should attempt to effect one.

The assembly could hardly be induced to hear the embassadors through;
and, as soon as they had finished their address, the whole council
broke forth into cries of dissent and displeasure, and even into
shouts of derision. Order was at length restored, and the officers,
whose duty it was to express the sentiments of the assembly, gave for
their reply that the Gauls had never received any thing but violence
and injuries from Rome, or any thing but kindness and goodwill from
Carthage; and that they had no idea of being guilty of the folly of
bringing the impending storm of Hannibal's hostility upon their own
heads, merely for the sake of averting it from their ancient and
implacable foes. Thus the embassadors were every where repulsed. They
found no friendly disposition toward the Roman power till they had
crossed the Rhone.

Hannibal began now to form his plans, in a very deliberate and
cautious manner, for a march into Italy. He knew well that this was an
expedition of such magnitude and duration as to require beforehand the
most careful and well-considered arrangements, both for the forces
which were to go, and for the states and communities which were to
remain. The winter was coming on. His first measure was to dismiss a
large portion of his forces, that they might visit their homes. He
told them that he was intending some great designs for the ensuing
spring, which might take them to a great distance, and keep them for a
long time absent from Spain, and he would, accordingly, give them the
intervening time to visit their families and their homes, and to
arrange their affairs. This act of kind consideration and confidence
renewed the attachment of the soldiers to their commander, and they
returned to his camp in the spring not only with new strength and
vigor, but with redoubled attachment to the service in which they were
engaged.

Hannibal, after sending home his soldiers, retired himself to New
Carthage, which, as will be seen by the map, is further west than
Saguntum, where he went into winter quarters, and devoted himself to
the maturing of his designs. Besides the necessary preparations for
his own march, he had to provide for the government of the countries
that he should leave. He devised various and ingenious plans to
prevent the danger of insurrections and rebellions while he was gone.
One was, to organize an army for Spain out of soldiers drawn from
_Africa_, while the tr