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62 operations behind his back. There is every indication that he had allowed for, and perhaps courted this. His objective was Rome; the more soldiers Rome dispatched to Spain or Sicily, the fewer would she have to defend the heart of her empire.

With heavy, and perhaps unanticipated, loss, Hannibal crossed the Alps. It has been surmised that he expected to find friends there instead of the enemies that he actually encountered: since his whole plan rested upon appearing as the saviour of Italy and adjacent lands from Rome. Certainly in Italy he expected to find recruits, and his failure to do so considerably hampered him. Still, with his well-trained army he easily inflicted crushing disasters upon the Romans.

Lack of troops and siege engines prevented him from attempting to take Rome: instead he passed to the south and communicated with Carthage by sea, asking for reinforcements. These he failed to secure. Their non-arrival is attributed by Captain Mahan to the influence of Roman Sea Power, but the evidence of this is entirely negative. On the other hand it is a known fact that a party in Carthage regarded him with jealousy and suspicion, and opposed his being reinforced.

Before the battle of Cannae also he had not had reinforcements for certain definite reasons:

1. He was in no pressing need, the Spanish army was strong in itself and he hardly asked for more