Hey, guys, Louise, cuney here, potatoes. Yes, please, there are natural foods and a good source of fiber this winter. Warmer soup, I'm going to show you is super tasty and super easy to make potato soup with Carrizo and talked with Karar Parsley, Pesto one taste. And you'll be a super trouper, too. They say potatoes are brought to Europe from South America and 1036. Who knew what this recipe and hundreds more. Just visit potato dory for with soup potatoes prepared to be surprised.

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Welcome to Dan Snow's history hit with another episode of sibling podcast The Ancients for today, Hannibal Crossing the Alps. I'm going to take Garino turn a painting of a giant sky at the bottom of the little labouring figures in Athens. I think its little tiny like figures dwarfed by the majesty of the clouds and the mountains swirling about the of such identification. I just think that there's a lot of people got interest in history now, not any more. But I do the best I can to keep a better life look like it's about a family past and take them to see youthful paintings as well.

So of the Crystal in Cardiff University College. Excellent. Excellent. This is one of the great epic stories. If you were talking about the Christmas tree program, which is landing on history, hit TV late tonight, early tomorrow morning, depending on where we just negotiated a tearful look down here, the finishing touches on a slightly different perspective mean if you're talking about police hope to extricate two U.S. troops to just about another remarkable Christmas, one that took place six years ago on the eastern front in 1914 when consumer protections in fighting stopped and men from all sides came together to make Christmas Indians, Belgians, Brits, French and Germans.

An extraordinary story. And it's obvious that production coming out of the exchange with lot of the source material that historians will be coming to. This puts on the 2013 24/7 coverage. In effect, it's all happening outside of the continent. And listen for what it means to be the last day. I think few times I think there's any hope of getting Christmas gifts from history. You wouldn't talk about that critical aspect of it. So if you don't go to waste, it becomes a shopaholic comedy stuff that if you don't send comics also very good stuff you can send to friends around the country if you can't be with them anyway.

Everybody is nations with.

Thank you so much for joining me today. Well, thank you for having me. It's a pleasure to be here. No, not at all. And we're talking about the basin of the river trivia. And this is an extraordinary clash because we normally associate battles in the ancient Mediterranean with either the spring, the summer or the autumn. But this is an extraordinary battle that occurs in the heart of winter.

I know campaigning seasons in antiquity, all driven by access to food and it being relatively pleasant to march around so that you can actually go and find the enemy. But because of Hannibal's long march, he only manages to get into Italy by December the 21st. In fact, Plebe says around about the winter solstice. So we actually have a more or less exact date being given by one of our ancient sources.

That's actually amazing for an ancient battle to actually have an exact date for it. I mean, I know everything is so much in antiquity is always debated, but before we go into the battle itself, let's get into the background and the context.

You mentioned the year 218 B.C. and let's go back to the start of 218 B.C., because, Larry, was the situation between Rome and Carthage than war has just broken out. Yeah.

So Roman Catholics have had a relatively uneasy peace for about 20 years after the first Punic War. This is the start of the second Punic War.

And in the interim, while Rome has been consolidating its position in Italy, Carthage has been expanding in Spain, where Hannibal's family have been campaigning. First, Hambros father, Hasdrubal, who is a great hero and leader of the first Punic War, has subdued a number of Spanish tribes. Then on his death, his son in law, who is Hannibal's brother in law, takes over and expands from about two to six down to two to two and expands in Spain diplomatically as well as militarily.

He's got this vast army that he builds up. He founds Cartagena, New Carthage, as the Romans called it. And in that context, Hannibal has been and his other two brothers, Hasdrubal and Moco, have been growing up, exposed to campaign, exposed to the military life. And indeed, Hannibal has been acting as Hasdrubal, his brother in law's right hand man. So this Hasdrubal, his brother Hasdrubal, his brother in law, and the husband, his brother in law, someone is assassinated two to two.

So Hannibal has been gaining a lot of experience. He's been leading cavalry forces. A man has his brother in law dies. The Army elects Hannibal to be commander in chief in Spain. And this is ratified back in Carthage as well. So Hannibal hasn't been to Carthage since he was nine, according to some legends. And he's now in his early mid 20s and he's taken control of the Chilean army. And he started campaigning to the north of the Carthaginian conquests.

And this has taken him to the city of Squantum, which is south of the river appro, and he has besieged it. Now, secondments, very interesting city. It's pro Roman. It's reached out at some point in the past decade or so to the Romans and has either got some kind of formal treaty or at least to put themselves on the Romans watchlist as friends and potential allies and thorns in the side of the Carthaginian expansion. The Romans have been mindful of the Carthaginian expansion in Spain and in two to six had actually negotiated a treaty with Hasbro, the brother in law.

