Free Scipio Africanus by B.h. Liddell Hart Page A

Wonderful as was Hannibal’s fertility of plan, there appears in Scipio’s record a still richer variety, a still more complete calculation, and in three directions a definite superiority. The attack on a fortified place was admittedly in Hannibal a weakness; in Scipio the reverse, for Cartagena is a landmark in history. The pursuit after Ilipa marks a new advance in warfare, as also the wide concealed turning movement
in this last battle against Andobales, a development clearly beyond the narrow outflanking manœuvres which had hitherto been the highwater mark of tactical skill.
    Scipio’s military motto would seem to have been “ every time a new stratagem.” Has ever a general been so fertile an artist of war? Beside him most of the celebrated captains of history appear mere dabblers in the art, showing in their whole career but one or two variations of orthodox practice. And be it remembered that with one exception Scipio’s triumphs were won over first-class opponents; not, like Alexander, over Asiatic mobs; like Cæsar, over tribal hordes; or like Frederick and Napoleon, over the courtier-generals and senile pedants of an atrophied military system.
    This victory over Andobales and Mandonius proved to be the coping-stone not only on his military career in Spain, but on the political conquest of the country. So decisive had it been that Andobales realised the futility of further resistance, and sent his brother Mandonius to sue for peace unconditionally. One imagines that Mandonius must have felt some pessimism as to his reception and as to his tenure of life. It would have been natural to have dealt out to these twice-repeated rebels a dire vengeance. But Scipio knew human nature,
including Spanish nature. No vengeance could improve his military or political position, now unchallenged, whereas, on the other hand, it would merely sow the seeds of future trouble, convert the survivors into embittered foes, biding their time for a fresh outbreak. Little as he counted on their fidelity, generosity was the one course which might secure it. Therefore, after upbraiding Mandonius, and through him, Andobales, driving home the helplessness of their position and the rightful forfeiture of their lives, he made a peace as generous as it was diplomatically foresighted. To show how little he feared them, he did not demand the surrender of their arms and all their possessions, as was the custom, nor even the required hostages, saying that“ should they revolt, he would not take vengeance on their unoffending hostages, but upon themselves, inflicting punishment not upon defenceless but on armed enemies ” (Livy). The wisdom of this policy found its justification in the fact that from this juncture Spain disappears from the history of the Punic War, whether as a base of recruitment and supply for the Carthaginian armies or as a distraction from Scipio’s concentration on his new objective —Carthage itself. True, revolts broke out at intervals, the first avowedly from the contempt
felt by the Spanish for the generals who succeeded Scipio, and recurred for centuries. But they were isolated and spasmodic outbursts, and limited to the hill tribes, in whose blood fighting was a malarial fever.
    Scipio’s mission in Spain was accomplished. Only Gades held out as the last fragment of the Carthaginian power, and this, being then an island fortress, was impregnable save through possible betrayal by its defenders. By some historians Mago’s escape from Gades is made an imputation on Scipio’s generalship, yet from a comparison of the authorities it would seem probable that Mago left there, under orders from Carthage, while Scipio was occupied with the far more pressing menace of the mutiny and Andobales’s revolt. Mago, too, was not such a redoubtable personality that his departure, with a handful of troops, for other fields was in itself a menace to the general situation, even if it could