SEVENTH BOOK OF THE WAR IN GAUL.--THE REVOLT OF VERCINGETORIX.--B.C. 52.
In opening his account of his seventh campaign Cæsar makes almost the
only reference to the affairs of Rome which we find in these memoirs.
Clodius has been murdered. We know, too, that Crassus had been killed at
the head of his army in the east, and that, at the death of Clodius,
Pompey had been created Dictator in the city with the name of sole
Consul. Cæsar, however, only mentions the murder of Clodius, and then
goes on to say that the Gauls, knowing how important to him must be the
affairs of Rome at this moment, think that he cannot now attend to them,
and that, in his absence, they may shake off the Roman yoke. The affairs
of Rome must indeed have been important to Cæsar, if, as no doubt is
true, he had already before his eyes a settled course of action by which
to make himself supreme in the Republic. Clodius, the demagogue, was
dead, whom he never could have loved, but whom it had not suited him to
treat as an enemy. Crassus, too, was dead, whom, on account of his
wealth, Cæsar had admitted as a colleague. Pompey, the third triumvir,
remained at Rome, and was now sole Consul; Pompey who, only twelve
months since, had so fondly given up his legion for the sake of the
Republic,--and for friendship. Cæsar, no doubt, foresaw by this time
that the struggle must be at last between himself and Pompey. The very
forms of the old republican rule were being turned adrift, and Cæsar
must have known, as Pompey also knew, and Clodius had known, and even
Crassus, that a new power would become paramount in the city. But the
hands to wrest such power must be very strong. And the day had not yet
quite come. Having spent six summers in subduing Gaul, Cæsar would not
lose the prestige, the power, the support, which such a territory,
really subdued, would give him. Things, doubtless, were important at
Rome, but it was still his most politic course to return over the Alps
and complete his work. Before the winter was over he heard that the
tribes were conspiring, because it was thought that at such an emergency
Cæsar could not leave Italy.
This last book of the Commentary, as written by Cæsar, tells the story
of the gallant Vercingetorix, one of the Arverni,--the modern
Auvergne,--whose father, Celtillus, is said to have sought the
chieftainship of all Gaul, and to have been killed on that account by
his own state. Vercingetorix is certainly the hero of these wars on the
Gaulish side, though we hear nothing of him till this seventh campaign.
The conspiracy against Rome is afloat, the Carnutes, whose chief town is
Genabum,--Orleans,--having commenced it. Vercingetorix excites his own
countrymen to join, but is expelled from their town, Gergovia, for the
attempt. The Arverni, or at least their chief men, fear to oppose the
Romans; but Vercingetorix obtains a crowd of followers out in the
country, and perseveres. Men of other tribes come to him, from as far
north as Paris, and west from the Ocean. He assumes supreme power, and
enacts and carries out most severe laws for his guidance during the war.
For any greater offence he burns the offender alive and subjects him to
all kinds of torments. For any small fault he cuts off a man’s ears,
pokes out one of his eyes, and sends him home, that he may be an example
visible to all men. By threats of such punishment to those who do not
join him, and by inflicting such on those who do and are then untrue to
him or lukewarm, he gets together a great army. Cæsar, who is still in
Italy, hears of all this, and having made things comfortable with
Pompey, hurries into the province. He tells us of his great difficulty
in joining his army,--of the necessity which is incumbent on him of
securing even the Roman Province from invasion, and of the manner in
which he breaks through snow-clad mountains, the Cevennes, at a time of
the year in which such mountains were supposed to be impassable. He is
forced into fighting before the winter is over, because, unless he does
so, the few friends he has in Gaul,--the Ædui, for instance,--will have
been gained over by the enemy. This made it very difficult, Cæsar tells
us, for him to know what to do; but he decides that he must begin his
campaign, though it be winter still.
Cæsar, moving his army about with wonderful quickness, takes three towns
in the centre of Gaul, of which Genabum, Orleans, is the first, and
thus provides himself with food. Vercingetorix, when he hears of these
losses, greatly troubled in his mind that Cæsar should thus he enabled
to exist on the provisions gathered by the Gauls, determines to burn all
the Gaulish towns in those parts. He tells his people that there is
nothing else for them in their present emergency, and that they must
remember when they see their hearths smoking and their property
destroyed, that it would be, or ought to be, much more grievous for them
to know that their wives and children would become slaves, as
undoubtedly would be their fate, if Cæsar were allowed to prevail. The
order is given. Twenty cities belonging to one tribe are burned to the
ground. The same thing is done in other states. But there is one very
beautiful city, the glory of the country round, which can, they say, be
so easily defended that it will be a comfort rather than a peril to
them. Avaricum, the present Bourges,--must that also be burned? May not
Avaricum be spared? Vercingetorix is all for burning Avaricum as he has
burned the others; but he allows himself to be persuaded, and the city
is spared--for the time.