That meant that the Carthaginians had to undertake not to cross the river apro in arms. So they Rabo is a major river to the north east of southern coast of Spain, essentially runs up parallel to the Pyrenees, more or less so. Hannibal, by attacking the Guntram, isn't violating that treaty, at least according to the tenets of geography, but is interfering with one of Rome's allies, which, according to the treaty that was negotiated at the end of the first Punic War, neither side was supposed to be attacking the other's allies, the terms of the treaty.

So the Romans might see this as a breach of the treaty. But I don't think that it's not, because this is a matter that the Romans have gained either formally or informally after the treaty date. So Hannibal besieges this city. It takes him a long time to capture it. And in the interim, the Romans have sent a number of embassies both to him and to Carthage, trying to get him to desist from the siege. He sends them away angrily.

And when push comes to shove and Hannibal has actually captured the city, the Roman ambassadors in Carthage say now you've either got to hand over Hannibal, who was sacked this city and all of his staff for punishment. Or you have to accept that we are now at war. The ambassador famously says, I hold in the folds of my togher war and peace. Which do you choose? And according to fantastic, evocative anecdote in Lévy, the Carthaginians Senate stands up and shouts.

He choose war and then theatrically the senator shakes out his toga, and so presumably more flops down onto the floor of the Senate and there it is. So the question is, have been very active in Spain. The government have just kept an eye on Spain. They've had other problems. So at the start of 218, they have just come out of a war in Libya. So across the Adriatic, where they've been dealing with the people of Epirus and a certain queen, Chuter, and they've had their first Alerian war, which they've fought successfully, but they've also been involved for the past four or five years in conquering northern Italy.

So the area more or less north of the Rubicon, the pope's plane, which is this huge plane and northern Italy nowadays is very prosperous. It's got these great cities, Turin, Chens, Milan, all these great cities. All of these were sort of Gallic communities of some standing even back then. And the Romans have spent the last three or four years in particular, defeating various Gallic tribes. And at the beginning of two hundred and eighteen, even as the country is falling, the Romans are sending out two colonies, one to Piacenza, to potentia, as the Romans called it, and the other one to Cremona.

So they've just set up these two colonies and essentially those things are just being built at that very point. So that's the situation that the protagonists find themselves. The Carthaginian army. There's a very large Carthaginian army in Spain. The question is obviously hold a lot of northern Africa and a lot of the coasts all the way along the sort of Algerian coast and also through Tunisia, all the way down into modern day Libya. And so the Carthaginians have probably a smaller army based in North Africa to keep security.

They have a number of indigenous tribes that they have to rule over and also to deal with in various ways. They have allies with certain tribes of what would now be more wars, but would then Namibians and they control sort of local Libyan populations. So they have a smaller army there. And actually the very beginning of the war, Hannibal transfers some forces from Spain to Africa and some African forces to Spain to make it harder for revolts and desertions to occur.

So once you've got Liberians serving as soldiers in Africa, they're not likely to run home to their home. Tribes is much more complicated for them and vice versa for the Libyans. So he transfers and mixes some of the forces at the beginning, the Romans, they have military forces, resources just coming back from a vacuum. But they've also have these veterans of the northern Italian wars as well, which are available to them.

Now, you mentioned there how Hannibal he's got this sizable army in Spain at this time and also how the Romans, they are still consolidating their control over the Ohio River Valley. And what we know might say, well, what we will say is northern Italy.

So Hannibal, he sees this in Spain and he's now at war with Rome. What's his plan? Right.

So it depends a little bit on whether you think this is a plan that has been long in the brewing or one that says, oh, no, we're at war with Rome. We were hoping that they wouldn't interfere. But because we're safer, the appropriate it looks like we're going to have to work out a strategy to attack them. The best forces are with Hannibal in Spain. And so in order to deal with the Romans, you can either fight them wherever they want to fight.

And we know that the Roman initial strategy becomes one of sending one army to Spain and another army to Africa. And it's incredibly predictable because this is the way the Romans like to operate. They like to operate by fighting in the enemy's territory rather than their own, a very sensible thing to do. So to forestall that, Hannibal has to get his army to Italy, because if he's fighting in Italy, there's less chance of an invasion of Africa, there's less chance of invasion of Spain.

And so consequently, Hannibal, who is a great fan of the great Hellenistic general Paris of the Pirates, has read the memoirs of Paris. We know that from various accounts that Hannibal was an avid reader of Greek history of strategy. He'd read his own accounts of his campaigns in Italy, and he understood that the way you deal with the Romans is to deal with them in Italy itself, because in the first Punic War, the Carthaginians had predominantly fought over Sicily, which was neither Roman nor entirely Carthaginian at the time.

