Rajiv Gandhi International Airport

Rajiv Gandhi International Airport is an international airport that serves Hyderabad, the capital of the Indian state of Telangana. It is located in Shamshabad, about 24 kilometres (15 mi) south of Hyderabad and it was opened on 23 March 2008 to replace Begumpet Airport, which was the sole civilian airport serving Hyderabad. It is named after Rajiv Gandhi, former Prime Minister of India. Built over an area of 5,500 acres (2,200 ha), it is the largest airport of India by area. It is owned and operated by GMR Hyderabad International Airport Limited (GHIAL), a public–private consortium. Rajiv Gandhi International Airport, Hyderabad was the first airport in India to launch domestic e-boarding facility in December 2015 and international e-boarding facility in October 2020. It has also ranked in AirHelp's list of top 10 airports in the world. The fourth busiest airport in India by passengers traffic, it handled almost 21 million passengers and over 140,000 tonnes (150,000 short tons) of cargo between April 2022 and March 2023.

Rajiv Gandhi International Airport is India's first greenfield airport built under a public-private partnership model. The airport has an integrated passenger terminal, a cargo terminal and two runways. There are also aviation training facilities, a fuel farm, a solar power plant and two maintenance, repair, and operations (MRO) facilities. The airport serves as a hub for Alliance Air (India), Amazon Air, Blue Dart Aviation, SpiceJet and IndiGo. It is a focus city for Air India.

## History

### Planning (1991–2004)

The existing commercial airport, Begumpet Airport, was unable to handle rising passenger traffic. The state government led by then chief minister N. Chandrababu Naidu initially considered converting Hakimpet Air Force Station to civilian use; however, the Air Force refused. When the State proposed the construction of a new airport for the Air Force, the Ministry of Defence suggested the State consider sites south of Begumpet Airport. By October 1998, the State had narrowed down to three possible locations for the new airport: Bongloor, Nadergul and Shamshabad. Due to its convenient location near two highways (NH 44 and NH 765) and a railway line, Shamshabad was selected in December 1998.

In November 2000, under the N. Chandrababu Naidu government and the Airports Authority of India (AAI) signed a memorandum of understanding on the greenfield airport project, establishing it as a public–private partnership. The State and AAI together would hold a 26% stake in the project, while the remaining 74% would be allotted to private companies. Through a bidding process the Shamshabad international airport with already land acquired of 5500 acres is in government possession and N. Chandrababu Naidu assigned bid to consortium consisting of Grandhi Mallikarjuna Rao (GMR Group) and Malaysia Airports Holdings Berhad was chosen as the holder of the 74% stake.

In December 2002, Hyderabad International Airport Ltd (HIAL), later renamed GMR Hyderabad International Airport Limited (GHIAL), was created as a special purpose entity, into which the State, AAI and GMR–MAHB placed their stakes.

In September 2003, the members of GHIAL signed a shareholders' agreement, as well as an agreement for state subsidy of over ₹4 billion (US\$50 million). A concession agreement between GHIAL and the Central Government was signed in December 2004, stipulating that no airport within a 150-kilometre (93 mi) radius of RGIA could be operated. Thus, the closure of Begumpet Airport was required.

### Construction and opening (2005–2008)

The project was forwarded when Y. S. Rajasekhara Reddy gained power and construction began by GMR on 16 March 2005 when Sonia Gandhi laid the foundation stone. Two days prior, the Central Government had named the airport after former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, who had undergone pilot training in Hyderabad. The naming resulted in opposition from the Telugu Desam Party (TDP). At Begumpet Airport, the international terminal was named after Rajiv Gandhi while the domestic terminal was named after TDP founder N. T. Rama Rao; TDP wanted to continue this naming convention at the new airport. However, the new airport has only one terminal.

Roughly three years after the foundation stone laying ceremony, the airport was inaugurated on 14 March 2008 amid protests. TDP repeated its demand for the naming of the domestic terminal. In addition, on 12 and 13 March, 20,000 AAI employees had conducted a strike against the closure of Begumpet Airport, as well as that of HAL Airport in Bangalore, fearing they would lose their jobs.

RGIA was originally scheduled to open to commercial operations on 16 March 2008; however, the date was delayed due to protests from some airlines over the high ground handling rates at the airport. Once the rates were reduced, the launch date was set for 23 March 2008. Although Lufthansa Flight 752 from Frankfurt was scheduled to be the first flight to land at RGIA, two SpiceJet flights landed earlier. However, the Lufthansa flight still received the planned ceremonial welcome upon its 12:25 am arrival.

Rajiv Gandhi International Airport reassigned the IATA airport code, HYD, from Begumpet Airport after the previous airport ceased international commercial flights.

### Later developments (2009–present)

In September 2011, SpiceJet launched its regional hub at RGIA, using its new Bombardier Q400 aircraft. The airline, which chose Hyderabad due to its central location in the country, flies to several Tier-II and Tier-III cities from the airport. Regional airline TruJet too opened a hub at RGIA upon commencing operations in July 2015.

In November 2014, the Ministry of Civil Aviation resolved that the domestic terminal of RGIA would be named after N. T. Rama Rao, resulting in protests from members of the Rajya Sabha. Airport officials remained unsure as to how the naming would occur.

## Ownership

RGIA is owned and operated by GMR Hyderabad International Airport Ltd (GHIAL), a public–private venture. It is composed of public entities Airports Authority of India (13%) and the Government of Telangana (13%), as well as a private consortium between GMR Group (63%) and Malaysia Airports Holdings Berhad (11%). Per the concession agreement between GHIAL and the Central Government, GHIAL has the right to operate the airport for 30 years, with the option to continue doing so for another 30 years. In May 2022, Central Government extended the concession agreement term of GHIAL from 23 March 2038, up to 22 March 2068.

## Facilities

### Structure

The airport is spread over 2,200 hectares (5,500 acres). Out of which 810 hectares (2,000 acres) have been developed towards airport needs which mainly constitutes 690 hectares (1,700 acres) of land is airside and 120 hectares (300 acres) of land is landside facilities. The remaining 1,414 hectares (3,495 acres) is expansion of the airport. No further land will be acquired. The airport is fully planned within 2,200 hectares (5,500 acres).

### Runways

The airport has two runways:

- Runway 09L/27R: 3,707 by 45 metres (12,162 ft × 148 ft).
- Runway 09R/27L: 4,260 by 60 metres (13,980 ft × 200 ft), ILS equipped.

Runway 09R/27L, the original and primary runway, is long enough to be able to receive the Airbus A380 which is the world's largest passenger aircraft. Originally a taxiway, runway 09L/27R was inaugurated in February 2012. Its length is shorter than the main runway and able to handle aircraft such as the Airbus A340 and Boeing 747. It is mainly used when runway 09R/27L is undergoing maintenance, and as air traffic to the airport rises it will be used more often. North of these runways are the three parking aprons: the cargo, passenger terminal and MRO aprons. The passenger terminal apron contains parking stands on both the north and south sides of the terminal. Rajiv Gandhi International Airport, Hyderabad was the first international airport in south India to have a parallel runway at the time of inauguration of the second runway in February 2012 respectively.

### Terminal

RGIA has an integrated passenger terminal, which covers 379,370 m2 (4,083,500 sq ft) and has a capacity for 34 million passengers per year. The western side of the terminal handles international flights while the eastern side is for domestic operations. There are 46 immigration counters and 96 check-in desks with 19 kiosks for self check-in. There is a total of nine gates, seven of which are located on the south side of the terminal and the other two on the north side. Three gates are each equipped with two jetways to accelerate the handling of widebody aircraft. Public lounge facilities are provided by Plaza Premium Lounge, which operates three lounges in the terminal; there are also three separate lounges for VIPs. The pre-security "airport village" is a meeting point for passenger pick-up.

The airport has 57 parking bays: 47 remote parking bays and 10 aero bridges. In January 2019 the GHIAL added another 26 parking bays which makes a total of 83 parking bays.

## Airlines and destinations

### Passenger

### Cargo

## Statistics

## GMR Aerospace Park

The GMR Aerospace Park contains several facilities primarily related to the aviation sector. It has a 100-hectare (250-acre) special economic zone, which includes an 8.1-hectare (20-acre) Free Trade and Warehousing Zone, as well as a domestic tariff area.

