Julius Caesar (20 page)

Caesar did not need to have his former partner’s actions spelled out for him. He was aware that Pompey’s new relations and friends would do all that they could to weaken the link between the two surviving triumvirs, and would indeed try to make an open break between them. It was also clear to Caesar, even if it was not yet to Pompey, that the death of Julia, the death of Crassus, and Pompey’s remarriage into the heart of
Optimate
country, all tended toward a direct confrontation between the two men.

20

The Great Gallic Uprising

THROUGHOUT that winter the eyes of the world were upon Rome and the contest for power that was taking place. Those who are on the sidelines can often see more clearly than those who are engaged, and the leaders of the Gauls and their informants were far from ignorant barbarians in a distant country. They knew, to some extent at any rate, the relative positions of Caesar and Pompey in their struggle. They knew also that it was Caesar whom they had to fear, and their experience of Roman occupation had not endeared their new masters to them. Even the favored tribes knew that they would never enjoy real freedom again and, in Caesar’s absence, the mood began to harden throughout Gaul. It was clear that individual uprisings were of no avail and that only a massive insurrection on a
national
scale (something never previously envisaged) could secure them their liberty.

Caesar’s reaction to Pompey’s elevation to the consulship, and to his move toward an alliance with the
Optimates
, was to counterbalance the consul’s power with the aristocracy by seeking the affection of the people—an area in which Pompey had never had much success. Suetonius details the means that Caesar employed to win a popularity that would benefit him privately and also stand him in good stead when he became a candidate for his second consulship. Almost for the first time, he had money to spare—not borrowed as before from Crassus and others, but money of his own. It stemmed of course from Gaul, partly the loot of captured towns and villages, but also from deals with tribal chiefs,

Roman merchants, tax-collectors and slave-dealers. A large section of the continent that had hitherto known only the economic requirements of its leaders and their immediate supporters, was now open to methods of extracting money from the conquered that Rome had perfected in its dealings throughout the East and the Mediterranean world. From the spoils taken in Gaul Caesar began building Rome a new Forum, paying (as Suetonius tells us) more than a million gold pieces for the site alone. A gladiatorial show (always a way to the people’s heart) and an immense public banquet in memory of his daughter Julia were followed by arrangements for the training and provision of gladiators of a high standard for shows in the future. He was careful not to forget the real source of his strength, doubling the rate of pay of the private soldier, while at the same time he increased his ration from the state granaries and, whenever the market was glutted, would allocate a Gallic slave to every soldier. He became “a certain and reliable source of help to all in legal difficulties, or in debt, or living beyond their means…”

For those with serious criminal records or whose affairs were in such a state that even he could not help them, he had only one thing to say: “What you need is a civil war.” (If it should come to that, he knew well on whose side they would be.) Nor did he look only to Rome and Italy, for he knew—especially if there should be a civil war—that it was in the vast provinces of the empire that allies would be needed. Not only Rome benefited from his architectural munificence, but also the other major cities of Italy, for he knew better than anyone that an imposing work of architecture makes its donor’s name reverberate a thousand times a day. Magnificent public works were presented to the main cities of Asia and Greece, as well as to Spain and Narbonese Gaul. “Everyone,” writes Suetonius, “was amazed by this liberality and wondered what it might signify.” Thinking men knew of course, and saw that everything was leading up to a conflict between Caesar and Pompey for the rulership of the world.

