FIRST BOOK OF THE WAR IN GAUL.--CÆSAR DRIVES FIRST THE SWISS AND THEN
THE GERMANS OUT OF GAUL.--B.C. 58.
It has been remarked in the preceding chapter that Cæsar does not appear
to have received any commission for the subjugation of Gaul when he took
military charge of his three provinces. The Gauls were still feared in
Rome, and it was his duty to see that they did not make their way over
the Alps into the Roman territory. It was also his duty to protect from
invasion, and also from rebellion, that portion of Gaul which had
already been constituted a Roman province, but in which the sympathies
of the people were still rather with their old brethren than with their
new masters. The experience, however, which we have of great and
encroaching empires tells us how probable it is that the protection of
that which the strong already holds should lead to the grasping of more,
till at last all has been grasped. It is thus that our own empire in
India has grown. It was thus that the Spanish empire grew in America. It
is thus that the empire of the United States is now growing. It was thus
that Prussia, driven, as we all remember, by the necessity of
self-preservation, took Nassau the other day, and Hanover and Holstein
and Hesse. It was thus that the wolf claimed all the river, not being
able to endure the encroaching lamb. The humane reader of history
execrates, as he reads, the cruel, all-absorbing, ravenous wolf. But the
philosophical reader perceives that in this way, and in no other, is
civilisation carried into distant lands. The wolf, though he be a
ravenous wolf, brings with him energy and knowledge.
What may have been Cæsar’s own aspirations in regard to Gaul, when the
government of the provinces was confided to him, we have no means of
knowing. We may surmise,--indeed we feel that we know,--that he had a
project in hand much greater to him, in his view of its result, than
could be the adding of any new province to the Republic, let the
territory added be as wide as all Gaul. He had seen enough of Roman
politics to know that real power in Rome could only belong to a master
of legions. Both Marius and Sulla had prevailed in the city by means of
the armies which they had levied as the trusted generals of the
Republic. Pompey had had his army trained to conquest in the East, and
it had been expected that he also would use it to the same end. He had
been magnanimous, or half-hearted, or imprudent, as critics of his
conduct might choose to judge him then and may choose to judge him now,
and on reaching Italy from the East had disbanded his legions. As a
consequence, he was at that moment, when Cæsar was looking out into the
future and preparing his own career, fain to seek some influence in the
city by joining himself in a secret compact with Cæsar, his natural
enemy, and with Crassus. Cæsar, seeing all this, knowing how Marius and
Sulla had succeeded and had failed, seeing what had come of the
magnanimity of Pompey--resolved no doubt that, whatever might be the
wars in which they should be trained, he would have trained legions at
his command. When, therefore, he first found a cause for war, he was
ready for war. He had not been long proconsul before there came a wicked
lamb and drank at his stream.
In describing to us the way in which he conquered lamb after lamb
throughout the whole country which he calls Gallia, he tells us almost
nothing of himself. Of his own political ideas, of his own ambition,
even of his doings in Italy through those winter months which he
generally passed on the Roman side of the Alps, having left his army in
winter quarters under his lieutenants, he says but a very few words. His
record is simply the record of the campaigns; and although he now and
then speaks of the dignity of the Republic, he hardly ever so far
digresses from the narrative as to give to the reader any idea of the
motives by which he is actuated. Once in these seven memoirs of seven
years’ battling in Gaul, and once only, does he refer to a motive
absolutely personal to himself. When he succeeded in slaughtering a
fourth of the emigrating Swiss, which was his first military success in
Gaul, he tells us that he had then revenged an injury to himself as well
as an injury to the Republic, because the grandfather of his
father-in-law had in former wars been killed by the very tribe which he
had just destroyed!
It is to be observed, also, that he does not intentionally speak in the
first person, and that when he does so it is in some passage of no
moment, in which the personality is accidental and altogether trivial.
He does not speak of “I” and “me,” but of Cæsar, as though he, Cæsar,
who wrote the Commentary, were not the Cæsar of whom he is writing. Not
unfrequently he speaks strongly in praise of himself; but as there is no
humility in his tone, so also is there no pride, even when he praises
himself. He never seems to boast, though he tells us of his own exploits
as he does of those of his generals and centurions. Without any
diffidence he informs us now and again how, at the end of this or that
campaign, a “supplication,” or public festival and thanksgiving for his
victories, was decreed in Rome, on the hearing of the news,--to last for
fifteen or twenty days, as the case might be.
