The turn of the Aremorican cantons came. In the autumn of 697

Publius Crassus was sent thither with a Roman corps; he induced

the Veneti--who as masters of the ports of the modern Morbihan

and of a respectable fleet occupied the first place among all

the Celtic cantons in navigation and commerce--and generally

the coast-districts between the Loire and Seine, to submit

to the Romans and give them hostages. But they soon repented.

When in the following winter (697-698) Roman officers

came to these legions to levy requisitions of grain there,

they were detained by the Veneti as counter-hostages. The example

thus set was quickly followed not only by the Aremorican cantons,

but also by the maritime cantons of the Belgae that still remained

free; where, as in some cantons of Normandy, the common council

refused to join the insurrection, the multitude put them to death

and attached itself with redoubled zeal to the national cause.

The whole coast from the mouth of the Loire to that of the Rhine

rose against Rome; the most resolute patriots from all the Celtic

cantons hastened thither to co-operate in the great work of liberation;

they already calculated on the rising of the whole Belgic confederacy,

on aid from Britain, on the arrival of Germans from beyond the Rhine.

Caesar sent Labienus with all the cavalry to the Rhine, with a view

to hold in check the agitation in the Belgic province, and in case

of need to prevent the Germans from crossing the river; another

of his lieutenants, Quintus Titurius Sabinus, went with three legions

to Normandy, where the main body of the insurgents assembled.

But the powerful and intelligent Veneti were the true centre

of the insurrection; the chief attack by land and sea was directed

against them. Caesar's lieutenant, Decimus Brutus, brought up

the fleet formed partly of the ships of the subject Celtic cantons,

partly of a number of Roman galleys hastily built on the Loire

and manned with rowers from the Narbonese province; Caesar himself

advanced with the flower of his infantry into the territory of the Veneti.

But these were prepared beforehand, and had with equal skill

and resolution availed themselves of the favourable circumstances

which the nature of the ground in Brittany and the possession

of a considerable naval power presented. The country was much

intersected and poorly furnished with grain, the towns

were situated for the most part on cliffs and tongues of land,

and were accessible from the mainland only by shallows which it was

difficult to cross; the provision of supplies and the conducting

of sieges were equally difficult for the army attacking by land,

while the Celts by means of their vessels could furnish the towns

easily with everything needful, and in the event of the worst could

accomplish their evacuation. The legions expended their time

and strength in the sieges of the Venetian townships, only to see

the substantial fruits of victory ultimately carried off in the vessels

of the enemy.

Naval Battle between the Romans and the Veneti

Submission of the Maritime Cantons

Accordingly when the Roman fleet, long detained by storms

at the mouth of the Loire, arrived at length on the coast of Brittany,

it was left to decide the struggle by a naval battle. The Celts,

conscious of their superiority on this element, brought forth their

fleet against that of the Romans commanded by Brutus. Not only

did it number 220 sail, far more than the Romans had been able

to bring up, but their high-decked strong sailing-vessels with flat

bottoms were also far better adapted for the high-running waves

of the Atlantic Ocean than the low, lightly-built oared galleys

of the Romans with their sharp keels. Neither the missiles

nor the boarding-bridges of the Romans could reach the high deck

of the enemy's vessels, and the iron beaks recoiled powerless

from the strong oaken planks. But the Roman mariners cut the ropes,

by which the yards were fastened to the masts, by means of sickles

fastened to long poles; the yards and sails fell down, and, as they

did not know how to repair the damage speedily, the ship was thus

rendered a wreck just as it is at the present day by the falling

of the masts, and the Roman boats easily succeeded by a joint attack

in mastering the maimed vessel of the enemy. When the Gauls

perceived this manoeuvre, they attempted to move from the coast

on which they had taken up the combat with the Romans, and to gain

the high seas, whither the Roman galleys could not follow them;

but unhappily for them there suddenly set in a dead calm,

and the immense fleet, towards the equipment of which the maritime

cantons had applied all their energies, was almost wholly destroyed

by the Romans. Thus was this naval battle--so far as historical

knowledge reaches, the earliest fought on the Atlantic Ocean--

just like the engagement at Mylae two hundred years before,(39)

notwithstanding the most unfavourable circumstances, decided in favour

of the Romans by a lucky invention suggested by necessity.

The consequence of the victory achieved by Brutus was the surrender

of the Veneti and of all Brittany. More with a view to impress

the Celtic nation, after so manifold evidences of clemency towards

the vanquished, by an example of fearful severity now against those

whose resistance had been obstinate, than with the view of punishing

the breach of treaty and the arrest of the Roman officers, Caesar

caused the whole common council to be executed and the people

of the Venetian canton to the last man to be sold into slavery.

By this dreadful fate, as well as by their intelligence

and their patriotism, the Veneti have more than any other Celtic clan

acquired a title to the sympathy of posterity.

Sabinus meanwhile opposed to the levy of the coast-states assembled

on the Channel the same tactics by which Caesar had in the previous

year conquered the Belgic general levy on the Aisne; he stood

on the defensive till impatience and want invaded the ranks of the enemy,

and then managed by deceiving them as to the temper and strength

of his troops, and above all by means of their own impatience,

to allure them to an imprudent assault upon the Roman camp, in which

they were defeated; whereupon the militia dispersed and the country

as far as the Seine submitted.

Expeditins against the Morini and Menapii

The Morini and Menapii alone persevered in withholding their

recognition of the Roman supremacy. To compel them to this, Caesar

appeared on their borders; but, rendered wiser by the experiences

of their countrymen, they avoided accepting battle on the borders

of their land, and retired into the forests which then stretched

almost without interruption from the Ardennes towards the German

Ocean. The Romans attempted to make a road through the forest

with the axe, ranging the felled trees on each side as a barricade

against the enemy's attacks; but even Caesar, daring as he was,

found it advisable after some days of most laborious marching,

especially as it was verging towards winter, to order a retreat,

although but a small portion of the Morini had submitted and the powerful

Menapii had not been reached at all. In the following year (699)

while Caesar himself was employed in Britain the greater part

of the army was sent afresh against these tribes; but this expedition

also remained in the main unsuccessful. Nevertheless the result

of the last campaigns was the almost complete reduction of Gaul

under the dominion of the Romans. While central Gaul had submitted

to it without resistance, during the campaign of 697 the Belgic,

and during that of the following year the maritime, cantons

had been compelled by force of arms to acknowledge the Roman rule.

The lofty hopes, with which the Celtic patriots had begun

the last campaign, had nowhere been fulfilled. Neither Germans

nor Britons had come to their aid; and in Belgica the presence

of Labienus had sufficed to prevent the renewal of the conflicts

of the previous year.

Establishment of Communications with Italy by the Valais

While Caesar was thus forming the Roman domain in the west by force

of arms into a compact whole, he did not neglect to open up

for the newly-conquered country--which was destined in fact to fill up

the wide gap in that domain between Italy and Spain-communications both

with the Italian home and with the Spanish provinces. The communication

between Gaul and Italy had certainly been materially facilitated

by the military road laid out by Pompeius in 677 over Mont Genevre;(40)

but since the whole of Gaul had been subdued by the Romans, there was

need of a route crossing the ridge of the Alps from the valley of the Po,

not in a westerly but in a northerly direction, and furnishing a shorter

communication between Italy and central Gaul. The way which leads over

the Great St. Bernard into the Valais and along the lake of Geneva

had long served the merchant for this purpose; to get this road

into his power, Caesar as early as the autumn of 697 caused Octodurum

(Martigny) to be occupied by Servius Galba, and the inhabitants

of the Valais to be reduced to subjection--a result which was,

of course, merely postponed, not prevented, by the brave resistance

of these mountain-peoples.

And with Spain

To gain communication with Spain, moreover, Publius Crassus

was sent in the following year (698) to Aquitania with instructions

to compel the Iberian tribes dwelling there to acknowledge the Roman

rule. The task was not without difficulty; the Iberians held

together more compactly than the Celts and knew better than these

how to learn from their enemies. The tribes beyond the Pyrenees,

especially the valiant Cantabri, sent a contingent to their

threatened countrymen; with this there came experienced officers

trained under the leadership of Sertorius in the Roman fashion,

who introduced as far as possible the principles of the Roman art

of war, and especially of encampment, among the Aquitanian levy

already respectable from its numbers and its valour.

But the excellent officer who led the Romans knew how to surmount

all difficulties, and after some hardly-contested but successful

battles he induced the peoples from the Garonne to the vicinity

of the Pyrenees to submit to the new masters.

Fresh Violations of the Rhine-Boundary by the Germans

The Usipetes and Tencteri

One of the objects which Caesar had proposed to himself--

the subjugation of Gaul--had been in substance, with exceptions

scarcely worth mentioning, attained so far as it could be attained

at all by the sword. But the other half of the work undertaken

by Caesar was still far from being satisfactorily accomplished,

and the Germans had by no means as yet been everywhere compelled

to recognize the Rhine as their limit. Even now, in the winter

of 698-699, a fresh crossing of the boundary had taken place

on the lower course of the river, whither the Romans had not yet

penetrated. The German tribes of the Usipetes and Tencteri

whose attempts to cross the Rhine in the territory of the Menapii

have been already mentioned,(41) had at length, eluding the vigilance

of their opponents by a feigned retreat, crossed in the vessels

belonging to the Menapii--an enormous host, which is said,

including women and children, to have amounted to 430,000 persons.

They still lay, apparently, in the region of Nimeguen and Cleves;

but it was said that, following the invitations of the Celtic

patriot party, they intended to advance into the interior of Gaul;

and the rumour was confirmed by the fact that bands of their

horsemen already roamed as far as the borders of the Treveri.