### Aviation training

The GMR Aviation Academy is located in the park. It was established in 2009 in co-operation with the International Air Transport Association (IATA), International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), Airports Council International (ACI) and the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA). The academy offers programmes related to airport operations, which are accredited by the listed organisations. The park also includes the Asia Pacific Flight Training (APFT) academy, an initiative of GMR Group and Asia Pacific Flight Training. Launched in 2013, it provides pilot training courses.

### GMR Aero Technic Ltd MRO

The MRO operated by GMR Aero Technic Ltd is one of two MROs at the airport. Built at a cost of ₹3.5 billion (US\$44 million) and inaugurated in March 2012, the facility can handle up to five aircraft simultaneously. Initially, the MRO was a joint venture between GMR Group and Malaysian Aerospace Engineering (MAE), a subsidiary of Malaysia Airlines. However, amid its parent's poor financial situation following the Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 incident, MAE was unable to fund the MRO, which had been accruing losses. GMR bought out MAE's stake in December 2014.

GMR Aero Technic Ltd is the only one MRO in private sector in India with extensive capability to maintain Airbus A320 family aircraft, Boeing 737, ATR 72/42 and Bombardier DHC Q400 aircraft. GMR Aero Technic is a world class aircraft maintenance organisation approved by EASA and Directorate General of Civil Aviation (India) and various civil aviation authorities and one of the few MROs certified for AS9110 standards in South East Asia region.

## Other facilities

### Air India MRO

The other MRO is operated by Air India Engineering Services Limited (AIESL), a subsidiary of Air India. Spread over 2 hectares (5 acres), the facility cost ₹790 million (US\$9.9 million) to construct and was opened in May 2015.

### Cargo terminal

The cargo terminal is located west of the passenger terminal. It covers 14,330 square metres (154,200 sq ft) and can handle 150,000 tonnes (170,000 short tons) of cargo annually. The terminal is operated by Hyderabad Menzies Air Cargo Pvt Ltd, a joint venture between GHIAL (51%) and Menzies Aviation (49%). Within the terminal is the Pharma Zone, a temperature-controlled facility designed for storing pharmaceuticals. The first such facility to be opened at an Indian airport, it is important to RGIA as pharmaceuticals account for 70% of exports from the airport. In May 2011, Lufthansa Cargo launched its first pharma hub at the airport.

### Fuel farm

The airport has a fuel farm consisting of six storage tanks in which 4 are filled, with a total capacity for 13,500 kilolitres (480,000 cu ft) of jet fuel. The tanks are connected to the apron via underground pipelines. Reliance Industries built and operates the farm, which can be used by any oil company under an open-access model.

### Solar power plant

In January 2016, GHIAL commissioned a 5 MW solar power plant near RGIA, which will be used to serve the airport's energy needs. It was built over 9.7 hectares (24 acres) at a cost of ₹300 million (US\$3.8 million). Over the following two to three years, the capacity of the plant will be raised to 30 MW, allowing RGIA to become fully solar powered.

### Airport hotel

The Novotel Hyderabad Airport, located 3.5 kilometres (2.2 mi) from RGIA, was opened in October 2008. The hotel includes 305 rooms, two restaurants and a lounge for aircrew. It was initially owned by GHIAL before being shifted to subsidiary GMR Hotels and Resorts Ltd. Owing to high losses from low occupancy, GMR began seeking buyers of the hotel in August 2015.

### Kartainment Go Karting Track

Kartainment is a professional racing and recreational Go- Karting track located in the GMR Rajiv Gandhi Hyderabad International Airport, Shamshabad. It is made up of 900 meter professional track and 600 meter recreational Go-Karting track. The quality of the track and its maintenance is of extremely high standards and Kartaiment is the preferred choice to host many National Karting Championship events.

### Aero plaza

Aeroplaza is located within the main terminal of the airport. It is spread over two floors and was inaugurated in 2022.

### GMR Aerocity Hyderabad

In April 2021, GMR Group announced the launch of GMR Hyderabad Airport City, which is proposed to be the largest aerotropolis in India spread across 1,500-acre (6.1 km2) around Rajiv Gandhi International Airport, and is being billed as an "integrated ecosystem covering Office Space, Retail, Leisure, Entertainment, Hospitality, Education, Healthcare, Aerospace & Logistics".

## Connectivity

### Road

RGIA is connected to the city of Hyderabad by NH 44, NH 765 and the Outer Ring Road. In October 2009, the PV Narasimha Rao Expressway was completed between Mehdipatnam and Aramghar, where it joins NH 44. This long flyover which is 13 km has reduced travel time between the airport and the city to 30–40 minutes and also provides three entry and exit points.

The "Pushpak – Airport Liner" service of the Telangana State Road Transport Corporation provides bus transportation to different parts of the city. It was launched in December 2012 to replace GMR's Aero Express service.

### Metro

Under the second phase of the Hyderabad Metro Rail project, a 31-kilometre (19 mi) rail link between Raidurg and RGIA will be constructed. As of late 2015, feasibility studies on the phase are underway. In August 2019, K. T. Rama Rao said that state cabinet has approved the Hyderabad Airport Metro Express Link from Raidurg to the airport. The alignment to Shamshabad RGI Airport from the Raidurg metro station will be passing over Bio-diversity Junction, through Roda Mistry college lane, Khajaguda Junction. The 31 km-long Hyderabad Airport Metro Express link will cost around ₹ 6250 crore. In September 2021, GMR Group, the company operating the Rajiv Gandhi International Airport (RGIA) in Hyderabad said that it will invest ₹ 519.52 crore towards metro connectivity at the airport. During foundation laying ceremony on 9 December 2022, GMR Group contributed ₹625 crore (US\$78 million), or 10 per cent of the project's cost.

The closest Indian Railways station is Umdanagar, which is 6 km from the airport.

## Awards

In December 2022, the airport was ranked among the most punctual airports in the world, in which it ranked the fourth position, globally, by Cirium, an aviation data analytics company. The airport was awarded as the Best Airport in the category of 15 to 25 million passengers per annum in the Asia-Pacific region for 2022, by Airports Council International in March 2023. As per a survey of April 2023 on airports performing best in on-time performance, conducted by Cirium, the airport was ranked as the most punctual in the world, in May 2023. As per report by the aviation analytical firm Cirium, in March 2023 RGIA emerged as only airport in the world with a 90.43% on-time performance in the global as well as large airport category.

## Future plans

In 2009, GHIAL decided to postpone the second phase due to lower growth in passenger traffic than anticipated. The phase was revived in late 2015, as the airport is expected to reach its capacity in 2016. The first leg of this phase will bring the capacity to 18 million passengers annually, and the second leg will raise it to 20 million. The passenger terminal will be enlarged with additional security lanes, check-in counters and other facilities, and solar panels will be built on the roof. In October 2017, GHIAL CEO SGK Kishore confirmed that the airport expansion would start by January 2018, and it is expected to be completed by the end of 2019. But due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, which caused lockdowns, restrictions and curfews, it resulted in lack of labour and delays in work. Construction work has resumed as of mid 2021, and now it is expected to be completed by 2023. The airport terminal will be expanded to include 48 aerobridges, a larger arrival area for faster check out and more check-in desks.

In the midst of the expansion to 25 million, the grant for the 50 million PPA expansion was awarded. The master plan of the airport involves construction of new runways and the terminal on the north side of the airport approach road which replicates the existing runways and terminal on the south of approach road. New cross taxiways will be built on east & west of terminals connecting the runways on north and south of the approach road. The approach road tunnel will be built under the new taxiways which allows free flow of traffic entering airport from ORR/Bangalore Highway junction and Srisailam Highway as well. The final phase of expansion will increase the terminal capacity to 80 million passengers annually.

## See also

- List of airports in India
- List of the busiest airports in India
- List of airports in Telangana
- Warangal Airport

Airport serving Hyderabad, Telangana, India

Buildings and structures in Hyderabad, India

Public–private partnership projects in India


Brown Dog affair

The Brown Dog affair was a political controversy about vivisection that raged in Britain from 1903 until 1910. It involved the infiltration of University of London medical lectures by Swedish feminists, battles between medical students and the police, police protection for the statue of a dog, a libel trial at the Royal Courts of Justice, and the establishment of a Royal Commission to investigate the use of animals in experiments. The affair became a cause célèbre that divided the country.

