041b - The Gallic Wars

Hello, and welcome to the History of Rome, episode 41b, the Gallic Wars. Caesar's first year in Gaul had been a great success for both the Romans and the local tribes. Two invading hordes, first the Helvetii and then the Germans, had been repulsed by the legions. Caesar was making a name for himself as a superb commander, and the balance of power among the Gallic tribes had not been upset. So as the winter of 58 BC neared, everyone was happy. But Caesar was not in Gaul simply to act as a bodyguard for independent tribes. He was in Gaul to conquer Gaul. To this end, he did not withdraw back to his provinces on the Italian side of the Alps as the Gauls assumed he would. Instead, he ordered his troops to build winter camps and dig in. These wooden forts dotting the countryside were a visible symbol of Caesar's true intentions. Suddenly, not everyone was so happy.

But Caesar was a savvy general and nothing if not a master politician. He knew that the jig was up, that there was no use pretending Rome was not in Gaul to stay, at least not when he met with the leaders of the Gallic tribes in private. Some tribes swore instantly to resist Roman domination, but others were persuaded that conquest was inevitable and the only question was who would enjoy what privileges in the new Roman order. Caesar played rivals against each other, promising to settle ancient scores for one side or the other in exchange for support, intelligence, or troops. What Caesar managed to achieve in the tent prevented the Gauls from ever truly uniting in the field.

When the spring of 57 BC came around, the Roman occupation was immediately challenged in the north by a confederation of Belgic tribes. The territory of Belgae, as you could probably guess, covers roughly modern Belgium and was then about as far as you could get from Roman civilization. The tribes in southern Gaul were long accustomed to dealing with the Romans, but Italian traders rarely made their way this far north. So it is no great surprise that this would become the epicenter of initial resistance.

But Caesar had been able to convince at least one of the Belgic tribes that support for Rome was in their best interest. When this tribe came under attack for their foreign allegiance, Caesar was quick to intervene, hoping to prove that friendship with Rome was not just a one-way street. Those who helped Rome would in turn be helped by Rome. Also, it was a lovely excuse to conquer Belgium. That Caesar had a Belgic ally was the good news. That he only had one Belgic ally was the bad news.

He marched the legions north to support his new ally and prevent the Belgae from coalescing into a single force. But he arrived too late and saw to his dismay that a huge army was gathered. Skirmishes broke out and a brief, bloody battle was fought to prevent a portion of the Belgae from circling around behind the Romans. Caesar, outnumbered and deep in enemy territory, had to think fast. Doubtful that he would be able to win a fight in the open, Caesar called for a play that had proved so effective at the end of the Third Samnite War. He ordered squads to fan out across the countryside and sack every settlement they came across. With all their warriors massed in one place, the civilian Belgae were helpless and soon the whole territory was in flames. With little internal cohesion except a hatred of the Romans to bind them, the Belgic army quickly evaporated as tribes returned home to protect their property.

Caesar was now free to march from tribe to tribe and pick them off one by one. Sometimes the locals resisted and were destroyed, but more often than not, they saw the handwriting on the wall and surrendered. One tribe in particular, though, the Nervii, neither surrendered nor were pushovers in the field. At one point, they managed to catch the Romans by surprise as they built a camp and in the confusion nearly shattered the legions before Caesar could rally his troops and counterattack. But aside from this one near disaster, the conquest of the Belgae went off without a hitch and Caesar entered the winter of 57 BC with nearly the whole of Gaul already under his thumb.

Over that winter, with the Romans again building camps across the country, Caesar returned to Cisalpine Gaul to attend to his duties there. He was, after all, still the governor and there was a backlog of high importance action items that he had been neglecting. While on the Italian side of the Alps, Pompey and Crassus left Rome to join Caesar for a conference. The triumvirate was renewed and it was agreed that Pompey and Crassus would again serve together as co-consuls for the year 55 BC. The three men also took the time to divvy up the Roman world between them. Caesar would have his pro-consulship of Gaul extended for another five years and upon completing their term in office, Pompey would be appointed pro-consul of Hispania and allowed to govern in absentia while Crassus would receive the governorship of Syria.

