at this time, weren't they?

As for the Ligurians, I completely forgot to factor them in! And I should have known better, seeing how they're a pain in the ass to defeat in the RTW mod Europa Barbarorum (although EB II for Medieval II just has Etruscan hoplites, no cool-looking unique Ligurian cavalry this time around...boo, boo I say).

[Mangalore]

I would also say there is a strategic initiative aspect to it.

Fighting Scipio at Massilia was what Scipio wanted. The Romans had plenty of space to retreat into if things went south. By avoiding Scipio and marching to Italy via the Alps Hannibal forced Scipio to split forces, hurry back to Italy and hurry to seek battle because Hannibal was suddenly somewhere where Scipio couldn't just avoid battle without looking bad. It also made forces going to Sicily take a U-turn so overall the entire Roman opening plan was in disarray.

[Caligula's_Horse]

Aside from the aspect of the Ligurians already adequately covered, there's the matter of a victory at Massalia being both difficult and not actually very effective at hurting Rome itself. Really, it would have earned Hannibal little more than passage.

Hannibal's entire strategy relied on breaking up Rome's relationship with what we charitably call its allies (vassals or client states would be more accurate for most of them). In order to do that, he had to shake their belief that Rome could protect them or punish them if they broke rank. Its a psychological game, and Massalia is simply too far out of sight and out of mind off mainland Italy to be effective at doing that. The shock value of coming over the mountains with elephants in toe did do a little better in that regard, though in retrospect, still not near enough.

There's also the matter of the forces at Massalia being no pushovers. Defeating them would have been costly, and not a sure thing (their commander was no fool, Hannibal didn't outnumber them that badly, and as the defenders, Rome would benefit from the choice of terrain). Besides, even a Roman loss with heavy casualties on both sides would have played in Rome's favor, with the Romans having more manpower than Carthage had gold and mercenaries; I'm sure Hannibal was well aware of Pyrrhus and his "victories" over Rome, and wasn't keen on reenactment.
And if the Romans decided they feel like holing up for a siege, Hannibal would have had a hard time dislodging them, if he could have managed it at all. His experiences later in Italy demonstrate his army wasn't very good at taking fortified Roman cities, and Massalia's port access to reinforcements and supply makes it worse than most. And he can't just pass the city by and continue on his way, they'd hound him the entire way to Rome, picking off his men when they're most vulnerable and wrecking any supply lines he set up, all while seriously threatening to crush him between two armies if another force showed up from Italy's direction.

All in all, I'd say the coastal route isn't much of an improvement over the alps, might be worse if anything. And indeed in the end it wasn't going over the alps that brought Hannibal down, but rather his inability to reinforce from back home, a shift in Rome's strategic thinking to hit Carthage where Hannibal wasn't, and to slowly bleed Hannibal through attrition, combined with Hannibal's difficulty in taking fortified targets which prevented him from actually taking advantage of his victories in the field.

[Roma_Victrix]

That's a great post! If Dromy didn't completely sway me before, you've basically put the final nail into the coffin of my doubt that crossing the Alps was the best option for Hannibal. Unfortunately for a good number of his men who froze and starved to death, however, I think they would have probably preferred the coastal route.

[pannonian]

It's also worth taking Hasdrubal's crossing into consideration. If Hannibal had better and more reliable guides, it's conceivable that he could have crossed as easily as his brother did some years later, in which case the coastal crossing might have seemed an unreasonable risk. Also, if he was going to cross the Alps, it would make sense to cross as early as possible before the passes iced over. Fighting battles that didn't contribute to his overall strategy would only delay him, and even if he'd won, he'd still lose in the longer run.

[Maiar93]

It seems to me, and correct me if this is wrong, that there was one fatal fault in Hannibal's plan that I haven't seen mentioned yet. He just arrived too soon. His brother Hasdrubal only arrived after Hannibal had already been defeated. Perhaps he should have secured some form of immediate support before heading into Italy?

I realize that doing so would have been very hard. And yet, he never came close to really defeating the Romans, truly rendering them incapable of continuing the war.

[Dromikaites]

It seems to me, and correct me if this is wrong, that there was one fatal fault in Hannibal's plan that I haven't seen mentioned yet. He just arrived too soon. His brother Hasdrubal only arrived after Hannibal had already been defeated. Perhaps he should have secured some form of immediate support before heading into Italy?

I realize that doing so would have been very hard. And yet, he never came close to really defeating the Romans, truly rendering them incapable of continuing the war.

Hannibal wasn't defeated yet at the time Hasdrubal left for Italy. What had happened was the Carthaginians were losing Spain so Hasdrubal extricated his army from there and moved to reinforce Hannibal. Hasdrubal's march to Italy happened 10 years after Hannibal's. During those 10 long years the Carthaginians and the Romans had fought for the control of the Iberian Peninsula, which was the Carthaginian source of money and manpower. This is the main reason Hannibal had received very little Carthaginian assistance during all that time.

