was not that of a general with a general, of an army with an army;
it was like the subsequent contest between Napoleon and England, the
contest of a man with a nation; and in both cases, the nation, after
being reduced to the most grievous straits, proved victorious over the
man. But Hannibal was not supported as the French emperor was during the
great part of his splendid career; no nation with forty millions of
souls laid its youth at his feet; no obsequious senate voted him two
millions of men in fifteen years; he did not march with the military
strength of the half of Europe at his back. Alone, unaided,
unbefriended, with the Roman legions in front, and the jealous
Carthaginian senate in rear, without succour, reinforcements, or
assistance from home, he maintained the contest for fifteen years in
Italy, against the might, the energy, and the patriotism of Rome. Such
was the terror inspired by his name and exploits, that it rendered even
the fierce plebeians of Rome, usually so jealous of patrician
interference with their rights, obsequious even in the comitia to their
commands. "Go back," said Fabius, when the first centuries had returned
consuls of their own choice, whom he knew to be unfit for the command,
"and bid them recollect that the consuls must head the armies, and that
Hannibal is in Italy." The people succumbed, the votes were taken anew,
and the consuls whom he desired were returned.

After the battle of Cannae had rendered hopeless any further contest in
the field, the war in Italy degenerated into a mere succession of
attempts to gain possession of fortified towns. Hannibal's total want of
siege artillery left him no resource for this but stratagem or internal
assistance, and in gaining both his great capacity was eminently
conspicuous. Capua, Beneventum, Tarentum, and a great many others, were
successively wrested or won from the Romans; and it at one period seemed
exceedingly doubtful whether, in this war of posts and stratagems, the
Carthaginian would not prevail over them, as he had done in the field.
This war, and from the influence of the same necessity in both cases,
much resembled the wars of the League and Henry IV. in France; and the
military conduct of Hannibal bore alternately a striking resemblance to
the skill and resources of the chivalrous king of Navarre, and the bold
daring of the emperor Napoleon. The gallant irruption, in particular, of
the Carthaginian general, by which he relieved