Of his difficulties at home,--the political difficulties with which he
had to contend,--he says never a word. And yet at times they must have
been very harassing. We hear from other sources that during these wars
in Gaul his conduct was violently reprobated in Rome, in that he had,
with the utmost cruelty, attacked and crushed states supposed to be in
amity with Rome, and that it was once even proposed to give him up to
the enemy as a punishment for grievous treachery to the enemy. Had it
been so resolved by the Roman Senate,--had such a law been enacted,--the
power to carry out the law would have been wanted. It was easier to
grant a “supplication” for twenty days than to stop his career after his
legions had come to know him.
Nor is there very much said by Cæsar of his strategic difficulties;
though now and then, especially when his ships are being knocked about
on the British coast, and again when the iron of his heel has so bruised
the Gauls that they all turn against him in one body under
Vercingetorix, the reader is allowed to see that he is pressed hard
enough. But it is his rule to tell the thing he means to do, the way he
does it, and the completeness of the result, in the fewest possible
words. If any student of the literature of battles would read first
Cæsar’s seven books of the Gallic War, and then Mr Kinglake’s first four
volumes of the ‘Invasion of the Crimea,’ he would be able to compare two
most wonderful examples of the dexterous use of words, in the former of
which the narrative is told with the utmost possible brevity, and in the
latter with almost the utmost possible prolixity. And yet each narrative
is equally clear, and each equally distinguished by so excellent an
arrangement of words, that the reader is forced to acknowledge that the
story is told to him by a great master.
In praising others,--his lieutenants, his soldiers, and occasionally his
enemies,--Cæsar is often enthusiastic, though the praise is conferred by
a word or two,--is given, perhaps, simply in an epithet added on for
that purpose to a sentence planned with a wholly different purpose. Of
blame he is very sparing; so much so, that it almost seems that he
looked upon certain imperfections, in regard even to faith as well as
valour or prudence, as necessary to humanity, and pardonable because of
their necessity. He can tell of the absolute destruction of a legion
through the folly and perhaps cowardice of one of his lieutenants,
without heaping a word of reproach on the name of the unfortunate. He
can relate how a much-favoured tribe fell off from their faith again and
again without expressing anger at their faithlessness, and can explain
how they were,--hardly forgiven, but received again as friends,--because
it suited him so to treat them. But again he can tell us, without
apparently a quiver of the pen, how he could devote to destruction a
city with all its women and all its children, so that other cities might
know what would come to them if they did not yield and obey, and become
vassals to the godlike hero in whose hands Providence had placed their
lives and their possessions.
It appears that Cæsar never failed to believe in himself. He is far too
simple in his language, and too conscious of his own personal dignity,
to assert that he has never been worsted. But his very simplicity seems
to convey the assurance that such cannot ultimately be the result of any
campaign in which he is engaged. He seems to imply that victory attends
him so certainly that it would be futile in any case to discuss its
probability. He feared no one, and was therefore the cause of awe to
others. He could face his own legions when they would not obey his call
to arms, and reduce them to obedience by a word. Lucan, understanding
his character well, says of him that “he deserved to be feared, for he
feared nothing;” “meruitque timeri Nil metuens.” He writes of himself
as we might imagine some god would write who knew that his divine
purpose must of course prevail, and who would therefore never be in the
way of entertaining a doubt. With Cæsar there is always this godlike
simplicity, which makes his “Veni, vidi, vici,” the natural expression
of his mind as to his own mode of action. The same thing is felt in the
very numerous but very brief records of the punishments which he
inflicted. Cities are left desolate, as it were with a wave of his hand,
but he hardly deigns to say that his own hand has even been waved. He
tells us of one Acco who had opposed him, that, “Graviore sententiâ
pronunciatâ,”--as though there had been some jury to pronounce this
severe sentence, which was in fact pronounced only by himself,
Cæsar,--he inflicted punishment on him “more majorum.” We learn from
other sources that this punishment consisted in being stripped naked,
confined by the neck in a cleft stick, and then being flogged to death.
In the next words, having told us in half a sentence that he had made
the country too hot to hold the fugitive accomplices of the tortured
chief, he passes on into Italy with the majestic step of one much too
great to dwell long on these small but disagreeable details. And we feel
that he is too great.
