SECOND BOOK OF THE WAR IN GAUL.--CÆSAR SUBDUES THE BELGIAN TRIBES.--B.C.
57.
The man had got on the horse’s back, but the horse had various
disagreeable enemies in attacking whom the man might be very useful, and
the horse was therefore not as yet anxious to unseat his rider. Would
Cæsar be so good as to go and conquer the Belgian tribes? Cæsar is not
slow in finding reasons for so doing. The Belgians are conspiring
together against him. They think that as all Gaul has been reduced,--or
“pacified,” as Cæsar calls it,--the Roman conqueror will certainly bring
his valour to bear upon them, and that they had better be ready. Cæsar
suggests that it would no doubt be felt by them as a great grievance
that a Roman army should remain all the winter so near to them. In this
way, and governed by these considerations, the Belgian lambs disturb the
stream very sadly, and the wolf has to look to it. He collects two more
legions, and, as soon as the earth brings forth the food necessary for
his increased number of men and horses, he hurries off against these
Belgian tribes of Northern Gallia. Of these, one tribe, the Remi,
immediately send word to him that they are not wicked lambs like the
others; they have not touched the waters. All the other Belgians, say
the Remi, and with them a parcel of Germans, are in a conspiracy
together. Even their very next-door neighbours, their brothers and
cousins, the Suessiones, are wicked; but they, the Remi, have steadily
refused even to sniff at the stream, which they acknowledge to be the
exclusive property of the good wolf. Would the wolf be kind enough to
come and take possession of them and all their belongings, and allow
them to be the humblest of his friends? We come to hate these Remi, as
we do the Ædui; but they are wise in their generation, and escape much
of the starvation and massacring and utter ruin to which the other
tribes are subjected. Among almost all these so-called Belgian tribes we
find the modern names which are familiar to us. Rheims is in the old
country of the Remi, Soissons in that of the Suessiones. Beauvais
represents the Bellovaci, Amiens the Ambiani, Arras the Atrebates,
Treves the Treviri,--as has been pointed out before. Silva Arduenna is,
of course, the Forest of Ardennes.
The campaign is commenced by an attack made by the other Belgians on
those unnatural Remi who have gone over to the Romans. There is a town
of theirs, Bibrax, now known, or rather not known, as Bievre, and here
the Remi are besieged by their brethren. When Bibrax is on the point of
falling,--and we can imagine what would then have been the condition of
the townsmen,--they send to Cæsar, who is only eight miles distant.
Unless Cæsar will help, they cannot endure any longer such onslaught as
is made on them. Cæsar, having bided his time, of course sends help, and
the poor besieging Belgians fall into inextricable confusion. They agree
to go home, each to his own country, and from thence to proceed to the
defence of any tribe which Cæsar might attack. “So,” says Cæsar, as he
ends the story of this little affair, “without any danger on our part,
our men killed as great a number of theirs as the space of the day would
admit.” When the sun set, and not till then, came an end to the
killing,--such having been the order of Cæsar.
That these Belgians had really formed any intention of attacking the
Roman province, or even any Roman ally, there is no other proof than
that Cæsar tells us that they had all conspired. But whatever might be
their sin, or what the lack of sin on their part, he is determined to go
on with the war till he has subjugated them altogether. On the very next
day he attacks the Suessiones, and gets as far as Noviodunum,--Noyons.
The people there, when they see how terrible are his engines of war,
give up all idea of defending themselves, and ask for terms. The
Bellovaci do the same. At the instigation of his friends the Remi, he
spares the one city, and, to please the Ædui, the other. But he takes
away all their arms, and exacts hostages. From the Bellovaci, because
they have a name as a powerful people, he takes 600 hostages. Throughout
all these wars it becomes a matter of wonder to us what Cæsar did with
all these hostages, and how he maintained them. It was, however, no
doubt clearly understood that they would be killed if the town, or
state, or tribe by which they were given should misbehave, or in any way
thwart the great conqueror.
The Ambiani come next, and the ancestors of our intimate friends at
Amiens soon give themselves up. The next to them are the Nervii, a
people far away to the north, where Lille now is and a considerable
portion of Flanders. Of these Cæsar had heard wonderful travellers’
tales. They were a people who admitted no dealers among them, being in
this respect very unlike their descendants, the Belgians of to-day; they
drank no wine, and indulged in no luxuries, lest their martial valour
should be diminished. They send no ambassadors to Cæsar, and resolve to
hold their own if they can. They trust solely to infantry in battle, and
know nothing of horses. Against the cavalry of other nations, however,
they are wont to protect themselves by artificial hedges, which they
make almost as strong as walls.
Cæsar in attacking the Nervii had eight legions, and he tells us how he
advanced against them “consuetudine suâ,”--after his usual fashion. For
some false information had been given to the Nervii on this subject,
which brought them into considerable trouble. He sent on first his
cavalry, then six legions, the legions consisting solely of
foot-soldiers; after these all the baggage, commissariat, and burden of
the army, comprising the materials necessary for sieges; and lastly, the
two other legions, which had been latest enrolled. It may be as well to
explain here that the legion in the time of Cæsar consisted on paper of
six thousand heavy-armed foot-soldiers. There were ten cohorts in a
legion, and six centuries, or six hundred men, in each cohort. It may
possibly be that, as with our regiments, the numbers were frequently not
full. Eight full legions would thus have formed an army consisting of
48,000 infantry. The exact number of men under his orders Cæsar does not
mention here or elsewhere.
