In the period 241-239 BC relations between Carthage and Rome were good: Hanno's land party had the upper hand in Carthage.

The peace treaty after the first war penalized the Carthaginians both militarily and financially. Consequently, the Carthaginians could no longer afford to pay for their mercenaries. The mercenaries, unhappy with delayed payments, rebelled against Carthage joined by Numidian and Libyan subjects. Eventually, they were driven out of Carthage and set up their base at the island of Sardina.

Unable to pay their mercenaries what they were demanding, Carthage faced a "truceless war" led by the runaway Roman slave Spendius and a Libyan named Mathos and a throng of foreign soldiers, who stoned anyone attempting to speak against them. The so-called �Truceless� or Mercenaries� War of 241-237 B.C. was both an intensely dramatic conflict and one of the most fully recorded episodes in Carthage�s history, though many details remain unclear. The saviour of Carthage from its domestic foes, Hamilcar Barca, raised an army of 10,000 Carthaginian citizens, broke the siege of Utica, and with Rome's cooperation finally annihilated the mercenary army. He exploited his victory to make himself and his family the virtual rulers of the city and its growing empire.

The war had taken half the agricultural produce and doubled the tribute of the towns; Utica and Hippo Zarytus, the two cities which refused to join the revolt, were besieged. Eventually Hamilcar Barca

Origins
The Carthaginian army was one of the most diverse and complex in recorded military history. Apart from its officer corps, the entire army consisted of mercenaries drawn from all over the ancient world. It consisted of Spaniards, Libyans , Numidians , Italians, Greeks, and Gauls (Celts) . There was no common language or religion, yet they managed to fight as a cohesive force longer and harder for their employers than a citizen army would for its own country. They fought for the one thing that can unify diverse groups of people: money. Without this money, however, this unity vanishes.

As soon as Carthage started nursing her war wounds, her mercenaries, who had not been paid for several years, revolted against their former employers. In 241, they surrounded and laid siege to the city of Carthage.

The �mercenaries� in fact consisted of foreign mercenaries plus Libyan conscripts. There is an argument that it was not really a mercenaries� war but an insurrection of the downtrodden Libyan subjects of Carthage. The way this was organised, financed and kept going for three years is tantalisingly obscure.The claim by Appian, Sicelica 2.9, and Dio (in Zonaras 8.17) that slaves took part can be dismissed.

According to Polybius� account, the army of Sicily did not wish to mutiny, only to put pressure on the Carthaginians to pay them off and send them to their various homes.

The sources are unanimous that large arrears were owed and this chimes with evidence for Punic penury in the 240s - for instance the Carthaginians� failed attempt around 247 to borrow 2000 talents from Ptolemy II. But Hamilcar had to make substantial promises to them when the war ended - At best a trickle of funds had got through from time to time, enough to keep the men obedient - and fed.

The veterans of Sicily may have been forced into mutiny by the extremists around Mathos and Spendius, but they then threw themselves into it with a vengeance. Moderates real or suspect were liquidated. The non-Libyan leaders Spendius and Autaritus were as keen on �frightfulness� as Mathos and the Libyans . The veterans very likely hoped for wealth and maybe territory from a defeated Carthage and the grateful Libyans.

Tthe sources� stress how impossible it was for the Carthaginians to fight on after the disaster at the Aegates and what straits they were in when the mercenaries mutinied . Not that the Carthaginians were literally destitute or disarmed: like their oppressed and embittered Libyan subjects they no doubt put everything they had into the struggle.

Hamilcar
The Carthaginian Senate ordered Hamilcar to lead the Carthaginian army in defense of the city. In all of her past wars, Carthage had relied on mercenaries to fight for them. Since these mercenaries were up in arms, Hamilcar had to rely on an inexperienced citizen militia to fight war hardened soldiers. Though faced with overwhelming odds and lack of trained troops, however in the end Hamilcar prevailed.

At times Hamilcar got himself into serious military trouble: in his first campaign in the hinterland, pursued by Spendius and the Gallic warlord Autaritus, he was finally manoeuvred into a virtual box - as Polybius makes clear - and saved only by the defection of the Numidian prince Naravas with his cavalrymen. Much later, when he and a subordinate general laid the main rebel encampment at Tunes under siege from opposite sides, a rebel sortie routed the subordinate�s forces and executed the general himself without any counter-attack from the inconveniently distant Hamilcar, who was forced to give up the siege. He then had to accept the reappointment of Hanno, with whom he had quarrelled furiously earlier on.

At the battle of Bagradas River, he marched his army across the mouth of the river, taking advantage of a strong wind which silted up the river, thus making it fordable. By doing this, he caught the rebels in the rear and butchered them. The surviving rebels were subsequently starved out and slaughtered.

Hamilcar�s manoeuvres at the battle of the Bagradas River, early in the war, may be seen as anticipating Hannibal�s tactics of feigned retreat and cavalry envelopment at Cannae. Hamilcar�s negotiations with Spendius and the other rebel field commanders before the battle of The Saw, climaxing in his arresting them and then annihilating their army, smack to most readers of sharp dealing if not plain treachery.

Again, his later retreat to the mouth of the Bagradas river after the defeat of his subordinate outside Tunes - since Utica and Hippou Acra, both of them on the coast north of Carthage, had by now joined the revolt it was important to block the Tunes rebels� access to them for resupply (and perhaps reinforcements). The rebels instead headed in the opposite direction, but Hamilcar could not predict that.