It has been already said that the great proconsular wolf was not long in
hearing that a lamb had come down to drink of his stream. The Helvetii,
or Swiss, as we call them,--those tribes which lived on the Lake Leman,
and among the hills and valleys to the north of the lake,--had made up
their minds that they were inhabiting but a poor sort of country, and
that they might considerably better themselves by leaving their
mountains and going out into some part of Gaul, in which they might find
themselves stronger than the existing tribes, and might take possession
of the fat of the land. In doing so, their easiest way out of their own
country would lie by the Rhone, where it now runs through Geneva into
France. But in taking this route the Swiss would be obliged to pass over
a corner of the Roman province. Here was a case of the lamb troubling
the waters with a vengeance. When this was told to Cæsar,--that these
Swiss intended, “facero iter per Provinciam nostram”--“to do their
travelling through our Province,”--he hurried over the Alps into Gaul,
and came to Geneva as fast as he could travel.
He begins his first book by a geographical definition of Gaul, which no
doubt was hardly accurate, but which gives us a singularly clear idea of
that which Cæsar desired to convey. In speaking of Gallia he intends to
signify the whole country from the outflow of the Rhine into the ocean
down to the Pyrenees, and then eastward to the Rhone, to the Swiss
mountains, and the borders of the Roman Province. This he divides into
three parts, telling us that the Belgians inhabited the part north of
the Seine and Marne, the people of Aquitania the part south of the
Garonne, and the Gauls or Celts the intermediate territory. Having so
far described the scene of his action, he rushes off at once to the
dreadful sin of the Swiss emigrants in desiring to pass through “our
Province.”
He has but one legion in Further Gaul,--that is, in the Roman province
on the further side of the Alps from Rome; and therefore, when
ambassadors come to him from the Swiss, asking permission to go through
the corner of land, and promising that they will do no harm in their
passage, he temporises with them. He can’t give them an answer just
then, but must think of it. They must come back to him by a certain
day,--when he will have more soldiers ready. Of course he refuses. The
Swiss make some slight attempt, but soon give that matter up in despair.
There is another way by which they can get out of their
mountains,--through the territory of a people called Sequani; and for
doing this they obtain leave. But Cæsar knows how injurious the Swiss
lambs will be to him and his wolves, should they succeed in getting
round to the back of his Province,--that Roman Province which left the
name of Provence in modern France till France refused to be divided any
longer into provinces. And he is, moreover, invited by certain friends
of the Roman Republic, called the Ædui, to come and stop these rough
Swiss travellers. He is always willing to help the Ædui, although these
Ædui are a fickle, inconstant people,--and he is, above all things,
willing to get to war. So he comes upon the rear of the Swiss when three
portions of the people have passed the river Arar (Saone), and one
portion is still behind. This hindermost tribe,--for the wretches were
all of one tribe or mountain canton,--he sets upon and utterly destroys;
and on this occasion congratulates himself on having avenged himself
upon the slayers of the grandfather of his father-in-law.
There can be nothing more remarkable in history than this story of the
attempted emigration of the Helvetii, which Cæsar tells us without the
expression of any wonder. The whole people made up their minds that, as
their borders were narrow, their numbers increasing, and their courage
good, they would go forth,--men, women, and children,--and seek other
homes. We read constantly of the emigrations of people,--of the Northmen
from the north covering the southern plains, of Danes and Jutes entering
Britain, of men from Scandinavia coming down across the Rhine, and the
like. We know that after this fashion the world has become peopled. But
we picture to ourselves generally a concourse of warriors going forth
and leaving behind them homes and friends, to whom they may or may not
return. With these Swiss wanderers there was to be no return. All that
they could not take with them they destroyed, burning their houses, and
burning even their corn, so that there should be no means of turning
their steps backward. They do make considerable progress, getting as far
into France as Autun,--three-fourths of them at least getting so far;
but near this they are brought to an engagement by Cæsar, who
outgenerals them on a hill. The prestige of the Romans had not as yet
established itself in these parts, and the Swiss nearly have the best of
it. Cæsar owns, as he does not own again above once or twice, that the
battle between them was very long, and for long very doubtful. But at
last the poor Helvetii are driven in slaughter. Cæsar, however, is not
content that they should simply fly. He forces them back upon their old
territory,--upon their burnt houses and devastated fields,--lest certain
Germans should come and live there, and make themselves disagreeable.
And they go back;--so many, at least, go back as are not slain in the
adventure. With great attempt at accuracy, Cæsar tells us that 368,000
human beings went out on the expedition, and that 110,000, or less than
a third, found their way back. Of those that perished, many hecatombs
had been offered up to the shade of his father-in-law’s grandfather.
