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Updated: June 16, 2025
With regard to the Roman war, if the battle of Trasimenus was more glorious than that at Trebia, and the battle of Cannae than that of Trasimenus, that he would eclipse the fame of the battle of Cannae by a greater and more brilliant victory." With this answer, and with munificent presents, he dismissed the ambassadors.
A few days later, Marshal Macdonald, whom Napoleon had left on the Katzbach at the head of several army corps, thought that he also would take advantage of the liberty given him by the absence of the Emperor to attempt to win a battle, which would compensate for the bloody defeat which he had endured on the Trébia during the Italian campaign of 1799, but once more he was defeated.
While this little comedy was passing, he, whose advent had been its occasion, was regarding Marcia fixedly; but he now looked into eyes that neither quailed nor wandered before his own. At last he spoke, and in Latin: "I am Mago, the son of Hamilcar. What brings a Roman woman to Capua in these days?" This youth, then, was the famous brother of Hannibal; the commander of the ambush at the Trebia.
From the earliest hour of the morning the Roman light troops had been skirmishing with the light cavalry of the enemy; the latter slowly retreated, and the Romans eagerly pursued it through the deeply swollen Trebia to follow up the advantage which they had gained.
The words recurred to Malchus as he sat in his tent by the side of his father's body on the night after the battle of the Trebia, and a deep bitterness mingled with his sorrow. "Giscon was right," he exclaimed. "All means are justifiable to rid one's country of those who are destroying her.
However, the delights of victory and of pillage at last brought into full play the Cisalpine Gauls' natural hatred of Rome. After Ticinus and Trebia, Hannibal had no more zealous and devoted troops. Of five thousand five hundred men that the victory of Cannae cost Hannibal, four thousand were Gauls.
With these he tried to stop the enemy from crossing the river Ticinus, but he was defeated and so badly wounded that his life was only saved by the bravery of his son, who led him out of the battle. Before he was able to join the army again, Sempronius had fought another battle with Hannibal on the banks of the Trebia and suffered a terrible defeat.
Few battles confer more honour on the Roman soldier than this on the Trebia, and few at the same time furnish graver impeachment of the general in command; although the candid judge will not forget that a commandership in chief expiring on a definite day was an unmilitary institution, and that figs cannot be reaped from thistles. The victory came to be costly even to the victors.
He knew Rome better perhaps than the Romans knew it themselves, and was very well aware how decidedly he was the weaker and continued to be so notwithstanding the brilliant battle on the Trebia; he knew too that his ultimate object, the humiliation of Rome, was not to be wrung from the unbending Roman pride either by terror or by surprise, but could only be gained by the actual subjugation of the haughty city.
But Hannibal's latter campaigns had not been signalized by any such great victories as marked the first years of his invasion of Italy. The stern spirit of Roman resolution, ever highest in disaster and danger, had neither bent nor despaired beneath the merciless blows which "the dire African" dealt her in rapid succession at Trebia, at Thrasymene, and at Cannae.
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