without hesitation.  So Bituitus, King of the Arvernians, was for trying
accommodation.  He was a powerful and wealthy chieftain.  His father
Luern used to give amongst the mountains magnificent entertainments; he
had a space of twelve square furlongs enclosed, and dispensed wine, mead,
and beer from cisterns made within the enclosure; and all the Arvernians
crowded to his feasts.  Bituitus displayed before the Romans his barbaric
splendor.  A numerous escort, superbly clad, surrounded his ambassador;
in attendance were packs of enormous hounds; and in front; went a bard,
or poet, who sang, with rotte or harp in hand, the glory of Bituitus and
of the Arvernian people.  Disdainfully the consul received and sent back
the embassy.  War broke out; the Allobrogians, with the usual confidence
and hastiness of all barbarians, attacked alone, without waiting for the
Arvernians, and were beaten at the confluence of the Rhone and the
Sorgue, a little above Avignon.  The next year, 121 B.C., the Arvernians
in their turn descended from the mountains, and crossed the Rhone with
all their tribes, diversely armed and clad, and ranged each about its own
chieftain.  In his barbaric vanity, Bituitus marched to war with the same
pomp that he had in vain displayed to obtain peace.  He sat upon a car
glittering with silver; he wore a plaid of striking colors; and he
brought in his train a pack of war-hounds.  At the sight of the Roman
legions, few in number, iron-clad, in serried ranks that took up little
space, he contemptuously cried, "There is not a meal for my hounds."

The Arvernians were beaten, as the Allobrogians had been.  The hounds of
Bituitus were of little use to him against the elephants which the Romans
had borrowed from Asiatic usage, and which spread consternation amongst
the Gauls.  The Roman historians say that the Arvernian army was two
hundred thousand strong, and that one hundred and twenty thousand were
slain; but the figures are absurd, like most of those found in ancient
chronicles.  We know nowadays, thanks to modern civilization, which shows
everything in broad daylight, and measures everything with proper
caution, that only the most populous and powerful nations, and that at
great expenditure of trouble and time, can succeed in moving armies of
two hundred thousand men, and that no battle, however murderous it may
be, ever costs one hundred and twenty thousand lives.

Rome treated the Arvernians with consideration; but the Allobrogians lost
their existence as a nation.  The Senate declared them subject to the
Roman people; and all the country comprised between the Alps, the Rhone
from its entry into the Lake of Geneva to its mouth, and the
Mediterranean, was made a Roman consular province, which means that every
year a consul must march thither with his army.  In the three following
years, indeed, the consuls extended the boundaries of the new province,
on the right bank of the Rhone, to the frontier of the Pyrenees
southward.  In the year 115 B.C. a colony of Roman citizens was conducted
to Narbonne, a town even then of importance, in spite of the objections
made by certain senators who were unwilling, say the historians, so to
expose Roman citizens "to the waves of barbarism."  This was the second
colony which went and established itself out of Italy; the first had been
founded on the ruins of Carthage.

Having thus completed their conquest, the Senate, to render possession
safe and sure, decreed the occupation of the passes of the Alps which
opened Gaul to Italy.  There was up to that time no communication with
Gaul save along the Mediterranean, by a narrow and difficult path, which
has become in our time the beautiful route called the Corniche.  The
mountain tribes defended their independence with desperation; when that
of the Stumians, who occupied the pass of the maritime Alps, saw their
inability to hold their own, they cut the throats of their wives and
children, set fire to their houses, and threw themselves into the flames.
But the Senate pursued its course imperturbably.  All the chief defiles
of the Alps fell into its hands.  The old Phoenician road, restored by
the consul Domitius, bore thenceforth his name (Via Donaitia), and less
than sixty years after Cisalpine Gaul had been reduced to a Roman
province, Rome possessed, in Transalpine Gaul, a second province, whither
she sent her armies, and where she established her citizens without
obstruction.  But Providence seldom allows men, even in the midst of
their successes, to forget for long how precarious they are; and when He
is pleased to remind them, it is not by words, as the Persians reminded
their king, but by fearful events that He gives His warnings.  At the
very moment when Rome believed herself set free from Gallic invasions,
and on the point of avenging herself by a course of conquest, a new
invasion, more extensive and more barbarous, came bursting upon Rome and
upon Gaul at the same time, and plunged them together in the same
troubles and the same perils.

In the year 113 B.C. there appeared to the north of the Adriatic, on the
right bank of the Danube, an immense multitude of barbarians, ravaging
Noricum and threatening Italy.  Two nations predominated; the Kymrians or
Cimbrians, and the Teutons, the national name of the Germans.  They came
from afar, northward, from the Cimbrian peninsula, nowadays Jutland, and
from the countries bordering on the Baltic which nowadays form the
duchies of Holstein and Schleswig.  A violent shock of earthquake, a
terrible inundation, had driven them, they said, from their homes; and
those countries do indeed show traces of such events.  And Cimbrians and
Teutons had been for some time roaming over Germany.

The consul Papirius Carbo, despatched in all haste to defend the
frontier, bade them, in the name of the Roman people, to withdraw.  The
barbarians modestly replied that they had no intention of settling in
Noricum, and if the Romans had rights over the country, they would carry
their arms elsewhere.  The consul, who had found haughtiness succeed,
thought he might also employ perfidy against the barbarians.  He offered
guides to conduct them out of Noricum; and the guides misled them.  The
consul attacked them unexpectedly during the night, and was beaten.