Hereupon the Gauls begin to see how great a man is Cæsar. He tells us
that no sooner was that war with the Swiss finished than nearly all the
tribes of Gallia send to congratulate him. And one special tribe, those
Ædui,--of whom we hear a great deal, and whom we never like because they
are thoroughly anti-Gallican in all their doings till they think that
Cæsar is really in trouble, and then they turn upon him,--have to beg of
him a great favour. Two tribes,--the Ædui, whose name seems to have left
no trace in France, and the Arverni, whom we still know in
Auvergne,--have been long contending for the upper hand; whereupon the
Arverni and their friends the Sequani have called in the assistance of
certain Germans from across the Rhine. It went badly then with the Ædui.
And now one of their kings, named Divitiacus, implores the help of
Cæsar. Would Cæsar be kind enough to expel these horrid Germans, and
get back the hostages, and free them from a burdensome dominion, and put
things a little to rights? And, indeed, not only were the Ædui suffering
from these Germans, and their king, Ariovistus; it is going still worse
with the Sequani, who had called them in. In fact, Ariovistus was an
intolerable nuisance to that eastern portion of Gaul. Would Cæsar be
kind enough to drive him out? Cæsar consents, and then we are made to
think of another little fable,--of the prayer which the horse made to
the man for assistance in his contest with the stag, and of the manner
in which the man got upon the horse, and never got down again. Cæsar was
not slow to mount, and when once in the saddle, certainly did not mean
to leave it.
Cæsar tells us his reasons for undertaking this commission. The Ædui had
often been called “brothers” and “cousins” by the Roman Senate; and it
was not fitting that men who had been so honoured should be domineered
over by Germans. And then, unless these marauding Germans could be
stopped, they would fall into the habit of coming across the Rhine, and
at last might get into the Province, and by that route into Italy
itself. And Ariovistus himself was personally so arrogant a man that the
thing must be made to cease. So Cæsar sends ambassadors to Ariovistus,
and invites the barbarian to a meeting. The barbarian will not come to
the meeting. If he wanted to see the Roman, he would go to the Roman: if
the Roman wants to see him, the Roman may come to him. Such is the reply
of Ariovistus. Ambassadors pass between them, and there is a good deal
of argument, in which the barbarian has the best of it. Cæsar, with his
godlike simplicity, scorns not to give the barbarian the benefit of his
logic. Ariovistus reminds Cæsar that the Romans have been in the habit
of governing the tribes conquered by them after their fashion, without
interference from him, Ariovistus; and that the Germans claim and mean
to exercise the same right. He goes on to say that he is willing enough
to live in amity with the Romans; but will Cæsar be kind enough to
remember that the Germans are a people unconquered in war, trained to
the use of arms, and how hardy he might judge when he was told that for
fourteen years they had not slept under a roof? In the mean time other
Gauls were complaining, and begging for assistance. The Treviri, people
of the country where Treves now stands, are being harassed by the
terrible yellow-haired Suevi, who at this time seem to have possessed
nearly the whole of Prussia as it now exists on the further side of the
Rhine, and who had the same desire to come westward that the Prussians
have evinced since. And a people called the Harudes, from the Danube,
are also harassing the poor Ædui. Cæsar, looking at these things, sees
that unless he is quick, the northern and southern Germans may join
their forces. He gets together his commissariat, and flies at Ariovistus
very quickly.
Throughout all his campaigns, Cæsar, as did Napoleon afterwards,
effected everything by celerity. He preaches to us no sermon on the
subject, favours us with no disquisition as to the value of despatch in
war, but constantly tells us that he moved all his army “magnis
itineribus”--by very rapid marches; that he went on with his work night
and day, and took precautions “magno opere,”--with much labour and all
his care,--to be beforehand with the enemy. In this instance Ariovistus
tries to reach a certain town of the poor Sequani, then called Vesontio,
now known to us as Besançon,--the same name, but very much altered. It
consisted of a hill, or natural fortress, almost surrounded by a river,
or natural fosse. There is nothing, says Cæsar, so useful in a war as
the possession of a place thus naturally strong. Therefore he hurries on
and gets before Ariovistus, and occupies the town. The reader already
begins to feel that Cæsar is destined to divine success. The reader
indeed knows that beforehand, and expects nothing worse for Cæsar than
hairbreadth escapes. But the Romans themselves had not as yet the same
confidence in him. Tidings are brought to him at Vesontio that his men
are terribly afraid of the Germans. And so, no doubt, they were. These
Romans, though by the art of war they had been made fine
soldiers,--though they had been trained in the Eastern conquests and the
Punic wars, and invasions of all nations around them,--were
nevertheless, up to this day, greatly afraid even of the Gauls. The
coming of the Gauls into Italy had been a source of terror to them ever
since the days of Brennus. And the Germans were worse than the Gauls.