The controversy was triggered by allegations that, in February 1903, William Bayliss of the Department of Physiology at University College London performed an illegal vivisection, before an audience of 60 medical students, on a brown terrier dog—adequately anaesthetized, according to Bayliss and his team; conscious and struggling, according to the Swedish activists. The procedure was condemned as cruel and unlawful by the National Anti-Vivisection Society. Outraged by the assault on his reputation, Bayliss, whose research on dogs led to the discovery of hormones, sued for libel and won.

Anti-vivisectionists commissioned a bronze statue of the dog as a memorial, unveiled on the Latchmere Recreation Ground in Battersea in 1906, but medical students were angered by its provocative plaque—"Men and women of England, how long shall these Things be?"—leading to frequent vandalism of the memorial and the need for a 24-hour police guard against the so-called anti-doggers. On 10 December 1907, hundreds of medical students marched through central London waving effigies of the brown dog on sticks, clashing with suffragettes, trade unionists and 300 police officers, one of a series of battles known as the Brown Dog riots.

In March 1910, tired of the controversy, Battersea Council sent four workers accompanied by 120 police officers to remove the statue under cover of darkness, after which it was reportedly melted down by the council's blacksmith, despite a 20,000-strong petition in its favour. A new statue of the brown dog, commissioned by anti-vivisection groups, was erected in Battersea Park in 1985.

On 6 September 2021, the 115th anniversary of when the original statue was unveiled, a new campaign was launched by author Paula S. Owen to recast the original statue.

## Background

### Cruelty to Animals Act 1876

There was significant opposition to vivisection in England, in both houses of Parliament, during the reign of Queen Victoria (1837–1901); the Queen herself strongly opposed it. The term vivisection referred to the dissection of living animals, with and without anaesthesia, often in front of audiences of medical students. In 1878 there were under 300 experiments on animals in the UK, a figure that had risen to 19,084 in 1903 when the brown dog was vivisected (according to the inscription on the second Brown Dog statue), and to five million by 1970.

Physiologists in the 19th century were frequently criticized for their work. The prominent French physiologist Claude Bernard appears to have shared the distaste of his critics, who included his wife, referring to "the science of life" as a "superb and dazzlingly lighted hall which may be reached only by passing through a long and ghastly kitchen". In 1875, Irish feminist Frances Power Cobbe founded the National Anti-Vivisection Society (NAVS) in London and in 1898 the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection (BUAV). The former sought to restrict vivisection and the latter to abolish it.

The opposition led the British government, in July 1875, to set up the first Royal Commission on the "Practice of Subjecting Live Animals to Experiments for Scientific Purposes". After hearing that researchers did not use anaesthesia regularly—one scientist, Emmanuel Klein told the commission he had "no regard at all" for the suffering of the animals—the commission recommended a series of measures, including a ban on experiments on dogs, cats, horses, donkeys and mules. The General Medical Council and British Medical Journal objected, so additional protection was introduced instead. The result was the Cruelty to Animals Act 1876, criticized by NAVS as "infamous but well-named".

The act stipulated that researchers could not be prosecuted for cruelty, but that the animal must be anaesthetized, unless the anaesthesia would interfere with the point of the experiment. Each animal could be used only once, although several procedures regarded as part of the same experiment were permitted. The animal had to be killed when the study was over, unless doing so would frustrate the object of the experiment. Prosecutions could take place only with the approval of the home secretary. At the time of the Brown Dog affair, this was Aretas Akers-Douglas, who was unsympathetic to the anti-vivisectionist cause.

### Ernest Starling and William Bayliss

In the early 20th century, Ernest Starling, professor of physiology at University College London, and his brother-in-law William Bayliss, were using vivisection on dogs to determine whether the nervous system controls pancreatic secretions, as postulated by Ivan Pavlov. Bayliss had held a licence to practice vivisection since 1890 and had taught physiology since 1900. According to Starling's biographer John Henderson, Starling and Bayliss were "compulsive experimenters", and Starling's lab was the busiest in London.

The men knew that the pancreas produces digestive juices in response to increased acidity in the duodenum and jejunum, because of the arrival of chyme there. By severing the duodenal and jejunal nerves in anaesthetized dogs, while leaving the blood vessels intact, then introducing acid into the duodenum and jejunum, they discovered that the process is not mediated by a nervous response, but by a new type of chemical reflex. They named the chemical messenger secretin, because it is secreted by the intestinal lining into the bloodstream, stimulating the pancreas on circulation. In 1905 Starling coined the term hormone—from the Greek hormao ὁρμάω meaning "I arouse" or "I excite"—to describe chemicals such as secretin that are capable, in extremely small quantities, of stimulating organs from a distance.

Bayliss and Starling had also used vivisection on anaesthetized dogs to discover peristalsis in 1899. They went on to discover a variety of other important physiological phenomena and principles, many of which were based on their experimental work involving animal vivisection.

### Lizzy Lind af Hageby and Leisa Schartau

Starling and Bayliss's lectures had been infiltrated by two Swedish feminists and anti-vivisection activists, Lizzy Lind af Hageby and Leisa Schartau. The women had known each other since childhood and came from distinguished families; Lind af Hageby, who had attended Cheltenham Ladies College, was the granddaughter of a chamberlain to the king of Sweden.

In 1900, the women visited the Pasteur Institute in Paris, a centre of animal experimentation, and were shocked by the rooms full of caged animals given diseases by the researchers. When they returned home, they founded the Anti-Vivisection Society of Sweden, and to gain medical training to help their campaigning, they enrolled in 1902 at the London School of Medicine for Women, a vivisection-free college that had visiting arrangements with other colleges. They attended 100 lectures and demonstrations at King's and University College, including 50 experiments on live animals, of which 20 were what Mason called "full-scale vivisection". Their diary, at first called Eye-Witnesses, was later published as The Shambles of Science: Extracts from the Diary of Two Students of Physiology (1903); shambles was a name for a slaughterhouse. The women were present when the brown dog was vivisected, and wrote a chapter about it entitled "Fun", referring to the laughter they said they heard in the lecture room during the procedure. The following year, a revised edition was published without that chapter; the authors wrote: "The story of the thrice vivisected brown dog as told by its vivisectors to the Lord Chief Justice and a special jury, and as it is found in the verbatim report of the trial, proved the true nature of vivisection far better than the chapter 'Fun' which can now be dispensed with."

## The brown dog

### Vivisection of the dog

According to Starling, the brown dog was "a small brown mongrel allied to a terrier with short roughish hair, about 14–15 lb [c. 6 kg] in weight". He was first used in a vivisection in December 1902 by Starling, who cut open his abdomen and ligated the pancreatic duct. For the next two months he lived in a cage, until Starling and Bayliss used him again for two procedures on 2 February 1903, the day the Swedish women were present.

Outside the lecture room before the students arrived, according to testimony Starling and others gave in court, Starling cut the dog open again to inspect the results of the previous surgery, which took about 45 minutes, after which he clamped the wound with forceps and handed the dog over to Bayliss. Bayliss cut a new opening in the dog's neck to expose the lingual nerves of the salivary glands, to which he attached electrodes. The aim was to stimulate the nerves with electricity to demonstrate that salivary pressure was independent of blood pressure. The dog was then carried to the lecture theatre, stretched on his back on an operating board, with his legs tied to the board, his head clamped and his mouth muzzled.

According to Bayliss, the dog had been given a morphine injection earlier in the day, then was anaesthetized during the procedure with six fluid ounces of alcohol, chloroform and ether (ACE), delivered from an ante-room to a tube in his trachea, via a pipe hidden behind the bench on which the men were working. The Swedish students disputed that the dog had been adequately anaesthetized. They said the dog had appeared conscious during the procedure, had tried to lift himself off the board, and that there was no smell of anaesthesia or the usual hissing sound of the apparatus. Other students said the dog had not struggled, but had merely twitched.

