If you want to be loved, you have to love people. Pen @ fun @ pavilion wWw. ｂｉｑUｇE。 ｉｎｆｏ

- Osonius (Roman poet)

While Oscar was besieging Messina, Hannibal had indeed led his army to the port of Baisassion; However, Hannibal could not immediately lead his army back to Sicily. It turned out that because of the successful obstruction of the Carthaginian Senate, Hannibal could not use too many transport ships to transport 24,000 soldiers back to Sicily at once, and he had to divide his troops to transport them.

At this time, Hannibal was completely unaware that the army of the House of Augustus had surrounded Messina in Upper Sicilya, and he thought that he had the strategic initiative; Therefore, in the face of the deliberate arrangement of the Carthaginian Senate, Hannibal did not think much about it, but only divided his army in two and transported it back to Sicily twice.

This first group of troops was 6,000 Libyan spearmen and 6,000 Punic infantry led by Mahabar himself; Hannibal himself led 10,000 Iberian infantry and 2,000 Templar infantry as the second army. Before leaving, Hannibal also specially instructed Mahabal that after returning to Lower Sicilya, he only needed to be stationed in the port temporarily, and there was no need to ask about other matters.

After Mahabal sailed away, Hannibal placed 10,000 Iberian infantry under his command near the port; After that, Hannibal took two thousand infantry of the Holy Order in a boat and marched in the direction of the kingdom of Cyrenaica.

A little more than a month ago, when the Kingdom of Cyrenaica sent an emissary to Hannibal to announce its submission, it brought Hannibal another news that was very important to Hannibal. Half a year ago, there was a rebel force in the Kingdom of Cyrenaica, and this rebel force was not strong, only less than 2,000 people; But this rebel force has an extremely powerful trump card!

This trump card is naturally the traditional powerful existence on the land of North Africa - war elephants! A group of robbers who came out of nowhere, after occasionally discovering a large herd, forcibly coerced a group of people who trained war elephants, and then transformed this huge herd into power in their hands.

If it is said that it is only a few war elephants, then the Cyrenaica Kingdom will not be afraid, and only needs to fight to the death with a ruthless heart, and a few war elephants are still not enough to affect the overall situation; But the tragedy is that this huge herd of elephants provided this rebel force with a full eighty war elephants! Eighty war elephants, that was a number that Hannibal was shocked to hear!

Of course, Hannibal's trip was not to help the Cyrenaica kingdom out of the crisis, but to take the rebel forces to his own use. For a rebel army of about two thousand men, Hannibal naturally would not take them seriously; But the eighty war elephants were full of temptation for Hannibal.

Hannibal was always a genius tactician who advocated offense, and he liked to use cavalry in battle, and he was extremely good at using cavalry; To put it bluntly, in such an era, no one could surpass Hannibal in cavalry combat, and there was not even anyone who could match him.

For such a person, his fondness for cavalry can be imagined; In Hannibal's eyes, there are five types of the best cavalry in the world, namely the Numidian javelin cavalry, the Carthaginian shield cavalry, the Seleucid ironclad cavalry, the Macedonian royal cavalry, and the strongest king of cavalry - the war elephant cavalry!

War elephants, in Hannibal's eyes, were always the strongest cavalry, and the most difficult to obtain; Since the last time Hannibal's war elephants were killed or wounded in the battle, there have been no more war elephants under Hannibal's command. Although there is a special army of war elephants in the Carthaginian kingdom itself, it is impossible for that cavalry to leave Carthage and has no tactical value.

The other is the war elephant of Juguda, the whole hundred war elephants, which were destroyed by the defeat of Victoria; This shocked Hannibal and distressed him. Of course, Hannibal doesn't think it's a war elephant that isn't good enough; In Hannibal's opinion, it was clear that Jugurdah would not use war elephant troops.

And so it was, if the hundred war elephants were in Hannibal's hands; Even if Vimyna fought in person, it would be impossible to wipe out these hundred war elephants so easily, and it would be impossible to be as costless as last time.

Unfortunately, none of this would have made any sense to Hannibal; Therefore, when the Kingdom of Cyrenaica asked Hannibal for help, Hannibal decisively chose to agree. A Cyrenaica kingdom that supported the Carthaginian kingdom was nothing, but a cavalry group of eighty war elephants was a temptation that Hannibal could not refuse.

Hannibal, with two thousand infantry of the Holy Order, set out from the port of Baisasion in the direction of the kingdom of Cyrenaica; In fact, the distance between the kingdoms of Cyrenaica and Carthage was still very long, and Hannibal arrived in Cyrenaica by boat was almost enough to transport the fleet to Sicily and back.

