The summer had passed off gloriously for the Roman arms. The expedition
to Britain had produced all the effects which Caesar expected from it,
and Gaul was outwardly calm. Below the smooth appearance the elements
of disquiet were silently working, and the winter was about to produce
the most serious disaster and the sharpest trials which Caesar had yet
experienced. On his return from Britain he held a council at Amiens.
The harvest had been bad, and it was found expedient, for their better
provision, to disperse the troops over a broader area than usual. There
were in all eight legions, with part of another to be disposed of, and
they were distributed in the following order. Lucius Roscius was placed
at Séex, in Normandy; Quintus Cicero at Charleroy, not far from the
scene of the battle with the Nervii. Cicero had chosen this position
for himself as peculiarly advantageous; and his brother speaks of
Caesar's acquiescence in the arrangement as a special mark of favor to
himself. Labienus was at Lavacherie, on the Ourthe, about seventy miles
to the south-east of Cicero; and Sabinus and Cotta were at Tongres,
among the Aduatuci, not far from Liége, an equal distance from him to
the north-east. Caius Fabius had a legion at St. Pol, between Calais
and Arras; Trebonius one at Amiens; Marcus Crassus one at Montdidier;
Munatius Plancus one across the Oise, near Compiègne. Roscius was far
off, but in a comparatively quiet country. The other camps lay within a
circle, two hundred miles in diameter, of which Bavay was the centre.
Amiens was at one point on the circumference. Tongres, on the opposite
side of it, to the north-east. Sabinus, being the most exposed, had, in
addition to his legion, a few cohorts lately raised in Italy. Caesar,
having no particular business to take him over the Alps, remained, with
Trebonius attending to general business. His dispositions had been
carefully watched by the Gauls. Caesar, they supposed, would go away as
usual; they even believed that he had gone; and a conspiracy was formed
in the north to destroy the legions in detail.
The instigator of the movement was Induciomarus, the leader of the
patriot party among the Treveri, whose intrigues had taken Caesar to
the Moselle before the first visit to Britain. At that time
Induciomarus had been able to do nothing; but a fairer opportunity had
arrived. The overthrow of the great German horde had affected
powerfully the semi-Teutonic populations on the left bank of the Rhine.
The Eburones, a large tribe of German race occupying the country
between Liége and Cologne, had given in their submission; but their
strength was still undiminished, and Induciomarus prevailed on their
two chiefs, Ambiorix and Catavoleus, to attack Sabinus and Cotta. It
was midwinter. The camp at Tongres was isolated. The nearest support
was seventy miles distant. If one Roman camp was taken, Induciomarus
calculated that the country would rise; the others could be separately
surrounded, and Gaul would be free. The plot was well laid. An
entrenched camp being difficult to storm, the confederates decided to
begin by treachery. Ambiorix was personally known to many of the Roman
officers. He sent to Sabiuus to say that he wished to communicate with
him on a matter of the greatest consequence. An interview being
granted, he stated that a general conspiracy had been formed through
the whole of Gaul to surprise and destroy the legions. Each station was
to be attacked on the same day, that they might be unable to support
each other. He pretended himself to have remonstrated; but his tribe,
he said, had been carried away by the general enthusiasm for liberty,
and he could not keep them back. Vast bodies of Germans had crossed the
Rhine to join in the war. In two days at the furthest they would
arrive. He was under private obligations to Caesar, who had rescued his
son and nephew in the fight with the Aduatuci, and out of gratitude he
wished to save Sabinus from destruction, which was otherwise
inevitable. He urged him to escape while there was still time, and to
join either Labienus or Cicero, giving a solemn promise that he should
not be molested on the road.
A council of officers was held on the receipt of this unwelcome
information. It was thought unlikely that the Eburones would rise by
themselves. It was probable enough, therefore, that the conspiracy was
more extensive. Cotta, who was second in command, was of opinion that
it would be rash and wrong to leave the camp without Caesar's orders.