In front of around 60 students, Bayliss stimulated the nerves with electricity for half an hour, but was unable to demonstrate his point. The dog was then handed to a student, Henry Dale, a future Nobel laureate, who removed the dog's pancreas, then killed him with a knife through the heart. This became a point of embarrassment during the libel trial, when Bayliss's laboratory assistant, Charles Scuttle, testified that the dog had been killed with chloroform or the ACE mixture. After Scuttle's testimony, Dale told the court that he had, in fact, used a knife.

### Women's diary

On 14 April 1903, Lind af Hageby and Schartau showed their unpublished 200-page diary, published later that year as The Shambles of Science, to the barrister Stephen Coleridge, secretary of the National Anti-Vivisection Society. Coleridge was the son of John Duke Coleridge, former Lord Chief Justice of England, and great-grandson of the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge. His attention was drawn to the account of the brown dog. The 1876 Cruelty to Animals Act forbade the use of an animal in more than one experiment, yet it appeared that the brown dog had been used by Starling to perform surgery on the pancreas, used again by him when he opened the dog to inspect the results of the previous surgery, and used for a third time by Bayliss to study the salivary glands. The diary said of the procedures on the brown dog:

> Today's lecture will include a repetition of a demonstration which failed last time. A large dog, stretched on its back on an operation board, is carried into the lecture-room by the demonstrator and the laboratory attendant. Its legs are fixed to the board, its head is firmly held in the usual manner, and it is tightly muzzled.
>
> There is a large incision in the side of the neck, exposing the gland. The animal exhibits all signs of intense suffering; in his struggles, he again and again lifts his body from the board, and makes powerful attempts to get free.

The allegations of repeated use and inadequate anaesthesia represented prima facie violations of the Cruelty to Animals Act. In addition the diary said the dog had been killed by Henry Dale, an unlicensed research student, and that the students had laughed during the procedure; there were "jokes and laughter everywhere" in the lecture hall, it said.

### Coleridge's speech

According to Mason, Coleridge decided there was no point in relying on a prosecution under the act, which he regarded as deliberately obstructive. Instead he gave an angry speech about the dog on 1 May 1903 to the annual meeting of the National Anti-Vivisection Society at St James's Hall in Piccadilly, attended by 2,000–3,000 people. Mason writes that support and apologies for absence were sent by Jerome K. Jerome, Thomas Hardy and Rudyard Kipling. Coleridge accused the scientists of torture: "If this is not torture, let Mr. Bayliss and his friends ... tell us in Heaven's name what torture is."

Details of the speech were published the next day by the radical Daily News (founded in 1846 by Charles Dickens), and questions were raised in the House of Commons, particularly by Sir Frederick Banbury, a Conservative MP and sponsor of a bill aimed at ending vivisection demonstrations. Banbury asked the Home Secretary to state "under what certificate the operation on a brown dog was performed at University College Hospital on Feb. 2 last; and, whether, seeing that a second operation was performed upon this animal before the wounds caused by the first operation had healed, he proposes to take any action in the matter."

Bayliss demanded a public apology from Coleridge, and, when it had failed to materialize by 12 May, he issued a writ for libel. Ernest Starling decided not to sue; The Lancet, no friend of Coleridge, wrote that "it may be contended that Dr. Starling and Mr. Bayliss committed a technical infringement of the Act under which they performed their experiments." Coleridge tried to persuade the women not to publish their diary before the trial began, but they went ahead anyway, and it was published by Ernest Bell of Covent Garden in July 1903.

## Bayliss v. Coleridge

### Trial

The trial opened at the Old Bailey on 11 November 1903 before Lord Alverstone, the Lord Chief Justice, and lasted four days, closing on 18 November. There were queues 30 yards long outside the courthouse. Bayliss's barrister, Rufus Isaacs, called Starling as his first witness. Starling admitted that he had broken the law by using the dog twice, but said that he had done so to avoid sacrificing two dogs. Bayliss testified that the dog had been given one-and-a-half grains of morphia earlier in the day, then six ounces of alcohol, chloroform and ether, delivered from an ante room to a tube connected to the dog's trachea. The tubes were fragile, he said, and had the dog been struggling they would have broken.

A veterinarian, Alfred Sewell, said the system Bayliss was using was unlikely to be adequate, but other witnesses, including Frederick Hobday of the Royal Veterinary College, disagreed; there was even a claim that Bayliss had used too much anaesthesia, which is why the dog had failed to respond to the electrical stimulation. According to Bayliss, the dog had been suffering from chorea, a disease that causes involuntary spasm, and that any movement reported by Lind af Hageby and Schartau had not been purposive. Four students, three women and a man, testified that the dog had seemed unconscious.

Coleridge's barrister, John Lawson Walton, called Lind af Hageby and Schartau. They repeated they had been the first students to arrive and had been left alone with the dog for about two minutes. They had observed scars from the previous operations and an incision in the neck where two tubes had been placed. They had not smelled the anaesthetic and had not seen any apparatus delivering it. They said, Mason wrote, that the dog had arched his back and jerked his legs in what they regarded as an effort to escape. When the experiment began the dog continued to "upheave its abdomen" and tremble, they said, movements they regarded as "violent and purposeful".

Bayliss's lawyer criticized Coleridge for having accepted the women's statements without seeking corroboration, and for speaking about the issue publicly without first approaching Bayliss, despite knowing that doing so could lead to litigation. Coleridge replied that he had not sought verification because he knew the claims would be denied, and that he continued to regard the women's statement as true. The Times wrote of his testimony: "The Defendant, when placed in the witness box, did as much damage to his own case as the time at his disposal for the purpose would allow."

### Verdict

Lord Alverstone told the jury that the case was an important one of national interest. He called The Shambles of Science "hysterical" and advised the jury not to be swayed by arguments about the validity of vivisection. After retiring for 25 minutes on 18 November 1903, the jury unanimously found that Bayliss had been defamed, to the applause of physicians in the public gallery. Bayliss was awarded £2,000 with £3,000 costs; Coleridge gave him a cheque the next day. The Daily News asked for donations to cover Coleridge's costs and raised £5,700 within four months. Bayliss donated his damages to UCL for use in research; according to Mason, Bayliss ignored the Daily Mail's suggestion that he call it the "Stephen Coleridge Vivisection Fund". Gratzer wrote in 2004 that the fund may still have been in use then to buy animals.

The Times declared itself satisfied with the verdict, although it criticized the rowdy behaviour of medical students during the trial, accusing them of "medical hooliganism". The Sun, Star and Daily News backed Coleridge, calling the decision a miscarriage of justice. Ernest Bell, publisher of The Shambles of Science, apologized to Bayliss on 25 November, and pledged to withdraw the diary and pass its remaining copies to Bayliss's solicitors.

The Animal Defence and Anti-Vivisection Society, founded by Lind af Hageby in 1903, republished the book, printing a fifth edition by 1913. The chapter "Fun" was replaced by one called "The Vivisections of the Brown Dog", describing the experiment and the trial. The novelist Thomas Hardy kept a copy of the book on a table for visitors; he told a correspondent that he had "not really read [it], but everybody who comes into this room, where it lies on my table, dips into it, etc, and, I hope, profits something". According to historian Hilda Kean, the Research Defence Society, a lobby group founded in 1908 to counteract the antivivisectionist campaign, discussed how to have the revised editions withdrawn because of the book's impact.

In December 1903, Mark Twain, who opposed vivisection, published a short story, A Dog's Tale, in Harper's, written from the point of view of a dog whose puppy is experimented on and killed. Given the timing and Twain's views, the story may have been inspired by the libel trial, according to Mark Twain scholar Shelley Fisher Fishkin. Coleridge ordered 3,000 copies of A Dog's Tale, which were specially printed for him by Harper's.

## Second Royal Commission on Vivisection

On 17 September 1906, the government appointed the Second Royal Commission on Vivisection, which heard evidence from scientists and anti-vivisection groups; Ernest Starling addressed the commission for three days in December 1906. After much delay (two of its ten members died and several fell ill), the commission reported its findings in March 1912. Its 139-page report recommended an increase in the number of full-time inspectors from two to four, and restrictions on the use of curare, a poison used to immobilize animals during experiments. The Commission decided that animals should be adequately anaesthetized, and euthanized if the pain was likely to continue, and experiments should not be performed "as an illustration of lectures" in medical schools and similar. All the restrictions could be lifted if they would "frustrate the object of the experiment". There was also a tightening of the definition and practice of pithing. The Commission recommended the maintenance of more detailed records and the establishment of a committee to advise the Secretary of State on matters related to the Cruelty to Animals Act. The latter became the Animal Procedures Committee under the Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act 1986.