However, Hannibal didn't care about these things; Hannibal had already given orders to the 10,000-strong army outside the harbor before leaving; As soon as the convoy returned to the port of Baisasian, they immediately boarded the ships and went to Lower Sicilia, without waiting for Hannibal to return. Hannibal himself would take the eighty elephants and then drive directly from the Kingdom of Cyrenaica to Sicily.

After arranging everything in the native land, Hannibal went straight away, and set off in the direction of the kingdom of Cyrenaica; Hannibal, who had been accustomed to long voyages at sea for years, did not feel any different feelings about the scenery at sea, but he was just thinking about how he could successfully collect the eighty war elephants in his own cabin.

After more than ten days, Hannibal's fleet finally arrived at the port of the Kingdom of Cyrenaica at noon one day; Cyrene, the capital of the Kingdom of Cyrenaica, is a city close to a port, only more than thirty miles away. The king of Cyrenaica had long been aware of Hannibal's coming to Cyrenaica, and he personally welcomed Hannibal at the port.

Originally, the Kingdom of Cyrenaica had planned to entertain Hannibal with great hospitality, and then send people with Hannibal and his army to find this rebel army; But when Hannibal came ashore, he directly declined the invitation of the king of the Cyrenaica kingdom, and asked the king to send someone to lead the way to find the rebel force.

In the face of Hannibal's resoluteness, the king of the Kingdom of Cyrenaica had no choice but to give up the welcome ceremony he had prepared, and directly sent more than a dozen people to lead Hannibal to the south to find the rebel forces.

Although the Kingdom of Cyrenaica is also an old kingdom on the North African continent, its land area is very small, and it is the smallest country on the North African continent, only one-third of the province of Africa and one-fifteenth of the province of Tripoli. However, its population is still quite considerable, with a total population of two or three hundred thousand.

The core area of the Kingdom of Cyrenaica is the northern region headed by the capital of Cyrena, and its southern region is a relatively backward and chaotic region; And the place where this rebel force is entrenched is also in the south.

The difference between the north and south of the entire Cyrenaica Kingdom is still relatively large, which is mainly due to the differences in ethnic composition within the country; Since ancient times, North Africa has been a region of ethnic confusion and ethnic strife, and the Kingdom of Cyrenaica is no exception.

The northern part of the kingdom has always been ruled by the dominant ethnic groups in a strong position, while the southern region is ruled by many ethnic groups in a weak position; In this way, it directly led to the prosperity of the northern region of the Cyrenaica Kingdom, and the chaos and backwardness of the southern region, which also formed a huge difference between the north and the south.

Hannibal led two thousand infantry of the Holy Order, guided by more than a dozen people, all the way from the north to the south, and the changes on the road were also very astonishing; After the river from the north-south dividing line has passed, the peace and tranquility of the north is gone, and even the pedestrians on the road give people more of a feeling of being poorly clothed and hungry.

Of course, the biggest change is the change in social security; When he was in the north, Hannibal rarely saw illegal and criminal acts, and there were not even many normal fights. However, after entering the south, social order was obviously much more chaotic; In addition to the fact that there are many traitors, Hannibal even discovered several times that tribes were fighting each other!

It is clear that in such an area, it is definitely a breeding ground for chaos and rebels, and the best place for accidents; But Hannibal came different, and the two thousand mighty and well-equipped infantry of the Holy Order behind him were enough to discourage anyone with other intentions from acting rashly.

After a full day's march south, the dozen men took Hannibal to the vicinity of a city; It turned out that this city was the largest city in the south of the Cyrenaica Kingdom in the past, and it is also the city where the rebel forces are now entrenched. Looking at the sizable city and the tall walls, and thinking that the rebels were only two thousand infantry; Hannibal shook his head helplessly.

After approaching the city, the dozen or so men were reluctant to move on, and Hannibal did not embarrass them for this, but told them to be careful when they returned to their lives; Immediately, as if they had been pardoned, they galloped away.

Hannibal ignored the rapidly departing dozen or so men, and instead shifted all his thoughts to the city in front of him and the rebels in it; From the very beginning, Hannibal had no intention of fighting this rebel army, he wanted to take it all under his command and use it for his own use.

As for why he brought the most elite 2,000 Holy Order infantry, it was just to better make this rebel army surrender willingly; In many cases, if you want others to surrender, you still need to show your own strength appropriately, otherwise who wants to be willing to be someone else's subordinate? (To be continued.) )