[Caligula's_Horse]

Hannibal wasn't defeated yet at the time Hasdrubal left for Italy. What had happened was the Carthaginians were losing Spain so Hasdrubal extricated his army from there and moved to reinforce Hannibal. Hasdrubal's march to Italy happened 10 years after Hannibal's. During those 10 long years the Carthaginians and the Romans had fought for the control of the Iberian Peninsula, which was the Carthaginian source of money and manpower. This is the main reason Hannibal had received very little Carthaginian assistance during all that time.

I thought the lack of reinforcements had to do more with lack of consistent political support of Hannibal's campaign (oligarchic councils, like all parliaments, tend to be fickle), and because by the time of the second war, Rome's navy being the stronger of the two, which made the logistics of reinforcing Hannibal problematic.
With the sea being, if not entirely closed off, then at least really risky to send forces through (with risky being defined as a chance to loose the entire force to a single encounter with some warships), the only real route remaining was from Spain through land, which was so inefficient and slow it pretty much guarantees a Roman army will be waiting on the other side. Might as well just leave those troops in Spain, which probably needed the help more then Hannibal (the Italian campaign merely proved ineffective at changing the strategic status quo; the Spanish campaigned ended with Rome kicking Carthage out of the peninsula).

Its funny how the naval aspect of the Punic wars played out. The Carthaginians were without a doubt the superior sailors, with a deep seated tradition for exploration and maritime trade. The Romans, by contrast had a navy that at the start of the first war was adequate for little more than hunting pirates and guarding grain shipments, forcing them to avoid confrontation where they could and getting their rear end handed to them where they couldn't. One advanced ship design they got largely by chance from an IKEA-assembly Carthaginian ship that washed off to shore later though, and they started cranking out the things as fast as their shipyards would go. Through sheer militarism and willingness to commit resources on a scale that would have made the Carthaginian merchants go pale, they ended up closing much of the gap in a matter of a few years, and by the time the second war rolled around, the Romans which decades before barely had a navy were now the strongest naval force in the western Mediterranean.
The Carthaginians could have probably won their naval dominance back if they were willing to go into total war mode and doubled down on their own naval investment (ideally before the war started); they had their own (underutilized) shipyards which were quite impressive and the naval traditions do count for something. The political will simply wasn't there however, and cost them their best chance of defeating Rome.

[pannonian]

I thought the lack of reinforcements had to do more with lack of consistent political support of Hannibal's campaign (oligarchic councils, like all parliaments, tend to be fickle), and because by the time of the second war, Rome's navy being the stronger of the two, which made the logistics of reinforcing Hannibal problematic.
With the sea being, if not entirely closed off, then at least really risky to send forces through (with risky being defined as a chance to loose the entire force to a single encounter with some warships), the only real route remaining was from Spain through land, which was so inefficient and slow it pretty much guarantees a Roman army will be waiting on the other side. Might as well just leave those troops in Spain, which probably needed the help more then Hannibal (the Italian campaign merely proved ineffective at changing the strategic status quo; the Spanish campaigned ended with Rome kicking Carthage out of the peninsula).

Its funny how the naval aspect of the Punic wars played out. The Carthaginians were without a doubt the superior sailors, with a deep seated tradition for exploration and maritime trade. The Romans, by contrast had a navy that at the start of the first war was adequate for little more than hunting pirates and guarding grain shipments, forcing them to avoid confrontation where they could and getting their rear end handed to them where they couldn't. One advanced ship design they got largely by chance from an IKEA-assembly Carthaginian ship that washed off to shore later though, and they started cranking out the things as fast as their shipyards would go. Through sheer militarism and willingness to commit resources on a scale that would have made the Carthaginian merchants go pale, they ended up closing much of the gap in a matter of a few years, and by the time the second war rolled around, the Romans which decades before barely had a navy were now the strongest naval force in the western Mediterranean.
The Carthaginians could have probably won their naval dominance back if they were willing to go into total war mode and doubled down on their own naval investment (ideally before the war started); they had their own (underutilized) shipyards which were quite impressive and the naval traditions do count for something. The political will simply wasn't there however, and cost them their best chance of defeating Rome.

I thought the problem wasn't ships, but crew. The Roman state had a large and reasonably reliable pool of manpower to call on. While Carthage had much larger monetary resources, their pool of reliable manpower was considerably smaller, and each lost naval battle sent a sizeable proportion of them to the bottom of the sea. The naval battles of the First Punic War involved, for the ancient world, unbelievable numbers of combatants, and the Romans weren't fans of taking prisoners.