But when Caesar with his legions arrived opposite to them, the sorely-

harassed emigrants seemed not desirous of fresh conflicts,

but very ready to accept land from the Romans and to till it in peace

under their supremacy. While negotiations as to this were going on,

a suspicion arose in the mind of the Roman general that the Germans

only sought to gain time till the bands of horsemen sent out

by them had returned. Whether this suspicion was well founded or not,

we cannot tell; but confirmed in it by an attack, which in spite

of the de facto suspension of arms a troop of the enemy made

on his vanguard, and exasperated by the severe loss thereby sustained,

Caesar believed himself entitled to disregard every consideration

of international law. When on the second morning the princes

and elders of the Germans appeared in the Roman camp to apologize

for the attack made without their knowledge, they were arrested,

and the multitude anticipating no assault and deprived of their leaders

were suddenly fallen upon by the Roman army. It was rather a manhunt

than a battle; those that did not fall under the swords of the Romans

were drowned in the Rhine; almost none but the divisions detached

at the time of the attack escaped the massacre and succeeded

in recrossing the Rhine, where the Sugambri gave them an asylu

in their territory, apparently on the Lippe. The behaviour of Caesar

towards these German immigrants met with severe and just censure

in the senate; but, however little it can be excused, the German

encroachments were emphatically checked by the terror

which it occasioned.

Caesar on the Right Bank of the Rhine

Caesar however found it advisable to take yet a further step

and to lead the legions over the Rhine. He was not without connections

beyond the river. the Germans at the stage of culture

which they had then reached, lacked as yet any national coherence;

in political distraction they--though from other causes--fell nothing

short of the Celts. The Ubii (on the Sieg and Lahn), the most

civilized among the German tribes, had recently been made subject

and tributary by a powerful Suebian canton of the interior, and had

as early as 697 through their envoys entreated Caesar to free them

like the Gauls from the Suebian rule. It was not Caesar's design

seriously to respond to this suggestion, which would have involved

him in endless enterprises; but it seemed advisable, with the view

of preventing the appearance of the Germanic arms on the south

of the Rhine, at least to show the Roman arms beyond it. The protection

which the fugitive Usipetes and Tencteri had found among the Sugambri

afforded a suitable occasion. In the region, apparently between

Coblentz and Andernach, Caesar erected a bridge of piles over the Rhine

and led his legions across from the Treverian to the Ubian territory.

Some smaller cantons gave in their submission; but the Sugambri,

against whom the expedition was primarily directed, withdrew,

on the approach of the Roman army, with those under their protection

into the interior. In like manner the powerful Suebian canton

which oppressed the Ubii--presumably the same which subsequently

appears under the name of the Chatti--caused the districts immediately

adjoining the Ubian territory to be evacuated and the non-combatant

portion of the people to be placed in safety, while all the men

capable of arms were directed to assemble at the centre of the canton.

The Roman general had neither occasion nor desire to accept

this challenge; his object--partly to reconnoitre, partly to produce

an impressive effect if possible upon the Germans, or at least

on the Celts and his countrymen at home, by an expedition

over the Rhine--was substantially attained; after remaining

eighteen days on the right bank of the Rhine he again arrived

in Gaul and broke down the Rhine bridge behind him (699).

Expeditions to Britain

There remained the insular Celts. From the close connection

between them and the Celts of the continent, especially

the maritime cantons, it may readily be conceived that they had

at least sympathized with the national resistance, and that if they

did not grant armed assistance to the patriots, they gave at any rate

an honourable asylum in their sea-protected isle to every one

who was no longer safe in his native land. This certainly involved

a danger, if not for the present, at any rate for the future; it

seemed judicious--if not to undertake the conquest of the island

itself--at any rate to conduct there also defensive operations

by offensive means, and to show the islanders by a landing

on the coast that the arm of the Romans reached even across the Channel.

The first Roman officer who entered Brittany, Publius Crassus

had already (697) crossed thence to the "tin-islands" at the south-west

point of England (Stilly islands); in the summer of 699 Caesar

himself with only two legions crossed the Channel at its narrowest

part.(42) He found the coast covered with masses of the enemy's

troops and sailed onward with his vessels; but the British war-

chariots moved on quite as fast by land as the Roman galleys

by sea, and it was only with the utmost difficulty that the Roman

soldiers succeeded in gaining the shore in the face of the enemy,

partly by wading, partly in boats, under the protection

of the ships of war, which swept the beach with missiles thrown

from machines and by the hand. In the first alarm the nearest villages

submitted; but the islanders soon perceived how weak the enemy was,

and how he did not venture to move far from the shore. The natives

disappeared into the interior and returned only to threaten

the camp; and the fleet, which had been left in the open roads,

suffered very considerable damage from the first tempest

that burst upon it. The Romans had to reckon themselves fortunate

in repelling the attacks of the barbarians till they had bestowed

the necessary repairs on the ships, and in regaining with these

the Gallic coast before the bad season of the year came on.

Caesar himself was so dissatisfied with the results of this expedition

undertaken inconsiderately and with inadequate means, that he immediately

(in the winter of 699-700) ordered a transport fleet of 800 sail

to be fitted out, and in the spring of 700 sailed a second time

for the Kentish coast, on this occasion with five legions

and 2000 cavalry. The forces of the Britons, assembled

this time also on the shore, retired before the mighty armada

without risking a battle; Caesar immediately set out on his march

into the interior, and after some successful conflicts crossed

the river Stour; but he was obliged to halt very much against his will,

because the fleet in the open roads had been again half destroyed

by the storms of the Channel. Before they got the ships drawn

up upon the beach and the extensive arrangements made

for their repair, precious time was lost, which the Celts wisely

turned to account.

Cassivellaunus

The brave and cautious prince Cassivellaunus, who ruled in what

is now Middlesex and the surrounding district--formerly the terror

of the Celts to the south of the Thames, but now the protector

and champion of the whole nation--had headed the defence of the land.

He soon saw that nothing at all could be done with the Celtic

infantry against the Roman, and that the mass of the general levy--

which it was difficult to feed and difficult to control--was only

a hindrance to the defence; he therefore dismissed it and retained

only the war-chariots, of which he collected 4000, and in which

the warriors, accustomed to leap down from their chariots and fight

on foot, could be employed in a twofold manner like the burgess-

cavalry of the earliest Rome. When Caesar was once more able

to continue his march, he met with no interruption to it;

but the British war-chariots moved always in front and alongside

of the Roman army, induced the evacuation of the country

(which from the absence of towns proved no great difficulty),

prevented the sending out of detachments, and threatened

the communications. The Thames was crossed--apparently

between Kingston and Brentford above London--by the Romans;

they moved forward, but made no real progress; the general achieved

no victory, the soldiers made no booty, and the only actual result,

the submission of the Trinobante in the modern Essex, was less

the effect of a dread of the Romans than of the deep hostility

between this canton and Cassivellaunus. The danger increased

with every onward step, and the attack, which the princes of Kent

by the orders of Cassivellaunus made on the Roman naval camp,

although it was repulsed, was an urgent warning to turn back.

The taking by storm of a great British tree-barricade,

in which a multitude of cattle fell into the hands of the Romans,

furnished a passable conclusion to the aimless advance and a tolerable

pretext for returning. Cassivellaunus was sagacious enough

not to drive the dangerous enemy to extremities, and promised,

as Caesar desired him, to abstain from disturbing the Trinobantes,

to pay tribute and to furnish hostages; nothing was said

of delivering up arms or leaving behind a Roman garrison,

and even those promises were, it may be presumed, so far as

they concerned the future, neither given nor received in earnest.

After receiving the hostages Caesar returned to the naval camp

and thence to Gaul. If he, as it would certainly seem,

had hoped on this occasion to conquer Britain, the scheme

was totally thwarted partly by the wise defensive system

of Cassivellaunus, partly and chiefly by the unserviceableness

of the Italian oared fleet in the waters of the North Sea;

for it is certain that the stipulated tribute was never paid.

But the immediate object--of rousing the islanders out of their haughty

security and inducing them in their own interest no longer to allow

their island to be a rendezvous for continental emigrants--

seems certainly to have been attained; at least no complaints

are afterwards heard as to the bestowal of such protection.

The Conspiracy of the Patriots

The work of repelling the Germanic invasion and of subduing

the continental Celts was completed. But it is often easier

to subdue a free nation than to keep a subdued one in subjection.

The rivalry for the hegemony, by which more even than by the attacks

of Rome the Celtic nation had been ruined, was in some measure set

aside by the conquest, inasmuch as the conqueror took the hegemony

to himself. Separate interests were silent; under the common

oppression at any rate they felt themselves again as one people;

and the infinite value of that which they had with indifference

gambled away when they possessed it--freedom and nationality--

was now, when it was too late, fully appreciated by their infinite

longing. But was it, then, too late? With indignant shame they

confessed to themselves that a nation, which numbered at least

a million of men capable of arms, a nation of ancient and well-

founded warlike renown, had allowed the yoke to be imposed upon it

by, at the most, 50,000 Romans. The submission of the confederacy

of central Gaul without having struck even a blow; the submission

of the Belgic confederacy without having done more than merely

shown a wish to strike; the heroic fall on the other hand

of the Nervii and the Veneti, the sagacious and successful resistance

of the Morini, and of the Britons under Cassivellaunus--

all that in each case had been done or neglected, had failed

or had succeeded--spurred the minds of the patriots to new attempts,

if possible, more united and more successful. Especially

among the Celtic nobility there prevailed an excitement, which seemed

every moment as if it must break out into a general insurrection.

Even before the second expedition to Britain in the spring of 700 Caesar

had found it necessary to go in person to the Treveri, who,

since they had compromised themselves in the Nervian conflict in 697,

had no longer appeared at the general diets and had formed more than

suspicious connections with the Germans beyond the Rhine. At that

time Caesar had contented himself with carrying the men of most

note among the patriot party, particularly Indutiomarus, along

with him to Britain in the ranks of the Treverian cavalry-contingent;

he did his utmost to overlook the conspiracy, that he might not

by strict measures ripen it into insurrection. But when the Haeduan

Dumnorix, who likewise was present in the army destined for Britain,

nominally as a cavalry officer, but really as a hostage,

peremptorily refused to embark and rode home instead, Caesar could

not do otherwise than have him pursued as a deserter; he was accordingly

overtaken by the division sent after him and, when he stood

on his defence, was cut down (700). That the most esteemed knight

of the most powerful and still the least dependent of the Celtic cantons

should have been put to death by the Romans, was a thunder-clap

for the whole Celtic nobility; every one who was conscious

of similar sentiments--and they formed the great majority--

saw in that catastrophe the picture of what was in store for himself.