## Brown Dog memorial

### Original memorial

After the trial Anna Louisa Woodward, founder of the World League Against Vivisection, raised £120 for a public memorial and commissioned a bronze statue of the dog from sculptor Joseph Whitehead. The statue sat on top of a granite memorial stone, 7 ft 6 in (2.29 m) tall, that housed a drinking fountain for human beings and a lower trough for dogs and horses. It also carried an inscription (right), described by The New York Times in 1910 as the "hysterical language customary of anti-vivisectionists" and "a slander on the whole medical profession".

The group turned to the borough of Battersea for a location for the memorial. Lansbury wrote that the area was a hotbed of radicalism—proletarian, socialist, full of belching smoke and slums, and closely associated with the anti-vivisection movement. The National Anti-Vivisection and Battersea General Hospital—opened in 1896, on the corner of Albert Bridge Road and Prince of Wales Drive, and closed in 1972—refused until 1935 to perform vivisection or employ doctors who engaged in it, and was known locally as the "antiviv" or the "old anti". The chairman of the Battersea Dogs Home, William Cavendish-Bentinck, 6th Duke of Portland, rejected a request in 1907 that its lost dogs be sold to vivisectors as "not only horrible, but absurd".

Battersea council agreed to provide space for the statue on its Latchmere Recreation Ground, part of the council's new Latchmere Estate, which offered terraced homes to rent for seven and sixpence a week. The statue was unveiled on 15 September 1906 in front of a large crowd, with speakers that included George Bernard Shaw, the Irish feminist Charlotte Despard, the mayor of Battersea, James H. Brown (secretary of the Battersea Trades and Labour Council), and the Reverend Charles Noel.

## Riots

### November–December 1907

Medical students at London's teaching hospitals were enraged by the plaque. The first year of the statue's existence was a quiet one, while University College explored whether they could take legal action over it, but from November 1907 the students turned Battersea into the scene of frequent disruption.

The first action was on 20 November, when undergraduate William Howard Lister led a group of medical students across the Thames to Battersea to attack the statue with a crowbar and sledgehammer. One of them, Duncan Jones, hit the statue with a hammer, denting it, at which point all ten were arrested by just two police officers. According to Mason, a local doctor told the South Western Star that this signalled the "utter degeneration" of junior doctors: "I can remember the time when it was more than 10 policemen could do to take one student. The Anglo-Saxon race is played out."

The students were fined £5 by the magistrate, Paul Taylor, at South-West London Police Court in Battersea and warned they would be jailed next time. This triggered another protest two days later, when medical students from UCL, King's, Guy's, and the West Middlesex hospitals marched along the Strand toward King's College, waving miniature brown dogs on sticks and a life-sized effigy of the magistrate, and singing, "Let's hang Paul Taylor on a sour apple tree / As we go marching on." The Times reported that they tried to burn the effigy but, unable to light it, threw it in the Thames instead.

Women's suffrage meetings were invaded, although the students knew that not all suffragettes were anti-vivisectionists. A meeting organized by Millicent Fawcett on 5 December 1907 at the Paddington Baths Hall in Bayswater was left with chairs and tables smashed and one steward with a torn ear. Two fireworks were let off, and Fawcett's speech was drowned out by students singing "John Brown's Body", after which they marched down Queen's Road led by someone with bagpipes. The Daily Express reported the meeting as "Medical Students' Gallant Fight with Women".

### 10 December 1907

The rioting reached its height five days later, on Tuesday, 10 December, when 100 medical students tried to pull the memorial down. The previous protests had been spontaneous, but this one was organized to coincide with the annual Oxford–Cambridge rugby match at Queen's Club, West Kensington. The protesters hoped (in vain, as it turned out) that some of the thousands of Oxbridge students would swell their numbers. The intention was that, after toppling the statue and throwing it in the Thames, 2,000–3,000 students would meet at 11:30 pm in Trafalgar Square. Street vendors sold handkerchiefs stamped with the date of the protest and the words, "Brown Dog's inscription is a lie, and the statuette an insult to the London University."

In the afternoon, protesters headed for the statue, but were driven off by locals. The students proceeded down Battersea Park Road instead, intending to attack the Anti-Vivisection Hospital, but were again forced back. When one student fell from the top of a tram, the workers shouted that it was "the brown dog's revenge" and refused to take him to hospital. The British Medical Journal responded that, given that it was the Anti-Vivisection Hospital, the crowd's actions may have been "prompted by benevolence".

A second group of students headed for central London, waving effigies of the brown dog, joined by a police escort and, briefly, a busker with bagpipes. As the marchers reached Trafalgar Square, they were 400 strong, facing 200–300 police officers, 15 of them on horseback. The students gathered around Nelson's Column, where the ringleaders climbed onto its base to make speeches. While students fought with police on the ground, mounted police charged the crowd, scattering them into smaller groups and arresting the stragglers, including one undergraduate, Alexander Bowley, who was arrested for "barking like a dog". The fighting continued for hours before the police gained control. At Bow Street magistrate's court the next day, ten students were bound over to keep the peace; several were fined 40 shillings, or £3 if they had fought with police.

### Strange relationships

Rioting broke out elsewhere over the following days and months, as medical and veterinary students united. Whenever Lizzy Lind af Hageby spoke, students would shout her down. When she arranged a meeting of the Ealing and Acton Anti-Vivisection Society at Acton Central Hall on 11 December 1906, over 100 students disrupted it, throwing chairs and stink bombs, particularly when she objected to a student blowing her a kiss. The Daily Chronicle reported: "The rest of Miss Lind-af-Hageby's indignation was lost in a beautiful 'eggy' atmosphere that was now rolling heavily across the hall. 'Change your socks!' shouted one of the students." Furniture was smashed and clothing torn.

For Susan McHugh of the University of New England, the political coalition of trade unionists, socialists, Marxists, liberals and suffragettes that rallied to the statue's defence reflected the brown dog's mongrel status. The riots saw them descend on Battersea to fight the medical students, even though, she writes, the suffragettes were not a group toward whom male workers felt any warmth. But the "Brown Terrier Dog Done to Death" by the male scientific establishment united them all.

Lizzy Lind af-Hageby and Charlotte Despard saw the affair as a battle between feminism and machismo. According to Coral Lansbury, the fight for women's suffrage became closely linked with the anti-vivisection movement, and the iconography of vivisection struck a chord with women. Three of the four vice-presidents of the National Anti-Vivisection Hospital were women. Lansbury argues that the Brown Dog affair became a matter of opposing symbols: the vivisected dog on the operating board blurred into images of suffragettes force-fed in Brixton Prison, or women strapped down for childbirth or forced to have their ovaries and uteruses removed as a cure for "mania". The "vivisected animal stood for vivisected woman".

Both sides saw themselves as heirs to the future. Hilda Kean writes that the Swedish activists were young and female, anti-establishment and progressive, and viewed the scientists as remnants of a previous age. Their access to higher education had made the case possible, creating what feminist scholar Susan Hamilton called a "new form of witnessing". Against this, Lansbury writes, the students saw themselves and their teachers as the "New Priesthood" and the women and trade unionists as representatives of superstition and sentimentality.

### "Exit the 'Brown Dog'"

Questions were asked in the House of Commons about the cost of policing the statue, which required six constables a day at a cost of £700 a year. In February 1908 Sir Philip Magnus, MP for the London University constituency, asked the Home Secretary, Herbert Gladstone, "whether his attention has been called to the special expense of police protection of a public monument at Battersea that bears a controversial inscription". Gladstone replied that six constables were needed daily to protect the statue, and that the overall cost of extra policing had been equivalent to employing 27 inspectors, 55 sergeants, and 1,083 constables for a day.

London's police commissioner wrote to Battersea Council to ask that they contribute to the cost. Councillor John Archer, later Mayor of Battersea and the first black mayor in London, told the Daily Mail that he was amazed by the request, considering Battersea was already paying £22,000 a year in police rates. The Canine Defence League wondered whether, if Battersea were to organize raids on laboratories, the laboratories would be asked to pay the policing costs themselves.

