The natives opposed a desperate resistance, but the three columns pressed forward on parallel lines.

The towns were besieged and captured, and after two months of desperate fighting Catalonia was subdued, but its conquest cost Hannibal twenty-one thousand men, a fifth of his whole army.

Hanno was for the time left here with ten thousand infantry and a thousand cavalry.

He was to suppress any fresh rising, to hold the large towns, to form magazines for the army, and to keep open the passes of the Pyrenees.

He fixed his headquarters at Burgos.