This would be the last cooperative venture between the three triumvirs. Crassus would soon lay dead in Syria after a humiliating defeat at the hands of the Parthians and the familial bond between Caesar and Pompey would soon be shattered by the death of Julia, Caesar's beloved daughter and Pompey's beloved wife. With their agreement in hand, each of the triumvirs went about their business. For Crassus and Pompey, this meant laying the groundwork for their consular campaign and for Caesar, this meant consolidating his hold over Gaul.

But despite his glowing reports to the Senate that Gaul was completely pacified, the reality was not so neat and tidy. This time, trouble came from the Veneti, a maritime tribe from Brittany who decided to take their shot at avoiding Roman domination. Admittedly, they were in a unique position and had good reason to believe they could resist the Romans, but in the end it was not enough and they too fell under Caesar's sword.

The Veneti's unique position was a mastery of the sea that the Romans could not match. Their forts were all built on narrow spits jutting out into the English Channel, nearly impossible to attack by land and connected to endless supplies by sea. If Caesar hoped to put down this rebellion, he would have to build a navy. But as we have noted before, the Romans were never great sailors to begin with, even on the relatively calm waters of the Mediterranean. The choppy chaos of the English Channel would prove to be one of the most implacable foes Caesar would ever face and on more than one occasion it threatened to end not just his campaign but his life.

After an entire summer of being given the runaround and losing ships that were no match for the sturdy oak constructions of the Veneti, Caesar finally hit upon the weakness of his enemies. The Veneti ships lacked oars, relying exclusively on sails for maneuverability. Near the end of the year, Caesar sent the whole of his navy, some 200 ships, to attack the main Veneti stronghold. The Veneti were unable to resist the opportunity to crush the Romans once and for all and sailed out en masse to greet them. But the Romans were prepared and eschewing their failed tactics of ramming and boarding, they instead used hooks to tear down the sails of the Veneti ships. This, coupled with the fortuitous absence of a strong wind, made the Veneti sitting ducks. The Romans went from ship to ship and though the fighting was long and hard, the outcome was no longer in doubt. The whole of the Veneti navy was destroyed and the tribal leaders on land, deprived of their supply line, were forced to surrender to Rome.

Caesar now controlled almost the entire north coast of Gaul, but he was not content with stopping at the water's edge. Across the channel lay the mythical island of Britannia, which Caesar resolved to invade the following year, both to cut off the aid that had flowed from the island to the rebellious Belgae and the Veneti, but also to score a massive domestic political coup. Think of the headlines, Caesar conquers the ends of the earth. It has a nice ring to it.

But before he could invade the ends of the earth, Caesar would be forced to engage in a less romantic, though arguably more important venture. And as it would turn out, the Roman public was at least as impressed with Caesar for leading a Roman army into Germania as they were for his later invasion of Britain. In 55 BC, German tribes began crossing the Rhine River and running amok, often encouraged by the local Gauls, who hoped to stir up as much trouble for Rome as they could. Caesar was forced to put his British invasion on hold while he headed east to secure the border.

What he immediately intuited was that the Germans would have no fear as long as they believed the Rhine was a magical barrier to Roman advancement. So Caesar decided to put lie to that particular myth. But understanding that the optics demanded something altogether more spectacular than crossing his legionaries on rickety boats, Caesar ordered a bridge be built across the great river. In what is widely acknowledged as one of the great feats in the history of military engineering, Caesar's army designed and built his bridge in just ten days. Stable in the rushing water and strong enough to sustain the 40,000 troops Caesar intended to march into Germania, the bridge was an architectural masterpiece, but, more importantly for Caesar's immediate concerns, it scared the bejesus out of the Germans.

