Excerpt from The United Service Journal, and the Naval and Military Magazine, 1832, Vol. 2

But independent of these precautions, the genius of Hannibal was itself an antidote to the evils which naturally resulted from entrust ing an army _of foreigners with the maintenance of a people's rights, or the vindication of their honour. Under such a general, a compara tively short period would do much towards transforming a mixed and heterogeneous mass into a regular and orderly body of disciplined sol diers and still more, perhaps, towards gaining for him over all under his command, no matter how little known or attached to him before, that influence and ascendancy, the power of acquiring which is an emi uently characteristic attribute of every great military leader. Hannibal, however, had full time both to perfect the discipline and possess him self of the confidence of the army, which he marched into Italy; and we may be certain that the success with which veterans who had so long served under his father and himself, disputed with the mistress of the world possession of even her central seat of empire, was nowise greater than they were entitled to, as well by their own merits as those 'of their incomparable commander. The achievements of this great man, which throw so pre-eminent a lustre over the declining glory of Car thage, prove to what a' height of power and dominion she might have been exalted, had it not been for that capital defect in her military system Which so often rendered her warlike operations feeble and inef fectual. The evils which resulted from depending on other people for the support of her rights in war, wereno sooner neutralised by the energies and resources of one powerful mind, than, weakened as she had been by the disasters of her first war with the Romans, by the mutiny of her troops, and the loss of one of her most important pos sessions, she rose, as it were, with renovated strength, and having shown herself equal to the conquest of a country which. At a subse quent period, was among the very last to acknowledge even the supre macy of Rome, proceeded, in the occupation of the fairest provinces of Italy for sixteen years together, to give conspicuous proof how wor thy she was to be the antagonist of the imperial city itself in the competition for empire.

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