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 revenge upon his ancient enemy, and at once invaded the Roman possessions in Spain, and laid siege to the city of Saguntum, which, after heroic resistance, yielded to his victorious arms. Thus commenced the second Punic war, in which Hannibal was to show to the world his genius as a general.

Leaving a large force in Africa, and also in Spain, to defend these points, Hannibal set out in the spring of the year B.C. 218, with a large army to fulfill his project against Rome.

His course lay along the Mediterranean; the whole distance to Rome being about one thousand miles by the land route which he contemplated. When he had traversed Spain, he came to the Pyrenees, a range of mountains separating that country from Gaul, now France. He was here attacked by wild tribes of brave barbarians, but he easily drove them back. He crossed the Pyrenees, traversed Gaul, and came at last to the Alps, which threw up their frowning battlements, interposing a formidable obstacle between him and the object of his expedition.

No warrior had then crossed these snowy peaks with such an army; and none but a man of that degree of resolution and self-reliance which could not be baffled, would have hazarded the fearful enterprise. Indeed, we turn with amazement to Hannibal's passage of the Alps; that great and daring feat surpasses in magnitude anything of the kind ever attempted by man. The pride of the French historians have often led them to compare Napoleon's passage of the Great St. Bernard to Hannibal's passage of the Alps; but without detracting from the well-earned fame of the French Emperor, it may safely be affirmed that his achieve