They had felt themselves completely safe on their side of the river, secure in the knowledge that the Romans a. were afraid of invading Germania, b. would be easy targets if they tried to cross the river in boats, and c. couldn't build a bridge so fast that the Germans wouldn't be able to simply mass an army to meet the invaders. But in the time it took German scouts to notice the bridge and report it to their chiefs, the Romans were already hammering in the final nails. When the next round of scouts arrived to check the progress of the construction, they were forced to immediately turn around and report the unbelievable news that the Romans were already across the Rhine. The Germans panicked and retreated into the dense forest. Caesar spent three weeks marching around western Germany without encountering any resistance. Realizing he had made his point, he ordered his troops back across the Rhine and the bridge burned. The Germans did not miss the point. Rome could go where it wanted, when it wanted, and it was best not to forget that fact.

Despite the time he had spent on his detour into Germania, Caesar was determined to launch at least a preliminary expedition to Britain by the end of the year. So with the autumn winds howling and winter fast approaching, Caesar set out with 80 ships to find out how much resistance he could expect if he decided to launch a full invasion, or if a full invasion would even be necessary.

This first crossing can't really be described as anything but a debacle. Caesar had been unable to squeeze any decent information out of the local traders about where and when to land on the island, but what minimal scout work his own officers had done was totally inadequate. Not only did the Romans have no clue how to handle things like tides, but at every possible landing site they found themselves met by thousands of British warriors lining the cliffs. Finally, with great difficulty, Caesar was able to land his fleet and establish a small beachhead. But as soon as his ships were anchored, a storm swept in, smashing his fleet against the rocks. The beleaguered Caesar made contact with the local tribes and tried to put on a brave face, but it was obvious to anyone with eyes that the Romans posed no threat whatsoever. The local Britons indulged Caesar's pompous demands that they send hostages to secure the goodwill of Rome, and returned to their tribes promising that, yeah, they'd get right on that. Caesar didn't even wait for them not to comply, generously agreeing to accept the hostages in Gaul rather than forcing the Britons to respond right this very second. He patched up his fleet as fast as he could and sailed back to Gaul. Only two British tribes actually sent their promised hostages.

The next spring, though, Caesar launched a far better planned invasion. The Romans never did get a handle on the tricky tides of the North Atlantic, but they were able to land without as much difficulty and establish a proper base. This time, Caesar arrived not with 80 ships, but 800 ships. The southern Britons were forced to take this threat a little more seriously, but they still proved to be a hard bunch to get a handle on. They all willingly agreed to submit to Rome, but took every opportunity to undermine the Roman presence and showed little stomach for the kind of real, actual submission the Romans were used to. The Britons seemed to be treating the Romans as little more than a temporary nuisance, shining on the invaders until they lost interest and went home.

Caesar pressed inland and met with fiercer resistance, but primarily in the form of guerrilla attacks rather than open battle. Eventually, Caesar learned who was directing the resistance and put their stronghold to siege. Failing to land a counterpunch on the Roman camp and draw Caesar away, the resistance ended and the besieged tribe agreed to recognize a king of Caesar's choosing. Unable to get back to Gaul, Caesar left the islands in the hands of local allies. It would be another hundred years before Rome returned to fully incorporate Britannia as a province.

The expedition had resulted in little material gain, but in terms of publicity, the invasion was a huge success for Caesar personally. There was nothing, it seemed, that the charismatic general could not do. Caesar returned to Gaul and settled in for a long winter. His heart was heavy with grief and his mind was wracked by dread at news he had received while he was in Britain. His daughter Julia had died in childbirth.

The death of his only child affected the passionate Caesar mightily, but he further struggled with the implications this had on his alliance with Pompey. With Crassus in Syria, Pompey stood alone as the dominant triumvirate in Rome and now had nothing to bind his interest to Caesar's. But the sullen general did not have long to dwell on his grief or his political future.

