n horse on the Ticino, when the superiority of the
Numidian cavalry was first decisively displayed, had an immediate effect
in bringing a crowd of Gaulish recruits to his standard. The
Carthaginian general was careful in his first engagement to hazard only
his cavalry, in which arm he was certain of his superiority. The battle
of the Trebia which followed, and which first broke the strength of the
legions, excited an unbounded ferment in Lombardy, and brought the
Gaulish youths in crowds, to follow the career of plunder and revenge
under his victorious standards. Recruits speedily were not awanting; the
only difficulty was to select from the crowds which presented themselves
for enrolment. It was like the resurrection of Prussia in 1813, against
the tyrannic domination of the French emperor. Winter was spent in
organizing these rude auxiliaries, and reducing them to something like
military discipline; and so effective was their co-operation, and so
numerous the reinforcements which their zeal brought to his standard,
that in the following spring he crossed the Apennines, and traversed the
marshes of Volterra, at the head of nearly fifty thousand men, of whom
above one half were Gaulish recruits. And when the Consul Flaminius
attempted to stop him on the margin of the Thrasymene Lake, where the
stream still called "_Sanguinetto_" murmurs among the old oaks, the
children of the soil, the total defeat of his army with the loss of
thirty thousand men, lost the Romans the whole north of Italy, and
carried consternation to the gates of the Capitol.

After so great a victory within a few days' march of the Tiber, and no
considerable army intervening to arrest the advance of the conqueror, it
may seem extraordinary that Hannibal did not advance straight to the
capital, and terminate the war by its destruction: still more
inexplicable does it at first sight appear, that, instead of doing so,
he should have turned to the left, and passing Rome, moved into the
south of Italy; thus losing in a great measure his communication with
Lombardy, which had hitherto proved so invaluable a nursery for his
army. But it was in these very movements, more perhaps than in any
others of his life, that the wisdom and judgment of this great general's
conduct were conspicuous. The chief difficulty he had now to contend
with in Italy was the reduction of its fortified towns. The innumerable
wars which had so long prevailed in the southern parts of the