Insurrection

If patriotism and despair had induced the heads of the Celtic

nobility to conspire, fear and self-defence now drove the conspirators

to strike. In the winter of 700-701, with the exception of a legion

stationed in Brittany and a second in the very unsettled canton

of the Carnutes (near Chartres), the whole Roman army numbering six

legions was encamped in the Belgic territory. The scantiness

of the supplies of grain had induced Caesar to station his troops

farther apart than he was otherwise wont to do--in six different

camps constructed in the cantons of the Bellovaci, Ambiani, Morini,

Nervii, Remi, and Eburones. The fixed camp placed farthest towards

the east in the territory of the Eburones, probably not far

from the later Aduatuca (the modern Tongern), the strongest of all,

consisting of a legion under one of the most respected of Caesar's

leaders of division, Quintus Titurius Sabinus, besides different

detachments led by the brave Lucius Aurunculeius Cotta(43) and amounting

together to the strength of half a legion, found itself all of a sudden

surrounded by the general levy of the Eburones under the kings Ambiorix

and Catuvolcus. The attack came so unexpectedly, that the very men

absent from the camp could not be recalled and were cut off

by the enemy; otherwise the immediate danger was not great,

as there was no lack of provisions, and the assault, which the Eburones

attempted, recoiled powerless from the Roman intrenchments.

But king Ambiorix informed the Roman commander that all the Roman camps

in Gaul were similarly assailed on the same day, and that the Romans

would undoubtedly be lost if the several corps did not quickly set out

and effect a junction; that Sabinus had the more reason to make haste,

as the Germans too from beyond the Rhine were already advancing

against him; that he himself out of friendship for the Romans

would promise them a free retreat as far as the nearest

Roman camp, only two days' march distant. Some things

in these statements seemed no fiction; that the little canton

of the Eburones specially favoured by the Romans(44) should have

undertaken the attack of its own accord was in reality incredible,

and, owing to the difficulty of effecting a communication with the other

far-distant camps, the danger of being attacked by the whole

mass of the insurgents and destroyed in detail was by no means

to be esteemed slight; nevertheless it could not admit of the smallest

doubt that both honour and prudence required them to reject

the capitulation offered by the enemy and to maintain the post

entrusted to them. Yet, although in the council of war numerous

voices and especially the weighty voice of Lucius Aurunculeius

Cotta supported this view, the commandant determined to accept

the proposal of Ambiorix. The Roman troops accordingly marched

off next morning; but when they had arrived at a narrow valley about

two miles from the camp they found themselves surrounded

by the Eburones and every outlet blocked. They attempted to open

a way for themselves by force of arms; but the Eburones would not enter

into any close combat, and contented themselves with discharging

their missiles from their unassailable positions into the dense

mass of the Romans. Bewildered, as if seeking deliverance

from treachery at the hands of the traitor, Sabinus requested

a conference with Ambiorix; it was granted, and he and the officers

accompanying him were first disarmed and then slain. After the fall

of the commander the Eburones threw themselves from all sides

at once on the exhausted and despairing Romans, and broke their

ranks; most of them, including Cotta who had already been wounded,

met their death in this attack; a small portion, who had succeeded

in regaining the abandoned camp, flung themselves on their own

swords during the following night. The whole corps was annihilated.

Cicero Attacked

This success, such as the insurgents themselves had hardly ventured

to hope for, increased the ferment among the Celtic patriots

so greatly that the Romans were no longer sure of a single district

with the exception of the Haedui and Remi, and the insurrection

broke out at the most diverse points. First of all the Eburones

followed up their victory. Reinforced by the levy of the Aduatuci,

who gladly embraced the opportunity of requiting the injury done

to them by Caesar, and of the powerful and still unsubdued Menapii,

they appeared in the territory of the Nervii, who immediately

joined them, and the whole host thus swelled to 60,000 moved

forward to confront the Roman camp formed in the Nervian canton.

Quintus Cicero, who commanded there, had with his weak corps

a difficult position, especially as the besiegers, learning from the foe,

constructed ramparts and trenches, -testudines- and moveable towers

after the Roman fashion, and showered fire-balls and burning

spears over the straw-covered huts of the camp. The only hope

of the besieged rested on Caesar, who lay not so very far off

with three legions in his winter encampment in the region of Amiens.

But--a significant proof of the feeling that prevailed in Gaul-

for a considerable time not the slightest hint reached the general

either of the disaster of Sabinus or of the perilous

situation of Cicero.

Caesar Proceeds to His Relief

The Insurrection Checked

At length a Celtic horseman from Cicero's camp succeeded

in stealing through the enemy to Caesar. On receiving the startling

news Caesar immediately set out, although only with two weak

legions, together numbering about 7000, and 400 horsemen;

nevertheless the announcement that Caesar was advancing sufficed

to induce the insurgents to raise the siege. It was time;

not one tenth of the men in Cicero's camp remained unwounded.

Caesar, against whom the insurgent army had turned, deceived the enemy,

in the way which he had already on several occasions successfully

applied, as to his strength; under the most unfavourable

circumstances they ventured an assault upon the Roman camp

and in doing so suffered a defeat. It is singular, but characteristic

of the Celtic nation, that in consequence of this one lost battle,

or perhaps rather in consequence of Caesar's appearance in person

on the scene of conflict, the insurrection, which had commenced

so victoriously and extended so widely, suddenly and pitiably broke

off the war. The Nervii, Menapii, Aduatuci, Eburones, returned

to their homes. The forces of the maritime cantons, who had made

preparations for assailing the legion in Brittany, did the same.

The Treveri, through whose leader Indutiomarus the Eburones,

the clients of the powerful neighbouring canton, had been chiefly

induced to that so successful attack, had taken arms on the news

of the disaster of Aduatuca and advanced into the territory

of the Remi with the view of attacking the legion cantoned there

under the command of Labienus; they too desisted for the present

from continuing the struggle. Caesar not unwillingly postponed

farther measures against the revolted districts till the spring,

in order not to expose his troops which had suffered much to the whole

severity of the Gallic winter, and with the view of only reappearing

in the field when the fifteen cohorts destroyed should have

been replaced in an imposing manner by the levy of thirty new

cohorts which he had ordered. The insurrection meanwhile pursued

its course, although there was for the moment a suspension of arms.

Its chief seats in central Gaul were, partly the districts

of the Carnutes and the neighbouring Senones (about Sens), the latter

of whom drove the king appointed by Caesar out of their country;

partly the region of the Treveri, who invited the whole Celtic

emigrants and the Germans beyond the Rhine to take part

in the impending national war, and called out their whole force,

with a view to advance in the spring a second time into the territory

of the Remi, to capture the corps of Labienus, and to seek

a communication with the insurgents on the Seine and Loire.

The deputies of these three cantons remained absent from the diet

convoked by Caesar in central Gaul, and thereby declared war just

as openly as a part of the Belgic cantons had done by the attacks

on the camps of Sabinus and Cicero.

And Suppressed

The winter was drawing to a close when Caesar set out

with his army, which meanwhile had been considerably reinforced,

against the insurgents. The attempts of the Treveri to concentrate

the revolt had not succeeded; the agitated districts were kept in check

by the marching in of Roman troops, and those in open rebellion

were attacked in detail. First the Nervii were routed by Caesar

in person. The Senones and Carnutes met the same fate. The Menapii,

the only canton which had never submitted to the Romans,

were compelled by a grand attack simultaneously directed against them

from three sides to renounce their long-preserved freedom.

Labienus meanwhile was preparing the same fate for the Treveri.

Their first attack had been paralyzed, partly by the refusal

of the adjoining German tribes to furnish them with mercenaries,

partly by the fact that Indutiomarus, the soul of the whole movement

had fallen in a skirmish with the cavalry of Labienus. But they did

not on this account abandon their projects. With their whole levy

they appeared in front of Labienus and waited for the German bands

that were to follow, for their recruiting agents found a better

reception than they had met with from the dwellers on the Rhine,

among the warlike tribes of the interior of Germany, especially,

as it would appear, among the Chatti. But when Labienus seemed

as if he wished to avoid these and to march off in all haste, the Treveri

attacked the Romans even before the Germans arrived and in a most

unfavourable spot, and were completely defeated. Nothing remained

for the Germans who came up too late but to return, nothing for

the Treverian canton but to submit; its government reverted to the head

of the Roman party Cingetorix, the son-in-law of Indutiomarus.

After these expeditions of Caesar against the Menapii and of Labienus

against the Treveri the whole Roman army was again united

in the territory of the latter. With the view of rendering

the Germans disinclined to come back, Caesar once more crossed

the Rhine, in order if possible to strike an emphatic blow against

the troublesome neighbours; but, as the Chatti, faithful to their

tried tactics, assembled not on their western boundary,

but far in the interior, apparently at the Harz mountains,

for the defence of the land, he immediately turned back and contented

himself with leaving behind a garrison at the passage of the Rhine.

Retaliatory Expedition against the Eburones

Accounts had thus been settled with all the tribes that took part

in the rising; the Eburones alone were passed over but not forgotten.

Since Caesar had met with the disaster of Aduatuca, he had worn

mourning and had sworn that he would only lay it aside

when he should have avenged his soldiers, who had not fallen

in honourable war, but had been treacherously murdered.

Helpless and passive the Eburones sat in their huts and looked on

as the neighbouring cantons one after another submitted to the Romans,

till the Roman cavalry from the Treverian territory advanced

through the Ardennes into their land. So little were they prepared

for the attack, that the cavalry had almost seized the king

Ambiorix in his house; with great difficulty, while his attendants

sacrificed themselves on his behalf, he escaped into the neighbouring

thicket. Ten Roman legions soon followed the cavalry.

At the same time a summons was issued to the surrounding tribes

to hunt the outlawed Eburones and pillage their land in concert

with the Roman soldiers; not a few complied with the call, including

even an audacious band of Sugambrian horsemen from the other side

of the Rhine, who for that matter treated the Romans no better than

the Eburones, and had almost by a daring coup de main surprised

the Roman camp at Aduatuca. The fate of the Eburones was dreadful.

However they might hide themselves in forests and morasses,

there were more hunters than game. Many put themselves to death

like the gray-haired prince Catuvolcus; only a few saved life

and liberty, but among these few was the man whom the Romans sought

above all to seize, the prince Ambiorix; with but four horsemen

he escaped over the Rhine. This execution against the canton

which had transgressed above all the rest was followed in the other

districts by processes of high treason against individuals. The season

for clemency was past. At the bidding of the Roman proconsul

the eminent Carnutic knight Acco was beheaded by Roman lictors

(701) and the rule of the -fasces- was thus formally inaugurated.