In northeast Gaul, a full legion was tricked out of their winter quarters by supposedly friendly locals, lured into a trap, and slaughtered to a man. But this was not news that Caesar would learn until after he got word that another camp was under siege by the same group, whose ranks now swelled with warriors from all over the country who wanted nothing more than to kill Romans. The besieged camp was led by one of Caesar's ablest commanders, Quintus Cicero, brother of the great orator. Quintus had not fallen for the ruse that had lured out the slaughtered legion from their camp, and despite the satisfaction of seeing through the trick, he was now surrounded by a rebel Gallic army, and unable to get word through the line that he was under attack.

Finally, a slave agreed to slip through and make contact with Caesar, in exchange for his freedom. Once alerted, Caesar immediately charged out into the winter snow to relieve the besieged legion and arrive just in time. The sight of Caesar's army scattered the rebels, and Cicero's legion was saved. Nearly every soldier trapped inside the liberated camp had been wounded in some fashion or another, and Caesar praised them all to the hilt, handing out awards and honors left and right.

It was not lost on these men, nor on the men who had done the liberating, that Caesar seemed to genuinely care about the average soldiers under his command. Throughout the campaign, Caesar famously referred to his men not as soldier, but as comrade. These simple acts of familiarity and compassion helped breed in his troops the fanatical loyalty that would prove decisive in the coming civil war. These men were never Roman legionaries, they were Caesar's legionaries.

When the spring of 53 BC came, Caesar had one thing on his mind, revenge. He brought the full weight of his army down on northeast Gaul, and engaged in a genocidal campaign against the tribes that were behind the assault on Cicero's men, and, the Romans had later learned with horror, the murder of the tricked legion. Without remorse, Caesar slaughtered the men and sold the women and children into slavery. During this year in the field, Caesar also built a second bridge across the Rhine to halt aid and comfort that was coming in from Germania. He hoped to achieve not only a measure of revenge, but also signal that Gaul was no longer a free country, and that any attack on Rome would be met with the swiftest and most brutal repercussions.

In this, he was not entirely successful, as the brutality of 53 BC proved to those Gauls who still had fight in them that they had better do something now, or they would all wind up like their annihilated cousins in the north. But in a larger sense, the campaign was effective. It galvanized the last of the independent-minded Gauls, and when Caesar defeated them the following summer, all formal resistance was wiped out with them.

But on the cusp of this great victory, Caesar's political fortunes in Rome were quickly spinning out of control. He had offered his grand-niece Octavia, the sister of the future Caesar Augustus, to Pompey in marriage in an attempt to re-secure their alliance. But Pompey spurned the offer, and instead agreed to wed the daughter of one of Caesar's most hated enemies, a man named Quintus Metellus Scipio. This was not a good sign. On top of that, Marcus Crassus, long Caesar's benefactor, died fighting a disastrous campaign in the east. The triumvirate was literally and figuratively dead.

But there was no time to worry about domestic political concerns. In 52 BC, the last great battle of the Gallic Wars was set to be fought. Since he had arrived in Gaul five years earlier, Caesar had effectively used Gallic tribal rivalries to his advantage and avoided ever facing a united front. Now though, with the noose finally closing around their necks, the Gauls joined forces under the banner of Vercingetorix, a Gallic king who would lead the last stand for his country's independence.

I hope I'm not giving away the ending when I say that Vercingetorix would meet his end after being paraded through Roman chains during Caesar's triumph. Cause of death? Unceremonious strangulation in a Roman jail cell. Prior to this ignoble end, however, he was the last best hope of the Gauls, and would cause as much grief to Caesar in one summer as the Roman general had experienced during his entire occupation of the country.

In the dead of winter, the Gallic king launched his rebellion by embarking on a scorched earth campaign. The Romans had been living off the land since their arrival, allowing them greater mobility and freedom from worries about protecting a supply line. Now Vercingetorix put as many towns and granaries as possible to the torch. It was cruel, and punished his own people as much as it punished the Romans, but this was a time for desperate measures. He was persuaded, however, to spare Avaricum, the greatest city in southern Gaul, a decision he was uncomfortable with and would soon regret.