However, the barbarians, still fearful, did not venture into Italy.
They roamed for three years along the Danube, as far as the mountains of
Macedonia and Thrace.  Then retracing their steps, and marching eastward,
they inundated the valleys of the Helvetic Alps, now Switzerland, having
their numbers swelled by other tribes, Gallic or German, who preferred
joining in pillage to undergoing it.  The Ambrons, among others, a Gallic
peoplet that had taken refuge in Helvetia after the expulsion of the
Umbrians by the Etruscans from Italy, joined the Cimbrians and Teutons;
and in the year 110 B.C.  all together entered Gaul, at first by way of
Belgica, and then, continuing their wanderings and ravages in central
Gaul, they at last reached the Rhone, on the frontiers of the Roman
province.

There the name of Rome again arrested their progress; they applied to her
anew for lands, with the offer of their services.  "Rome," answered
M. Silanus, who commanded in the province, "has neither lands to give you
nor services to accept from you."  He attacked them in their camp, and
was beaten.

Three consuls, L. Cassius, C. Servilius Omepio, and Cu. Manlius,
successively experienced the same fate.  With the barbarians victory bred
presumption.  Their chieftains met and deliberated whether they should
not forthwith cross into Italy, to exterminate or enslave the Romans,
and make Kymrian spoken at Rome.  Scaurus, a prisoner, was in the tent,
loaded with fetters, during the deliberation.  He was questioned about
the resources of his country.  "Cross not the Alps," said he; "go not
into Italy: the Romans are invincible."  In a transport of fury the
chieftain of the Kymrians, Boiorix by name, fell upon the Roman, and ran
him through.  Howbeit the advice of Scaurus was followed.  The barbarians
did not as yet dare to decide upon invading Italy; but they freely
scoured the Roman province, meeting here with repulse, and there with
re-enforcement from the peoplets who formed the inhabitants.  The
Tectosagian Voles, Hymrian in origin and maltreated by Rome, joined them.
Then, on a sudden, whilst the Teutons and Ambrons remained in Gaul, the
Kymrians passed over to Spain without apparent motive, and probably as an
overswollen torrent divides, and disperses its waters in all directions.
The commotion at Rome was extreme; never had so many or such wild
barbarians threatened the Republic; never had so many or such large Roman
armies been beaten in succession.  There was but one man, it was said,
who could avert the danger, and give Rome the ascendency.  It was Marius,
low-born, but already illustrious; esteemed by the Senate for his genius
as a commander and for his victories; swaying at his will the people, who
saw in him one of themselves, and admired without envying him; beloved
and feared by the army for his bravery, his rigorous discipline, and his
readiness to share their toils and dangers; stern and rugged; without
education, eloquence, or riches; ill-suited for shining in public
assemblies, but resolute and dexterous in action; verily made to dominate
the vigorous but unrefined multitude, whether in camp or city, partly by
participating their feelings, partly by giving them in his own person a
specimen of the deserts and sometimes of the virtues which they esteem
but do not possess.

He was consul in Africa, where he was putting an end to the war with
Jugurtha.  He was elected a second time consul, without interval and in
his absence, contrary to all the laws of the Republic.  Scarcely had he
returned, when, on descending from the Capitol, where he had just
received a triumph for having conquered and captured Jugurtha, he set out
for Gaul.  On his arrival, instead of proceeding, as his predecessors,
to attack the barbarians at once, he confined himself to organizing and
inuring his troops, subjecting them to frequent marches, all kinds of
military exercises, and long and hard labor.  To insure supplies he made
them dig, towards the mouths of the Rhone, a large canal which formed a
junction with the river a little above Arles, and which, at its entrance
into the sea, offered good harborage for vessels.  This canal, which
existed for a long while under the name of Rossae Mariance (the dikes of
Marius), is filled up nowadays; but at its southern extremity the village
of Foz still preserves a remembrance of it.  Trained in this severe
school, the soldiers acquired such a reputation for sobriety and
laborious assiduity, that they were proverbially called Marius's mules.

He was as careful for their moral state as for their physical fitness,
and labored to exalt their imaginations as well as to harden their
bodies.  In that camp, and amidst those toils in which he kept them
strictly engaged, frequent sacrifices, and scrupulous care in consulting
the oracles, kept superstition at a white heat.  A Syrian prophetess,
named Martha, who had been sent to Marius by his wife Julia, the aunt of
Julius Caesar, was ever with him, and accompanied him at the sacred
ceremonies and on the march, being treated with the greatest respect, and
having vast influence over the minds of the soldiers.

Two years rolled on in this fashion; and yet Marius would not move.  The
increasing devastation of the country, fire, and famine, the despair and
complaints of the inhabitants, did not shake his resolution.  Nor was the
confidence he inspired both in the camp and at Rome a whit shaken: he was
twice re-elected consul, once while he was still absent, and once during
a visit he paid to Rome to give directions to his party in person.

It was at Rome, in the year 102 B.C., that he learned how the Kymrians,
weary of Spain, had recrossed the Pyrenees, rejoined their old comrades,
and had at last resolved, in concert, to invade Italy; the Kymrians from
the north, by way of Helvetia and Noricum, the Teutons and Ambrons from
the south, by way of the maritime Alps.  They were to form a junction on
the banks of the Po, and thence march together on Rome.  At this news
Marius returned forthwith to Gaul, and, without troubling himself about
the Kymrians, who had really put themselves in motion towards the
north-east, he placed his camp so as to cover at one and the same time
the two Roman roads which crossed at Arles, and by one of which the
Ambro-Teutons must necessarily pass to enter Italy on the south.

