In nine years Hamilcar brought under Carthaginian rule all the country south of the Tagus; then—229 B.C.—he fell in battle. He was succeeded by his son-in-law, Hasdrubal, who continued the course of conquest until, eight years after the death of Hamilcar, he met his own end by the knife of an assassin. Thereupon the command passed to Hamilcar’s son, Hannibal, then only twenty-six years of age. I doubt not that when the youngster was advanced to the supreme command the graybeards of the general staff shook their heads dismally, and said, “Too young; too young,” and prophesied failure and disaster. For how could they have dreamed that, when history should grant him the justice of perspective, this youthful Carthaginian would be recognized as one of the greatest captains of all time? For, in the whole history of the world, there have been only two other men—Alexander the Great and Napoleon—who approached him in military and administrative genius. As a boy of nine, before the altar of the gods, Hannibal had taken an oath of undying hatred for Rome. And this oath he now proceeded to fulfil. Just as Sherman broke the heart of the Confederacy by his March to the Sea, so Hannibal determined to smash the power of Rome by carrying the war into the enemy’s territory, by sweeping across Italy itself. So audacious a plan of campaign depended for its success upon the rapidity with which it was executed. The Romans must be paralyzed by the speed of his advance. They must know of his coming only when they heard the trample of his elephants and saw the sun glinting on his spear-heads. What he planned was, in short, a great raid through Spain and Gaul and so down the whole length of the Italian peninsula, capturing Rome itself, if that were possible, and, if it were not, joining hands with Carthage across the narrow seas. Intrusting the command of the troops he left in occupation of Spain to his brother, Hannibal left New Carthage (Carthagena), which had been founded by his father some years before, and, late in the May of 218 B.C., set out with an army of ninety thousand men and a great number of elephants, on one of the most daring enterprises recorded in military history. Crossing the Pyrenees, and evading the Roman army which had been set to watch the mouth of the Rhone, he made friends with the Gauls and pressed on unhindered to the foot of the Alps. Though the savage Alpine winter, with its deep snow and bitter cold, was already at hand, though the barbarians hung on his flanks like ravening wolves, and though his losses in men and animals from exposure were enormous, he crossed into Italy by the Pass of the Great St. Bernard, as it is known to-day, cutting his way through the snow-drifts and splitting the rocks which impeded the passage of his wagon-trains with vinegar, for, be it remembered, he had to make his own roads as he advanced. In the words of Napoleon, “Hannibal forced the Alps; I turned them.”