But everything—money, power, legions and his continued freedom from prosecution in Rome—hinged upon Gaul. Caesar had staked all on his possession of that great new power base, and he needed it solid behind him or he was ruined. The first signs that Gaul was again stirring uneasily came early in 52. The Carnutes were once more among the first to raise the banner of independence, putting a number of Romans to death in their town of Cenabum (Orleans). Then his faithful ally and friend, Commius of the Atrebates, after surviving an assassination plotted by Labienus, proved to be at the heart of the rebellion, organizing a rising designed to take advantage of Caesar’s absence and to cut him off from his legions in Gaul. But the center of the revolt was finally to be a tribe which, although one of the most powerful in Gaul, had hitherto not been conspicuous in opposition to the Romans. Indeed, the man who led them had fought in Caesar’s Gallic cavalry and had been dignified by the proconsul with the title of
Friend.
This tribe, the Arverni, came from the region of the Auvergne, and had probably failed to take part in previous uprisings only because its people were bedeviled by the usual struggle for power between two rival chieftains. They and almost all Gaul were ultimately led in the great revolt against Rome by the son of the man who lost this power struggle, the man who had distinguished himself fighting with the Roman cavalry, the man who was to remain a Gallic hero throughout all the ages—Vercingetorix. (This is the name that Caesar gives him, while Plutarch calls him Vergentorix—in either case, probably a title rather than a name.)

Despite opposition from the other Arvernian leaders, who were not anxious to provoke the Romans, Vercingetorix managed to arouse the ordinary peasants in the country to take up arms against Rome. This was new in itself, since all previous revolts had started with the Gallic chieftains and nobles. He even enrolled slaves in his ranks, promising them their liberty, and—a fact that Caesar comments upon—“he welcomed robbers.” Vercingetorix, proclaimed King by his followers, managed to rouse the neighboring tribes and persuaded them to accept his overall leadership. Inspired very probably by the way in which Caesar had begun to weld the various Celtic tribes into a single province, he conceived the dream of the Celts as a nation—united against Rome and in their shared language, customs and religious beliefs. It was something completely new in their history and for this reason acted as a leaven among people previously divided by clan loyalties. At the same time another leader declared himself, one Lucterius, from the Cadurci, a tribe neighboring upon the Arverni, a man whom even Caesar was to call “of unusual courage.” He was unusual too in that he was prepared to accept Vercingetorix as his leader, and he rapidly began to draw into the revolt a number of tribes which had hitherto kept out of entanglements against the foreign power. Vercingetorix was meanwhile rousing the tribes from the Parisii to Armorica; the whole territory was bursting into flame and the rising even threatened the Roman province of Narbonne. Once the Gauls began to work together like this there was real danger for the Romans, and Caesar acted immediately. After crossing the Alps he made straight for the provincial capital, rapidly organized its defense and saw to it that the frontiers were well garrisoned. Lucterius, who had been moving southward threatening the province, found himself forestalled by that immense speed with which Caesar was always able to move his troops, impressing everyone around him with the necessity for immediate action. Time and again his enemies would discover to their discomfort this quicksilver quality, whether in the civil war, in Alexandria or later in Spain. It was something quite matchless. Plutarch catches its quality:

But Caesar, who above all men was gifted with the faculty of making the right use of everything in war, and most especially of seizing the right moment, as soon as he heard of the revolt, returned immediately the same way he went, and showed the barbarians, by the quickness of his march in such a severe season, that an army was advancing against them which was invincible.

Coming up from the south Caesar was confronted by the Cevennes mountains, where the pass was deep under snow and Vercingetorix to the north of it had reckoned himself secure for the time being. He little understood as yet the capabilities of the Roman legionary. The snow was six foot deep, yet the pass was cleared in a night and a day and the Romans suddenly appeared upon the borders of the Arverni.

So confident had Vercingetorix felt, that he had been away urging upon another tribe the necessity of breaking with the Romans, and by the time the news reached him, the legions were moving deep into his own country. Plutarch again takes up the tale:

For in the time that one would have thought it scarcely credible that a courier or express should have come with a message from him, he himself appeared with all his army, ravaging the country, reducing their posts, subduing their towns, receiving into his protection those who declared for him…

Vercingetorix was now forced to concentrate on the defense of his own lands, while Caesar, leaving Decimus Brutus with enough troops to keep the enemy occupied, moved on rapidly toward Vienne where he was met by a detachment of cavalry, in whose company, traveling overnight, he made for Langres where two legions were stationed. Two other legions stationed in the country of the Remi were ordered to Agedincum (Sens), and the main body of his troops was already forming. Vercingetorix, having observed from Caesar the value of rapid movement in war, now marched north and began to besiege a town called Gorgobina, the center of the Boii tribe whom Caesar had placed under the sovereignty of the Aedui. He knew that the Aedui were wavering in their attachment to Rome, and that if they could be made to join the revolt the whole of the Roman scheme for the new Gallic colony would collapse. But Caesar realized this as well, and realized too that all the waverers would abandon their neutral or their pro-Roman position if it were seen that Caesar could not protect a small and relatively unimportant tribe.