They had abundant provisions. They could hold their own lines against
any force which the Germans could bring upon them, and help would not
be long in reaching them. It would be preposterous to take so grave a
step on the advice of an enemy. Sabinus unfortunately thought
differently. He had been over-cautious in Brittany, though he had
afterward redeemed his fault. Caesar, he persuaded himself, had left
the country; each commander therefore must act on his own
responsibility. The story told by Ambiorix was likely in itself. The
Germans were known to be furious at the passage of the Rhine, the
destruction of Ariovistus, and their other defeats. Gaul resented the
loss of its independence. Ambiorix was acting like a true friend, and
it would be madness to refuse his offer. Two days' march would bring
them to their friends. If the alarm was false, they could return. If
there was to be a general insurrection, the legions could not be too
speedily brought together. If they waited, as Cotta advised, they would
be surrounded, and in the end would be starved into surrender.
Cotta was not convinced, and the majority of officers supported him.
The first duty of a Roman army, he said, was obedience to orders. Their
business was to hold the post which had been committed to them, till
they were otherwise directed. The officers were consulting in the midst
of the camp, surrounded by the legionaries. "Have it as you wish,"
Sabinus exclaimed, in a tone which the men could hear; "I am not afraid
of being killed. If things go amiss, the troops will understand where
to lay the blame. If you allowed it, they might in forty-eight hours be
at the next quarters, facing the chances of war with their comrades,
instead of perishing here alone by sword or hunger."
Neither party would give way. The troops joined in the discussion. They
were willing either to go or to stay, if their commanders would agree;
but they said that it must be one thing or the other; disputes would be
certain ruin. The discussion lasted till midnight. Sabinus was
obstinate, Cotta at last withdrew his opposition, and the fatal
resolution was formed to march at dawn. The remaining hours of the
night were passed by the men in collecting such valuables as they
wished to take with them. Everything seemed ingeniously done to
increase the difficulty of remaining, and to add to the perils of the
march by the exhaustion of the troops. The Meuse lay between them and
Labienus, so they had selected to go to Cicero at Charleroy. Their
course lay up the left bank of the little river _Geer_. Trusting to the
promises of Ambiorix, they started in loose order, followed by a long
train of carts and wagons. The Eburones lay, waiting for them, in a
large valley, two miles from the camp. When most of the cohorts were
entangled in the middle of the hollow, the enemy appeared suddenly,
some in front, some on both sides of the valley, some behind
threatening the baggage. Wise men, as Caesar says, anticipate possible
difficulties, and decide beforehand what they will do if occasions
arise. Sabinus had foreseen nothing and arranged nothing. Cotta, who
had expected what might happen, was better prepared, and did the best
that was possible. The men had scattered among the wagons, each to save
or protect what he could. Cotta ordered them back, bade them leave the
carts to their fate, and form together in a ring. He did right, Caesar
thought; but the effect was unfortunate. The troops lost heart, and the
enemy was encouraged, knowing that the baggage would only be abandoned
when the position was desperate. The Eburones were under good command.
They did not, as might have been expected, fly upon the plunder. They
stood to their work, well aware that the carts would not escape them.
They were not in great numbers. Caesar specially says that the Romans
were as numerous as they. But everything else was against the Romans.
Sabinus could give no directions. They were in a narrow meadow, with
wooded hills on each side of them filled with enemies whom they could
not reach. When they charged, the light-footed barbarians ran back;
when they retired, they closed in upon them again, and not a dart, an
arrow, or a stone missed its mark among the crowded cohorts. Bravely as
the Romans fought, they were in a trap where their courage was useless
to them. The battle lasted from dawn till the afternoon, and though
they were falling fast, there was no flinching and no cowardice.
Caesar, who inquired particularly into the minutest circumstances of
the disaster, records by name the officers who distinguished
themselves; he mentions one whose courage he had marked before, who was
struck down with a lance through his thighs, and another who was killed
in rescuing his son. The brave Cotta was hit in the mouth by a stone as
he was cheering on his men. The end came at last. Sabinus, helpless and
distracted, caught sight of Ambiorix in the confusion, and sent an
interpreter to implore him to spare the remainder of the army. Ambiorix
answered that Sabinus might come to him, if he pleased; he hoped he
might persuade his tribe to be merciful; he promised that Sabinus
himself should suffer no injury. Sabinus asked Cotta to accompany him.