[Dromikaites]

I know the Senate of Carthage traditionally gets blamed for not supporting Hannibal. However they couldn't really afford to neglect the defense of Spain. And by looking at how the Romans proceeded we understand the control of Spain was vital: when Scipio Sr finds out that Hannibal has escaped over the Alps he doesn't take the army back to Italy. He sends it to Spain as intended and returns to recruit a new army for the defense of Italy.

The only army turned back to face Hannibal is the army initially destined to invade Africa. That shows that between Africa and Spain, even the Romans thought Spain was more important.

As for the Romans controlling the seas, that is more of a matter of speech than the actual situation. The Carthaginians were able to send a few troops to Hannibal as soon as he reached the southern coast of Italy. They were also able to land an army in Sicily. They were also able to land and to retrieve Mago Barca and his army to and from Liguria.

They also attempted to send some substantial amount of troops to Hannibal, but the fleet got bad winds and ended near Sardinia, from where the Romans chased it back.

As for the alleged Carthaginain superior seamanship, I have some serious doubts it was the case, given what has happened during the First Punic War. If we look at what Carthage was doing prior to the First Punic War, we see they hadn't fought any major naval battles for centuries. All their conflicts were fought mainly on land, be those against the Libyans or against the Greeks of Sicily.

And if we keep in mind that during the Persian wars the Phoenician fleet was sub-par compared to the Greek one we can assume the Carthaginian one would not be much different. Especially since unlike the Phoenicians, the Carthaginians were not facing any major enemy fleets in Western Mediterranean.

So it is likely the Carthaginian fleet was better than the Roman one at the beginning of the First Punic War simply because the Romans had no ships. Something is always better than nothing . Once the Romans did build their ships, whatever skills they had were good enough to avoid being rammed by the Carthaginians. It also helped the Romans that by that time the size of the ships was too large to make ramming the main tactics.

[Caligula's_Horse]

Hmmm, haven't thought of it that way. Maritime experience doesn't necessarily translate to fighting at sea; in fact the Roman's penchant for close combat may have actually given them an edge in that regard, with how crucial boarding was as a tactic back then. Though it probably took some time to get the men used to fighting on a swaying ship and develop a resistance to the nausea; from my personal experience in the navy, I can attest that most people are fine after a few months, and you can shorten that significantly if you weed them out through a selection process. And of course you still need a ship's crew good enough to get in contact with the enemy; its not as complicated as ramming, but some skill still helps.
The Carthaginian's lack of willingness to conscript their own civilians to fight would have certainly put them at a major disadvantage in regards to crewing their ships. No shortage of mercenaries to be had on land, but the naval variant never really caught on. Probably wasn't profitable to maintain a mercenary ship with lapses in pay in peace time, and just a crew of militarized sailors or marines without a ship for people that like Carthage that had more wood than men is simply too niche a market to be sustainable.

As for the Carthaginians being able to land and supply troops here and there, I think that was more due to how hard it is to find a fleet at sea without aid of modern technology. With viewing distance limited to roughly 20 km due to the curvature of the earth, enemy movement usually not being all that limited by geography, and the difficulty in communicating with scouts, just finding the enemy next to anything that wasn't their departure or destination (assuming you know either) was something of a small miracle. It was possible to blockade ports and block straights, but if the enemy decided they want to dump a small army on some random shore, they could probably do it without being caught, so long as they didn't do anything stupid (like being obvious about it) or got really unlucky.

I'm used to thinking of navies in modern terms, so its a bit weird for me to hear about the pre-modern variety, which couldn't reliably take their enemy equivalents out of operation, but only engage it at strategic points of contention or through dumb luck.
In that case, doubling down on ships probably wouldn't have saved Carthage, even if they did have crews to man them, and were able to defeat their Roman equivalents in open battle. Though it would have allowed Hannibal to avoid the alps/coastal route question entirely, that really wasn't his problem. His problem was that if Carthage lost an army, that's one less army they'd have in the war, and that's after being outnumbered to begin with. If Rome lost an army, they'd just raise another one and come back for more. Without a draft of their own, and the political willingness to go all in on a conflict, short of some miracle happening (or two miracles, if you already count Cannae turning out so well), it was only a matter of time until Carthage lost.

[Roma_Victrix]

I'm loving this conversation about their respective navies.

Battle of Cape Ecnomus:

[Ludicus]

So why, then, did Hannibal not face the relatively outnumbered Romans here ...

Simply put because he stuck to his original plan, the element of surprise,via Alpes.

Quoting, from the splendid "Carthage Must be Destroyed", Richard Miles, page 262,
"Hannibal initially vacillated between engaging with Scipio's legions and continuing on to Italy,but his mind was finally made up by the arrival in the Carthaginian camp of emmissaries from the Boii, who both offered to act as guides across the rugged terrain and promised an alliance"

It was the Carthaginian "Alea jacta est"