Dusmanul la Poarta!-Partea-47!

 1-Acest articol este copiat !

2-Istoria ramane pasiunea mea nr-1.

Sack the City

As the Third Punic War entered its fourth year, Scipio Aemilianus had his command prorogued for another year. As Spring began, he launched the final Roman assault. Hasdrubal was expecting the attack, so set fire to nearby warehouses in the harbour area. Despite this, an advanced legionary party broke through to the military harbour and captured it. This assault reached the city’s main square, where the legions camped overnight. The next morning Scipio led a legion to link up with the group at the harbour, which had stalled as it stripped the gold from the Temple of Apollo, which a furious Scipio was helpless to prevent. The Carthaginians forfeited their last chance to sortie as they pulled back to defensible positions, rather than isolate and annihilate the single legion in the square.

Now managing to consolidate the legions, the Romans systematically worked their way through the residential section of the city, killing all they encountered and burning the buildings as they went. The fighting was bitter and brutal, the Punic inhabitants knowing this was their last stand. At times the legionaries had to move across the rooftops to avoid the missiles being hurled down on them from above. This was a brutal and bloody business, with the people of Carthage fighting for the lives of their families, for their homes, for their city, all against an aggressive invader set on destruction because of a conflict that took place half a century ago. There was likely nobody alive during the Second Punic War now fighting in the siege, and yet still the mutual feelings of hatred and bitterness persevered. Rome knew that this war was won from before it began, yet had found its legions frustrated in failing to achieve a swift victory. Now the fury and anger of those legionaries who had stared at the city walls for four years, who had been fed tales from their fathers of the horrors of Hannibal and the valour of Scipio Africanus, were poured out on those citizens who fought for their very lives. The sacking of a city throughout history is a brutal experience, with men and children killed without mercy, women often raped before being killed themselves, and possessions stripped from home – fortunately not an experience we are ever likely to live today, yet one that was incredibly common throughout history. Once a besieging army entered a city, military discipline usually gave way to carnage. Commanders had no control over soldiers who now became looters, rapists and murderers, and often soldiers fought one another over the best loot. If a city surrendered, the commander took the bulk of the loot, so a sacking was often a soldier’s golden opportunity to find treasures for themselves, and a prospect most awaited with relish.

It took six days for the city to be cleared, a testament to the civilian resistance, and finally Scipio agreed to take prisoners. The last holdout included 900 Roman deserters at the Temple of Eshmoun, who burnt it down around themselves rather than surrender, knowing crucifixion would be the likely penalty for defecting. Following this Hasdrubal formally surrendered, on the promise of sparing his own life and freedom. His wife, watching from the ramparts, cursed Hasdrubal and blessed Scipio, then walked herself and her children into the raging inferno of the temple.

Scipio took 50,000 prisoners from Carthage, though this was only a small proportion of the city’s pre-war population. Legionary camps were often followed by slavers, and selling captives into slavery became a hugely profitable businesses – though ruinous for the long-term future of the Roman Republic. What was initially a by-product of war – making slaves of a defeated enemy – would soon become a cause for war. The site of the city was cursed, with the intention being to prevent it ever being resettled (although the idea that salt was sown on the earth was a myth added in the Nineteenth Century). The religious items that Carthage had looted from Sicily during its centuries of warfare on the island were returned, to great fanfare. The First Punic War had seen Carthage ended as a naval power. The Second Punic War had seen Carthage broken as a rival power. The Third Punic War had seen Carthage utterly destroyed, the nation, the city, the very concept of a civilisation that had existed for over half a millennia, which was older than Rome, simply erased. Contemporary observers saw this unprovoked Roman attack on a defeated power as disgraceful, a stain on Rome’s honour – though no power now had the capability to resist Rome in the Mediterranean.

Scipio returned to huge fanfare, and was awarded the agnomen (nickname) of Africanus. The Carthaginian territories were directly annexed by Rome as Africa Province, with its capital at Utica. The province would prove to be a breadbasket, and expediate the process began in Sicily of seeing Italian agricultural land turned over to luxuries like wine and figs, slowly driving out those very citizen smallholder farmers who comprised the legions as grain was increasingly imported from overseas. Scipio’s success in a stalemate siege, following on from his adoptive grandfather’s success at Zama, gave rise to the myth that Romans needed a Scipio to win in Africa. This bizarre myth would persevere for a century, until Julius Caesar crushed the forces ostensibly under Metellus Scipio at the Battle of Thapsus.

Roman expansion into Africa saw Scipio divide the Kingdom of Numidia betwixt various successors following the death of Masinissa, and laid the groundwork for the Jugurthine Wars in the following decades. Various other Punic cities came into the Roman fold, such as Mauretania, though they retained their systems of governance until they were fully incorporated as Roman provinces much later. The Punic language remained widely spoken in north Africa until the Islamic expansion of the Seventh Century.

The year of Carthage’s destruction, 146 BC, also saw the levelling of Corinth. Roman intervention in Greece finally saw the anti-Macedonian league turn again the legions too late, and they were crushed. Mummius destroyed Corinth, while Scipio destroyed Carthage. Destroying cities in strategically vital positions for emotional reasons seem stupid, and unsurprisingly both Carthage and Corinth were rebuilt, both in the time of Caesar. Carthage would become one of the key cities of north Africa for the Roman Empire, and its capture by the Vandals in the Fifth Century was indicative of the malaise of the Western Empire. A joint Eastern – Western counter-attack was called off by the invasion of the East by Atilla the Hun, and the Vandals ruled the city until the Byzantine Emperor Justinian crushed their nation. It would remain an important Byzantine city until the Islamic conquests, when much of the material from the city was used in the construction of Tunis.

Today Carthage is a suburb of Tunis, ten miles east of the modern city. The term “Carthaginian Peace” means to extract a peace so punishing that the enemy is completely crushed and rendered incapable of waging further war. There are many parallels betwixt the Punic Wars and World Wars – a small, regional conflict escalating into involving great powers, those powers committing all of their resources to victory, the grinding down of opponents, the unimaginable loss of life and civilian suffering, an initial peace treaty so punishing it fostered bitterness and made further war inevitable. Does that fact that such mistakes were repeated over two millennia later mean that mankind does not learn the lessons of history? On 5 February 1958, the mayors of Rome and the modern city of Carthage, Ugo Vetere and Chedli Klibi respectively, signed a formal peace treaty some 2,131 years after the war had ended. Although Rome may have won the Punic Wars, the cost of victory would be its very self – for the seeds had been sown for the collapse of the republic which would soon follow.