And the war basically dragged on for 20 odd years in Sicily with a brief foray of the Romans to Africa, which actually almost pulled the Carthaginians to their knees. So the question is, realize that they are fragile in Africa. Potentially, if a Roman army gets there, then it can cause all kinds of problems, but also that fighting the Romans broad doesn't bring victory. So the way you have to deal with them is to try and get. To them in Italy either captured Rome or perhaps more practically break up the Roman alliance system, which is something that Paris had actually started to manage to do, he prised away a number of recently conquered tribes in southern and central Italy when he campaigned in the two seventies B.C. So this is 50 years on.

And, you know, the allies of Rome may still have lingering resentment towards Rome, but nevertheless, time has passed and it's probable that the allies will be less likely to revolt. But nevertheless, it's worth a try. So Hannibal needs to get Anami to Italy from Spain, his best troops, and he needs to get himself because he's the ambitious young general. He's the kind of I wouldn't say is an Alexander wannabe, but he's imbued with that Hellenistic leadership approach, which is to be decisive, to lead from the front more or less, and to really try and take the enemy to task in as many decisive battles as they need to realize that they've been defeated.

Alexander conquered the Persian Empire in three great battles. Come and do the same as the question. So he's got to get his army to Spain. The Romans, however, had demonstrated that in the first Punic War, their fleet was something to be reckoned with. Carthaginians were traditionally a very powerful naval force, probably the predominant navy in the western Mediterranean. But the Romans had matched them and had taken as many casualties, if not more sea than the Carthaginians.

So have the resources to match. The coastline is at sea and at the start of the war, probably had a larger fleet and a fleet that was probably in a better state as well. So sailing to Italy was problematic, not least because of the sheer numbers that have wanted to take the need to actually require the ships to cross the whole of the western Mediterranean and get past any kind of Roman War fleets that are put out would be very, very difficult and dangerous.

So he decides to march his army across the Pyrenees, across southern France, across the Alps and into northern Italy, where he may well expect a rather good reception from the recently conquered and oppressed goals. Something you learn from Paris is that if you go somewhere the Romans had recently defeated, you are more likely to get support from those areas. So for Paris, it was the some nights and the Ukrainians and the Greeks and the south, which the Romans are they really overawed?

For about twenty years here, we've only got a gap of four or five years between the initial Roman victories and actually the defeat. So Hannibal is in contact with the goals and negotiating with them throughout his short reign as commander in chief. He's already put out feelers. He's gathered information about the march is possible that his father and his brother in law had already thought through this plan that the only way you could get the Romans was to march from Spain.

There is obviously something that they considered and planned for collectively, but it's Hannibal who really puts out the feelers, is in contact with the girls in northern Italy and in fact, has a number of ambassadors from them who encouraged him to come. And I'd say also that at the beginning of two hundred and eighteen, with the planting of these colonies in northern Italy, the girls are really upset about that, particularly the tribes of the boy and the insiders who are the major tribes in the north.

And they're both encouraging Hannibal to come. But they also, the Burri in particular, decide to try and disrupt the foundation of these colonies. And so they start to wage war against the colonists. And the Romans have to raise forces and send forces to deal with them. And they, in fact, defeat the girls in a couple of engagements. So they're already sort of Gallic Roman hostilities happening in the spring and summer of 280.

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Seven minutes remaining on your monthly allowance. Hello. Hi, Don, it's Amy. Amy, there's your hockey team might say, hi, I haven't got long. Me neither.

Just a few spare minutes, like getting your money's worth. Enjoy the delicious mayo chicken. Just one euro 50 from the McDonald's euro saver menu.

Louis, though, that's all. Amazing how Hannibal has already has these connections with those in northern Italy, the ghouls who aren't happy with the Romans. I love this link with one of my heroes, Paris, and that Hellenistic style of leadership, charismatic style of leadership.

And let's go on towards the battle of the river.

I know that the march to the is remarkable and even the initial stages of it going to the Pyrenees and to the river. Roen, so Hannibal and his army, they've marched out of Spain, they've passed the Pyrenees and they've managed to cross the river. What about the march through the Alps?

When does this happen? And what happens during this? One of the greatest adventures in ancient history?