Opposition was silent; tranquillity everywhere prevailed. Caesar

went as he was wont towards the end of the year (701) over the Alps,

that through the winter he might observe more closely

the daily-increasing complications in the capital.

Second Insurrection

The sagacious calculator had on this occasion miscalculated.

The fire was smothered, but not extinguished. The stroke,

under which the head of Acco fell, was felt by the whole Celtic nobility.

At this very moment the position of affairs presented better prospects

than ever. The insurrection of the last winter had evidently failed

only through Caesar himself appearing on the scene of action;

now he was at a distance, detained on the Po by the imminence

of civil war, and the Gallic army, which was collected on the upper Seine,

was far separated from its dreaded leader. If a general insurrection

now broke out in central Gaul, the Roman army might be surrounded,

and the almost undefended old Roman province be overrun before Caesar

reappeared beyond the Alps, even if the Italian complications

did not altogether prevent him from further concerning himself about Gaul.

The Carnutes

The Arverni

Conspirators from all the cantons of central Gaul assembled;

the Carnutes, as most directly affected by the execution of Acco,

offered to take the lead. On a set day in the winter of 701-702

the Carnutic knights Gutruatus and Conconnetodumnus gave at Cenabum

(Orleans) the signal for the rising, and put to death in a body

the Romans who happened to be there. The most vehement agitation

seized the length and breadth of the great Celtic land; the patriots

everywhere bestirred themselves. But nothing stirred the nation

so deeply as the insurrection of the Arverni. The government

of this community, which had formerly under its kings been the first

in southern Gaul, and had still after the fall of its principality

occasioned by the unfortunate wars against Rome(45) continued to be

one of the wealthiest, most civilized, and most powerful in all Gaul,

had hitherto inviolably adhered to Rome. Even now the patriot party

in the governing common council was in the minority; an attempt

to induce it to join the insurrection was in vain. The attacks

of the patriots were therefore directed against the common council

and the existing constitution itself; and the more so, that the change

of constitution which among the Arverni had substituted the common

council for the prince(46) had taken place after the victories

of the Romans and probably under their influence.

Vercingetorix

The leader of the Arvernian patriots Vercingetorix, one of those

nobles whom we meet with among the Celts, of almost regal repute

in and beyond his canton, and a stately, brave, sagacious man

to boot, left the capital and summoned the country people,

who were as hostile to the ruling oligarchy as to the Romans, at once

to re-establish the Arvernian monarchy and to go to war with Rome.

The multitude quickly joined him; the restoration of the throne

of Luerius and Betuitus was at the same time the declaration

of a national war against Rome. The centre of unity,

from the want of which all previous attempts of the nation

to shake off the foreign yoke had failed, was now found

in the new self-nominated king of the Arverni. Vercingetorix

became for the Celts of the continent what Cassivellaunus

was for the insular Celts; the feeling strongly pervaded the masses

that he, if any one, was the man to save the nation.

Spread of the Insurrection

Appearance of Caesar

The west from the mouth of the Garonne to that of the Seine

was rapidly infected by the insurrection, and Vercingetorix

was recognized by all the cantons there as commander-in-chief;

where the common council made any difficulty, the multitude compelled

it to join the movement; only a few cantons, such as that

of the Bituriges, required compulsion to join it, and these perhaps

only for appearance' sake. The insurrection found a less favourable

soil in the regions to the east of the upper Loire. Everything

here depended on the Haedui; and these wavered. The patriotic

party was very strong in this canton; but the old antagonism

to the leading of the Arverni counterbalanced their influence--

to the most serious detriment of the insurrection, as the accession

of the eastern cantons, particularly of the Sequani and Helvetii,

was conditional on the accession of the Haedui, and generally

in this part of Gaul the decision rested with them. While the insurgents

were thus labouring partly to induce the cantons that still

hesitated, especially the Haedui, to join them, partly to get

possession of Narbo--one of their leaders, the daring Lucterius,

had already appeared on the Tarn within the limits of the old

province--the Roman commander-in-chief suddenly presented himself

in the depth of winter, unexpected alike by friend and foe,

on this side of the Alps. He quickly made the necessary preparations

to cover the old province, and not only so, but sent also a corps

over the snow-covered Cevennes into the Arvernian territory;

but he could not remain here, where the accession of the Haedui

to the Gallic alliance might any moment cut him off from his army

encamped about Sens and Langres. With all secrecy he went to Vienna,

and thence, attended by only a few horsemen, through the territory

of the Haedui to his troops. The hopes, which had induced

the conspirators to declare themselves, vanished; peace continued

in Italy, and Caesar stood once more at the head of his army.

The Gallic Plan of War

But what were they to do? It was folly under such circumstances

to let the matter come to the decision of arms; for these had already

decidedly irrevocably. They might as well attempt to shake

the Alps by throwing stones at them as to shake the legions by means

of the Celtic bands, whether these might be congregated in huge

masses or sacrificed in detail canton after canton. Vercingetorix

despaired of defeating the Romans. He adopted a system of warfare

similar to that by which Cassivellaunus had saved the insular

Celts. The Roman infantry was not to be vanquished; but Caesar's

cavalry consisted almost exclusively of the contingent

of the Celtic nobility, and was practically dissolved by the general

revolt. It was possible for the insurrection, which was in fact

essentially composed of the Celtic nobility, to develop such

a superiority in this arm, that it could lay waste the land far

and wide, burn down towns and villages, destroy the magazines,

and endanger the supplies and the communications of the enemy,

without his being able seriously to hinder it. Vercingetorix

accordingly directed all his efforts to the increase of his cavalry,

and of the infantry-archers who were according to the mode of fighting

of that time regularly associated with it. He did not send the immense

and self-obstructing masses of the militia of the line to their homes,

but he did not allow them to face the enemy, and attempted

to impart to them gradually some capacity of intrenching, marching,

and manoeuvring, and some perception that the soldier is not destined

merely for hand-to-hand combat. Learning from the enemy, he adopted

in particular the Roman system of encampment, on which depended

the whole secret of the tactical superiority of the Romans;

for in consequence of it every Roman corps combined all the advantages

of the garrison of a fortress with all the advantages of an offensive

army.(47) It is true that a system completely adapted to Britain

which had few towns and to its rude, resolute, and on the whole

united inhabitants was not absolutely transferable to the rich

regions on the Loire and their indolent inhabitants on the eve

of utter political dissolution. Vercingetorix at least accomplished

this much, that they did not attempt as hitherto to hold every

town with the result of holding none; they agreed to destroy

the townships not capable of defence before attack reached them,

but to defend with all their might the strong fortresses. At the same

time the Arvernian king did what he could to bind to the cause of their

country the cowardly and backward by stern severity, the hesitating

by entreaties and representations, the covetous by gold, the decided

opponents by force, and to compel or allure the rabble high or low

to some manifestation of patriotism.

Beginning of the Struggle

Even before the winter was at an end, he threw himself on the Boii

settled by Caesar in the territory of the Haedui, with the view

of annihilating these, almost the sole trustworthy allies of Rome,

before Caesar came up. The news of this attack induced Caesar,

leaving behind the baggage and two legions in the winter quarters

of Agedincum (Sens), to march immediately and earlier than he would

doubtless otherwise have done, against the insurgents. He remedied

the sorely-felt want of cavalry and light infantry in some measure

by gradually bringing up German mercenaries, who instead of using

their own small and weak ponies were furnished with Italian

and Spanish horses partly bought, partly procured by requisition

of the officers. Caesar, after having by the way caused Cenabum,

the capital of the Carnutes, which had given the signal for the revolt,

to be pillaged and laid in ashes, moved over the Loire

into the country of the Bituriges. He thereby induced Vercingetorix

to abandon the siege of the town of the Boii, and to resort likewise

to the Bituriges. Here the new mode of warfare was first to be

tried. By order of Vercingetorix more than twenty townships

of the Bituriges perished in the flames on one day; the general

decreed a similar self-devastation as to the neighbour cantons,

so far as they could be reached by the Roman foraging parties.

Caesar before Arvaricum

According to his intention, Avaricum (Bourges), the rich

and strong capital of the Bituriges, was to meet the same fate;

but the majority of the war-council yielded to the suppliant entreaties

of the Biturigian authorities, and resolved rather to defend that city

with all their energy. Thus the war was concentrated in the first

instance around Avaricum, Vercingetorix placed his infantry amidst

the morasses adjoining the town in a position so unapproachable,

that even without being covered by the cavalry they needed not

to fear the attack of the legions. The Celtic cavalry covered

all the roads and obstructed the communication. The town was strongly

garrisoned, and the connection between it and the army before

the walls was kept open. Caesar's position was very awkward.

The attempt to induce the Celtic infantry to fight was unsuccessful;

it stirred not from its unassailable lines. Bravely as his soldiers

in front of the town trenched and fought, the besieged vied

with them in ingenuity and courage, and they had almost succeeded

in setting fire to the siege apparatus of their opponents.

The task withal of supplying an army of nearly 60,000 men

with provisions in a country devastated far and wide and scoured

by far superior bodies of cavalry became daily more difficult.

The slender stores of the Boii were soon used up; the supply promised

by the Haedui failed to appear; the corn was already consumed,

and the soldier was placed exclusively on flesh-rations.

But the moment was approaching when the town, with whatever contempt

of death the garrison fought, could be held no longer. Still it was

not impossible to withdraw the troops secretly by night and destroy

the town, before the enemy occupied it. Vercingetorix made

arrangements for this purpose, but the cry of distress raised

at the moment of evacuation by the women and children left behind

attracted the attention of the Romans; the departure miscarried.

Avaricum Conquered

Caesar Divides His Army

On the following gloomy and rainy day the Romans scaled the walls,

and, exasperated by the obstinate defence, spared neither age

nor sex in the conquered town. The ample stores, which the Celts had

accumulated in it, were welcome to the starved soldiers of Caesar.