They soon appeared "in immense numbers," say the historians, "with their
hideous looks and their wild cries," drawing up their chariots and
planting their tents in front of the Roman camp.  They showered upon
Marius and his soldiers continual insult and defiance.  The Romans, in
their irritation, would fain have rushed out of their camp, but Marius
restrained them.  "It is no question," said he, with his simple and
convincing common sense, "of gaining triumphs and trophies; it is a
question of averting this storm of war and of saving Italy."  A Teutonic
chieftain came one day up to the very gates of the camp, and challenged
him to fight.  Marius had him informed that if he were tired of life he
could go and hang himself.  As the barbarian still persisted, Marius sent
him a gladiator.

However, he made his soldiers, in regular succession, mount the ramparts,
to get them familiarized with the cries, looks, arms, and movements of
the barbarians.  The most distinguished of his officers, young Sertorius,
who understood and spoke Gallic well, penetrated, in the disguise of a
Gaul, into the camp of the Ambrons, and informed Marius of what was going
on there.

At last the barbarians, in their impatience, having vainly attempted to
storm the Roman camp, struck their own, and put themselves in motion
towards the Alps.  For six whole days, it is said, their bands were
defiling beneath the ramparts of the Romans, and crying, "Have you any
message for your wives?  We shall soon be with them."

Marius, too, struck his camp, and followed them.  They halted, both of
them, near Aix, on the borders of the Coenus, the barbarians in the
valley, Marius on a hill which commanded it.  The ardor of the Romans was
at its height; it was warm weather; there was a want of water on the
hill, and the soldiers murmured.  "You are men," said Marius, pointing to
the river below, "and there is water to be bought with blood."  "Why
don't you lead us against them at once, then," said a soldier, "whilst we
still have blood in our veins?"  "We must first fortify our camp,"
answered Marius quietly.

The soldiers obeyed: but the hour of battle had come, and well did Marius
know it.  It commenced on the brink of the Coenus, between some Ambrons
who were bathing and some Roman slaves gone down to draw water.  When the
whole horde of the Ambrons advanced to the battle, shouting their war-cry
of Ambra! Ambra! a body of Gallic auxiliaries in the Roman army, and in
the first rank, heard them with great amazement; for it was their own
name and their own cry; there were tribes of Ambrons in the Alps
subjected to Rome as well as in the Helvetic Alps; and Ambra! Ambra!
resounded on both sides.

The battle lasted two days, the first against the Ambrons, the second
against the Teutons.  Both were beaten, in spite of their savage bravery,
and the equal bravery of their women, who defended, with indomitable
obstinacy, the cars with which they had remained almost alone, in charge
of the children and the booty.  After the women, it was necessary to
exterminate the hounds who defended their masters' bodies.  Here again
the figures of the historians are absurd, although they differ; the most
extravagant raise the number of barbarians slain to two hundred thousand,
and that of the prisoners to eighty thousand; the most moderate stop at
one hundred thousand.  In any case, the carnage was great, for the
battle-field, where all these corpses rested without burial, rotting in
the sun and rain, got the name of Campi Putridi, or Fields of
Putrefaction, a name traceable even nowadays in that of Pourrires, a
neighboring village.

[Illustration: The Women defending the Cars----58]

As to the booty, the Roman army with one voice made a free gift of it to
Marius; but he, remembering, perhaps, what had been lately done by the
barbarians after the defeat of the consuls Manlius and Czepio, determined
to have it all burned in honor of the gods.  He had a great sacrifice
prepared.  The soldiers, crowned with laurel, were ranged about the pyre;
their general, holding on high a blazing torch, was about to apply the
light with his own hand, when suddenly, on the very spot, whether by
design or accident, came from Rome the news that Marius had just been for
the fifth time elected consul.  In the midst of acclamations from his
army, and with a fresh chaplet bound upon his brow, he applied the torch
in person, and completed the sacrifice.

Were we travelling in Provence, in the neighborhood of Aix, we should
encounter, peradventure, some peasant who, whilst pointing out to us the
summit of a lull whereon, in all probability, Marius offered, nineteen
hundred and forty years ago, that glorious sacrifice, would say to us in
his native dialect, "Aqui es lou deloubre do la Vittoria:"  "There is the
temple of victory."  There, indeed, was built, not far from a pyramid
erected in honor of Marius, a little temple dedicated to Victory.
Thither, every year, in the month of May, the population used to come and
celebrate a festival and light a bonfire, answered by other bonfires on
the neighboring heights.  When Gaul became Christian, neither monument
nor festival perished; a saint took the place of the goddess, and the
temple of Victory became the church of St. Victoire.  There are still
ruins of it to this day; the religious procession which succeeded the
pagan festival ceased only at the first outburst of the Revolution; and
the vague memory of a great national event still mingles in popular
tradition with the legends of the saint.