Yeah, and it is an incredible adventure. I mean, it's inspired people ever since British explorations in the 1940s and 50s who march Hannaford's across the Alps to reproduce this. Those guys, they knew about elephants from British rule in India. So they were able to sort of simulate and check on how far elephants could walk through the Alps. And they all demonstrated that it was entirely possible for this to happen. But in antiquity, it was a complete amazement that Hannibal would be as audacious enough to invade Italy anyway, but also to carry these 37 elephants, which he starts out with across two enormous mountain ranges, the Pyrenees and the Alps.

So, yeah, it's become a really romantic thing. It's inspired all kinds of artists and writers ever since. And it's Polybius. Our main source gives us a very detailed account of it and spends an awful long time on it. Lévy gives us another account as well, which is slightly more romantic in a way.

Very interestingly, Polybius, who's writing about 60 years after the invasion his own life, overlapped with Hannibal's barber eight years, who's about 18 years old. Hannibal died in a two.

Polybius actually was able to interview people who had crossed the Alps with Hannibal. He interviewed Master Nestor, who didn't, but who was the king of the new millions who had actually served with Hannibal in Spain. And so other Namibians and other soldiers who had marched with Hannibal were still alive. And Polybius was able to talk to some of these people or at least talk to their families and get a really detailed understanding of the nature of the crossing, Hannibal's generalship, Hannibal's logistical planning and that sort of thing as well.

He'd also explore the Alps himself, so he knew this crossing. So when we are sort of looking at accounts, Polybius, this is probably the most reliable and it's the one that archaeologists, people who have tried to explore which route Hannibal took across the Alps, they basically look at Polybius first and see whether or not the routes can be reconciled with his account. And if they can't, then you turn to other sources and see what happens. So Hannibal crosses the Broon, which is a major river, and he gets his elephants across.

He actually manages to defeat a Gallic army that assembled on the other side. And he encounters a small scouting party sent by a Roman force under the command of the elder, we can call him. He's the father of the famous Kippie Africanness who wins the battle of Zama against Hannibal some six years later. And this specif you have been sent by the Romans with that invasion force I mentioned earlier that was going to invade Spain. So the Roman initial strategy in the war send a consular army of two legions and allies numbering a similar sort of amount to Spain to contest with the baskets for control of that region and the other force under some previous longus, another consul has been sent to Sicily to limit Byam, which was a Punic Carthaginian base in the West but is now in Roman hands, has long been in very good hands since the end of the first war that he's assembling a fleet, he's got a force and he's going to make an expedition to Africa.

So what's interesting is Hannibal crosses the road and then encounters this scouting party from Ceppos Force, which had just stopped off at Marseilles, Macedonia, and they just heard that Hannibal was in the area. So they'd gone north to scout Hannibal on a screen of cavalry down to have a look to see what was going on. And lo and behold, there's a skirmish and serious force comes out on top. And Hannibal, new million light cavalry are driven back to the camp and good, crikey, that's a Roman army down there.

Perhaps the route through the Alps, the easy route, which is to the south, is out of bounds. If I head that way, I may have to fight a Roman army before winter and that might delay me and my army and no longer will be able to cross the Alps. So what he does is he actually heads north up the road and then the river is air comes off to the east and he follows the ASAT up into the Alps.

There are some debates about what his crossing was, which of the various passes to the north that he could have taken. And there are a number of scholars who disagree. But there has been some recent really interesting archaeological and geological investigation by Bill Mahayni, who in 2015 to 2018. Has looked at the most difficult parts, which is the called the Lutrova set, and is actually the highest and most awkward pass. But Polybius says that Hannibal took the highest pass in the Alps and Polybius having traveled the Alps and having interviewed people.

I think we should probably listen to him first. And what Bill Mahayni discovered is that in the area just south of the highest part of the passes are low plane, just below the very highest precipitous part of the crossing. And there he's dug some cause of soil and taken samples of the soil. And what he's found is that there is a disturbed layer, a layer that has been disturbed by some kind of geological event, possibly a rockslide. But actually, when they analyzed it, what they found was a lot of fecal matter produced by large numbers of horses.

Hannibal's army had large numbers of horses. It's also been carbon dated and the carbon dating puts it in the right era. Now, carbon dating is quite difficult to be very exact. So we can't say 218. Exactly. What we can say is we are pretty certain that it's the first two centuries B.C. We're reasonably certain that it may be 218 plus or minus 50 years. We're less certain than it could be plus or minus 25 years. And they're less certain that plus or minus five years, whatever.

So the point is we may have found either Hannibal's army or Hannibal's brother's army, which came over in 208 or agalloch Army that's crossed the Alps. And one of the things that Polybius says is that although Hannibal inspired people with wonder when crossing over the Alps with his army, actually this was not a revolutionary thing. The goals and Gallic armies have been doing it for ages is what he says. And in fact, they had in 225 crossed over a large force to invade Italy and join the Celtic tribes in the north, which had actually precipitated the Roman counter-attack, which led to the subjection of the north.