With the capture of Avaricum (spring of 702), a first success

had been achieved over the insurrection, and according to former

experience Caesar might well expect that it would now dissolve,

and that it would only be requisite to deal with the cantons

individually. After he had therefore shown himself with his

whole army in the canton of the Haedui and had by this imposing

demonstration compelled the patriot party in a ferment there

to keep quiet at least for the moment, he divided his army and sent

Labienus back to Agedincum, that in combination with the troops

left there he might at the head of four legions suppress

in the first instance the movement in the territory of the Carnutes

and Senones, who on this occasion once more took the lead;

while he himself with the six remaining legions turned to the south

and prepared to carry the war into the Arvernian mountains, the proper

territory of Vercingetorix.

Labienus before Lutetia

Labienus moved from Agedincum up the left bank of the Seine with

a view to possess himself of Lutetia (Paris), the town of the Parisii

situated on an island in the Seine, and from this well-secured

position in the heart of the insurgent country to reduce it again

to subjection. But behind Melodunum (Melun), he found his route

barred by the whole army of the insurgents, which had here taken

up a position between unassailable morasses under the leadership

of the aged Camulogenus. Labienus retreated a certain distance,

crossed the Seine at Melodunum, and moved up its right bank

unhindered towards Lutetia; Camulogenus caused this town to be

burnt and the bridges leading to the left bank to be broken down,

and took up a position over against Labienus, in which the latter

could neither bring him to battle nor effect a passage

under the eyes of the hostile army.

Caesar before Gergovia

Fruitless Blockade

The Roman main army in its turn advanced along the Allier down

into the canton of the Arverni. Vercingetorix attempted to prevent

it from crossing to the left bank of the Allier, but Caesar

overreached him and after some days stood before the Arvernian

capital Gergovia.(48) Vercingetorix, however, doubtless even while

he was confronting Caesar on the Allier, had caused sufficient

stores to be collected in Gergovia and a fixed camp provided

with strong stone ramparts to be constructed for his troops in front

of the walls of the town, which was situated on the summit of a pretty

steep hill; and, as he had a sufficient start, he arrived before

Caesar at Gergovia and awaited the attack in the fortified camp

under the wall of the fortress. Caesar with his comparatively

weak army could neither regularly besiege the place nor even

sufficiently blockade it; he pitched his camp below the rising

ground occupied by Vercingetorix, and was compelled to preserve

an attitude as inactive as his opponent. It was almost a victory

for the insurgents, that Caesar's career of advance from triumph

to triumph had been suddenly checked on the Seine as on the Allier.

In fact the consequences of this check for Caesar were almost

equivalent to those of a defeat.

The Haedui Waver

The Haedui, who had hitherto continued vacillating, now made

preparations in earnest to join the patriotic party; the body

of men, whom Caesar had ordered to Gergovia, had on the march been

induced by its officers to declare for the insurgents; at the same

time they had begun in the canton itself to plunder and kill

the Romans settled there. Caesar, who had gone with two-thirds

of the blockading army to meet that corps of the Haedui which was being

brought up to Gergovia, had by his sudden appearance recalled it

to nominal obedience; but it was more than ever a hollow and fragile

relation, the continuance of which had been almost too dearly

purchased by the great peril of the two legions left behind

in front of Gergovia. For Vercingetorix, rapidly and resolutely

availing himself of Caesar's departure, had during his absence

made an attack on them, which had wellnigh ended in their

being overpowered, and the Roman camp being taken by storm.

Caesar's unrivalled celerity alone averted a second catastrophe

like that of Aduatuca. Though the Haedui made once more fair

promises, it might be foreseen that, if the blockade should still

be prolonged without result, they would openly range themselves

on the side of the insurgents and would thereby compel Caesar to raise

it; for their accession would interrupt the communication between

him and Labienus, and expose the latter especially in his isolation

to the greatest peril. Caesar was resolved not to let matters come

to this pass, but, however painful and even dangerous it was

to retire from Gergovia without having accomplished his object,

nevertheless, if it must be done, rather to set out immediately

and by marching into the canton of the Haedui to prevent

at any cost their formal desertion.

Caesar Defeated before Gergovia

Before entering however on this retreat, which was far

from agreeable to his quick and confident temperament, he made

yet a last attempt to free himself from his painful perplexity

by a brilliant success. While the bulk of the garrison of Gergovia

was occupied in intrenching the side on which the assault

was expected, the Roman general watched his opportunity to surprise

another access less conveniently situated but at the moment

left bare. In reality the Roman storming columns scaled the camp-wall,

and occupied the nearest quarters of the camp; but the whole garrison

was already alarmed, and owing to the small distances Caesar found

it not advisable to risk the second assault on the city-wall.

He gave the signal for retreat; but the foremost legions, carried

away by the impetuosity of victory, heard not or did not wish to hear,

and pushed forward without halting, up to the city-wall, some even

into the city. But masses more and more dense threw themselves

in front of the intruders; the foremost fell, the columns stopped;

in vain centurions and legionaries fought with the most devoted

and heroic courage; the assailants were chased with very considerable

loss out of the town and down the hill, where the troops stationed

by Caesar in the plain received them and prevented greater

mischief. The expected capture of Gergovia had been converted

into a defeat, and the considerable loss in killed and wounded--

there were counted 700 soldiers that had fallen, including 46

centurions--was the least part of the misfortune suffered.

Renewed Insurrection

Rising of the Haedui

Rising of the Belgae

The imposing position of Caesar in Gaul depended essentially

on the halo of victory that surrounded him; and this began to grow pale.

The conflicts around Avaricum, Caesar's vain attempts to compel

the enemy to fight, the resolute defence of the city and its almost

accidental capture by storm bore a stamp different from that

of the earlier Celtic wars, and had strengthened rather than impaired

the confidence of the Celts in themselves and their leader.

Moreover, the new system of warfare--the making head against the enemy

in intrenched camps under the protection of fortresses--had completely

approved itself at Lutetia as well as at Gergovia. Lastly,

this defeat, the first which Caesar in person had suffered

from the Celts crowned their success, and it accordingly gave

as it were the signal for a second outbreak of the insurrection.

The Haedui now broke formally with Caesar and entered into union

with Vercingetorix. Their contingent, which was still with Caesar's

army, not only deserted from it, but also took occasion to carry

off the depots of the army of Caesar at Noviodunum on the Loire,

whereby the chests and magazines, a number of remount-horses,

and all the hostages furnished to Caesar, fell into the hands

of the insurgents. It was of at least equal importance,

that on this news the Belgae, who had hitherto kept aloof

from the whole movement, began to bestir themselves. The powerful

canton of the Bellovaci rose with the view of attacking

in the rear the corps of Labienus, while it confronted

at Lutetia the levy of the surrounding cantons of central Gaul.

Everywhere else too men were taking to arms; the strength

of patriotic enthusiasm carried along with it even the most

decided and most favoured partisans of Rome, such as Commius

king of the Atrebates, who on account of his faithful services had

received from the Romans important privileges for his community

and the hegemony over the Morini. The threads of the insurrection

ramified even into the old Roman province: they cherished the hope,

perhaps not without ground, of inducing the Allobroges themselves

to take arms against the Romans. With the single exception

of the Remi and of the districts--dependent immediately on the Remi--

of the Suessiones, Leuci, and Lingones, whose peculiar isolation

was not affected even amidst this general enthusiasm, the whole Celtic

nation from the Pyrenees to the Rhine was now in reality,

for the first and for the last time, in arms for its freedom

and nationality; whereas, singularly enough, the whole German

communities, who in the former struggles had held the foremost

rank, kept aloof. In fact, the Treveri, and as it would seem

the Menapii also, were prevented by their feuds with the Germans

from taking an active part in the national war.

Caesar's Plan of War

Caesar Unites with Labienus

It was a grave and decisive moment, when after the retreat

from Gergovia and the loss of Noviodunum a council of war was held

in Caesar's headquarters regarding the measures now to be adopted.

Various voices expressed themselves in favour of a retreat over

the Cevennes into the old Roman province, which now lay open

on all sides to the insurrection and certainly was in urgent need

of the legions that had been sent from Rome primarily for its

protection. But Caesar rejected this timid strategy suggested

not by the position of affairs, but by government-instructions

and fear of responsibility. He contented himself with calling

the general levy of the Romans settled in the province to arms,

and having the frontiers guarded by that levy to the best of its

ability. On the other hand he himself set out in the opposite

direction and advanced by forced marches to Agedincum, to which

he ordered Labienus to retreat in all haste. The Celts naturally

endeavoured to prevent the junction of the two Roman armies.

Labienus might by crossing the Marne and marching down the right bank

of the Seine have reached Agedincum, where he had left his reserve

and his baggage; but he preferred not to allow the Celts

again to behold the retreat of Roman troops. He therefore

instead of crossing the Marne crossed the Seine under the eyes

of the deluded enemy, and on its left bank fought a battle

with the hostile forces, in which he conquered, and among many others

the Celtic general himself, the old Camulogenus, was left on the field.

Nor were the insurgents more successful in detaining Caesar

on the Loire; Caesar gave them no time to assemble larger masses there,

and without difficulty dispersed the militia of the Haedui,

which alone he found at that point

Position of the Insurgents at Alesia

Thus the junction of the two divisions of the army was happily

accomplished. The insurgents meanwhile had consulted as to the farthe

conduct of the war at Bibracte (Autun) the capital of the Haeduil

the soul of these consultations was again Vercingetorix,

to whom the nation was enthusiastically attached after the victory

of Gergovia. Particular interests were not, it is true,

even now silent; the Haedui still in this death-struggle of the nation

asserted their claims to the hegemony, and made a proposal

in the national assembly to substitute a leader of their own

for Vercingetorix. But the national representatives had not merely

declined this and confirmed Vercingetorix in the supreme command,

but had also adopted his plan of war without alteration. It was

substantially the same as that on which he had operated at Avaricum

and at Gergovia. As the base of the new position there was

selected the strong city of the Mandubii, Alesia (Alise Sainte

Reine near Semur in the department Cote d'Or)(49) and another

entrenched camp was constructed under its walls. Immense stores

were here accumulated, and the army was ordered thither

from Gergovia, having its cavalry raised by resolution of the national

assembly to 15,000 horse. Caesar with the whole strength

of his army after it was reunited at Agedincum took the direction

of Besancon, with the view of now approaching the alarmed province

and protecting it from an invasion, for in fact bands of insurgents

had already shown themselves in the territory of the Helvii

on the south slope of the Cevennes. Alesia lay almost on his way;

the cavalry of the Celts, the only arm with which Vercingetorix

chose to operate, attacked him on the route, but to the surprise

of all was worsted by the new German squadrons of Caesar

and the Roman infantry drawn up in support of them.