The boast made by Ariovistus that his men never slept beneath a roof was
not vain or useless. They were a horrid, hirsute, yellow-haired people,
the flashing aspect of whose eyes could hardly be endured by an
Italian. The fear is so great that the soldiers “sometimes could not
refrain even from tears;”--“neque interdum lacrimas tenere poterant.”
When we remember what these men became after they had been a while with
Cæsar, their blubbering awe of the Germans strikes us as almost comic.
And we are reminded that the Italians of those days were, as they are
now, more prone to show the outward signs of emotion than is thought to
be decorous with men in more northern climes. We can hardly realise the
idea of soldiers crying from fear. Cæsar is told by his centurions that
so great is this feeling, that the men will probably refuse to take up
their arms when called upon to go out and fight; whereupon he makes a
speech to all his captains and lieutenants, full of boasting, full of
scorn, full, no doubt, of falsehood, but using a bit of truth whenever
the truth could aid him. We know that among other great gifts Cæsar had
the gift of persuasion. From his tongue, also, as from Nestor’s, could
flow “words sweeter than honey,”--or sharper than steel. At any rate, if
others will not follow him, his tenth legion, he knows, will be true to
him. He will go forth with that one legion,--if necessary, with that
legion of true soldiers, and with no others. Though he had been at his
work but a short time, he already had his picked men, his guards, his
favourite regiments, his tenth legion; and he knew well how to use their
superiority and valour for the creation of those virtues in others.
Then Ariovistus sends ambassadors, and declares that he now is willing
to meet Cæsar. Let them meet on a certain plain, each bringing only his
cavalry guard. Ariovistus suggests that foot-soldiers might be
dangerous, knowing that Cæsar’s foot-soldiers would be Romans, and that
his cavalry are Gauls. Cæsar agrees, but takes men out of his own tenth
legion, mounted on the horses of the less-trusted allies. The accounts
of these meetings, and the arguments which we are told are used on this
and that side, are very interesting. We are bound to remember that Cæsar
is telling the story for both sides, but we feel that he tries to tell
it fairly. Ariovistus had very little to say to Cæsar’s demands, but a
great deal to say about his own exploits. The meeting, however, was
broken up by an attack made by the Germans on Cæsar’s mounted guard, and
Cæsar retires,--not, however, before he has explained to Ariovistus his
grand idea of the protection due by Rome to her allies. Then Ariovistus
proposes another meeting, which Cæsar declines to attend, sending,
however, certain ambassadors. Ariovistus at once throws the ambassadors
into chains, and then there is nothing for it but a fight.
The details of all these battles cannot be given within our short
limits, and there is nothing special in this battle to tempt us to dwell
upon it. Cæsar describes to us the way in which the German cavalry and
infantry fought together, the footmen advancing from amidst the
horsemen, and then returning for protection. His own men fight well, and
the Germans, in spite of their flashing eyes, are driven headlong in a
rout back to the Rhine. Ariovistus succeeds in getting over the river
and saving himself, but he has to leave his two daughters behind, and
his two wives. The two wives and one of the daughters are killed; the
other daughter is taken prisoner. Cæsar had sent as one of his
ambassadors to the German a certain dear friend of his, who, as we heard
before, was, with his comrade, at once subjected to chains. In the
flight this ambassador is recovered. “Which thing, indeed, gave Cæsar
not less satisfaction than the victory itself,--in that he saw one of
the honestest men of the Province of Gaul, his own familiar friend and
guest, rescued from the hands of his enemies and restored to him. Nor
did Fortune diminish this gratification by any calamity inflicted on the
man. Thrice, as he himself told the tale, had it been decided by lot in
his own presence whether he should then be burned alive or reserved for
another time.” So Cæsar tells the story, and we like him for his
enthusiasm, and are glad to hear that the comrade ambassador also is
brought back.
The yellow-haired Suevi, when they hear of all this, desist from their
invasion on the lower Rhine, and hurry back into their own country, not
without misfortunes on the road. So great already is Cæsar’s name, that
tribes, acting as it were on his side, dare to attack even the Suevi.
Then, in his “Veni, vidi, vici” style, he tells us that, having in one
summer finished off two wars, he is able to put his army into winter
quarters even before the necessary time, so that he himself may go into
his other Gaul across the Alps,--“ad conventus agendos,”--to hold some
kind of session or assizes for the government of his province, and
especially to collect more soldiers.