Caesar (30 page)

The main oppidum of the Senones was Agedincum on the Icauna River, and here Caesar had concentrated six of his legions for the winter; he was still unsure of that very powerful tribe's loyalties, particularly in light of the fact that he had been forced to execute Acco. Gaius Trebonius occupied the interior of Agedincum himself, and had the high command while Caesar was in Italian Gaul. Which did not mean he had been given the authority to go to war, a fact all the Gallic tribes were aware of. And were counting on. In January Trebonius's energies were absorbed by the most exasperating task a commander knew: he had to find sufficient grain and other supplies to feed thirty-six thousand men. The harvest was coming in, so bountiful this year that, had he had fewer legions to provision, Trebonius would not have needed to go any further than the local fields. As it was, he had to buy far and wide. The actual buying-in of grain was in the hands of a civilian Roman, the knight Gaius Fufius Cita; an old resident of Gaul, he spoke the languages and enjoyed a good relationship with the tribes of this central region. Off he trotted with his cartload of money and a heavily armed three-cohort guard to see which Gallic thanes were of a mind to sell at least a part of their harvest. In his wake trundled the high-sided wagons drawn by teams of ten oxen poled up two abreast; as each wagon filled with the precious wheat it peeled off from the column and returned to Agedincum, where it was unloaded and sent back to Fufius Cita. Having exhausted the territory to the north of the Icauna and the Sequana, Fufius Cita and his commissioners transferred to the lands of the Mandubii, the Lingones and the Senones. At first the wagons continued to fill in a most satisfactory manner; then as the seemingly endless caravan entered the lands of the Senones, the amount of grain to be had dropped dramatically. The execution of Acco was having an effect; Fufius Cita decided that he would not prosper trying to buy from the Senones, so he moved westward into the lands of the Carnutes. Where sales picked up immediately. Delighted, Fufius Cita and his senior commissioners settled down inside Cenabum, the Carnute capital; here was a safe haven for the cartload of money (it was, besides, not nearly as full as it had been) and no need for the three cohorts of troops who had escorted him. He sent them back to Agedincum. Cenabum was almost a second home for Fufius Cita; he would remain there among his Roman friends and conclude his purchasing in comfort. Cenabum, in fact, was something of a Gallic metropolis. It permitted some wealthier people—mostly Romans but also a few Greeks—to live inside the walls, and had quite a township outside the walls wherein thrived a metal-working industry. Only Avaricum was larger, and if Fufius Cita sighed a little as he thought of Avaricum, he was actually well content where he was.

The pact among Vercingetorix, Lucterius, Litaviccus, Cotus, Gutruatus and Sedulius, though made in the highly emotional aftermath of Acco's execution, had not fallen by the wayside. Each man went off to his people and talked, and if some of them made no reference to unification of all the Gallic peoples under one leadership, they did harp relentlessly on the perfidy and arrogance of the Romans, the unjustifiable death of Acco, the loss of liberty. Very fertile ground to work; Gaul still hungered to throw off the Roman yoke. Gutruatus of the Carnutes had needed little to push him into the pact with Vercingetorix; he was well aware that Caesar deemed him as guilty of treason as Acco. The next back to feel the lash and the next head to roll belonged to him. He knew it. Nor did he care, provided that before it happened he had managed to make Caesar's life a misery. So when he returned to his own lands, he did as he had promised Vercingetorix: he went straight to Carnutum, where the Druids dwelled, and sought Cathbad.“ You are right,” said Cathbad when the story of Acco was finished. The Chief Druid paused, then added, “Vercingetorix is right too, Gutruatus. We must unite and drive the Romans out as one people. We cannot do it otherwise. I will summon the Druids to a council.”

“And I,” said Gutruatus, enthusiasm soaring, “will travel among the Carnutes to spread the warcry!”

“Warcry? What warcry?”