Cotta said he would never surrender to an armed enemy; and, wounded as
he was, he stayed with the legion. Sabinus, followed by the rest of the
surviving officers whom he ordered to attend him, proceeded to the spot
where the chief was standing. They were commanded to lay down their
arms. They obeyed, and were immediately killed; and with one wild yell
the barbarians then rushed in a mass on the deserted cohorts. Cotta
fell, and most of the others with him. The survivors, with the eagle of
the legion, which they had still faithfully guarded, struggled back in
the dusk to their deserted camp. The standard-bearer, surrounded by
enemies, reached the fosse, flung the eagle over the rampart, and fell
with the last effort. Those that were left fought on till night, and
then, seeing that hope was gone, died like Romans on each other's
swords--a signal illustration of the Roman greatness of mind, which had
died out among the degenerate patricians, but was living in all its
force in Caesar's legions. A few stragglers, who had been cut off
during the battle from their comrades, escaped in the night through the
woods, and carried the news to Labienus. Cicero, at Charleroy, was left
in ignorance. The roads were beset, and no messenger could reach him.
Induciomarus understood his countrymen. The conspiracy with which he
had frightened Sabinus had not as yet extended beyond a few northern
chiefs, hut the success of Ambiorix produced the effect which he
desired. As soon as it was known that two Roman generals had been cut
off, the remnants of the Aduatuci and the Nervii were in arms for their
own revenge. The smaller tribes along the Meuse and Sambre rose with
them; and Cicero, taken by surprise, found himself surrounded before he
had a thought of danger. The Gauls, knowing that their chances depended
on the capture of the second camp before assistance could arrive, flung
themselves so desperately on the entrenchments that the legionaries
were barely able to repel the first assault. The assailants were driven
back at last, and Cicero despatched messengers to Caesar to Amiens, to
give him notice of the rising; but not a man was able to penetrate
through the multitude of enemies which now swarmed in the woods. The
troops worked gallantly, strengthening the weak points of their
fortifications. In one night they raised a hundred and twenty towers on
their walls. Again the Gauls tried a storm, and, though they failed a
second time, they left the garrison no rest either by day or night.
There was no leisure for sleep; not a hand could be spared from the
lines to care for the sick or wounded. Cicero was in bad health, but he
clung to his work till the men carried him by force to his tent and
obliged him to lie down. The first surprise not having succeeded, the
Nervian chiefs, who knew Cicero, desired a parley. They told the same
story which Ambiorix had told, that the Germans had crossed the Rhine,
and that all Gaul was in arms. They informed him of the destruction of
Sabinus; they warned him that the same fate was hanging over himself,
and that his only hope was in surrender. They did not wish, they said,
to hurt either him or the Roman people; he and his troops would be free
to go where they pleased, but they were determined to prevent the
legions from quartering themselves permanently in their country.
There was but one Sabinus in the Roman army. Cicero answered, with a
spirit worthy of his country, that Romans accepted no conditions from
enemies in arms. The Gauls might, if they pleased, send a deputation to
Caesar, and hear what he would say to them. For himself, he had no
authority to listen to them. Force and treachery being alike
unavailing, they resolved to starve Cicero out. They had watched the
Roman strategy. They had seen and felt the value of the entrenchments.
They made a bank and ditch all round the camp, and, though they had no
tools but their swords with which to dig turf and cut trees, so many
there were of them that the work was completed in three hours.[1]
Having thus pinned the Romans in, they slung red-hot balls and flung
darts carrying lighted straw over the ramparts of the camp on the
thatched roofs of the soldiers' huts. The wind was high, the fire
spread, and amidst the smoke and the blaze the Gauls again rushed on
from all sides to the assault. Roman discipline was never more severely
tried, and never showed its excellence more signally. The houses and
stores of the soldiers were in flames behind them. The enemy were
pressing on the walls in front, covered by a storm of javelins and
stones and arrows, but not a man left his post to save his property or
to extinguish the fire. They fought as they stood, striking down rank
after rank of the Gauls, who still crowded on, trampling on the bodies
of their companions, as the foremost lines fell dead into the ditch.
Such as reached the wall never left it alive, for they were driven
forward by the throng behind on the swords of the legionaries.
Thousands of them had fallen, before, in desperation, they drew back at
last.
