They might, in some sense, impute to themselves the distress to which they were reduced. During the last war, they had treated the African nations with the utmost rigour, by imposing excessive tributes on them, in the exaction of which no allowance was made for poverty and extreme misery; and governors, such as Hanno, were treated with the greater respect, the more severe they had been in levying those tributes. So that no great efforts were necessary to prevail upon the Africans to engage in this rebellion. At the very first signal that was made, it broke out, and in a moment became general. The women, who had often, with the deepest affliction, seen their husbands and fathers dragged to prison for non-payment, were more exasperated than the men; and with pleasure gave up all their ornaments towards the expenses of the war; so that the chiefs of the rebels, after paying all they had promised the soldiers, found themselves still in the midst of plenty: an instructive lesson, says Polybius, to ministers, how a people should be treated; as it teaches them to look, not only to the present occasion, but to extend their views to futurity. The Carthaginians, notwithstanding their present distress, did not despond, but made the most extraordinary efforts. The command of the army was given to Hanno. Troops were levied by land and sea; horse as well as foot. All citizens, capable of bearing arms, were mustered; mercenaries were invited from all parts; and all the ships which the republic had left were refitted. The rebels discovered no less ardour. We related before, that they had formed the siege of the two only cities which refused to join them. Their army was now increased to seventy thousand men. After detachments had been drawn from it to carry on those sieges, they pitched their camp at Tunis; and thereby held Carthage in a kind of blockade, filling it with perpetual alarms, and frequently advancing up to its very walls by day as well as by night.