The Ambrons and Teutons beaten, there remained the Kymrians, who,
according to agreement, had repassed the Helvetic Alps and entered Italy
on the north-east, by way of the Adige.  Marius marched against them in
July of the following year, 101 B.C.  Ignorant of what had occurred in
Gaul, and possessed, as ever, with the desire of a settlement, they again
sent to him a deputation, saying, "Give us lands and towns for us and our
brethren."  "What brethren?" asked Marius.  "The Teutons."  The Romans
who were about Marius began to laugh.  "Let your brethren be," said
Marius; "they have land, and will always have it; they received it from
us."  The Kymrians, perceiving the irony of his tone, burst out into
threats, telling Marius that he should suffer for it at their hands
first, and afterwards at those of the Teutons when they arrived.  "They
are here," rejoined Marius; "you must not depart without saluting your
brethren;" and he had Teutobod, King of the Teutons, brought out with
other captive chieftains.  The envoys reported the sad news in their own
camp, and three days afterwards, July 30, a great battle took place
between the Kymrians and the Romans in the Raudine Plains, a large tract
near Verceil.

It were unnecessary to dwell on the details of the battle, which
resembled that of Aix; besides, fought as it was in Italy and by none but
Romans, it has but little to do with a history of Gaul.  It has been
mentioned only to make known the issue of that famous invasion, of which
Gaul was the principal theatre.  For a moment it threatened the very
existence of the Roman Republic.  The victories of Marius arrested the
torrent, but did not dry up its source.  The great movement which drove
from Asia to Europe, and from eastern to western Europe, masses of roving
populations, followed its course, bringing incessantly upon the Roman
frontiers new comers and new perils.  A greater man than Marius, Julius
Caesar in fact, saw that to effectually resist these clouds of barbaric
assailants, the country into which they poured must be conquered and made
Roman.  The conquest of Gaul was the accomplishment of that idea, and the
decisive step towards the transformation of the Roman republic into a
Roman empire.




CHAPTER IV.----GAUL CONQUERED BY JULIUS CAESAR.

Historians, ancient and modern, have attributed to the Roman Senate,
from the time of the establishment of the Roman province in Gaul, a
long-premeditated design of conquering Gaul altogether.  Others have said
that when Julius Caesar, in the year of Rome 696, (58 B C.) got himself
appointed proconsul in Gaul, his single aim was to form for himself there
an army devoted to his person, of which he might avail himself to satisfy
his ambition and make himself master of Rome.  We should not be too ready
to believe in these far-reaching and precise plans, conceived and settled
so long beforehand, whether by a senate or a single man.  Prevision and
exact calculation do not count for so much in the lives of governments
and of peoples.  It is unexpected events, inevitable situations, the
imperious necessities of successive epochs, which most often decide the
conduct of the greatest powers and the most able politicians.  It is
after the fair, when the course of facts and their consequences has
received full development, that, amidst their tranquil meditations,
annalists and historians, in their learned way, attribute everything to
systematic plans and personal calculations on the part of the chief
actors.  There is much less of combination than of momentary inspiration,
derived from circumstances, in the resolutions and conduct of political
chiefs, kings, senators, or great men.  From the time that discord and
corruption had turned the Roman Republic into a bloody and tyrannical
anarchy, the Roman Senate no longer meditated grand designs, and its
members were preoccupied only with the question of escaping or avenging
proscriptions.  When Caesar procured for himself the government for five
years of the Gauls, the fact was, that, not desiring to be a sanguinary
dictator like Scylla, or a gala chieftain like Pompey, he went and sought
abroad, for his own glory and fortune's sake, in a war of general Roman
interest, the means and chances of success which were not furnished to
him in Rome itself by the dogged and monotonous struggle of the factions.

[Illustration: The Roman Army invading Gaul----61]

In spite of the victories of Marius, and the destruction or dispersion of
the Teutons and Cimbrians, the whole of Gaul remained seriously disturbed
and threatened.  At the north-east, in Belgica, some bands of other
Teutons, who had begun to be called Germans (men of war), had passed over
the left bank of the Rhine, and were settling or wandering there without
definite purpose.  In eastern and central Gaul, in the valleys of the
Jura and Auvergne, on the banks of the Saone, the Allier, and the Doubs,
the two great Gallic confederations, that of the AEduans and that of the
Arvernians, were disputing the preponderance, and making war one upon
another, seeking the aid, respectively, of the Romans and of the Germans.
At the foot of the Alps, the little nation of Allobrogians, having fallen
a prey to civil dissension, had given up its independence to Rome.  Even
in southern and western Gaul the populations of Agnitania were rising,
vexing the Roman province, and rendering necessary, on both sides of the
Pyrenees, the intervention of Roman legions.  Everywhere floods of
barbaric populations were pressing upon Gaul, were carrying disgnietude
even where they had not themselves yet penetrated, and causing
presentiments of a general commotion.  The danger burst before long upon
particular places and in connection with particular names which have
remained historical.  In the war with the confederation of the AEduans,
that of the Arvernians called to their aid the German Ariovistus,
chieftain of a confederation of tribes which, under the name of Suevians,
were roving over the right bank of the Rhine, ready at any time to cross
the river.  Ariovistus, with fifteen thousand warriors at his back, was
not slow in responding to the appeal.  The AEdaans were beaten; and
Ariovistus settled amongst the Gauls who had been thoughtless enough to
appeal to him.  Numerous bands of Suevians came and rejoined him; and in
two or three years after his victory he had about him, it was said, one
hundred and twenty thousand warriors.  He had appropriated to them a
third of the territory of his Gallic allies, and he imperiously demanded
another third to satisfy other twenty-five thousand of his old German
comrades, who asked to share his booty and his new country.  One of the
foremost AEduans, Divitiacus by name, went and invoked the succor of the
Roman people, the patrons of his confederation.  He was admitted to the
presence of the Senate, and invited to be seated; but he modestly
declined, and standing, leaning upon his shield, he set forth the
sufferings and the claims of his country.  He received kindly promises,
which at first remained without fruit.  He, however, remained at Rome,
persistent in his solicitations, and carrying on intercourse with several
Romans of consideration, notably with Cicero, who says of him, "I knew
Divitiacus, the AEduan, who claimed proficiency in that natural science
which the Greeks call physiology, and he predicted the future, either by
augury or his own conjecture."  The Roman Senate, with the indecision and
indolence of all declining powers, hesitated to engage, for the AEduans'
sake, in a war against the invaders of a corner of Gallic territory.  At
the same time that they gave a cordial welcome to Divitiacus, they
entered into negotiations with Ariovistus himself; they gave him
beautiful presents, the title of King, and even of friend; the only
demand they made was, that he should live peaceably in his new
settlement, and not lend his support to the fresh invasions of which
there were symptoms in Gaul, and which were becoming too serious for
resolutions not to be taken to repel them.