But Cicero's situation was almost desperate too. The huts were
destroyed. The majority of the men were wounded, and those able to bear
arms were daily growing weaker in number. Caesar was 120 miles distant,
and no word had reached him of the danger. Messengers were again sent
off, but they were caught one after another, and were tortured to death
in front of the ramparts, and the boldest men shrank from risking their
lives on so hopeless an enterprise. At length a Nervian slave was found
to make another adventure. He was a Gaul, and could easily disguise
himself. A letter to Caesar was enclosed in the shaft of his javelin.
He glided out of the camp in the dark, passed undetected among the
enemies as one of themselves, and, escaping from their lines, made his
way to Amiens.
Swiftness of movement was Caesar's distinguishing excellence. The
legions were kept ready to march at an hour's notice. He sent an order
to Crassus to join him instantly from Montdidier. He sent to Fabius at
St. Pol to meet him at Arras. He wrote to Labienus, telling him the
situation, and leaving him to his discretion to advance or to remain on
his guard at Lavacherie, as might seem most prudent. Not caring to wait
for the rest of his army, and leaving Crassus to take care of Amiens,
he started himself, the morning after the information reached him, with
Trebonius's legion to Cicero's relief. Fabius joined him, as he had
been directed, at Arras. He had hoped for Labienus's presence also; but
Labienus sent to say that he was surrounded by the Treveri, and dared
not stir. Caesar approved his hesitation, and with but two legions,
amounting in all to only 7,000 men, he hurried forward to the Nervian
border. Learning that Cicero was still holding out, he wrote a letter
to him in Greek, that it might be unintelligible if intercepted, to
tell him that help was near. A Gaul carried the letter, and fastened it
by a line to his javelin, which he flung over Cicero's rampart. The
javelin stuck in the side of one of the towers and was unobserved for
several days. The besiegers were better informed. They learnt that
Caesar was at hand, that he had but a handful of men with him. By that
time their own numbers had risen to 60,000, and, leaving Cicero to be
dealt with at leisure, they moved off to envelop and destroy their
great enemy. Caesar was well served by spies. He knew that Cicero was
no longer in immediate danger, and there was thus no occasion for him
to risk a battle at a disadvantage to relieve him. When he found the
Gauls near him, he encamped, drawing his lines as narrowly as he could,
that from the small show which he made they might imagine his troops to
be even fewer than they were. He invited attack by an ostentation of
timidity, and having tempted the Gauls to become the assailants, he
flung open his gates, rushed out upon them with his whole force, and
all but annihilated them. The patriot army was broken to pieces, and
the unfortunate Nervii and Aduatuci never rallied from this second
blow. Caesar could then go at his leisure to Cicero and his comrades,
who had fought so nobly against such desperate odds. In every ten men
he found that there was but one unwounded. He inquired with minute
curiosity into every detail of the siege. In a general address he
thanked Cicero and the whole legion. He thanked the officers man by man
for their gallantry and fidelity. Now for the first time (and that he
could have remained ignorant of it so long speaks for the passionate
unanimity with which the Gauls had risen) he learnt from prisoners the
fate of Sabinus. He did not underrate the greatness of the catastrophe.
The soldiers in the army he treated always as friends and comrades in
arms, and the loss of so many of them was as personally grievous to him
as the effects of it might be politically mischievous. He made it the
subject of a second speech to his own and to Cicero's troops, but he
spoke to encourage and to console. A serious misfortune had happened,
he said, through the fault of one of his generals, but it must be borne
with equanimity, and had already been heroically expiated. The meeting
with Cicero must have been an interesting one. He and the two Ciceros
had been friends and companions in youth. It would have been well if
Marcus Tullius could have remembered in the coming years the personal
exertion with which Caesar had rescued a brother to whom he was so
warmly attached.
Communications among the Gauls were feverishly rapid. While the Nervii
were attacking Cicero, Induciomarus and the Treveri had surrounded
Labienus at Lavacherie. Caesar had entered Cicero's camp at three
o'clock in the afternoon. The news reached Induciomarus before
midnight, and he had disappeared by the morning. Caesar returned to
Amiens, but the whole country was now in a state of excitement. He had
intended to go to Italy, but he abandoned all thoughts of departure.