Cæsar, of course, determines to take Avaricum; but he encounters great
difficulties. The cattle have been driven away. There is no corn. Those
wretched Ædui do almost nothing for him; and the Boii, who are their
neighbours, and who, at the best, are but a poor scanty people, are
equally unserviceable. Some days his army is absolutely without food;
but yet no word of complaint is heard “unworthy of the majesty and
former victories of the Roman people.” The soldiers even beg him to
continue the siege when he offers to raise it because of the hardships
they are enduring. Let them endure anything, they say, but failure!
“Moreover Cæsar, when he would accost his legions one by one at their
work, and would tell them that he would raise the siege if they could
but ill bear their privations, was implored by all of them not to do
that. They said that for many years under his command they had so well
done their duty that they had undergone no disgrace, had never quitted
their ground leaving aught unfinished,”--except the subjugation of
Britain they might perhaps have said,--“that they would be now disgraced
if they should raise a siege which had been commenced; that they would
rather bear all hardships than not avenge the Roman citizens who had
perished at Genabum by the perfidy of the Gauls.” Cæsar puts these words
into the mouths of his legionaries, and as we read them we believe that
such was the existing spirit of the men. Cæsar’s soldiers now had
learned better than to cry because they were afraid of their enemies.
Then we hear that Vercingetorix is in trouble with the Gauls. The Gauls,
when they see the Romans so near them, think that they are to be
betrayed into Cæsar’s hands, and they accuse their leader. But
Vercingetorix makes them a speech, and brings up certain Roman prisoners
to give evidence as to the evil condition of the Roman army.
Vercingetorix swears that these prisoners are soldiers from the Roman
legions, and so settles that little trouble; but Cæsar, defending his
legionaries, asserts that the men so used were simply slaves.
Vercingetorix is in his camp at some little distance from Avaricum,
while Cæsar is determined to take the city. We have the description of
the siege, concise, graphic, and clear. We are told of the nature of the
walls; how the Gauls were good at mining and countermining; how they
flung hot pitch and boiling grease on the invaders; how this was kept
up, one Gaul after another stepping on to the body of his dying comrade;
how at last they resolved to quit the town and make their way by night
to the camp of Vercingetorix, but were stopped by the prayers of their
own women, who feared Cæsar’s mercies;--and how at last the city was
taken. We cannot but execrate Cæsar when he tells us coolly of the
result. They were all killed. The old, the women, and the children,
perished altogether, slaughtered by the Romans. Out of forty thousand
inhabitants, Cæsar says that about eight hundred got safely to
Vercingetorix. Of course we doubt the accuracy of Cæsar’s figures when
he tells us of the numbers of the Gauls; but we do not doubt that but a
few escaped, and that all but a few were slaughtered. When, during the
last campaign, the Gauls at Genabum (Orleans) had determined on revolt
against Cæsar, certain Roman traders--usurers for the most part, who had
there established themselves--were killed. Cæsar gives this as the
cause, and sufficient cause, for the wholesale slaughter of women and
children! One reflects that not otherwise, perhaps, could he have
conquered Gaul, and that Gaul had to be conquered; but we cannot for
the moment but abhor the man capable of such work. Vercingetorix bears
his loss bravely. He reminds the Gauls that had they taken his advice
the city would have been destroyed by themselves and not defended; he
tells them that all the states of Gaul are now ready to join him; and he
prepares to fortify a camp after the Roman fashion. Hitherto the Gauls
have fought either from behind the walls of towns, or out in the open
country without other protection than that of the woods and hills.
Then there is another episode with those unsatisfactory Ædui. There is a
quarrel among them who shall be their chief magistrate,--a certain old
man or a certain young man,--and they send to Cæsar to settle the
question. Cæsar’s hands are very full; but, as he explains, it is
essential to him that his allies shall be kept in due subordinate order.