[Illustration: Divitiacus before the Roman Senate----63]

A people of Gallic race, the Helvetians, who inhabited present
Switzerland, where the old name still abides beside the modern, found
themselves incessantly threatened, ravaged, and invaded by the German
tribes which pressed upon their frontiers.  After some years of
perplexity and internal discord, the whole Helvetic nation decided upon
abandoning its territory, and going to seek in Gaul, westward, it is
said, on the borders of the ocean, a more tranquil settlement.  Being
informed of this design, the Roman Senate and Caesar, at that time
consul, resolved to protect the Roman province and their Gallic allies,
the AEduans, against this inundation of roving neighbors.  The Helvetians
none the less persisted in their plan; and in the spring of the year of
Rome 696 (58 B C.) they committed to the flames, in the country they were
about to leave, twelve towns, four hundred villages, and all their
houses; loaded their cars with provisions for three months, and agreed to
meet at the southern point of the Lake of Geneva.  They found on their
reunion, says Caesar, a total of three hundred and sixty-eight thousand
emigrants, including ninety-two thousand men-at-arms.  The Switzerland
which they abandoned numbers now two million five hundred thousand
inhabitants.  But when the Helvetians would have entered Gaul, they found
there Caesar, who, after having got himself appointed proconsul for five
years, had arrived suddenly at Geneva, prepared to forbid their passage.
They sent to him a deputation, to ask leave, they said, merely to
traverse the Roman province without causing the least damage.  Caesar
knew as well how to gain time as not to lose any: he was not ready; so he
put off the Helvetians to a second conference.  In the interval he
employed his legionaries, who could work as well as fight, in erecting
upon the left bank of the Rhone a wall sixteen feet high and ten miles
long, which rendered the passage of the river very difficult, and, on the
return of the Helvetian envoys, he formally forbade them to pass by the
road they had proposed to follow.  They attempted to take another, and to
cross not the Rhone but the Saone, and march thence towards western Gaul.
But whilst they were arranging for the execution of this movement,
Caesar, who had up to that time only four legions at his disposal,
returned to Italy, brought away five fresh legions, and arrived on the
left bank of the Saone at the moment when the rear-guard of the
Helvetians was embarking to rejoin the main body which had already
pitched its camp on the right bank.  Caesar cut to pieces this rear-guard,
crossed the river, in his turn, with his legions, pursued the emigrants
without relaxation, came in contact with them on several occasions, at
one time attacking them or repelling their attacks, at another receiving
and giving audience to their envoys without ever consenting to treat with
them, and before the end of the year he had so completely beaten,
decimated, dispersed and driven them back, that of three hundred and
sixty-eight thousand Helvetians who had entered Gaul, but one hundred and
ten thousand escaped from the Romans, and were enabled, by flight, to
regain their country.

[Illustration: Mounted Gauls----66]