According to his own showing, Cæsar is hurried into a battle before he
knows where he is. Cæsar, he says, had everything to do himself, all at
the same time,--to unfurl the standard of battle, to give the signal
with the trumpet, to get back the soldiers from their work, to call back
some who had gone to a distance for stuff to make a rampart, to draw up
the army, to address the men, and then to give the word. In that matter
of oratory, he only tells them to remember their old valour. The enemy
was so close upon them, and so ready for fighting, that they could
scarcely put on their helmets and take their shields out of their cases.
So great was the confusion that the soldiers could not get to their own
ranks, but had to fight as they stood, under any flag that was nearest
to them. There were so many things against them, and especially those
thick artificial hedges, which prevented them even from seeing, that it
was impossible for them to fight according to any method, and in
consequence there were vicissitudes of fortune. One is driven to feel
that on this occasion Cæsar was caught napping. The Nervii did at times
and places seem to be getting the best of it. The ninth and tenth
legions pursue one tribe into a river, and then they have to fight them
again, and drive them out of the river. The eleventh and eighth, having
put to flight another tribe, are attacked on the very river-banks. The
twelfth and the seventh have their hands equally full, when Boduognatus,
the Nervian chief, makes his way into the very middle of the Roman camp.
So great is the confusion that the Treviri, who had joined Cæsar on this
occasion as allies, although reputed the bravest of the cavalry of Gaul,
run away home, and declare that the Romans are conquered. Cæsar,
however, comes to the rescue, and saves his army on this occasion by
personal prowess. When he saw how it was going,--“rem esse in
angusto,”--how the thing had got itself into the very narrowest neck of
a difficulty, he seizes a shield from a common soldier,--having come
there himself with no shield,--and rushes into the fight. When the
soldiers saw him, and saw, too, that what they did was done in his
sight, they fought anew, and the onslaught of the enemy was checked.
Perhaps readers will wish that they could know how much of all this is
exactly true. It reads as though it were true. We cannot in these days
understand how one brave man at such a moment should be so much more
effective than another, how he should be known personally to the
soldiers of an army so large, how Cæsar should have known the names of
the centurions,--for he tells us that he addresses them by name;--and
yet it reads like truth; and the reader feels that as Cæsar would hardly
condescend to boast, so neither would he be constrained by any modern
feeling of humility from telling any truth of himself. It is as though
Minerva were to tell us of some descent which she made among the
Trojans. The Nervii fight on, but of course they are driven in flight.
The nation is all but destroyed, so that the very name can but hardly
remain;--so at least we are told here, though we hear of them again as a
tribe by no means destroyed or powerless. When out of six hundred
senators there are but three senators left, when from sixty thousand
fighting men the army has been reduced to scarcely five hundred, Cæsar
throws the mantle of his mercy over the survivors. He allows them even
to go and live in their own homes, and forbids their neighbours to
harass them. There can be no doubt that Cæsar nearly got the worst of it
in this struggle, and we may surmise that he learned a lesson which was
of service to him in subsequent campaigns.
But there are still certain Aduatici to be disposed of before the summer
is over,--people who had helped the Nervii,--who have a city of their
own, and who live somewhere in the present Namur district.[6] At first
they fight a little round the walls of their town; but when they see
what terrible instruments Cæsar has, by means of which to get at them
over their very walls,--how he can build up a great turret at a
distance, which, at that distance, is ludicrous to them, but which he
brings near to them, so that it overhangs them, from which to harass
them with arrows and stones, and against which, so high is it, they have
no defence--then they send out and beg for mercy. Surely, they say,
Cæsar and the Romans must have more than human power. They will give up
everything, if only Cæsar out of his mercy will leave to them their
arms. They are always at war with all their neighbours; and where would
they be without arms?
Cæsar replies. Merits of their own they have none. How could a tribe
have merits against which Cæsar was at war? Nevertheless, such being his
custom, he will admit them to some terms of grace if they surrender
before his battering-ram has touched their walls. But as for their arms,
surely they must be joking with him. Of course their arms must be
surrendered. What he had done for the Nervii he would do for them. He
would tell their neighbours not to hurt them. They agree, and throw
their arms into the outside ditch of the town, but not quite all their
arms. A part,--a third,--are cunningly kept back; and when Cæsar enters
the town, they who have kept their arms, and others unarmed, try to
escape from the town. They fight, and some thousands are slain. Others
are driven back, and these are sold for slaves. Who, we wonder, could
have been the purchasers, and at what price on that day was a man to be
bought in the city of the Aduatici?
Then Cæsar learns through his lieutenant, young Crassus, the son of his
colleague in the triumvirate, that all the Belgian states, from the
Scheldt to the Bay of Biscay, have been reduced beneath the yoke of the
Roman people. The Germans, too, send ambassadors to him, so convinced
are they that to fight against him is of no avail,--so wonderful an idea
of this last war has pervaded all the tribes of barbarians. But Cæsar is
in a hurry, and can hear no ambassadors now. He wants to get into Italy,
and they must come again to him next summer.
For all which glorious doings a public thanksgiving of fifteen days is
decreed, as soon as the news is heard in Rome.