Campaigns and fighting
Hanno, soon after hostilities opened, led the first available Punic army over to help Utica, under siege by Spendius, but his early successes were negated by a stalemate which prompted the Carthaginians to appoint Hamilcar general too.

Now Polybius summarises Hamilcar�s achievements before going into their details, and reports that he raised the siege of Utica - a feat not mentioned in the aftermath of the battle of the River Bagradas but not contradicted either. Many a modern scholar rejects the claim because it is not so confirmed and because Utica later went over to the rebels along with the continuously-besieged Hippou Acra.

When Hamilcar and Hanno joined forces in the hinterland. Hanno more probably had remained throughout in the Utica area, or between Utica and Hippou; once the siege of Utica was raised - something Hanno may even have contributed to, unsung by Polybius - he quite probably continued to cover the town and to keep an eye on the besiegers of Hippou, until requested some time later by Hamilcar to join him in the interior.

As mentioned earlier there are claims that at the battle of the Bagradas Hamilcar used essentially the same tactics that his son was to use at Cannae; and that similar tactics, assisted by Naravas, both in the victory over Spendius and Autaritus and in the famous battle at The Saw. However, tactics in the later battles are sketchily recorded: that in the second one Hamilcar�s elephants and cavalry played important parts , and in the third he surrounded the enemy with the elephants and his other forces , is not enough for reconstructing tactics. Second, feigned retreat before battle and then a sudden realignment to throw the enemy into confusion - as at the Bagradas - hardly matches what the Punic army did at Cannae or indeed in any of Hannibal�s major battles.

Incidentally, at the Bagradas Polybius reports that when one of the enemy�s two corps collided with the other in confusion at Hamilcar�s sudden volte-face, �they destroyed both themselves and their comrades� though the majority were crushed by the cavalry and elephant attack . Since he can hardly mean that the colliding forces started to slay one another, it is more than likely that the other slaughter was the work of the infantry phalanx, taking advantage of the spreading chaos in rebel ranks. If the bulk of the slaying was due to the non-infantry arms it looks as though these were able to pin some (at least) of the enemy against the river, for elephants could scarcely keep up the sort of pursuit that cavalry could across country.

In these respects, Hamilcar�s tactical flexibility and the skilful reliability of his variegated units do put us in mind of Hannibal�s. But the envelopment-tactics of Cannae look much closer to those used by the Spartan mercenary general Xanthippus in Punic service against the invading Regulus in 255.

Despite his post-Bagradas successes in the hinterland, Hamilcar eventually asked Hanno to join him there thus exposing Utica as well as Hippou Acra to intolerable pressures until they defected. The rebels then concentrated on besieging Carthage itself. This was surely a major miscalculation by Hamilcar. The simultaneous and paralysing quarrel between the two Carthaginian generals was probably over military matters and not personal ones. Hanno may have disagreed with Hamilcar�s harsh treatment of captured rebels or with his strategy of campaigning inland, on both of which issues he would arguably have been in the right for once.

Tthe campaign which followed Hamilcar�s election as sole commander climaxed with the enemy�s entrapment at The Saw (the site has not been clearly identified). Polybius� report of the rebels being �entirely surrounded� by the Carthaginian trench and palisade suggests instead a hilltop or ridge - as does the place-name itself which he says reflected the topography.

The �Lepcis� region, where Polybius locates the final campaign as the generally-accepted Lepcis Minor near Hadrumetum south-east of Carthage.

Punic politics
The significance of the Punic authorities� decision to let the Hamilcar-Hanno quarrel be decided by the troops: generals were normally elected by the people of Carthage. Both Hasdrubal and Hannibal were later elected generals (in effect Carthage�s supreme generals) first by their troops in Spain and then by the citizens at home. Hamilcar�s election, whether or not confirmed by the citizens, thus set a momentous precedent and can even be seen as a sort of military-political coup.

When Hanno was recalled to share command, he showed his de facto even if not de jure subordination by going out to Barca with the delegation of senators that sought to reconcile the two: Barca did not come to him, and Polybius� stress on how much effort it took to reconcile them must really mean that Barca, not Hanno, was hard to persuade.

The Numidian campaigning, indirectly vouched for by Diod. 25.10.1 and Nepos, Hamil. 2.5, probably fitted into the final months of the insurrection while the two generals were re-establishing control over Libya and then blockading the diehard Utica and Hippou. For the revolt had started late in 241 and lasted 3 years 4 months. Hamilcar�s sojourn in Spain began in early 237; and in between there occurred the crisis with Rome over Sardinia.

Hanno, nicknamed �the Great� (for obscure reasons), went down in history as the inveterate foe of Hamilcar�s family, but the two men were not enemies when the war started.

Hamilcar�s 'coup d'etat' is something of a puzzle: there was no social or political revolution involved. The general avoids prosecution by being elected general for Spain: how a general was thus immune is not made clear, nor why the appointment should make Barca master of the state.

One son-in-law, Bomilcar, may have been another Punicised Numidian prince like Naravas and it may have been this support which made Hamilcar dominant and in turn gave him the Spanish command.

The supposed prosecution-attempt in 237 is another Appianism, not in Diodorus� discussion of how Hamilcar attained dominance at that period and implicitly contradicted by Polybius� remark that when the Sardinia crisis ended Hamilcar was �swiftly� sent to Spain . If there were efforts to prosecute him for alleged offences in the First Punic War - which is how Appian describes the charges - they are much more likely during 241 and Appian or his source misdated them to after another war.

Nevertheless, this victory saved Carthage and gave Hamilcar the influence and prestige that he needed to start operations in Spain.