AEduans, Sequanians, or Arvernians, all the Gauls interested in the
struggle thus terminated, were eager to congratulate Caesar upon his
victory; but if they were delivered from the invasion of the Helvetians,
another scourge fell heavily upon them; Ariovistus and the Germans, who
were settled upon their territory, oppressed them cruelly, and day by day
fresh bands were continually coming to aggravate the evil and the danger.
They adjured Caesar to protect them from these swarms of barbarians.  "In
a few years," said they, "all the Germans will have crossed the Rhine,
and all the Gauls will be driven from Gaul, for the soil of Germany
cannot compare with that of Gaul, any more than the mode of life.  If
Caesar and the Roman people refuse to aid us, there is nothing left for
us but to abandon our lands, as the Helvetians would have done in their
case, and go seek, afar from the Germans, another dwelling-place."
Caesar, touched by so prompt an appeal to the power of his name and fame
gave ear to the prayer of the Gauls.  But he was for trying negotiation
before war.  He proposed to Ariovistus an interview "at which they aright
treat in common of affairs of importance for both."  Ariovistus replied
that "if he wanted anything of Caesar, he would go in search of him; if
Caesar had business with him, it was for Caesar to come."  Caesar
thereupon conveyed to him by messenger his express injunctions, "not to
summon any more from the borders of the Rhine fresh multitudes of men,
and to cease from vexing the AEduans and making war on them, them and
their allies.  Otherwise, Caesar would not fail to avenge their wrongs."
Ariovistus replied that "he had conquered the AEduans.  The Roman people
were in the habit of treating the vanquished after their own pleasure,
and not the advice of another; he too, himself, had the same right.
Caesar said he would avenge the wrongs of the AEduans; but no one had
ever attacked him with impunity.  If Caesar would like to try it, let him
come; he would learn what could be done by the bravery of the Germans,
who were as yet unbeaten, who were trained to arms, who for fourteen
years had not slept beneath a roof."  At the moment he received this
answer, Caesar had just heard that fresh bands of Suevians were encamped
on the right bank of the Rhine, ready to cross, and that Ariovistus with
all his forces was making towards Vesontio (Besancon), the chief town of
the Sequanians.  Caesar forthwith put himself in motion, occupied
Vesontio, established there a strong garrison, and made his arrangements
for issuing from it with his legions to go and anticipate the attack of
Ariovistus.  Then came to him word that no little disquietude was showing
itself among the Roman troops; that many soldiers and even officers
appeared anxious about the struggle with the Germans, their ferocity, the
vast forests that must be traversed to reach them, the difficult roads,
and the transport of provisions; there was an apprehension of broken
courage, and perchance of numerous desertions.  Caesar summoned a great
council of war, to which he called the chief officers of his legions; he
complained bitterly of their alarm, recalled to their memory their recent
success against the Helvetians, and scoffed at the rumors spread about
the Germans, and at the doubts with which there was an attempt to inspire
him about the fidelity and obedience of his troops.  "An army," said he,
"disobeys only the commander who leads them badly and has no good
fortune, or is found guilty of cupidity and malversation.  My whole life
shows my integrity, and the war against the Helvetians my good fortune.
I shall order forthwith the departure I had intended to put off.  I shall
strike the camp the very next night, at the fourth watch; I wish to see
as soon as possible whether honor and duty or fear prevail in your ranks.
If there be any refusal to follow me, I shall march with only the tenth
legion, of which I have no doubt; that shall be my praetorian cohort."

The cheers of the troops, officers and men, were the answer given to the
reproaches and hopes of their general: all hesitation passed away; and
Caesar set out with his army.  He fetched a considerable compass, to
spare them the passage of thick forests, and, after a seven days' march,
arrived at a short distance from the camp of Ariovistus.  On learning
that Caesar was already so near, the German sent to him a messenger with
proposals for the interview which was but lately demanded, and to which
there was no longer any obstacle, since Caesar had himself arrived upon
the spot.  And the interview really took place, with mutual precautions
for safety and warlike dignity.  Caesar repeated all the demands he had
made upon Ariovistus, who, in his turn, maintained his refusal, asking,
"What was wanted?  Why had foot been set upon his lands?  That part of
Gaul was his province, just as the other was the Roman province.  If
Caesar did not retire, and withdraw his troops, he should consider him no
more a friend, but an enemy.  He knew that if he were to slay Caesar, he
would recommend himself to many nobles and chiefs amongst the Roman
people; he had learned as much from their own envoys.  But if Caesar
retired and left him, Ariovistus, in free possession of Gaul, he would
pay liberally in return, and would wage on Caesar's behalf, without
trouble or danger to him, any wars he might desire."  During this
interview it is probable that Caesar smiled more than once at the
boldness and shrewdness of the barbarian.  Ultimately some horsemen in
the escort of Ariovistus began to caracole towards the Romans, and to
hurl at them stones and darts.  Caesar ordered his men to make no
reprisals, and broke off the conference.  The next day but one Ariovistus
proposed a renewal; but Caesar refused, having decided to bring the
quarrel to an issue.  Several days in succession he led out his legions
from their camp, and offered battle; but Ariovistus remained within his
lines.  Caesar then took the resolution of assailing the German camp.  At
his approach, the Germans at length moved out from their intrenchments,
arrayed by peoplets, and defiling in front of cars filled with their
women, who implored them with tears not to deliver them in slavery to the
Romans.  The struggle was obstinate, and not without moments of anxiety
and partial check for the Romans; but the genius of Caesar and strict
discipline of the legions carried the day.  The rout of the Germans was
complete; they fled towards the Rhine, which was only a few leagues from
the field of battle.  Ariovistus himself was amongst the fugitives; he
found a boat by the river side, and recrossed into Germany, where he died
shortly afterwards, "to the great grief of the Germans," says Caesar.
The Suevian bands, who were awaiting on the right bank the result of the
struggle, plunged back again within their own territory.  And so the
invasion of the Germans was stopped as the emigration of the Helvetians
had been; and Caesar had only to conquer Gaul.

