Mercenary War

Mercenary War.
The Mercenary War, also known as the Truceless War, was a mutiny by troops employed by Carthage at the end of the First Punic War (264 to 241 BC), backed by an uprising of African settlements against Carthaginian control. The war began in 241 BC as a dispute over wages owed to 20,000 foreign soldiers. It erupted into a full-scale mutiny that included 70,000 Africans from Carthage's oppressed dependent territories, bringing supplies and finance. The Carthaginian general Hamilcar Barca initially demonstrated leniency to woo the rebels over, but pursued the war with great brutality after they tortured 700 Carthaginian prisoners to death. It ended in late 238 or early 237 BC with a Carthaginian victory. An expedition was then prepared to reoccupy Sardinia, where all Carthaginians had been killed. However, Rome declared that this would be an act of war and occupied both Sardinia and Corsica, in contravention of the recent peace treaty. (This article is part of a featured topic: Punic Wars.)