Other councillors suggested the statue be encased in a steel cage and surrounded by a barbed wire fence. Suggestions were made through the letters pages of the Times and elsewhere that it be moved, perhaps to the grounds of the Anti-Vivisection Hospital. The British Medical Journal wrote in March 1910:

> May we suggest that the most appropriate resting place for the rejected work of art is the Home for Lost Dogs at Battersea, where it could be "done to death", as the inscription says, with a hammer in the presence of Miss Woodword, the Rev. Lionel S. Lewis, and other friends; if their feelings were too much for them, doubtless an anaesthetic could be administered.

Battersea Council grew tired of the controversy. A new Conservative council was elected in November 1909 amid talk of removing the statue. There were protests in support of it, and the 500-strong Brown Dog memorial defence committee was established. Twenty thousand people signed a petition, and 1,500 attended a rally in February 1910 addressed by Lind af Hageby, Charlotte Despard and Liberal MP George Greenwood. There were more demonstrations in central London and speeches in Hyde Park, with supporters wearing masks of dogs.

The protests were to no avail. The statue was quietly removed before dawn on 10 March 1910 by four council workmen, accompanied by 120 police officers. Nine days later, 3,000 anti-vivisectionists gathered in Trafalgar Square to demand its return, but it was clear by then that Battersea Council had turned its back on the affair. The statue was at first hidden in the borough surveyor's bicycle shed, according to a letter his daughter wrote in 1956 to the British Medical Journal, then reportedly destroyed by a council blacksmith, who melted it down. Anti-vivisectionists filed a High Court petition demanding its return, but the case was dismissed in January 1911.

## New memorial

On 12 December 1985, over 75 years after the statue's removal, a new memorial to the brown dog was unveiled by actress Geraldine James in Battersea Park behind the Pump House. Created by sculptor Nicola Hicks, the new bronze dog is mounted on a rectangular plinth of Portland stone and based on Hicks's own terrier, Brock. Three of the four plaques affixed to the column of the current Brown Dog statue bear the original inscriptions.

The British Medical Journal (Clinical Research Edition) published an editorial in March 1986, "A new antivivisectionist libellous statue at Battersea", criticizing Battersea Council and the Greater London Council for allowing it.

Echoing the fate of the previous memorial, the new dog was moved into storage in 1992 by Battersea Park's owners, the Conservative Borough of Wandsworth, they said as part of a park renovation scheme. Anti-vivisectionists campaigned for its return, suspicious of the explanation. It was reinstated in the park's Woodland Walk in 1994, near the Old English Garden, a more secluded spot than before.

The new statue was criticized in 2003 by historian Hilda Kean. She saw the old Brown Dog as a radical statement, upright and defiant: "The dog has changed from a public image of defiance to a pet". For Kean, the new Brown Dog, located near the Old English Garden as "heritage", is too safe; unlike its controversial ancestor, she argues, it makes no one uncomfortable. On 6 September 2021, the 115th anniversary of when the original statue was unveiled, a new campaign was launched by author Paula S. Owen to recast the original statue. Owen is author of Little Brown Dog, a novel that is based on the true story.

## See also

- Animal welfare in the United Kingdom
- List of public art in Wandsworth
- Cruel Treatment of Cattle Act 1822
- Cruelty to Animals Act 1835
- Cruelty to Animals Act 1849
- Cruelty to Animals Act 1876
- Wild Animals in Captivity Protection Act 1900
- Protection of Animals Act 1911
- Protection of Animals Act 1934
- Abandonment of Animals Act 1960
- Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act 1986
- Animal Welfare Act 2006
- Animal Health and Welfare (Scotland) Act 2006
- RSPCA
- List of individual dogs

## Statue locations

- Location of the new Brown Dog, Old English Garden, Battersea Park on Wikimapia ()
- Location of the old Brown Dog (now empty), Latchmere Recreation Ground on Wikimapia ()

[1900s in England](Category:1900s_in_England "wikilink") [1903 in British law](Category:1903_in_British_law "wikilink") [1903 in case law](Category:1903_in_case_law "wikilink") [1903 in England](Category:1903_in_England "wikilink") [1903 in London](Category:1903_in_London "wikilink") [1907 in London](Category:1907_in_London "wikilink") [1907 riots](Category:1907_riots "wikilink") [Animal cruelty incidents](Category:Animal_cruelty_incidents "wikilink") [Animal rights](Category:Animal_rights "wikilink") [Animals in politics](Category:Animals_in_politics "wikilink") [Animal testing in the United Kingdom](Category:Animal_testing_in_the_United_Kingdom "wikilink") [Animal welfare and rights in the United Kingdom](Category:Animal_welfare_and_rights_in_the_United_Kingdom "wikilink") [Anti-vivisection movement](Category:Anti-vivisection_movement "wikilink") [Buildings and structures in Battersea](Category:Buildings_and_structures_in_Battersea "wikilink") [Dogs in the United Kingdom](Category:Dogs_in_the_United_Kingdom "wikilink") [Dog monuments](Category:Dog_monuments "wikilink") [English defamation case law](Category:English_defamation_case_law "wikilink") [History of animal testing](Category:History_of_animal_testing "wikilink") [Individual dogs](Category:Individual_dogs "wikilink") [Outdoor sculptures in London](Category:Outdoor_sculptures_in_London "wikilink") [Political controversies in the United Kingdom](Category:Political_controversies_in_the_United_Kingdom "wikilink") [Political history of England](Category:Political_history_of_England "wikilink") [Public art in London](Category:Public_art_in_London "wikilink") [20th-century riots in London](Category:20th-century_riots_in_London "wikilink")

British political controversy, 1903–1910


Hasdrubal, son of Hanno

Hasdrubal ( 255 – 250 BC) was a Carthaginian general who served during the middle years of the First Punic War, fought between Carthage and Rome, and took a leading part in three of the four major field battles of the war. He was a citizen of the city state of Carthage, which was in what is now Tunisia. His date of birth and age at death are both unknown, as are his activities prior to his coming to prominence in 255 BC. Modern historians distinguish him from other Carthaginians named Hasdrubal by the cognomen "son of Hanno".

Hasdrubal was one of three Carthaginian generals, possibly the senior, who took command of the army raised when the Romans invaded North Africa in 255 BC. He was responsible for the decision to march against the Romans late in the year and was present at the Battle of Adys where the Carthaginians were routed. Early in 254 BC the triumvirate of Carthaginian generals gave control of the army to the Spartan mercenary commander, Xanthippus, and accompanied him when the Romans were decisively beaten at the Battle of Tunis.

The focus of the war moved to the island of Sicily where Hasdrubal took command of the Carthaginian army. The Romans avoided battle between 254 and 251 BC because they feared the war elephants which had accompanied Hasdrubal. In late summer 250 BC Hasdrubal led out his army, the Romans withdrew to Panormus and Hasdrubal pressed on to the city walls. Once he arrived at Panormus, the Romans turned to fight, countering the elephants with a hail of javelins. Under this missile fire the elephants panicked and fled through the Carthaginian infantry. The Roman heavy infantry then charged and the Carthaginian army broke. Hasdrubal was recalled to Carthage to be executed.

## Name

Hasdrubal was a citizen of the city state of Carthage; modern historians distinguish him from other Carthaginians named Hasdrubal by the cognomen "son of Hanno". Hasdrubal's date of birth and age at death are both unknown, as are his activities prior to his coming to prominence in 255 BC during the First Punic War. Only four set piece land battles took place during the 23 years of the war; Hasdrubal took part as a general in three of them.

## Background

The city of Carthage was in what is now Tunisia (close to what is now Tunis) and by the mid-3rd century BC it had come to dominate southern Iberia, much of the coastal regions of North Africa, the Balearic Islands, Corsica, Sardinia, and the western half of Sicily in a military and commercial empire. Carthage was the leading maritime power in the Western Mediterranean with its navy dominating both militarily and commercially, while Rome had recently unified mainland Italy south of the Arno. The First Punic War broke out between Carthage and Rome in 264 BC and by 260 BC the war had grown into a struggle in which the Romans wanted to at least control the whole of Sicily.