It is uncertain whether he had from the very first determined the whole
plan; but so soon as he set seriously to work, he felt all the
difficulties.  The expulsion of the Helvetian emigrants and of the German
invaders left the Romans and Gauls alone face to face; and from that
moment the Romans were, in the eyes of the Gauls, foreigners, conquerors,
oppressors.  Their deeds aggravated day by day the feelings excited by
the situation; they did not ravage the country, as the Germans had done;
they did not appropriate such and such a piece of land; but everywhere
they assumed the mastery: they laid heavy burdens upon the population;
they removed the rightful chieftains who were opposed to them, and
forcibly placed or maintained in power those only who were subservient to
them.  Independently of the Roman empire, Caesar established everywhere
his own personal influence; by turns gentle or severe, caressing or
threatening, he sought and created for himself partisans amongst the
Gauls, as he had amongst his army, showing favor to those only whose
devotion was assured to him.  To national antipathy towards foreigners
must be added the intrigues and personal rivalry of the conquered in
their relations with the conqueror.  Conspiracies were hatched,
insurrections soon broke out in nearly every part of Gaul, in the heart
even of the peoplets most subject to Roman dominion.  Every movement of
the kind was for Caesar a provocation, a temptation, almost an obligation
to conquest.  He accepted them and profited by them, with that
promptitude in resolution, boldness and address in execution, and cool
indifference as to the means employed, which were characteristic of his
genius.  During nine years, from A. U. C. 696 to 705, and in eight
successive campaigns, he carried his troops, his lieutenants, himself,
and, ere long, war or negotiation, corruption, discord, or destruction in
his path, amongst the different nations and confederations of Gaul,
Celtic, Kymric, Germanic, Iberian or Hybrid, northward and eastward,
in Belgica, between the Seine and the Rhine; westward, in Armorica, on
the borders of the ocean; south-westward, in Aquitania; centre-ward,
amongst the peoplets established between the Seine, the Loire, and the
Saone.  He was nearly always victorious, and then at one time he pushed
his victory to the bitter end, at another stopped at the right moment,
that it might not be compromised.  When he experienced reverses, he bore
them without repining, and repaired them with inexhaustible ability and
courage.  More than once, to revive the sinking spirits of his men, he
was rashly lavish of his person; and on one of those occasions, at the
raising of the siege of Gergovia, he was all but taken by some Arvernian
horsemen, and left his sword in their hands.  It was found a while
afterwards, when the war was over, in a temple in which the Gauls had
hung it.  Caesar's soldiers would have torn it down and returned it to
him; but "let it be," said he; "'tis sanctified."  In good or evil
fortune, the hero of a triumph at Rome or a prisoner in the hands of
Mediterranean pirates, he was unrivalled in striking the imaginations of
men and growing great in their eyes.  He did not confine himself to
conquering and subjecting the Gauls in Gaul; his ideas were ever
outstripping his deeds, and he knew how to make his power felt even where
he had made no attempt to establish it.  Twice he crossed the Rhine to
hurl back the Germans beyond their river, and to strike to the very
hearts of their forests the terror of the Roman name (A. U. C.  699,
700).  He equipped two fleets, made two descents on Great Britain
(A. U. C.  699, 700), several times defeated the Britons and their
principal chieftain Caswallon (Cassivellaunus), and set up across the
channel, the first landmarks of Roman conquest.  He thus became more and
more famous and terrible, both in Gaul, whence he sometimes departed for
a moment to go and look after his political prospects in Italy, and in
more distant lands, where he was but an apparition.

But the greatest minds are far from foreseeing all the consequences of
their deeds, and all the perils proceeding from their successes.  Caesar
was by nature neither violent nor cruel; but he did not trouble himself
about justice or humanity, and the success of his enterprises, no matter
by what means or at what price, was his sole law of conduct.  He could
show, on occasion, moderation and mercy; but when he had to put down an
obstinate resistance, or when a long and arduous effort had irritated
him, he had no hesitation in employing atrocious severity and perfidious
promises.  During his first campaign in Belgica, (A. U. C.  697 and 57
B.C.), two peoplets, the Nervians and the Aduaticans, had gallantly
struggled, with brief moments of success, against the Roman legions.  The
Nervians were conquered and almost annihilated.  Their last remnants,
huddled for refuge in the midst of their morasses, sent a deputation to
Caesar, to make submission, saying, "Of six hundred senators three only
are left, and of sixty thousand men that bore arms scarce five hundred
have escaped."  Caesar received them kindly, returned to them their
lands, and warned their neighbors to do them no harm.  The Aduaticans, on
the contrary, defended them selves to the last extremity.  Caesar, having
slain four thousand, had all that remained sold by auction; and fifty-six
thousand human beings, according to his own statement, passed as slaves
into the hands of their purchasers.  Some years later another Belgian
peoplet, the Eburons, settled between the Meuse and the Rhine, rose and
inflicted great losses upon the Roman legions.  Caesar put them beyond
the pale of military and human law, and had all the neighboring peoplets
and all the roving bands invited to come and pillage and destroy "that
accursed race," promising to whoever would join in the work the
friendship of the Roman people.  A little later still, some insurgents in
the centre of Gaul had concentrated in a place to the south-west, called
Urellocdunum (nowadays, it is said, Puy d'Issola, in the department of
the Lot, between Vayrac and Martel).  After a long resistance they were
obliged to surrender, and Caesar had all the combatants' hands cut off,
and sent them, thus mutilated, to live and rove throughout Gaul, as a
spectacle to all the country that was, or was to be, brought to
submission.  Nor were the rigors of administration less than those of
warfare.  Caesar wanted a great deal of money, not only to maintain
satisfactorily his troops in Gaul, but to defray the enormous expenses he
was at in Italy, for the purpose of enriching his partisans, or securing
the favor of the Roman people.  It was with the produce of imposts and
plunder in Gaul that he undertook the reconstruction at Rome of the
basilica of the Forum, the site whereof, extending to the temple of
Liberty, was valued, it is said, at more than twenty million five
hundred thousand francs.  Cicero, who took the direction of the works,
wrote to his friend Atticus, "We shall make it the most glorious thing
in the world."  Cato was less satisfied; three years previously
despatches from Caesar had announced to the Senate his victories over
the Belgian and German insurgents.  The senators had voted a general
thanksgiving, but, "Thanksgiving!" cried Cato, "rather expiation!  Pray
the gods not to visit upon our armies the sin of a guilty general.  Give
up Caesar to the Germans, and let the foreigner know that Rome does not
enjoin perjury, and rejects with horror the fruit thereof!"