Caesar in Front of Alesia

Siege of Alesia

Vercingetorix hastened the more to shut himself up in Alesia;

and if Caesar was not disposed altogether to renounce the offensive,

no course was left to him but for the third time in this campaign

to proceed by way of attack with a far weaker force against an army

encamped under a well-garrisoned and well-provisioned fortress

and supplied with immense masses of cavalry. But, while the Celts

had hitherto been opposed by only a part of the Roman legions,

the whole forces of Caesar were united in the lines round Alesia,

and Vercingetorix did not succeed, as he had succeeded at Avaricum

and Gergovia, in placing his infantry under the protection of the walls

of the fortress and keeping his external communications open

for his own benefit by his cavalry, while he interrupted those

of the enemy. The Celtic cavalry, already discouraged by that defeat

inflicted on them by their lightly esteemed opponents, was beaten

by Caesar's German horse in every encounter. The line

of circumvallation of the besiegers extending about nine miles

invested the whole town, including the camp attached to it.

Vercingetorix had been prepared for a struggle under the walls,

but not for being besieged in Alesia; in that point of view

the accumulated stores, considerable as they were, were yet

far from sufficient for his army--which was said to amount to 80,000

infantry and 15,000 cavalry--and for the numerous inhabitants

of the town. Vercingetorix could not but perceive that his plan

of warfare had on this occasion turned to his own destruction,

and that he was lost unless the whole nation hastened up to the rescue

of its blockaded general. The existing provisions were still,

when the Roman circumvallation was closed, sufficient for a month

and perhaps something more; at the last moment, when there was still

free passage at least for horsemen, Vercingetorix dismissed

his whole cavalry, and sent at the same time to the heads

of the nation instructions to call out all their forces and lead them

to the relief of Alesia. He himself, resolved to bear in person

the responsibility for the plan of war which he had projected

and which had miscarried, remained in the fortress, to share in good

or evil the fate of his followers. But Caesar made up his mind

at once to besiege and to be besieged. He prepared his line

of circumvallation for defence also on its outer side, and furnished

himself with provisions for a longer period. The days passed;

they had no longer a boll of grain in the fortress, and they

were obliged to drive out the unhappy inhabitants of the town

to perish miserably between the entrenchments of the Celts

and of the Romans, pitilessly rejected by both.

Attempt at Relief

Conflicts before Alesia

At the last hour there appeared behind Caesar's lines

the interminable array of the Celto-Belgic relieving array, said

to amount to 250,000 infantry and 8000 cavalry, from the Channel

to the Cevennes the insurgent cantons had strained every nerve

to rescue the flower of their patriots and the general of their

choice--the Bellovaci alone had answered that they were doubtless

disposed to fight against the Romans, but not beyond their own bounds.

The first assault, which the besieged of Alesia and the relieving

troops without made on the Roman double line, was repulsed;

but, when after a day's rest it was repeated, the Celts

succeeded--at a spot where the line of circumvallation ran over

the slope of a hill and could be assailed from the height above--

in filling up the trenches and hurling the defenders down

from the rampart. Then Labienus, sent thither by Caesar, collected

the nearest cohorts and threw himself with four legions on the foe.

Under the eyes of the general, who himself appeared at the most

dangerous moment, the assailants were driven back in a desperate

hand-to-hand conflict, and the squadrons of cavalry that came

with Caesar taking the fugitives in rear completed the defeat.

Alesia Capitulates

It was more than a great victory; the fate of Alesia, and indeed

of the Celtic nation, was thereby irrevocably decided. The Celtic

army, utterly disheartened, dispersed at once from the battle-field

and went home. Vercingetorix might perhaps have even now taken

to flight, or at least have saved himself by the last means open

to a free man; he did not do so, but declared in a council of war that,

since he had not succeeded in breaking off the alien yoke,

he was ready to give himself up as a victim and to avert as far as

possible destruction from the nation by bringing it on his own

head. This was done. The Celtic officers delivered their general--

the solemn choice of the whole nation--over to the energy of their

country for such punishment as might be thought fit. Mounted

on his steed and in full armour the king of the Arverni appeared

before the Roman proconsul and rode round his tribunal;

then he surrendered his horse and arms, and sat down in silence

on the steps at Caesar's feet (702).

Vercingetorix Executed

Five years afterwards he was led in triumph through the streets

of the Italian capital, and, while his conqueror was offering solemn

thanks to the gods on the summit of the Capitol, Vercingetorix

was beheaded at its foot as guilty of high treason against the Roman

nation. As after a day of gloom the sun may perhaps break through

the clouds at its setting, so destiny may bestow on nations

in their decline yet a last great man. Thus Hannibal stands

at the close of the Phoenician history, and Vercingetorix

at the close of the Celtic. They were not able to save the nations

to which they belonged from a foreign yoke, but they spared them

the last remaining disgrace--an inglorious fall. Vercingetorix,

just like the Carthaginian, was obliged to contend not merely

against the public foe, but also and above all against that anti-national

opposition of wounded egotists and startled cowards, which regularly

accompanies a degenerate civilization; for him too a place

in history is secured, not by his battles and sieges,

but by the fact that he was able to furnish in his own person

a centre and rallying-point to a nation distracted and ruined

by the rivalry of individual interests. And yet there can hardly

be a more marked contrast than between the sober townsman

of the Phoenician mercantile city, whose plans were directed towards

one great object with unchanging energy throughout fifty years,

and the bold prince of the Celtic land, whose mighty deeds and high-

minded self-sacrifice fall within the compass of one brief summer.

The whole ancient world presents no more genuine knight, whether

as regards his essential character or his outward appearance.

But man ought not to be a mere knight, and least of all the statesman.

It was the knight, not the hero, who disdained to escape from Alesia,

when for the nation more depended on him than on a hundred thousand

ordinary brave men. It was the knight, not the hero, who gave

himself up as a sacrifice, when the only thing gained

by that sacrifice was that the nation publicly dishonoured itself

and with equal cowardice and absurdity employed its last breath

in proclaiming that its great historical death-struggle was a crime

against its oppressor. How very different was the conduct

of Hannibal in similar positions! It is impossible to part

from the noble king of the Arverni without a feeling of historical

and human sympathy; but it is a significant trait of the Celtic nation,

that its greatest man was after all merely a knight.

The Last Conflicts

With the Bituriges and Carnutes

The fall of Alesia and the capitulation of the army enclosed

in it were fearful blows for the Celtic insurrection; but blows

quite as heavy had befallen the nation and yet the conflict

had been renewed. The loss of Vercingetorix, however, was irreparable.

With him unity had come to the nation; with him it seemed also

to have departed. We do not find that the insurgents made any attempt

to continue their joint defence and to appoint another generalissimo;

the league of patriots fell to pieces of itself, and every clan

was left to fight or come to terms with the Romans as it pleased.

Naturally the desire after rest everywhere prevailed.

Caesar too had an interest in bringing the war quickly to an end.

Of the ten years of his governorship seven had elapsed, and the last

was called in question by his political opponents in the capital;

he could only reckon with some degree of certainty on two more summers,

and, while his interest as well as his honour required

that he should hand over the newly-acquired regions to his successor

in a condition of tolerable peace and tranquillity, there was

in truth but scanty time to bring about such a state of things.

To exercise mercy was in this case still more a necessity

for the victor than for the vanquished; and he might thank his stars

that the internal dissensions and the easy temperament of the Celts

met him in this respect half way. Where--as in the two most eminent

cantons of central Gaul, those of the Haedui and Arverni--there

existed a strong party well disposed to Rome, the cantons obtained

immediately after the fall of Alesia a complete restoration

of their former relations with Rome, and even their captives, 20,000

in number, were released without ransom, while those of the other

clans passed into the hard bondage of the victorious legionaries.

The greater portion of the Gallic districts submitted like the Haedui

and Arverni to their fate, and allowed their inevitable

punishment to be inflicted without farther resistance.

But not a few clung in foolish frivolity or sullen despair

to the lost cause, till the Roman troops of execution appeared

within their borders. Such expeditions were in the winter of 702-703

undertaken against the Bituriges and the Carnutes.

With the Bellovaci

More serious resistance was offered by the Bellovaci,

who in the previous year had kept aloof from the relief of Alesia;

they seem to have wished to show that their absence on that decisive day

at least did not proceed from want of courage or of love for freedom.

The Atrebates, Ambiani, Caletes, and other Belgic cantons took part

in this struggle; the brave king of the Atrebates Commius,

whose accession to the insurrection the Romans had least of all forgiven,

and against whom recently Labienus had even directed an atrocious

attempt at assassination, brought to the Bellovaci 500 German

horse, whose value the campaign of the previous year had shown.

The resolute and talented Bellovacian Correus, to whom the chief

conduct of the war had fallen, waged warfare as Vercingetorix

had waged it, and with no small success. Although Caesar had gradually

brought up the greater part of his army, he could neither bring

the infantry of the Bellovaci to a battle, nor even prevent it

from taking up other positions which afforded better protection

against his augmented forces; while the Roman horse, especially

the Celtic contingents, suffered most severe losses in various combats

at the hands of the enemy's cavalry, especially of the German cavalry

of Commius. But after Correus had met his death in a skirmish

with the Roman foragers, the resistance here too was broken;

the victor proposed tolerable conditions, to which the Bellovaci

along with their confederates submitted. The Treveri were reduced

to obedience by Labienus, and incidentally the territory

of the outlawed Eburones was once more traversed and laid waste.

Thus the last resistance of the Belgic confederacy was broken.

On the Loire

The maritime cantons still made an attempt to defend themselves

against the Roman domination in concert with their neighbours

on the Loire. Insurgent bands from the Andian, Carnutic, and other

surrounding cantons assembled on the lower Loire and besieged

in Lemonum (Poitiers) the prince of the Pictones who was friendly

to the Romans. But here too a considerable Roman force soon appeared

against them; the insurgents abandoned the siege, and retreated

with the view of placing the Loire between themselves and the enemy,

but were overtaken on the march and defeated; whereupon

the Carnutes and the other revolted cantons, including even

the maritime ones, sent in their submission.