The Carthaginians were engaging in their traditional policy of waiting for their opponents to wear themselves out, in the expectation of then regaining some or all of their possessions and negotiating a mutually satisfactory peace treaty. The Romans were essentially a land-based power and had gained control of much of Sicily using their army. The war there had reached a stalemate, as the Carthaginians focused on defending their well-fortified towns and cities; these were mostly on the coast and so could be supplied and reinforced by sea without the Romans being able to use their superior army to interfere. The focus of the war shifted to the sea, where the Romans had little experience; in 260 BC Romans set out to construct a fleet using a shipwrecked Carthaginian quinquereme as a blueprint for their own ships.

## Invasion of Africa

Naval victories at Mylae in 260 BC and Sulci in 258 BC, and their frustration at the continuing stalemate in Sicily, led the Romans to focus on a sea-based strategy and to develop a plan to invade the Carthaginian heartland in North Africa and threaten its capital, Carthage. Both sides were determined to establish naval supremacy and invested large amounts of money and manpower in increasing and maintaining the size of their navies.

### Battle of Ecnomus

The Roman fleet of 330 warships plus an unknown number of transport ships sailed from Ostia, the port of Rome, in early 256 BC, commanded by the consuls for the year, Marcus Atilius Regulus and Lucius Manlius Vulso Longus. They embarked approximately 26,000 picked legionaries from the Roman forces on Sicily. The Carthaginians were aware of the Romans' intentions and mustered all available warships, 350, under Hanno and Hamilcar, off the south coast of Sicily to intercept them. The combined total of about 680 warships carrying up to 290,000 crew and marines met in the Battle of Cape Ecnomus. The Carthaginians took the initiative, anticipating that their superior ship-handling skills would tell. After a prolonged and confused day of fighting the Carthaginians were defeated, losing 30 ships sunk and 64 captured to Roman losses of 24 ships sunk.

### Battle of Adys

As a result of the battle, the Roman army, commanded by Regulus, landed in Africa near Aspis (modern Kelibia) on the Cape Bon Peninsula in the summer of 256 BC and began ravaging the Carthaginian countryside. They captured 20,000 slaves, "vast herds of cattle", and, after a brief siege, the city of Aspis. They also fomented rebellions in many of Carthage's subject territories. The Roman Senate sent orders for most of the Roman ships and a large part of the army to return to Sicily, probably due to the logistical difficulties of feeding these more than 100,000 men over the winter. Regulus was left with 40 ships, 15,000 infantry and 500 cavalry to overwinter in Africa. His orders were to weaken the Carthaginian army, pending reinforcement in the spring. It was expected he would achieve this by raids and by encouraging Carthage's rebellious subject territories, but consuls had wide discretion.

This is the point at which Hasdrubal first appears in the historical record. The Carthaginian Senate appointed him as a general, jointly with Bostar, to counter the Roman threat. They took command of an army which was strong in cavalry and elephants and were joined by a third general, Hamilcar, the Carthaginian commander on Sicily, who was recalled along with 5,000 infantry and 500 cavalry. The total size and the makeup of the army is not known, but it was reported to be approximately the same size as the Roman army. (A few months later, at the Battle of Tunis, the Carthaginians fielded 100 elephants, 4,000 cavalry and 12,000 infantry; the latter would have included many citizen-militia.) Hasdrubal may have been the senior of the three Carthaginian generals as he is reported to have made the decision to march their army out to oppose Regulus.

Regulus had chosen to take his relatively small force and strike inland. He advanced on the city of Adys (modern Uthina), only 60 km (37 mi) south-east of Carthage, and besieged it. Determined to prevent the Romans further despoiling the countryside, the Carthaginian generals advanced their army to Adys, where it set up a fortified camp on a rocky hill near the town. They did not wish to commit to a battle on the open ground around Adys too hastily. The ancient Roman historian Polybius is critical of this decision by the Carthaginians, as their main advantages over the Romans were their cavalry and their elephants, neither of which could be deployed to advantage from behind fortifications, on steep ground, or in rough terrain. Modern historians point out that the Carthaginian generals would have been well aware of the strength of the legions when formed up in open battle and that to pause in a strong position while scouting the enemy and formulating a plan was not obviously a mistake. This was especially the case as their army was newly formed and not yet fully trained or used to operating together; although the modern historian George Tipps describes this deployment as a "total misuse" of their cavalry and elephants.

With the Carthaginian army overlooking him from a fortified hill Regulus immediately made the audacious decision to split his army in two and have each carry out a night march to launch a surprise dawn attack on the camp. The Romans would be attacking uphill against the Carthaginians' prepared position, but an attack from two directions would be difficult to respond to. Tipps describes the plan as a demonstration of Regulus's "recklessness". Both Roman forces were in position on time and successfully launched their attacks, although apparently not simultaneously. Complete surprise cannot have been achieved, as at least a large part of the Carthaginians were able to form up and confront one half of the Roman assault at the fortifications. This column was thrown back by the Carthaginian defenders and driven down the hill in disorder. The situation was confused, with the rest of the Carthaginians taking no effective action and failing to co-ordinate with their victorious colleagues. The role of Hasdrubal and his fellow generals in this fighting is unclear. According to the military historian Nigel Bagnall, the cavalry and elephants were promptly evacuated, as it was recognised they would not be able to play any useful role, either in defending the fortifications or on the broken terrain of the hill more generally.

Those Carthaginians pursuing the first Roman force chased them off the hill, and all or part of the second Roman column, rather than attacking the Carthaginian camp, charged downhill into the rear of the now over-extended Carthaginians. It is possible this group of Carthaginians also faced a frontal counter-attack by Roman reserves after leaving the hill. In any event, after some further fighting the Carthaginians fled the field. At this the in the camp, the fortifications of which had not been breached, panicked and withdrew. Again, the extent to which this was at Hasdrubal and his fellows' command is unclear. The Romans pursued for some distance, although the primary sources provide no figures for Carthaginian losses. Modern historians suggest the early Carthaginian order to evacuate their cavalry and elephants meant that they suffered few or no losses, while losses among the infantry would have been heavier. Breaking off their pursuit, the victorious Romans plundered the hilltop camp.

### Battle of Tunis

The Romans followed up and captured numerous towns, including Tunis, only 16 km (10 mi) from Carthage. From Tunis the Romans raided and devastated the immediate area around Carthage. Many of Carthage's African possessions took the opportunity to rise in revolt. The city of Carthage was packed with refugees fleeing Regulus or the rebels, and food ran out. In despair the Carthaginians sued for peace. Regulus, within sight of what he took to be a thoroughly defeated Carthage, demanded harsh terms. Finding these unacceptable, the Carthaginians decided to fight on.

The Carthaginians were recruiting fighting men from all over the Mediterranean region, and at around this time a large group of recruits from Greece arrived in Carthage. Among them was a Spartan mercenary commander, Xanthippus. Polybius notes that he had taken part in Spartan training methods and that he knew both how to deploy and how to manoeuvre an army. He made a good impression with the troops of the Carthaginian army, and was able to persuade the Carthaginian Senate that the strongest elements of their army were their cavalry and elephants and that to be deployed to best effect they needed to fight on open level ground. The historian John Lazenby speculates he may have previously faced elephants when Pyrrhus of Epirus attacked Sparta in the 270s BC. Xanthippus was put in charge of training both the new recruits and the existing army over the winter, although the committee of three Carthaginian generals retained operational control. As the prospect of a decisive battle drew nearer, and as Xanthippus's skill at manoeuvring the army became more evident, full control was given to him. Whether this was a decision of the generals, the Senate, or was forced on them by the wishes of the troops, who included many Carthaginian citizens, is not clear.