Caesar had all the gifts, all the means of success and empire, that can
be possessed by man.  He was great in politics and in war; as active and
as full of resource amidst the intrigues of the Forum as amidst the
combinations and surprises of the battle-field, equally able to please
and to terrify.  He had a double pride, which gave him double confidence
in himself, the pride of a great noble and the pride of a great man.  He
was fond of saying, "My aunt Julia is, maternally, the daughter of kings;
paternally, she is descended from the immortal gods; my family unites, to
the sacred character of kings who are the most powerful amongst men, the
awful majesty of the gods who have even kings in their keeping."  Thus,
by birth as well as nature, Caesar felt called to dominion; and at the
same time he was perfectly aware of the decadence of the Roman
patriciate, and of the necessity for being popular in order to become
master.  With this double instinct he undertook the conquest of the Gauls
as the surest means of achieving conquest at Rome.  But owing either to
his own vices or to the difficulties of the situation, he displayed in
his conduct and his work in Gaul so much violence and oppression, so much
iniquity and cruel indifference, that, even at that time, in the midst of
Roman harshness, pagan corruption, and Gallic or German barbarism, so
great an infliction of moral and material harm could not but be followed
by a formidable reaction.  Where there are strength and ability, the want
of foresight, the fears, the weaknesses, the dissensions of men, whether
individuals or peoples, may be for a long while calculated upon; but it
may be carried too far.  After six years' struggling Caesar was victor;
he had successively dealt with all the different populations of Gaul; he
had passed through and subjected them all, either by his own strong arm,
or thanks to their rivalries.  In the year of Rome 702 he was suddenly
informed in Italy, whither he had gone on his Roman business, that most
of the Gallic nations, united under a chieftain hitherto unknown, were
rising with one common impulse, and recommencing war.

The same perils and the same reverses, the same sufferings and the same
resentments, had stirred up amongst the Gauls, without distinction of
race and name, a sentiment to which they had hitherto been almost
strangers, the sentiment of Gallic nationality and the passion for
independence, not local any longer, but national.  This sentiment was
first manifested amongst the populace and under obscure chieftains; a
band of Carnutian peasants (people of Chartrain) rushed upon the town of
Genabum (Gies), roused the inhabitants, and massacred the Italian traders
and a Roman knight, C. Fusius Cita, whom Caesar had commissioned to buy
corn there.  In less than twenty-four hours the signal of insurrection
against Rome was borne across the country as far as the Arvernians,
amongst whom conspiracy had long ago been waiting and paving the way for
insurrection.  Amongst them lived a young Gaul whose real name has
remained unknown, and whom history has called Vercingetorix, that is,
chief over a hundred heads, chief-in-general.  He came of an ancient and
powerful family of Arvernians, and his father had been put to death in
his own city for attempting to make himself king.  Caesar knew him, and
had taken some pains to attach him to himself.  It does not appear that
the Arvernian aristocrat had absolutely declined the overtures; but when
the hope of national independence was aroused, Vercingetorix was its
representative and chief.  He descended with his followers from the
mountain, and seized Gergovia, the capital of his nation.  Thence his
messengers spread over the centre, north-west, and west of Gaul; the
greater part of the peoplets and cities of those regions pronounced from
the first moment for insurrection; the same sentiment was working amongst
others more compromised with Rome, who waited only for a breath of
success to break out.  Vercingetorix was immediately invested with the
chief command, and he made use of it with all the passion engendered by
patriotism and the possession of power; he regulated the movement,
demanded hostages, fixed the contingents of troops, imposed taxes,
inflicted summary punishment on the traitors, the dastards, and the
indifferent, and subjected those who turned a deaf ear to the appeal of
their common country to the same pains and the same mutilations that
Caesar inflicted on those who obstinately resisted the Roman yoke.

At the news of this great movement Caesar immediately left Italy, and
returned to Gaul.  He had one quality, rare even amongst the greatest
men: he remained cool amidst the very hottest alarms; necessity never
hurried him into precipitation, and he prepared for the struggle as if he
were always sure of arriving on the spot in time to sustain it.  He was
always quick, but never hasty; and his activity and patience were equally
admirable and efficacious.  Starting from Italy at the beginning of 702
A. U. C., he passed two months in traversing within Gaul the Roman
province and its neighborhood, in visiting the points threatened by the
insurrection, and the openings by which he might get at it, in assembling
his troops, in confirming his wavering allies; and it was not before the
early part of March that he moved with his whole army to Agendicum
(Sens), the very centre of revolt, and started thence to push on the war
with vigor.  In less than three months he had spread devastation
throughout the insurgent country; he had attacked and taken its principal
cities, Vellaunodunum (Trigueres), Genabum (Gien), Noviodunum (Sancerre),
and Avaricum (Bourges), delivering up everywhere country and city, lands
and inhabitants, to the rage of the Roman soldiery, maddened at having
again to conquer enemies so often conquered.  To strike a decisive blow,
he penetrated at last to the heart of the country of the Arvernians, and