So only seven years earlier, a Gallic army had gone over. Some of these passes. A large Gaelic army of 20000 plus had done that. So Hannibal is following routes that other forces had taken. He may well have taken the most difficult one, but even that is not necessarily impossible to cross for an army. However, it is getting towards the winter. Polybius says that the Pleiades were just setting and the Pleitez set towards the end of November.

So by the time Hannibal has actually got to the point where he's ascending, the snow has begun to fall and is starting to settle on the top of the Alps. So he's really laid the clock is ticking. He needs to get across before the passes are closed. He has a number of encounters with hostile Gallic tribes en route. The first encounter that had been settled was at the Rhône. He then allied with a local tribe and I get supplies from them.

But then he has to head north and head up the air and then up to whichever party he chooses. And there he is, opposed by various local groups who understandably don't want to see, well, 40000 people perhaps eat their food and come through. So they oppose him at various passes. And he has a very, very difficult and precipitous conflicts on at least two occasions where his army is really in danger because the enemy hold the high ground above the precipices or catch them of bottlenecks.

And he has some very uncomfortable conflicts which he's able to resolve mainly by using his light infantry, which he has an abundance of, who go up and storm into the mountain passes and remove the enemy. But he has considerable casualties. He particularly has casualties. And with his horses, you tend to panic when people were boulders down on them and his pack animals and he loses lots of pack animals as well. And this intensifies the supply problems that he has getting across the Japs.

So obviously he needs to stop wherever he can, whenever there's a flat piece of ground so that his horses can eat and graze. So he's had a very difficult ascencion and his whole reversing of the Alps may only have been about 14 or 15 days, but these are incredibly difficult days for him. And even once he gets to the precipice and he's removed all the opposing tribes and he only has to deal with the sort of raiding parties from then on, going down from the top into Italy is actually really difficult because at that point the snow has fallen.

Polybius Lévy both talk about how old snow had been compacted, a new snow had fallen on top of it. And this meant that distending was incredibly difficult because although you could sort of walk on the nice crispy snow below, it was frozen ice or slushy stuff which made it very treacherous. And as soon as you slipped up, you could tumble to your death or just go whizzing halfway down the mountain. Because Polybius says actually when they crouch down on their hands and knees, I just went down faster.

And for the horses and for the elephants, this was incredibly difficult. Finally, as they're descending, they encounter a rockfall. Part of the path had been swept away and then in. Other fallen fallen on top of that to make it for about 250 meters completely impassable and his army is stuck in the snow is beginning to fall. So he needs to build a path. So his army is trapped on the side of a precipice, essentially for a couple of days while his troops clear the ice, clear the debris, some particularly big rocks, apparently uncomfortable.

They're huge. And so the story goes that Hannibal warms up some vinegar, some sour wine pours over these rocks because they're frozen, they crack, and this helps and push them apart and get the army through. I would say that actually that's a fair story. I think ancient armies did actually move with sour wine because you could bathe your horses in sour wine and that would prevent scurvy, what it's called hunger mange. So it's a kind of horse scurvy.

You would be the cosiness and it would keep them in trim, really.

So it's not implausible that he has some wine with him. So it's a possible story.

Eventually, he descends into the plains of the PO and his army is completely exhausted and he has to rest for a few days. And Polybius, as a mark of his generalship, not only was his planning across the Alps immaculate because he had established guides and possible routes and places where he might be fed and the sorts of supplies he needed. But also when he got to Italy, he had to care for his man and his animals because they the men were so starved and so careworn that they resembled wild beasts.

And he spent several days restoring their health, their spirits and their condition. So this is a general who looks after his men and this means that his men will look after him in the future. So one of the great things about Hannibal is what a great man manager he is, how carefully is to push his men as far as they possibly can, and then to ease off the gas as soon as he possibly can to get them back to fighting trim.

And that's incredibly important for what comes next.

Big part in the history of our country. Hardbody, just a quick message at the end of this podcast, I'm currently sheltering in a small, windswept building on a piece of rock in the Bristol Channel called Lundie. I'm here to make a podcast. I'm here enduring weather that frankly is apocalyptic because I want to get some great podcast material. You guys, in return, I've got a little tiny favor to ask if you could go to get your podcasts, if you could give it a five star rating, if you could share it, if you could give it a review.

I really appreciate that. From the comfort of your own homes, you'll be doing me a massive favor. Then more people list the podcast. We can do more and more ambitious things and I can spend more of my time getting pummeled. Thank you.

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