Rumors came of messengers hurrying to and fro, of meetings at night in
lonely places, of confederacies among the patriots. Even Brittany was
growing uneasy; a force had been collected to attack Roscius, though it
had dispersed after the relief of Cicero. Caesar again summoned the
chiefs to come to him, and between threats and encouragements succeeded
in preventing a general rising. But the tribes on the upper Seine broke
into disturbance. The Aedui and the Remi alone remained really loyal;
and it was evident that only a leader was wanted to raise the whole of
Gaul. Caesar himself admitted that nothing could be more natural. The
more high-spirited of the Gauls were miserable to see that their
countrymen had so lost conceit of themselves as to submit willingly to
the Roman rule.
Induciomarus was busy all the winter soliciting help from the Germans,
and promising money and lands. The Germans had had enough of fighting
the Romans, and, as long as their own independence was not threatened,
were disinclined to move; but Induciomarus, nothing daunted, gathered
volunteers on all sides. His camp became a rallying point for
disaffection. Envoys came privately to him from distant tribes. He,
too, held his rival council, and a fresh attack on the camp of Labienus
was to be the first step in a general war. Labienus, well informed of
what was going on, watched him quietly from his entrenchments. When the
Gauls approached, he affected fear, as Caesar had done, and he secretly
formed a body of cavalry, of whose existence they had no suspicion.
Induciomarus became careless. Day after day he rode round the
entrenchments, insulting the Romans as cowards, and his men flinging
their javelins over the walls. Labienus remained passive, till one
evening, when, after one of these displays, the loose bands of the
Gauls had scattered, he sent his horse out suddenly with orders to
fight neither with small nor great, save with Induciomarus only, and
promising a reward for his head. Fortune favored him. Induciomarus was
overtaken and killed in a ford of the Ourthe, and for the moment the
agitation was cooled down. But the impression which had been excited by
the destruction of Sabinus was still telling through the country.
Caesar expected fresh trouble in the coming summer, and spent the rest
of the winter and spring in preparing for a new struggle. Future peace
depended on convincing the Gauls of the inexhaustible resources of
Italy; on showing them that any loss which might be inflicted could be
immediately repaired, and that the army could and would be maintained
in whatever strength might be necessary to coerce them. He raised two
fresh legions in his own province. Pompey had formed a legion in the
north of Italy, within Caesar's boundaries, for service in Spain.
Caesar requested Pompey to lend him this legion for immediate purposes;
and Pompey, who was still on good terms with Caesar, recognized the
importance of the occasion, and consented without difficulty.
[Sidenote: B.C. 53.] Thus amply reinforced, Caesar, before the grass
had begun to grow, took the field against the tribes which were openly
disaffected. The first business was to punish the Belgians, who had
attacked Cicero. He fell suddenly on the Nervii with four legions,
seized their cattle, wasted their country, and carried off thousands of
them to be sold into slavery. Returning to Amiens, he again called the
chiefs about him, and, the Seine tribes refusing to put in an
appearance, he transferred the council to Paris, and, advancing by
rapid marches, he brought the Senones and Carnutes to pray for
pardon.[2] He then turned on the Treveri and their allies, who, under
Ambiorix, had destroyed Sabinus. Leaving Labienus with the additional
legions to check the Treveri, he went himself into Flanders, where
Ambiorix was hiding among the rivers and marshes. He threw bridges over
the dikes, burnt the villages, and carried off an enormous spoil, of
cattle and, alas! of men. To favor and enrich the tribes that submitted
after a first defeat, to depopulate the determinately rebellious by
seizing and selling as slaves those who had forfeited a right to his
protection, was his uniform and, as the event proved, entirely
successful policy. The persuasions of the Treveri had failed with the
nearer German tribes; but some of the Suevi, who had never seen the
Romans, were tempted to adventure over and try their fortunes; and the
Treveri were waiting for them, to set on Labienus, in Caesar's absence.