He therefore absolutely goes in person to one of their cities, and
decides that the young man shall be the chief magistrate. But, as he
seldom does anything for nothing, he begs that ten thousand Æduan
infantry and all the Æduan cavalry may be sent to help him against
Vercingetorix. The Ædui have no alternative but to comply. Their
compliance, however, is not altogether of a friendly nature. The old man
who has been put out of the magistracy gets hold of the Æduan general of
the forces; and the Æduan army takes the field,--to help, not Cæsar, but
Vercingetorix! There is a large amount of lying and treachery among the
Ædui, and of course tidings of what is going on are carried to Cæsar.
Over and over again these people deceive him, betray him, and endeavour
to injure his cause; but he always forgives them, or pretends to forgive
them. It is his policy to show to the Gauls how great can be the
friendship and clemency of Cæsar. If he would have burned the Ædui and
spared Bourges we should have liked him better; but then, had he done
so, he would not have been Cæsar.
While Cæsar is thus troubled with his allies, he has trouble enough also
with his enemies. Vercingetorix, with his followers, after that terrible
reverse at Avaricum,--Bourges,--goes into his own country which we know
as Auvergne, and there encamps his army on a high hill with a flat top,
called Gergovia. All of us who have visited Clermont have probably seen
the hill. Vercingetorix makes three camps for his army on the hill, and
the Arverni have a town there. The Gaul has so placed himself that there
shall be a river not capable of being forded between himself and Cæsar.
But the Roman general makes a bridge and sets himself down with his
legions before Gergovia. The limits of this little work do not admit of
any detailed description of Cæsar’s battles; but perhaps there is none
more interesting than this siege. The three Gaulish camps are taken. The
women of Gergovia, thinking that their town is taken also, leaning over
the walls, implore mercy from the Romans, and beg that they may not be
treated as have the women of Avaricum. Certain leading Roman soldiers
absolutely climb up into the town. The reader also thinks that Cæsar is
to prevail, as he always does prevail. But he is beaten back, and has
to give it up. On this occasion the gallant Vercingetorix is the master
of the day, and Cæsar excuses himself by explaining how it was that his
legions were defeated through the rash courage of his own men, and not
by bad generalship of his own. And it probably was so. The reader always
feels inclined to believe the Commentary, even when he may most dislike
Cæsar. Cæsar again makes his bridge over the river, the Allier, and
retires into the territory of his doubtful friends the Ædui. He tells us
himself that in that affair he lost 700 men and 46 officers.
It seems that at this time Cæsar with his whole army must have been in
great danger of being destroyed by the Gauls. Why Vercingetorix did not
follow up his victory and prevent Cæsar from escaping over the Allier is
not explained. No doubt the requirements of warfare were not known to
the Gaul as they were to the Roman. As it was, Cæsar had enough to do to
save his army. The Ædui, of course, turned against him again. All his
stores and treasure and baggage were at Noviodunum,--Nevers,--a town
belonging to the Ædui. These are seized by his allies, who destroy all
that they cannot carry away, and Cæsar’s army is in danger of being
starved. Everything has been eaten up where he is, and the Loire,
without bridges or fords, was between him and a country where food was
to be found. He does cross the river, the Ædui having supposed that it
would be impossible. He finds a spot in which his men can wade across
with their shoulders just above the waters. Bad as the spot is for
fording, in his great difficulty he makes the attempt and accomplishes
it.
Then there is an account of a battle which Labienus is obliged to fight
up near Paris. He has four legions away with him there, and having heard
of Cæsar’s misfortune at Gergovia, knows how imperative it is that he
should join his chief. He fights his battle and wins it, and Cæsar tells
the story quite as enthusiastically as though he himself had been the
conqueror. When this difficulty is overcome, Labienus comes south and
joins his Imperator.
The Gauls are still determined to drive Cæsar out of their country, and
with this object call together a great council at Bibracte, which was
the chief town of the Ædui. It was afterwards called Augustodunum, which
has passed into the modern name Autun. At this meeting, the Ædui, who,
having been for some years past bolstered up by Rome, think themselves
the first of all the Gauls, demand that the chief authority in the
revolt against Rome,--now that they have revolted,--shall be intrusted
to them. An Æduan chief, they think, should be the commander-in-chief in
this war against Rome. Who has done so much for the revolt as the Ædui,
who have thrown over their friends the Romans,--now for about the tenth
time? But Vercingetorix is unanimously elected, and the Æduan chiefs are
disgusted. Then there is another battle. Vercingetorix thinks that he is
strong enough to attack the enemy as Cæsar is going down south towards
the Province. Cæsar, so says Vercingetorix, is in fact retreating. And,
indeed, it seems that Cæsar was retreating. But the Gauls are beaten and
fly, losing some three thousand of their men who are slaughtered in the
fight. Vercingetorix shuts himself up in a town called Alesia, and
Cæsar prepares for another siege.