“The words Dumnorix and Acco both shouted before they were killed. 'A free man in a free country!' ”

“Excellent!” said Cathbad. “But amend it. ‘Free men in a free country!' That is the beginning of unification, Gutruatus. When a man thinks of men before he thinks in the singular.” The Carnutes met in groups, always far from Roman ears, to talk insurrection. And the smithies outside Cenabum began to make nothing but mail shirts, a change of activity which Fufius Cita did not notice any more than his fellow foreign residents did. By mid-February the harvest was completely in. Every silo and granary across the country was full; the hams had been smoked, the pork and venison salted, the eggs and beets and apples stored down under the ground, the chickens, ducks and geese penned in, the cattle and sheep removed from the path of any marching army.“ It's time to start,” said Gutruatus to his fellow thanes, “and we Carnutes will lead the way. As the leaders of Gallic thought, it behooves us to strike the first blow. And we have to do it while Caesar is on the other side of the Alps. The signs say we're going to have a hard winter, and Vercingetorix says it is imperative that we keep Caesar from returning to his legions. They won't venture out of camp without him, especially during the winter. By spring, we will have united.”

“What are you going to do?” asked Cathbad.“ Tomorrow at dawn we raid Cenabum and kill every Roman and Greek it shelters.”

“An unmistakable declaration of war.”

“To the rest of Gaul, Cathbad, not to the Romans. I don't intend that news of Cenabum should reach Trebonius. If it did, he'd send word to Caesar immediately. Let Caesar linger on the far side of the Alps until the whole of Gaul is in arms.”

“Good strategy if it works,” said Cathbad. “I hope you're more successful than the Nervii were.”

“We're Celtae, Cathbad, not Belgae. Besides, the Nervii kept Quintus Cicero from communicating with Caesar for a month. That's long enough. Another month will see the start of winter.”

Thus did Gaius Fufius Cita and the foreign traders who lived in Cenabum discover the truth of the old Roman adage that revolt in a province always commenced with the murder of Roman civilians. Under the command of Gutruatus, a group of Carnutes swooped on their own capital, entered it, and killed every foreigner there. Fufius Cita suffered the same fate as Acco: he was publicly flogged and beheaded. Though he died under the lash. Urging on the man who wielded the whip, the Carnutes found nothing to criticize in this. Fufius Cita's head was a trophy carried in celebration to the grove of Esus and there offered up by Cathbad. News in Gaul traveled very swiftly, though the method of its transmission inevitably meant that the further it spread from its source, the more distorted it became. The Gauls simply shouted information from one person to the next across the fields. What had commenced as “The Romans inside Cenabum have been massacred!” became “The Carnutes are in open revolt and have killed every Roman in their lands!” by the time it had been shouted from mouth to ear for a distance of one hundred and sixty miles. It flew this far between dawn, when the raid had occurred, and dusk, when it was shouted into the main oppidum of the Arverni, Gergovia, and was heard by Vercingetorix. At last! At last! Revolt in central Gaul instead of in the lands of the Belgae or the Celtae of the western coast! These were people he knew, people who would yield him his lieutenants when the great Army of All Gaul came together, people sophisticated enough to understand the value of a mail shirt and a helmet, to understand the way the Romans made war. If the Carnutes had rebelled, it wouldn't be long before the Senones, the Parisii, the Seussiones, the Bituriges and all the other peoples of central Gaul would boil over. And he, Vercingetorix, would be there to forge them into the Army of All Gaul!Of course he had been working himself, but not, as was now manifest, with anything like the success Gutruatus had. The trouble was that the Arverni had not forgotten the disastrous war they had fought seventy-five years ago against the most prominent Ahenobarbus of that time. They had been defeated so completely that the slave markets of the world had received their first bulk consignment of Gallic women and children; the Arvernian men had mostly died.“ Vercingetorix, it has taken the Arverni these seventy-five years to rise again,” said Gobannitio in council, striving to be patient. “Once we were the greatest of all Gallic peoples. Then in our pride we went to war against Rome. We were reduced to nothing. We yielded supremacy to the Aedui, the Carnutes, the Senones. These peoples still outrank us, but we are steadily overtaking them. So no, we will not fight Rome again.”

“Uncle, Uncle, times have changed!” cried Vercingetorix. “Yes, we fell! Yes, we were crushed, humiliated, sold into slavery! But we were merely one among many peoples! And still today you talk of the Senones or the Aedui! Of Arvernian power contrasted with Aeduan power, with Carnute power! It can't be like that anymore! What is happening today is different! We are going to combine and become one people under one warcry—free men in a free country! We are not the Arverni or the Aedui or the Carnutes! We are the Gauls! We are a brotherhood! That is the difference! United, we will defeat Rome so decisively that Rome will never again send her armies to our country. And one day Gaul will march into Italia, one day Gaul will rule the world!”