Labienus went in search of the Treveri, tempted them into an engagement
by a feigned flight, killed many of them, and filled his camp with
prisoners. Their German allies retreated again across the river, and
the patriot chiefs, who had gone with Induciomarus, concealed
themselves in the forests of Westphalia. Caesar thought it desirable to
renew the admonition which he had given the Germans two years before,
and again threw a bridge over the Rhine at the same place where he had
made the first, but a little higher up the stream. Experience made the
construction more easy. The bridge was begun and finished in a few
days, but this time the labor was thrown away. The operation itself
lost its impressiveness by repetition, and the barrenness of practical
results was more evident than before. The Sueves, who had gone home,
were far away in the interior. To lead the heavily armed legions in
pursuit of wild light-footed marauders, who had not a town which could
be burned, or a field of corn which could be cut for food, was to waste
their strength to no purpose, and to prove still more plainly that in
their own forests they were beyond the reach of vengeance. Caesar drew
back again, after a brief visit to his allies the Ubii, cut two hundred
feet of the bridge on the German side, and leaving the rest standing
with a guard to defend it, he went in search of Ambiorix, who had as
yet eluded him, in the Ardennes. Ambiorix had added treachery to
insurrection, and as long as he was free and unpunished the massacred
legion had not been fully avenged. Caesar was particularly anxious to
catch him, and once had found the nest warm which Ambiorix had left but
a few moments before.
In the pursuit he came again to Tongres, to the fatal camp which
Sabinus had deserted and in which the last of the legionaries had
killed each other, rather than degrade the Roman name by allowing
themselves to be captured. The spot was fated, and narrowly escaped
being the scene of a second catastrophe as frightful as the first. The
entrenchments were standing as they were left, ready to be occupied.
Caesar, finding himself encumbered by his heavy baggage in the pursuit
of Ambiorix, decided to leave it there with Quintus Cicero and the 14th
legion. He was going himself to scour Brabant and East Flanders as far
as the Scheldt. In seven days he promised to return, and meanwhile he
gave Cicero strict directions to keep the legion within the lines, and
not to allow any of the men to stray. It happened that after Caesar
recrossed the Rhine two thousand German horse had followed in bravado,
and were then plundering between Tongres and the river. Hearing that
there was a rich booty in the camp, that Caesar was away, and only a
small party had been left to guard it, they decided to try to take the
place by a sudden stroke. Cicero, seeing no sign of an enemy, had
permitted his men to disperse in foraging parties. The Germans were on
them before they could recover their entrenchments, and they had to
form at a distance and defend themselves as they could. The gates of
the camp were open, and the enemy were actually inside before the few
maniples who were left there were able to collect and resist them.
Fortunately Sextius Bacillus, the same officer who had so brilliantly
distinguished himself in the battle with the Nervii, and had since been
badly wounded, was lying sick in his tent, where he had been for five
days, unable to touch food. Hearing the disturbance, Bacillus sprang
out, snatched a sword, rallied such men as he could find, and checked
the attack for a few minutes. Other officers rushed to his help, and
the legionaries having their centurions with them recovered their
steadiness. Sextius Bacillus was again severely hurt, and fainted, but
he was carried off in safety. Some of the cohorts who were outside, and
had been for a time cut off, made their way into the camp to join the
defenders, and the Germans, who had come without any fixed purpose,
merely for plunder, gave way and galloped off again. They left the
Romans, however, still in the utmost consternation. The scene and the
associations of it suggested the most gloomy anticipations. They
thought that German cavalry could never be so far from the Rhine,
unless their countrymen were invading in force behind them. Caesar, it
was supposed, must have been surprised and destroyed, and they and
every Roman in Gaul would soon share the same fate. Brave as they were,
the Roman soldiers seem to have been curiously liable to panics of this
kind. The faith with which they relied upon their general avenged
itself through the completeness with which they were accustomed to
depend upon him. He returned on the day which he had fixed, and not
unnaturally was displeased at the disregard of his orders. He did not,
or does not in his Commentaries, professedly blame Cicero. But the
Ciceros perhaps resented the loss of confidence which one of them had
brought upon himself. Quintus Cicero cooled in his zeal, and afterward
amused the leisure of his winter quarters with composing worthless
dramas.
Ambiorix had again escaped, and was never taken. The punishment fell on
his tribe. The Eburones were completely rooted out. The turn of the
Carnutes and Senones came next. The people themselves were spared; but
their leader, a chief named Acco, who was found to have instigated the
revolt, was arrested and executed. Again the whole of Gaul settled into
seeming quiet; and Caesar went to Italy, where the political frenzy was
now boiling over.
[1] Caesar says their trenches were fifteen miles long. This is, perhaps,
a mistake of the transcriber. A Roman camp did not usually cover more
than a few acres.
[2] People about Sens, Melun, and Chartres.