And in Uxellodunum

The resistance was at an end; save that an isolated leader of free

bands still here and there upheld the national banner. The bold

Drappes and the brave comrade in arms of Vercingetorix Lucterius,

after the breaking up of the army united on the Loire, gathered

together the most resolute men, and with these threw themselves

into the strong mountain-town of Uxellodunum on the Lot,(50)

which amidst severe and fatal conflicts they succeeded in sufficiently

provisioning. In spite of the loss of their leaders, of whom

Drappes had been taken prisoner, and Lucterius had been cut off

from the town, the garrison resisted to the uttermost; it was not

till Caesar appeared in person, and under his orders the spring

from which the besieged derived their water was diverted by means

of subterranean drains, that the fortress, the last stronghold

of the Celtic nation, fell. To distinguish the last champions

of the cause of freedom, Caesar ordered that the whole garrison should

have their hands cut off and should then be dismissed, each one

to his home. Caesar, who felt it all-important to put an end at least

to open resistance throughout Gaul, allowed king Commius, who still

held out in the region of Arras and maintained desultory warfare

with the Roman troops there down to the winter of 703-704, to make

his peace, and even acquiesced when the irritated and justly

distrustful man haughtily refused to appear in person in the Roman

camp. It is very probable that Caesar in a similar way allowed

himself to be satisfied with a merely nominal submission, perhaps

even with a de facto armistice, in the less accessible districts

of the north-west and north-east of Gaul.(51)

Gaul Subdued

Thus was Gaul--or, in other words, the land west of the Rhine

and north of the Pyrenees--rendered subject after only eight years

of conflict (696-703) to the Romans. Hardly a year after the full

pacification of the land, at the beginning of 705, the Roman troops

had to be withdrawn over the Alps in consequence of the civil war,

which had now at length broken out in Italy, and there remained

nothing but at the most some weak divisions of recruits in Gaul.

Nevertheless the Celts did not again rise against the foreign yoke;

and, while in all the old provinces of the empire there was

fighting against Caesar, the newly-acquired country alone remained

continuously obedient to its conqueror. Even the Germans

did not during those decisive years repeat their attempts to conquer

new settlements on the left bank of the Rhine. As little did

there occur in Gaul any national insurrection or German invasion

during the crises that followed, although these offered the most

favourable opportunities. If disturbances broke out anywhere,

such as the rising of the Bellovaci against the Romans in 708,

these movements were so isolated and so unconnected with

the complications in Italy, that they were suppressed without material

difficulty by the Roman governors. Certainly this state of peace

was most probably, just as was the peace of Spain for centuries,

purchased by provisionally allowing the regions that were most

remote and most strongly pervaded by national feeling--Brittany,

the districts on the Scheldt, the region of the Pyrenees--

to withdraw themselves de facto in a more or less definite manner

from the Roman allegiance. Nevertheless the building of Caesar--

however scanty the time which he found for it amidst other

and at the moment still more urgent labours, however unfinished

and but provisionally rounded off he may have left it--in substance

stood the test of this fiery trial, as respected both the repelling

of the Germans and the subjugation of the Celts.

Organization

Roman Taxation

As to administration in chief, the territories newly acquired

by the governor of Narbonese Gaul remained for the time being united

with the province of Narbo; it was not till Caesar gave up

this office (710) that two new governorships--Gaul proper

and Belgica--were formed out of the territory which he conquered.

That the individual cantons lost their political independence,

was implied in the very nature of conquest. They became throughout

tributary to the Roman community. Their system of tribute however was,

of course, not that by means of which the nobles and financial

aristocracy turned Asia to profitable account; but, as was

the case in Spain, a tribute fixed once for all was imposed on each

individual community, and the levying of it was left to itself.

In this way forty million sesterces (400,000 pounds) flowed annually

from Gaul into the chests of the Roman government; which, no doubt,

undertook in return the cost of defending the frontier of the

Rhine. Moreover, the masses of gold accumulated in the temples

of the gods and the treasuries of the grandees found their way,

as a matter of course, to Rome; when Caesar offered his Gallic gold

throughout the Roman empire and brought such masses of it at once

into the money market that gold as compared with silver fell about

25 per cent, we may guess what sums Gaul lost through the war.

Indulgences towards Existing Arrangements

The former cantonal constitutions with their hereditary kings,

or their presiding feudal-oligarchies, continued in the main

to subsist after the conquest, and even the system of clientship,

which made certain cantons dependent on others more powerful,

was not abolished, although no doubt with the loss of political

independence its edge was taken off. The sole object of Caesar

was, while making use of the existing dynastic, feudalist,

and hegemonic divisions, to arrange matters in the interest of Rome,

and to bring everywhere into power the men favourably disposed

to the foreign rule. Caesar spared no pains to form a Roman party

in Gaul; extensive rewards in money and specially in confiscated

estates were bestowed on his adherents, and places in the common

council and the first offices of state in their cantons

were procured for them by Caesar's influence. Those cantons

in which a sufficiently strong and trustworthy Roman party existed,

such as those of the Remi, the Lingones, the Haedui, were favoured

by the bestowal of a freer communal constitution--the right

of alliance, as it was called--and by preferences in the regulation

of the matter of hegemony. The national worship and its priests

seem to have been spared by Caesar from the outset as far as possible;

no trace is found in his case of measures such as were adopted

in later times by the Roman rulers against the Druidical system,

and with this is probably connected the fact that his Gallic wars,

so far as we see, do not at all bear the character of religious

warfare after the fashion which formed so prominent a feature

of the Britannic wars subsequently.

Introduction of the Romanizing of the Country

While Caesar thus showed to the conquered nation every allowable

consideration and spared their national, political, and religious

institutions as far as was at all compatible with their subjection

to Rome, he did so, not as renouncing the fundamental idea of his

conquest, the Romanization of Gaul, but with a view to realize it

in the most indulgent way. He did not content himself with letting

the same circumstances, which had already in great part Romanized

the south province, produce their effect likewise in the north;

but, like a genuine statesman, he sought to stimulate the natural

course of development and, moreover, to shorten as far as possible

the always painful period of transition. To say nothing

of the admission of a number of Celts of rank into Roman citizenship

and even of several perhaps into the Roman senate, it was probably

Caesar who introduced, although with certain restrictions,

the Latin instead of the native tongue as the official language

within the several cantons in Gaul, and who introduced the Roman

instead of the national monetary system on the footing of reserving

the coinage of gold and of denarii to the Roman authorities, while

the smaller money was to be coined by the several cantons, but only

for circulation within the cantonal bounds, and this too in accordance

with the Roman standard. We may smile at the Latin jargon,

which the dwellers by the Loire and the Seine henceforth employed

in accordance with orders;(52) but these barbarisms were pregnant

with a greater future than the correct Latin of the capital.

Perhaps too, if the cantonal constitution in Gaul afterwards appears

more closely approximated to the Italian urban constitution,

and the chief places of the canton as well as the common councils

attain a more marked prominence in it than was probably the case

in the original Celtic organization, the change may be referred

to Caesar. No one probably felt more than the political heir

of Gaius Gracchus and of Marius, how desirable in a military

as well as in a political point of view it would have been to establish

a series of Transalpine colonies as bases of support for the new rule

and starting-points of the new civilization. If nevertheless

he confined himself to the settlement of his Celtic or German horsemen

in Noviodunum(53) and to that of the Boii in the canton

of the Haedui (54)--which latter settlement already rendered quite

the services of a Roman colony in the war with Vercingetorix(55)--

the reason was merely that his farther plans did not permit him

to put the plough instead of the sword into the hands of his legions.

What he did in later years for the old Roman province

in this respect, will be explained in its own place; it is probable

that the want of time alone prevented him from extending

the same system to the regions which he had recently subdued.

The Catastrophe of the Celtic Nation

Traits Common to the Celts and Irish

All was over with the Celtic nation. Its political dissolution

had been completed by Caesar; its national dissolution was begun

and in course of regular progress. This was no accidental destruction,

such as destiny sometimes prepares even for peoples capable

of development, but a self-incurred and in some measure historically

necessary catastrophe. The very course of the last war proves this,

whether we view it as a whole or in detail. When the establishment

of the foreign rule was in contemplation, only single districts--

mostly, moreover, German or half-German--offered energetic

resistance. When the foreign rule was actually established,

the attempts to shake it off were either undertaken altogether

without judgment, or they were to an undue extent the work

of certain prominent nobles, and were therefore immediately

and entirely brought to an end with the death or capture of an

Indutiomarus, Camulogenus, Vercingetorix, or Correus. The sieges

and guerilla warfare, in which elsewhere the whole moral depth

of national struggles displays itself, were throughout this Celtic

struggle of a peculiarly pitiable character. Every page of Celtic

history confirms the severe saying of one of the few Romans who had

the judgment not to despise the so-called barbarians--that the Celts

boldly challenge danger while future, but lose their courage

before its presence. In the mighty vortex of the world's history,

which inexorably crushes all peoples that are not as hard

and as flexible as steel, such a nation could not permanently maintain

itself; with reason the Celts of the continent suffered the same

fate at the hands of the Romans, as their kinsmen in Ireland suffer

down to our own day at the hands of the Saxons--the fate

of becoming merged as a leaven of future development in a politically

superior nationality. On the eve of parting from this remarkable

nation we may be allowed to call attention to the fact,

that in the accounts of the ancients as to the Celts on the Loire

and Seine we find almost every one of the characteristic traits

which we are accustomed to recognize as marking the Irish.