“Dreams, Vercingetorix, silly dreams,” said Gobannitio wearily. “There will never be concord among the peoples of Gaul.” The upshot of this and many other arguments in the Arvernian council chamber was that Vercingetorix found himself forbidden to enter Gergovia. Not that he moved away from the district. Instead he remained in his house on the outskirts of Gergovia and confined his energies to persuading the younger Arvernian men that he was right. And here he was far more successful. With his cousins Critognarus and Vercassivellaunus following his example, he worked feverishly to make the younger men see where their only salvation lay: in unification. Nor did he dream. He planned. Fully aware that the hardest struggle would be to convince the leaders of the other peoples of Gaul that he, Vercingetorix, was the one who must lead the great Army of All Gaul. So when the news of the events at Cenabum was shouted into Gergovia, Vercingetorix took it as the omen he had been waiting for. He sent out the call to arms, then walked into Gergovia, took over the council and murdered Gobannitio.“ I am your king,” he said to the packed chamber of thanes, “and soon I will be King of a united Gaul! I go now to Carnutum to talk to the leaders of the other peoples, and on my way I will call every people to arms.” The tribes answered. With winter looming, men began to get out their armor, sharpen their swords, see to dispositions on the home front during a long absence. A huge wave of excitement rolled across central Gaul, and kept on rolling northward into the Belgae and westward into the Aremorici, the Celtic tribes of the Atlantic coast. Southwestward too, into Aquitania. Gaul was going to unite. Gaul united was going to drive the Romans out.

But it was in the oak grove at Carnutum that Vercingetorix had to fight his most difficult battle; here he had to summon up the power and the persuasiveness to have himself appointed leader. Too early to insist that he be called King—that would come after he had demonstrated the qualities necessary in a king.“ Cathbad is right,” he said to the assembled chieftains, and careful that he kept Cathbad's name to the forefront rather than the name of Gutruatus. “We must separate Caesar from his legions until the whole of Gaul is in arms.” Many had come whom he hadn't expected, including Commius of the Atrebates. All five men with whom he had concluded his original pact were there, Lucterius chafing to be started. But it was Commius who turned the tide in Vercingetorix's favor.“ I believed in the Romans,” said the King of the Atrebates, lips peeled back from his teeth. “Not because I felt a traitor to my people, but for much the same kind of reasons Vercingetorix gives us here today. Gaul needs to be one people, not many. And I thought the only way to do that was to use Rome. To let Rome, so centralized, so organized, so efficient, do what I thought no Gaul could ever do. Pull us together. Make us think of ourselves as one. But in this Arvernian, this Vercingetorix, I see a man of our own blood with the strength and the purpose we need! I am not Celtic, I am Belgic. But I am first and last a Gaul of Gaul! And I tell you, my fellow kings and princes, I will follow Vercingetorix! I will do as he asks. I will bring my Atrebatan people to his congress and tell them that a man of the Arverni is their leader, that I am merely his lieutenant!”

It was Cathbad who took the vote, Cathbad who could say to the warlords that Vercingetorix was elected leader of a united attempt to eject Rome from the homelands. And Vercingetorix, thin, febrile, glowing, proceeded to show his fellow Gauls that he was a thinker too.“ The cost of this war will be enormous,” he said, “and all our peoples must share it. The more we share, the more united we will feel. Every man is to go to the muster properly armed and outfitted. I want no brave fools stripping naked to demonstrate their valor; I want every man in mail shirt and helmet, every man carrying a full-sized shield, every man well provided with spears, arrows, whatever is his choice. And each people must work out how much food its men will eat, make sure they are not compelled to return home prematurely because they have no food left. The spoils will not be great; we cannot hope to reap enough to pay for this war. Nor are we going to ask for aid from the Germani. To do that is to open the back door for the wolves as we thrust the wild boars out the front door. Nor can we take from our own—unless our own choose to support Rome. For I warn you, any people which does not join us in this war will be deemed a traitor to united Gaul! No Remi or Lingones have come, so let the Remi and the Lingones beware!” He laughed, a breathless little sound. “With Remi horses, we will be better cavalrymen than the Germani!”

“The Bituriges aren't here either,” said Sedulius of the Lemovices. “I heard a rumor that they prefer Rome.”