Xanthippus, accompanied by the triumvirate of Carthaginian generals, led the army of 100 elephants, 4,000 cavalry and 12,000 infantry—the latter included the 5,000 veterans from Sicily and many citizen-militia—out of Carthage and set up camp close to the Romans in an area of open plain. The precise site is not known, but it is assumed to be close to Tunis. The Roman army of about 15,000 infantry and 500 cavalry advanced to meet them, and set up camp about 2 km (1.2 mi) away. The next morning both sides deployed for battle. Xanthippus placed the Carthaginian citizen-militia in the centre of his formation; with the Sicilian veterans and the freshly hired infantry divided on either side of them; and with the cavalry equally divided on either side of these. The elephants were deployed in a single line in front of the centre of the infantry. The Romans placed their legionary infantry in their centre, arranged in a deeper and denser formation than usual. Polybius considered this to be an effective anti-elephant formation, but points out that it shortened the frontage of the Roman infantry and made them susceptible to being out-flanked. Light infantry skirmishers were positioned in front of the legions, and the 500 cavalry were divided between the flanks. Regulus apparently hoped to punch through the elephants with his massed infantry, overcome the Carthaginian phalanx in their centre and so win the battle before he needed to worry about being attacked on the flanks.

The battle opened with attacks by the Carthaginian cavalry and elephants. The Roman cavalry, hopelessly outnumbered, were soon swept away. The Roman legionaries advanced, shouting and banging their sword hilts on their shields in an attempt to deter the elephants. Part of the Roman left overlapped the line of elephants, and they charged the infantry of the Carthaginian right, who broke and fled back to their camp, pursued by the Romans. This part of the Roman force probably consisted of Latin allies (socii). The rest of the Roman infantry had difficulties with the elephants, who were not deterred by their noise but charged home, inflicting casualties and considerable confusion. At least some of the legionaries fought their way through the line of elephants, and attacked the Carthaginian phalanx. But they were too disordered to fight effectively and the phalanx held firm. Some units of the Carthaginian cavalry were now returning from their pursuit and started to attack or feint against the Roman rear and flanks. The Romans attempted to fight on all sides which brought their forward momentum to a halt.

The Romans held firm, possibly partly because of the way their dense formation jammed them close together, but the elephants continued to rampage through their ranks, and the Carthaginian cavalry pinned them in place by hurling missiles into their rear and flanks. Then Xanthippus ordered the phalanx to attack. Most of the Romans were packed into a space where they could not resist effectively and were slaughtered. Regulus and a small force fought their way out of the encirclement, but were pursued and shortly he and 500 survivors were forced to surrender. A total of about 13,000 Romans were killed. The Carthaginians lost 800 men from the force on their right which was routed; the losses of the rest of their army are not known. A force of 2,000 Romans survived, from the left wing who had broken through into the Carthaginian camp; they escaped the battlefield and retreated to Aspis. This was Carthage's only victory in a major land battle during the war.

Xanthippus, fearful of the envy of Hasdrubal and the other Carthaginian generals he had outdone, took his pay and returned to Greece. Regulus died in Carthaginian captivity; later Roman authors invented a tale of him displaying heroic virtue while a prisoner. The Romans sent a fleet to evacuate their survivors and the Carthaginians attempted to oppose it. In the resulting Battle of Cape Hermaeum off Africa the Carthaginians were heavily defeated, losing 114 ships captured and 16 sunk. The Roman fleet, in turn, was devastated by a storm while returning to Italy: 384 ships were sunk from their total of 464 and 100,000 men lost, the majority non-Roman Latin allies.

## Sicily

Having lost most of their fleet in the storm of 255 BC, the Romans rapidly rebuilt it, adding 220 new ships, and launched a determined offensive in Sicily; their entire fleet, under both consuls, attacked Panormus early in 254 BC. Panormus was a large-for-the-time city on the north coast of Sicily, the site of the modern Sicilian capital Palermo. It had a population of approximately 70,000 and was one of the largest Sicilian cities still loyal to Carthage and the most important economically. The city's prosperity was based on trade and fishing, which resulted in an unusual lack of agriculture and the area immediately around the city was thickly forested, even close to the gates. The city was surrounded and blockaded, and siege engines set up. These made a breach in the walls which the Romans stormed, capturing the outer town and giving no quarter. The inner town promptly surrendered. The 14,000 inhabitants who could afford it ransomed themselves and the remaining 13,000 were sold into slavery. Much of western inland Sicily then went over to the Romans: Ietas, Solous, Petra, and Tyndaris all came to terms.

In response to these events on Sicily the Carthaginians despatched Hasdrubal to Sicily, probably in 254 BC, with the 5,000 infantry and 500 cavalry they had earlier withdrawn and a reinforcement of 140 elephants. The Romans avoided battle between 254 and 251 BC; according to Polybius because they feared the war elephants which the Carthaginians had shipped to Sicily. Bagnall suggests that survivors of the battle against Xanthippus passed on "horrific stories" of the effectiveness of the Carthaginian cavalry and elephants in open battle. In consequence Hasdrubal, probably with a smaller army than the Romans, dominated the plains; the Romans stayed on higher and broken ground, where much of the effect of the cavalry and elephants would have been nullified. Both sides declined to face the other on their favoured terrain. Hasdrubal spent the time drilling and training his army, including the elephants. In 252 BC the Romans captured Thermae and Lipara, which had been isolated by the fall of Panormus.

### Battle of Panormus

In late summer 250 BC Hasdrubal, hearing that one consul (Gaius Furius Pacilus) had left Sicily for Rome with half of the Roman army, marched out from the major Carthaginian stronghold of Lilybaeum towards Panormus with 30,000 men and between 60 and 142 elephants. Halting some distance away, he devastated the harvest in the territories of Rome's newly allied cities, in an attempt to provoke the Roman commander, Lucius Caecilius Metellus, into battle. The Roman troops amounted to two legions, and they had been dispersed to gather the harvest. Metellus withdrew them in front of the advancing Carthaginians and they retreated into Panormus. This timidity was what Hasdrubal had come to expect, and he advanced down the Oreto valley, continuing to despoil the countryside. The Oreto reached the sea immediately south of Panormus, and once there Hasdrubal ordered part of his army to cross the river and advance up to the city wall.

Once the elephants had crossed, or were crossing, the river, Metellus sent his light infantry to skirmish with the Carthaginians and impede their passage. These light troops hurled javelins at the Carthaginians, and had been instructed to concentrate on their elephants. Panormus was a major supply depot, and townspeople were employed in carrying bundles of javelins from stocks within the city to the foot of the walls so the Roman skirmishers were constantly resupplied. The ground between the river and the city was covered with earthworks, some constructed during the Roman siege and some part of the city's defensive works, which provided cover for the Romans and made it difficult for the elephants to advance, or even manoeuvre. The elephants' mahouts, eager to demonstrate their charges' prowess to Hasdrubal, nevertheless drove them forward. Some accounts also have missiles being hurled down from the city walls at them. Peppered with missiles and unable to retaliate, the elephants panicked and fled through the Carthaginian infantry behind them.

Metellus had concealed himself and a large part of his army either in the woods just outside the city gate, or immediately inside the gates; in either case this meant he was upstream from where the Carthaginian army was fording the river. From here Metellus fed fresh troops into the large-scale skirmish under the city walls. When the elephants broke, disorganising a large part of the Carthaginian army and demoralising all of it, Metellus ordered an attack on its left flank. The Carthaginians fled; those who attempted to fight were cut down. Hasdrubal escaped. Metellus did not permit a pursuit, but did capture ten elephants in the immediate aftermath and, according to some accounts, the rest of the surviving animals over the succeeding days.

Contemporary accounts do not report the other losses of either side, although those of the Carthaginians are thought to have been heavy. Modern historians consider later claims of 20,000–30,000 Carthaginian casualties improbable. Similarly, later accounts that most of the large Celtic contingent in the Carthaginian army were drunk when the battle began are usually dismissed; as is the suggestion that a Carthaginian fleet took part in the operation, causing heavy casualties when many fleeing soldiers ran into the sea hoping to be taken off by their ships. Panormus was the fourth and final set piece battle of the war.

## Death and afterwards

As was the Carthaginian custom after a defeat, Hasdrubal was recalled to Carthage to be executed.

After his success at Panormus, Metellus received a triumph in Rome on 7 September 250 BC, during which he paraded with the elephants he had captured at Panormus, who were then slaughtered in the Circus Maximus. The defeat, and especially the loss of the elephants, resulted in the Romans feeling freer to manoeuvre on the plains, and the Carthaginians no longer being willing to challenge them. Henceforth the Carthaginian approach was purely defensive. The war ended nine years later in 241 BC with a Roman victory.

## Notes, citations and sources

Carthaginian general (died c. 250 BC)

Carthaginian commanders of the First Punic War