Caesar gathered his scattered legions and headed straight for the great city. Despite assurances from the Gallic nobility that Avaricum was impregnable, Vercingetorix was forced to watch helplessly as the city fell after a brutal thirty-day siege. Caesar's starving soldiers killed everyone in the city. Most importantly, they had secured enough food to see them through the next few weeks. The Gauls retreated, and as soon as he resupplied his army, Caesar followed.

A series of feints and counterfeits finally saw the Romans chase the Gauls behind the walls of Dracovia. This time, however, overzealous Roman soldiers attacked too early despite Caesar's order to restrain themselves and blew the one chance they had to take the city. Forced to retreat after sustaining serious casualties, the Romans had more to worry about than simply licking their wounds. The defeat at Dracovia had broken the aura of invincibility surrounding Caesar, and the tribes across the country, including some of the most steadfast Roman supporters, flocked to Vercingetorix's banner. Caesar was facing the fight of his life.

The whole country was now in revolt, and if he was forced to retreat to Roman territory, he was sure to be stripped of his command by enemies in the Senate. So, rather than fall back to the south, Caesar ordered his shocked troops to move north. At this desperate hour, Caesar caught one of his many lucky breaks. Engaging in a brief battle, little more than a skirmish, the Romans got the better of an attacking Gallic force. The defeat spooked Vercingetorix, and rather than staying on the offensive, he ordered his army of 80,000 to retreat to the walled city of Alesia.

Caesar saw his fortune change at once. Alesia was a hill fort located between two rivers, and though it would be nearly impossible to storm, it was also nearly impossible to keep it resupplied. All he had to do was ring the city and prevent any relief from getting through. After that, it was just a matter of waiting for those trapped inside to surrender. So Caesar ordered a wall built around the entire city. The Gauls inside launched attacks to try and halt the construction, but the Romans fought them off and kept building. Soon, the city was encircled and the waiting game began.

But then word came of a new wrinkle. A relief army, estimated at some 60,000, was on its way. Caesar, thinking fast and unwilling to lose his opportunity to force Vercingetorix's surrender, ordered a second wall be built, this one facing out towards the oncoming army. Once this wall was completed, the Roman army's whole world collapsed to the few hundred yards between the two walls. The game now boiled down to who would relent first. The Romans were not well stocked, but those trapped in Alesia were already starving to death.

The commander of the newly arrived Gallic army knew Vercingetorix would not be able to hold out much longer, so he launched a full-scale attack at a weak point in the outer wall. The legions massed to repel the assault, but slowly began to lose ground. Fearing that the day and the whole campaign might be slipping away, Caesar personally led his cavalry out from behind the walls and circled around behind the Gauls. Suddenly surrounded, the Gauls panicked and broke apart in disarray.

At Alesia, Vercingetorix watched with resignation as his rebellion came to an end. There was no hope of lifting the siege now. The next day, the Gallic king rode out of the city on his horse and surrendered to Caesar, hoping to spare as many of his people as possible from future reprisals.

The siege of Alesia, which ended in October of 52 BC, marked the end of organized resistance to Roman rule in Gaul. Caesar had achieved everything he had set out to do, conquering vast new territories for Rome, exploring lands heretofore unknown, and making himself an incredibly wealthy and famous man. He hoped that his victories would earn him safe passage back to Rome and freedom from prosecution once he arrived there, but I think we all know that this was never meant to be.

Next week, we will bring the rest of the players in this greatest of Roman dramas up to that fateful year of 49 BC. While Caesar was in Gaul, Crassus had started a war with, and then been destroyed by, the Parthians. Pompey had slowly moved into the senatorial camp after his consulship ended. Cicero had been banished and then unbanished from the city, while Cato had been forced to take an unwanted command in Cyprus by Clodius, whose free grain program excited the masses, distressed the Senate, and eventually led to the populist Hellraisers' murder, a murder that would spark riots as rival gangs took to the streets to battle one another for control of the city. Rome was quickly descending into violent anarchy, and when the great general Caesar finally arrived and put the city under his thumb, many welcomed him not with fear but with relief, never realizing that the stability Caesar promised came at the price of their freedom.