Maddened with pain and terror, they were beginning to rush wildly on their own men, when Hannibal ordered them to be driven away to the left wing against the auxiliary Gauls on the Roman right. There they instantly produced unmistakable panic and flight, and the Romans had fresh cause for .alarm when they saw their auxiliaries routed. [2] They now stood fighting in a square, and about 10,000 of them, unable to escape in any other direction, forced their way through the centre of the African troops and the auxiliary Gauls who supported them and inflicted an immense loss on the enemy. [3] They were prevented by the river from returning to their camp, and the rain made it impossible for them to judge where they could best go to the assistance of their comrades, so they marched away straight to Placentia. [4] Then desperate attempts to escape were made on all sides; some who made for the river were swept away by the current or caught by the enemy while hesitating to cross; [5] others, scattered over the fields in flight, followed the track of the main retreat and sought Placentia; others, fearing the enemy more than the river, crossed it and reached their camp. [6] The driving sleet and the intolerable cold caused the death of many men and baggage animals, and nearly all the elephants perished. [7] The Carthaginians stopped their pursuit at the banks of the Trebia and returned to their camp so benumbed with cold that they hardly felt any joy in their victory. [8] In the night the men who had guarded the camp, and the rest of the soldiers, mostly wounded, crossed the Trebia on rafts without any interference from the Carthaginians, either because the roaring of the storm prevented them from hearing or because they were unable to move through weariness and wounds and pretended that they heard nothing. [9] Whilst the Carthaginians were keeping quiet, Scipio led his army to Placentia and thence across the Po to Cremona, in order that one colony might not be burdened with providing winter quarters for the two armies.
