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By 264BC, Rome controlled the whole of the Italian peninsula and had emerged as a powerful confederacy and the principal rival to the other major power in the western Mediterranean, Carthage. The Romans were forced to develop naval skills to defeat Carthage in the First Punic War, in which Rome drove the Carthaginians out of Sicily; soon after Corsica and Sardinia were seized as well. In the Second Punic War, the Roman heartland of Italy was invaded by Hannibal, who brought his army and, perhaps more famously, his elephant(s) from Spain over the Alps. Though Rome suffered devastating defeats at the Trebia, Lake Trasimene and Cannae, she was able to draw on the vast resources of Italy and eventually defeat Hannibal. The end of a century of Romano-Punic conflict came after the Third Punic War, during which Scipio Aemilianus stormed and obliterated Carthage. This conflict brought Rome an overseas empire and set her on the road to becoming the world’s first global empire, stretching from the Atlantic to the Euphrates and from the Sahara to the English Channel.