The taking of Alesia is the last event told in Cæsar’s Commentary on the
Gallic War, and of all the stories told, it is perhaps the most
heartrending. Civilisation was never forwarded in a fashion more
terrible than that which prevailed at this siege. Vercingetorix with his
whole army is forced into the town, and Cæsar surrounds it with ditches,
works, lines, and ramparts, so that no one shall be able to escape from
it. Before this is completed, and while there is yet a way open of
leaving the town, the Gaulish chief sends out horsemen, who are to go to
all the tribes of Gaul, and convene the fighting men to that place, so
that by their numbers they may raise the siege and expel the Romans. We
find that these horsemen do as they are bidden, and that a great Gaulish
conference is held, at which it is decided how many men shall be sent by
each tribe. Vercingetorix has been very touching in his demand that all
this shall be done quickly. He has food for the town for thirty days.
Probably it may be stretched to last a little longer. Then, if the
tribes are not true to him, he and the eighty thousand souls he has with
him must perish. The horsemen make good their escape from the town, and
Vercingetorix, with his eighty thousand hungry souls around him,
prepares to wait. It seems to us, when we think what must have been the
Gallia of those days, and when we remember how far thirty days would now
be for sufficing for such a purpose, that the difficulties to be
overcome were insuperable. But Cæsar says that the tribes did send their
men, each tribe sending the number demanded, except the Bellovaci,--the
men of Beauvais,--who declared that they chose to wage war on their own
account; but even they, out of kindness, lent two thousand men. Cæsar
explains that even his own best friends among the Gauls,--among whom was
one Commius, who had been very useful to him in Britain, and whom he had
made king over his own tribe, the Atrebates,--at this conjuncture of
affairs felt themselves bound to join the national movement. This
Commius had even begged for the two thousand men of Beauvais. So great,
says Cæsar, was the united desire of Gaul to recover Gallic liberty,
that they were deterred from coming by no memory of benefits or of
friendship. Eight thousand horsemen and two hundred and forty thousand
footmen assembled themselves in the territories of the Ædui. Alesia was
north of the Ædui, amidst the Lingones. This enormous army chose its
generals, and marched off to Alesia to relieve Vercingetorix.
But the thirty days were past, and more than past, and the men and women
in Alesia were starving. No tidings ever had reached Alesia of the
progress which was being made in the gathering of their friends. It had
come to be very bad with them there. Some were talking of unconditional
surrender. Others proposed to cut their way through the Roman lines.
Then one Critognatus had a suggestion to make, and Cæsar gives us the
words of his speech. It has been common with the Greek and Latin
historians to put speeches into the mouths of certain orators, adding
the words when the matter has come within either their knowledge or
belief. Cæsar does not often thus risk his credibility; but on this
occasion he does so. We have the speech of Critognatus, word for word.
Of those who speak of surrender he thinks so meanly that he will not
notice them. As to that cutting a way through the Roman lines, which
means death, he is of opinion that to endure misfortune is greater than
to die. Many a man can die who cannot bravely live and suffer. Let them
endure a little longer. Why doubt the truth and constancy of the tribes?
Then he makes his suggestion. Let those who can fight, and are thus
useful,--eat those who are useless and cannot fight; and thus live till
the levies of all Gaul shall have come to their succour! Those who have
authority in Alesia cannot quite bring themselves to this, but they do
that which is horrible in the next degree. They will turn out of the
town all the old, all the weak, and all the women. After that,--if that
will not suffice,--then they will begin to eat each other. The town
belongs, or did belong, to a people called the Mandubii,--not to
Vercingetorix or his tribe; and the Mandubii, with their children and
women, are compelled to go out.