Every feature reappears: the laziness in the culture of the fields;

the delight in tippling and brawling; the ostentation--we may recall

that sword of Caesar hung up in the sacred grove of the Arverni

after the victory of Gergovia, which its alleged former owner viewed

with a smile at the consecrated spot and ordered the sacred property

to be carefully spared; the language full of comparisons and hyperboles,

of allusions and quaint turns; the droll humour--an excellent

example of which was the rule, that if any one interrupted a person

speaking in public, a substantial and very visible hole should be

cut, as a measure of police, in the coat of the disturber

of the peace; the hearty delight in singing and reciting the deeds

of past ages, and the most decided gifts of rhetoric and poetry;

the curiosity--no trader was allowed to pass, before he had told

in the open street what he knew, or did not know, in the shape of news--

and the extravagant credulity which acted on such accounts,

for which reason in the better regulated cantons travellers

were prohibited on pain of severe punishment from communicating

unauthenticated reports to others than the public magistrates;

the childlike piety, which sees in the priest a father and asks

for his counsel in all things; the unsurpassed fervour of national

feeling, and the closeness with which those who are fellow-countrymen

cling together almost like one family in opposition to strangers;

the inclination to rise in revolt under the first chance-leader

that presents himself and to form bands, but at the same time

the utter incapacity to preserve a self-reliant courage equally remote

from presumption and from pusillanimity, to perceive the right time

for waiting and for striking a blow, to attain or even barely

to tolerate any organization, any sort of fixed military or political

discipline. It is, and remains, at all times and all places

the same indolent and poetical, irresolute and fervid, inquisitive,

credulous, amiable, clever, but--in a political point of view--

thoroughly useless nation; and therefore its fate has been always

and everywhere the same.

The Beginnings of Romanic Development

But the fact that this great people was ruined by the Transalpine wars

of Caesar, was not the most important result of that grand enterprise;

far more momentous than the negative was the positive result.

It hardly admits of a doubt that, if the rule of the senate

had prolonged its semblance of life for some generations

longer, the migration of peoples, as it is called, would have

occurred four hundred years sooner than it did, and would have

occurred at a time when the Italian civilization had not become

naturalized either in Gaul, or on the Danube, or in Africa and

Spain. Inasmuch as the great general and statesman of Rome

with sure glance perceived in the German tribes the rival antagonists

of the Romano-Greek world; inasmuch as with firm hand he established

the new system of aggressive defence down even to its details,

and taught men to protect the frontiers of the empire by rivers

or artificial ramparts, to colonize the nearest barbarian tribes along

the frontier with the view of warding off the more remote,

and to recruit the Roman army by enlistment from the enemy's country;

he gained for the Hellenico-Italian culture the interval necessary

to civilize the west just as it had already civilized the east.

Ordinary men see the fruits of their action; the seed sown by men

of genius germinates slowly. Centuries elapsed before men understood

that Alexander had not merely erected an ephemeral kingdom

in the east, but had carried Hellenism to Asia; centuries again

elapsed before men understood that Caesar had not merely conquered

a new province for the Romans, but had laid the foundation

for the Romanizing of the regions of the west. It was only a late

posterity that perceived the meaning of those expeditions

to England and Germany, so inconsiderate in a military point of view,

and so barren of immediate result. An immense circle of peoples,

whose existence and condition hitherto were known barely through

the reports--mingling some truth with much fiction--of the mariner

and the trader, was disclosed by this means to the Greek and Roman

world. "Daily," it is said in a Roman writing of May 698,

"the letters and messages from Gaul are announcing names of peoples,

cantons, and regions hitherto unknown to us." This enlargement

of the historical horizon by the expeditions of Caesar beyond

the Alps was as significant an event in the world's history

as the exploring of America by European bands. To the narrow circle

of the Mediterranean states were added the peoples of central

and northern Europe, the dwellers on the Baltic and North seas;

to the old world was added a new one, which thenceforth was influenced

by the old and influenced it in turn. What the Gothic Theodoric

afterwards succeeded in, came very near to being already carried

out by Ariovistus. Had it so happened, our civilization would have

hardly stood in any more intimate relation to the Romano-Greek than

to the Indian and Assyrian culture. That there is a bridge connecting

the past glory of Hellas and Rome with the prouder fabric of modern

history; that Western Europe is Romanic, and Germanic Europe

classic; that the names of Themistocles and Scipio have to us

a very different sound from those of Asoka and Salmanassar;

that Homer and Sophocles are not merely like the Vedas and Kalidasa

attractive to the literary botanist, but bloom for us in our own

garden--all this is the work of Caesar; and, while the creation

of his great predecessor in the east has been almost wholly reduced

to ruin by the tempests of the Middle Ages, the structure of Caesar

has outlasted those thousands of years which have changed religion

and polity for the human race and even shifted for it the centre

of civilization itself, and it stands erect for what we may

designate as eternity.

The Countries on the Danube

To complete the sketch of the relations of Rome to the peoples

of the north at this period, it remains that we cast a glance

at the countries which stretch to the north of the Italian and Greek

peninsulas, from the sources of the Rhine to the Black Sea.

It is true that the torch of history does not illumine the mighty stir

and turmoil of peoples which probably prevailed at that time there,

and the solitary gleams of light that fall on this region are,

like a faint glimmer amidst deep darkness, more fitted to bewilder

than to enlighten. But it is the duty of the historian to indicate

also the gaps in the record of the history of nations; he may not

deem it beneath him to mention, by the side of Caesar's magnificent

system of defence, the paltry arrangements by which the generals

of the senate professed to protect on this side

the frontier of the empire.

Alpine Peoples

North-eastern Italy was still as before(56) left exposed

to the attacks of the Alpine tribes. The strong Roman army

encamped at Aquileia in 695, and the triumph of the governor

of Cisalpine Gaul Lucius Afranius, lead us to infer, that about

this time an expedition to the Alps took place, and it may have been

in consequence of this that we find the Romans soon afterwards

in closer connection with a king of the Noricans. But that even

subsequently Italy was not at all secure on this side, is shown

by the sudden assault of the Alpine barbarians on the flourishing town

of Tergeste in 702, when the Transalpine insurrection had compelled

Caesar to divest upper Italy wholly of troops.

Illyria

The turbulent peoples also, who had possession of the district

along the Illyrian coast, gave their Roman masters constant

employment. The Dalmatians, even at an earlier period the most

considerable people of this region, enlarged their power so much

by admitting their neighbours into their union, that the number

of their townships rose from twenty to eighty. When they refused

to give up once more the town of Promona (not far from the river

Kerka), which they had wrested from the Liburnians, Caesar

after the battle of Pharsalia gave orders to march against them;

but the Romans were in the first instance worsted, and in consequence

of this Dalmatia became for some time a rendezvous of the party

hostile to Caesar, and the inhabitants in concert with the Pompeians

and with the pirates offered an energetic resistance

to the generals of Caesar both by land and by water.

Macedonia

Lastly Macedonia along with Epirus and Hellas lay in greater

desolation and decay than almost any other part of the Roman

empire. Dyrrhachium, Thessalonica, and Byzantium had still some

trade and commerce; Athens attracted travellers and students

by its name and its philosophical school; but on the whole there lay

over the formerly populous little towns of Hellas, and her seaports

once swarming with men, the calm of the grave. But if the Greeks

stirred not, the inhabitants of the hardly accessible Macedonian

mountains on the other hand continued after the old fashion their

predatory raids and feuds; for instance about 697-698 Agraeans

and Dolopians overran the Aetolian towns, and in 700 the Pirustae

dwelling in the valleys of the Drin overran southern Illyria.

The neighbouring peoples did likewise. The Dardani on the northern

frontier as well as the Thracians in the east had no doubt been

humbled by the Romans in the eight years' conflicts from 676

to 683; the most powerful of the Thracian princes, Cotys, the ruler

of the old Odrysian kingdom, was thenceforth numbered among the client

kings of Rome. Nevertheless the pacified land had still as before

to suffer invasions from the north and east. The governor Gaius

Antonius was severely handled both by the Dardani and by the tribes

settled in the modern Dobrudscha, who, with the help of the dreaded

Bastarnae brought up from the left bank of the Danube, inflicted

on him an important defeat (692-693) at Istropolis (Istere, not far

from Kustendji). Gaius Octavius fought with better fortune

against the Bessi and Thracians (694). Marcus Piso again (697-698)

as general-in-chief wretchedly mismanaged matters; which was

no wonder, seeing that for money he gave friends and foes whatever

they wished. The Thracian Dentheletae (on the Strymon) under his

governorship plundered Macedonia far and wide, and even stationed

their posts on the great Roman military road leading from Dyrrhachium

to Thessalonica; the people in Thessalonica made up their minds

to stand a siege from them, while the strong Roman army in the province

seemed to be present only as an onlooker when the inhabitants

of the mountains and neighbouring peoples levied contributions

from the peaceful subjects of Rome.

The New Dacian Kingdom

Such attacks could not indeed endanger the power of Rome, and a fresh

disgrace had long ago ceased to occasion concern. But just about

this period a people began to acquire political consolidation

beyond the Danube in the wide Dacian steppes--a people which seemed

destined to play a different part in history from that of the Bessi

and the Dentheletae. Among the Getae or Dacians in primeval times

there had been associated with the king of the people a holy man

called Zalmoxis, who, after having explored the ways and wonders

of the gods in distant travel in foreign lands, and having thoroughly

studied in particular the wisdom of the Egyptian priests

and of the Greek Pythagoreans, had returned to his native country

to endhis life as a pious hermit in a cavern of the "holy mountain."

He remained accessible only to the king and his servants, and gave

forth to the king and through him to the people his oracles

with reference to every important undertaking. He was regarded

by his countrymen at first as priest of the supreme god and ultimately

as himself a god, just as it is said of Moses and Aaron that the Lord

had made Aaron the prophet and Moses the god of the prophet.

This had become a permanent institution; there was regularly associated

with the king of the Getae such a god, from whose mouth everything

which the king ordered proceeded or appeared to proceed.

This peculiar constitution, in which the theocratic idea had become

subservient to the apparently absolute power of the king, probably

gave to the kings of the Getae some such position with respect

to their subjects as the caliphs had with respect to the Arabs;

and one result of it was the marvellous religious-political reform

of the nation, which was carried out about this time by the king

of the Getae, Burebistas, and the god Dekaeneos. The people,

which had morally and politically fallen into utter decay through

unexampled drunkenness, was as it were metamorphosed by the new

gospel of temperance and valour; with his bands under the influence,

so to speak, of puritanic discipline and enthusiasm king Burebistas

founded within a few years a mighty kingdom, which extended along

both banks of the Danube and reached southward far into Thrace,

Illyria, and Noricum. No direct contact with the Romans had yet

taken place, and no one could tell what might come out of

this singular state, which reminds us of the early times of Islam;

but this much it needed no prophetic gift to foretell, that proconsuls

like Antonius and Piso were not called to contend with gods.