Overshadowed by the deeds of his son Aníbal , unparalleled military genius who will have plenty of space in this section, the founder of the Bárcidas dynasty (Barqí¤ means "the thunderbolt" in Canaanite) deserves to be treated with dignity. It emerged as a great rival of the Roman Republic and was the physical and ideological seed of the longest and bloodiest conflict that Rome suffered throughout its republican stage.
Hamilcar Barca was born about 270 B.C. in the city of Carthage . This Carthaginian aristocrat and general has gone down in history more for being the father of Hannibal, Hasdrubal, Adonibal and Hanon than for his military achievements, which were many and famous in his homeland but minimized by the classical Greco-Latin chroniclers. His first military operations narrated by the historians of Antiquity took place during the First Punic War , the first conflict between the two antagonistic republics of the Western Mediterranean. Hamilcar he fought bravely in Sicily, being undefeated in the combats he sustained at Erice (íˆrici) and Drepana (Trapani) with the Roman legions. His guerrilla warfare tactics allowed him to maintain a strong position on the island until, after the naval disaster of the Aegeans, Carthage was forced to sign a dishonorable peace treaty with Rome.
It was the year 241 B.C. Hamilcar Barca negotiated with the Roman consul Caius Lutatius Catullus the departure of the Carthage troops from the island in acceptable conditions. The still Carthaginian governor Giscón was in charge of organizing the withdrawal to Africa of the mercenaries, armed and in small groups, from the port of Lylibeum (Marsala)
Carthage came out of the First Punic War very badly. Apart from the enormous human and material losses (close to seven hundred ships and a good part of their crews), the Treaty of Lutacio contemplated an indemnity to Rome of two thousand two hundred talents, spread over ten years, plus one thousand immediate talents, losing all rights over Sicily, its adjacent archipelagos and all the islands between Italy and Africa, as well as the return of prisoners of war without payment of ransom . These humiliating conditions emptied the Carthaginian coffers, causing an evil even worse than the defeat against Rome, the War of the Mercenaries .
It was in this revolt of the mercenaries that the charisma of Amílcar Barca was distinguished. . Nearly twenty thousand men (without loot, or trade, or benefit) gathered at the gates of Carthage demanding payment of their soldiers from the Council of Sufetes. Hannon He had already warned them in Sicca (Al-Kaf), the place where they camped as soon as they arrived from Sicily, that the payments to Rome had emptied the coffers of the city and they had to refuse part of their soldiers. Cartago, fearful of a full-fledged uprising that would worsen their already dramatic situation, agreed to pay and sent Giscón , well valued by the mercenaries, with the war chest. It was too late. Matho and Spendius , two of the leaders of the mercenaries, stirred up the rest, trapped the Punic representative and his treasure and ignited the spark of the general rebellion against Carthage of all the dependent cities of the old Tyrian colony.
Given the failures of Hannon to put down the rebellion, the council endowed in 240 B.C. to Hamilcar Barca with the supreme command of the Carthaginian army, composed of ten thousand men and seventy elephants. His first achievement was to break the siege of Carthage and íštica . Shortly after, the battle of Bagradas took place. where the cunning Carthaginian, knowing the terrain and the course of the river better than his opponents, knew how to surprise the mercenaries of Spendio combining his cavalry and his elephants in an encircling movement. He inflicted a severe setback on them:six thousand casualties and two thousand prisoners.
Three more years it took Barca to put an end to the mercenary insurrection. The Numidian prince Naravas allied with him. Hamilcar he behaved magnanimously with the vanquished, incorporating them into his troops. But not everything was nice. Carthage lost during the war Corsica and Sardinia (Corsica and Sardinia) in favor of Rome because of the defection of the troops that were stationed there. This fact, allowed by the Roman Senate, was decisive in the only possible alternative that Carthage had to recover from the grievances without upsetting its hostile neighbor:Look towards the West, to the immense lands that they knew in their language as Spania .
It was around then, around 236 BC, just before leaving for the conquest of our Iberia, when his son Hannibal I was between eight and nine years old. The boy wanted to travel with his father and that one, on the sacred fire of Baal , made him swear eternal hatred to Rome. Hamilcar he couldn't see it, but his son more than fulfilled the oath he made.
For eight long years Amílcar Barca he forged an empire in Iberia capable of supplying Carthage with raw materials and new ferocious hosts eager for booty, the always bellicose Iberian warriors. His death surprised him in 228 BC. putting down a riot. It seems that in the course of a skirmish in Helike (Elche de la Sierra or Elche, still to be decided) was wounded and fell into the river (Thader or Alabus respectively) with such bad luck that he drowned. It was a tragic and accidental end for the man who incurred the wrath of Rome's greatest enemy of all time...
Second installment of «Archienemies of Rome «. Collaboration of Gabriel Castelló