But whither shall they go? Cæsar has told us that there was a margin of
ground between his lines and the city wall,--an enclosed space from
which there was no egress except into Cæsar’s camp or into the besieged
town. Here stand these weak ones,--aged men, women, and children,--and
implore Cæsar to receive them into his camp, so that they may pass out
into the open country. There they stood as supplicants, on that narrow
margin of ground between two armies. Their own friends, having no food
for them, had expelled them from their own homes. Would Cæsar have
mercy? Cæsar, with a wave of his hand, declines to have mercy. He tells
us what he himself decides to do in eight words. “At Cæsar, depositis in
vallo custodiis, recipi prohibebat.” “But Cæsar, having placed guards
along the rampart, forbade that they should be received.” We hear no
more of them, but we know that they perished!
The collected forces of Gaul do at last come up to attempt the rescue of
Vercingetorix,--and indeed they come in time; were they able by coming
to do anything? They attack Cæsar in his camp, and a great battle is
fought beneath the eyes of the men in Alesia. But Cæsar is very careful
that those who now are hemmed up in the town shall not join themselves
to the Gauls who had spread over the country all around him. We hear how
during the battle Cæsar comes up himself, and is known by the colour of
his cloak. We again feel, as we read his account of the fighting, that
the Gauls nearly win, and that they ought to win. But at last they are
driven headlong in flight,--all the levies of all the tribes. The Romans
kill very many: were not the labour of killing too much for them, they
might kill all. A huge crowd, however, escapes, and the men scatter
themselves back into their tribes.
On the next day Vercingetorix yields himself and the city to Cæsar.
During the late battle he and his men shut up within the walls have been
simply spectators of the fighting. Cæsar is sitting in his lines before
his camp; and there the chieftains, with Vercingetorix at their head,
are brought up to him. Plutarch tells us a story of the chieftain
riding up before Cæsar, to deliver himself, with gilt armour, on a grand
horse, caracolling and prancing. We cannot fancy that any horse out of
Alesia, could, after the siege, have been fit for such holiday occasion.
The horses out of Vercingetorix’s stables had probably been eaten many
days since. Then Cæsar again forgives the Ædui; but Vercingetorix is
taken as a prisoner to Rome, is kept a prisoner for six years, is then
led in Cæsar’s Triumph, and, after these six years, is destroyed, as a
victim needed for Cæsar’s glory,--that so honour may be done to Cæsar!
Cæsar puts his army into winter quarters, and determines to remain
himself in Gaul during the winter. When his account of these things
reaches Home, a “supplication” of twenty days is decreed in his honour.
* * * * *
This is the end of Cæsar’s Commentary “De Bello Gallico.” The war was
carried on for two years more; and a memoir of Cæsar’s doings during
those two years,--B.C. 51 and 50,--was written, after Cæsar’s manner, by
one Aulus Hirtius. There is no pretence on the writer’s part that this
was the work of Cæsar’s hands, as in a short preface he makes an
author’s apology for venturing to continue what Cæsar had begun. The
most memorable circumstance of Cæsar’s warfares told in this record of
two campaigns is the taking of Uxellodunum, a town in the south-west of
France, the site of which is not now known. Cæsar took the town by
cutting off the water, and then horribly mutilated the inhabitants who
had dared to defend their own hearths. “Cæsar,” says this historian,
“knowing well that his clemency was acknowledged by all men, and that he
need not fear that any punishment inflicted by him would be attributed
to the cruelty of his nature, perceiving also that he could never know
what might be the end of his policy if such rebellions should continue
to break out, thought that other Gauls should be deterred by the fear of
punishment.” So he cut off the hands of all those who had borne arms at
Uxellodunum, and turned the maimed wretches adrift upon the world! And
his apologist adds, that he gave them life so that the punishment of
these wicked ones,--who had fought for their liberty,--might be the more
manifest to the world at large! This was perhaps the crowning act of
Cæsar’s cruelty,--defended, as we see, by the character he had achieved
for clemency!
Soon after this Gaul was really subdued, and then we hear the first
preparatory notes of the coming civil war. An attempt was made at Rome
to ruin Cæsar in his absence. One of the consuls of the year,--B.C.
51,--endeavoured to deprive him of the remainder of the term of his
proconsulship, and to debar him from seeking the suffrages of the people
for the consulship in his absence. Two of his legions are also demanded
from him, and are surrendered by him. The order, indeed, is for one
legion from him and one from Pompeius; but he has had with him, as the
reader will remember, a legion borrowed from Pompeius;--and thus in fact
Cæsar is called upon to give up two legions. And he gives them up,--not
being as yet quite ready to pass the Rubicon.