Young Knights of the Empire Part 28

But what seemed so unlikely actually happened in the end.

The Romans had no great fleet to speak of, but they had a fine army, and they meant business. They put their soldiers into crowded transports, and sailed across the short distance of ocean that lay between the two countries--not much farther than Hamburg in Germany is from Hull in Yorkshire.

Thus the country which, like Germany, had a fine, well-trained army, landed a force in Carthaginia, the country which, like Britain, had a great fleet and great colonies, but only a small army, and it smashed up the Carthaginians through their not Being Prepared for it.

Boar Hunting.

From Tunis one sees to the southward a mountain called Zaghouan.

Though forty miles away it was from here that the Carthaginians got their water supply, and they conveyed it by a small ca.n.a.l, which they built all the way to Carthage.

[Ill.u.s.tration: You can imagine the fun of having a lot of wildly excited Arabs firing from the opposite side of the circle straight in your direction, with the animal in between you.]

That ca.n.a.l still serves to bring the water into Tunis, though it is now a good deal over two thousand years old!

I went to Zaghouan once to hunt wild boars. We got on that occasion a hyena. It was an exciting time when our Arab beaters, working in a big circle, gradually closed in on him from all sides.

It was exciting because every beater carried a gun, and every man meant having a shot at that hyena.

You can imagine the fun of having a lot of wildly excited Arabs firing from the opposite side of the circle straight in your direction at the animal in between you!

Fortunately on this occasion the first few shots killed him, and there were no other deaths to record.

The Arabs themselves see no special danger in it, because, they say, the guns are all pointing downwards at the animal, and if the bullet misses him it will only bury itself in the ground.

That is all very well, but it might as likely as not hit a stone and glance up again and catch one in the eye or elsewhere that might be unpleasant.

Personally, I did not hold with that kind of shooting, but the Arabs seemed to enjoy it so much and were so cheery and jolly over it that I, too, had to smile and look as if I liked it.

There is plenty of game near Tunis, and this day we saw two dead wild boars being brought in.

ELEPHANTS USED IN WAR.

In the old days, as I told you, Carthage was the London of that time, being a city of 700,000 inhabitants, and the capital of a great empire, which had overseas colonies in Spain, Corsica, and Sicily.

For a very long time it was at war with the Romans, who were the great military nation then, and at first the Carthaginians got the better of their adversaries.

One great help to them was their corps of elephants. These elephants had scythes fixed on to their tusks, so that when they charged they not only cut down the serried ranks of their enemies, but they also trampled them underfoot.

In their great fight outside Carthage, the army belonging to the Carthaginians under a Greek officer, Xanthippus, carried the day with a grand charge of elephants, and thus defeated and routed the Romans under Regulus.

Of the 20,000 men who formed the Roman force only 2000 escaped.

Regulus and a number of his best officers were captured and held as prisoners of war for several years.

A BRAVE MAN FACES TORTURE.

As time went on, the Carthaginians tried to make peace, and they sent their prisoner, Regulus, over to Rome to persuade the Roman Government to come to terms. They made him promise on his word of honour that if he failed to bring about peace he would return again to Carthage, and become a prisoner once more.

When he got to Rome, instead of urging them to make peace, he told his countrymen to go on with the war.

The Roman Government were inclined to do this, but at the same time they saw that if they did, Regulus would probably be put to death by the Carthaginians for not having procured peace, so they did not know what to do.

Regulus, seeing their difficulty, told them that he was an old man and his life did not matter, and he pretended that he had already taken slow poison. So the Romans resolved to continue the war, and Regulus went back to Carthage, according to his promise, and gave himself up to the Carthaginians.

[Ill.u.s.tration: AN ARAB BOY AND HIS "MOKE."]

You might think that they would have admired him for his courage and sense of honour, but the Carthaginians, as I told you, were a cowardly lot; they hired soldiers to do their fighting for them, and, like all cowards, they were cruel, too; so instead of respecting this plucky old Roman, they punished him by shutting him into a box lined with sharp spikes, so that he could get no rest nor sleep.

Then they cut off his eyelids, and took him out of his dark cell into the blazing sunlight, so that he was blinded, and finally they killed him by crucifying him.

Supposing that we were invaded by an enemy who had a strong army, and we had nothing but paid soldiers to defend ourselves with because our men were too cowardly or too unpatriotic to learn how to defend their homes. If such an enemy were to defeat our weak army, and then order us to destroy every house in London, how should we like it?

Should not we feel, like the Carthaginians, enraged with our Government who had not made the country strong, and also enraged with ourselves because we had not trained ourselves to defend our homes before it was too late?

The Carthaginians in despair sent more messengers to the Roman general at their gates, begging for thirty days' grace in which to make their arrangements, but the conquerors sent these men back with the order that the destruction of the city was to begin at once.

Then a change came over the Carthaginians. From a mob of despairing, panic-stricken wretches they organised themselves into a defence force. They barred the city gates, and started to make weapons to replace those which they had surrendered to their enemies.

Night and day they worked--men, women, and children. They manufactured daily 100 shields, 300 swords, 500 spears, and 1000 b.a.l.l.s for their catapults, and the women cut off their hair and plaited it into ropes for the catapults.

A CATAPULT.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A CARTHAGINIAN CATAPULT.]

The catapult which the Carthaginians used was not the little implement that a boy uses nowadays; it was a big kind of windla.s.s, by which a number of ropes were twisted up tightly till they acted as a spring to a strong wooden arm at the end of which was a leather cup. This held a stone about the size of a man's head.

When the spring was let go, this arm was flung violently forward, and the stone was thereby hurled into the air, and flew with great force for 400 or 500 yards.

The catapults served the purpose of artillery in those days when gunpowder had not been invented.

The Carthaginians, when a favourable wind blew, sent a lot of fire boats filled with f.a.ggots and tar to drift among the Roman fleet and burn their ships.

They also got together the wrecks of their own ships which had been smashed up by the enemy, and from them they built up others and sallied out of port in order to astonish the Romans.

But they did not make any bold attacks, consequently the Romans only sat tight and got reinforcements over, and in the end they attacked and forced their way into the city. There the fighting in the streets was very close and bitter.

For six days it went on, but the stern discipline and valour of the Romans gradually told, and very soon the whole city was in their hands. Fifty thousand inhabitants were allowed to escape, and the city was given over to the flames.

One lot of defenders the Romans refused to spare. Some 900 of them took refuge, and made a last stand, in the Temple of AEsculapius, and among them was the wife of Hasdrubal, the commander of the Carthaginians, and her two sons.

Hasdrubal himself saved his skin by surrendering to Scipio, the Roman commander, but his wife stood up on the temple, which was now on fire, and reviled him as a coward. Then she killed her two boys, and threw herself into the fire rather than give in to the Latin enemy.