Just six months ago, sitting in my palace in Carthage, eating peeled grapes from the hands of my various man servants, I was pretty sure crossing the Alps to attack Rome from the north was an awesome idea. My ministers were behind it. My generals were brimming with confidence. And my emissaries to the Insubres tribes assured me that the Insubres were totally on board.
Now, standing here up to my ass in snow in the midst of these miserable, god forsaken Alps, I’m starting to think maybe this entire enterprise was a stupid idea.
I’ll admit, when we crossed the river Ebro, everything seemed to be going…swimmingly.
And when we outflanked and vanquished the barbarian hordes at the Rhone, the spirits within my camp were high, and I thought, Hey, this entire plan might actually work out pretty well.
That was then.
Because here’s the thing you might not know about the Alps: It snows. A lot. Like nonstop. Like every freaking minute of every freaking day.
Which hasn’t been good. For the elephants.
Did I mention the elephants? From the looks of things, half of my war elephants are dead. From the snow.
Oh, and did I mention it’s literally mind numbingly cold?
To say it’s mind numbingly cold is like the biggest understatement of 218 BC.
Which is a bitch because I was kind of counting on the war elephants to scare the crap out of the Romans. War elephants are kind of my thing.
Even though, if I’m being honest, once the battle actually starts the elephants mostly just run around in circles or just kinda wander off somewhere. Which is so freaking annoying. Still….
I guess we could feed the dead elephants to the other elephants. But I’m pretty sure they’re vegan. Anyway, we’re all eating the dead elephants now.
Let me tell you, if you think being the greatest military tactician the world has ever known is easy, it’s not. No, it isn’t. At all.
I mean, who knows? Maybe this whole plan will work out, and men will speak my name with reverence and awe 2000 years from now.
But honestly, as I sit here eating cold elephant soup, I’m starting to wonder why I ever went to war with this empire in the first place.
They’re just gonna strike back. Obviously.