Despite the great difficulties over provisions at this time of the year (the legionaries even had to be put on a meat diet, which they disliked intensely) Caesar started off with eight legions. After a two-day siege of one town (the inhabitants capitulating on the third) he moved into the country of the rebellious Carnutes and prepared to make them pay bitterly for the murders which had been the spark for Vercingetorix’s revolt. At Cenabum (Orleans) the inhabitants fled before the advance of the legions but, trying to escape by a bridge over the Loire, were caught in a bottleneck and killed or captured. The deserted town was looted and set on fire, and Caesar made a present of everything within it and of all its inhabitants to the legionaries. He now crossed the Loire and headed into the land of the Bituriges, whose particular assistance Vercingetorix was now soliciting, for he had been caught by the speed and the success of Caesar’s moves and forced to abandon his threat to the Boii (thus proving to the undecided that Caesar’s protection was of more value than joining the revolt) and had moved to protect the Bituriges.

This tribe, which had wholeheartedly responded to Vercingetorix’s call, had shown their willingness even to the extent of adopting a scorched-earth policy in the path of the Romans. They balked, though, at destroying their capital Avaricum (Bourges) and, despite Vercingetorix’s pleas that they should abandon the city, forced him to yield to their arguments that the place was so strong by nature that not even the legions could capture it. Vercingetorix and his troops remained outside Avaricum, their mission being to harass Caesar’s lines of supply and prevent food getting through to the legions (in which they nearly succeeded). But the legionaries, remembering the spoil from Cenabum and seeing this far richer city in front of them with its supposed wealth of treasures, remained steadfast at the siege in spite of the winter weather and their starvation rations, for neither the Aedui nor the recently rescued Boii came to Caesar’s aid despite constant requests for supplies. With the erection of towers by both sides, the digging of sap-works and the display by the besieged of a bravery and ingenuity that Caesar remarked upon, the siege dragged on for three-and-a-half weeks. On a day of torrential rain, when both sides had more or less decided that nothing further could be done, he ordered the legionaries to attack. Surprise was all. The defenders’ walls and towers were thrown down, an entrance was forced, and the citizens were put to the sword.

Gone were the days when Caesar had spared gallant adversaries. Gaul had given him too much trouble in recent years, and this revolt had been more dangerous than anything before. Everything hinged for him on Gaul’s being safely secured for the Romans by a Roman whom they would accordingly honor—himself. He noted that out of forty thousand men, women and children within the walls, not one survived the subsequent massacre. (In fact the only survivors were about eight hundred who had fled at the first sign of the attack.) The city was immensely rich and, almost as important to the legionaries after their days of semi-starvation, it was also found to be well stocked with grain and every kind of supplies. It may seem curious but, despite this defeat, Vercingetorix did not lose his hold over the Gauls and indeed even derived some political benefit from it. He was able to point out that he had always advised abandoning the city—and that his policy of leaving nothing anywhere for the Romans to capture, nor grain to eat, was right.

Caesar was now deeply concerned that the Aedui were becoming less and less reliable. They had failed to supply him with provisions during the recent siege, and he decided to make his headquarters at Noviodunum (Nevers) in their territory. He had learned that a civil war was imminent in this tribe, due to the usual disagreement between two rivals, and all his political skills were needed to sort this out. Mean-while, as the revolt still threatened the whole of Gaul, he took the decision to divide his forces into two, sending the much-trusted Labienus north to Lutetia (Paris) while he himself moved to attack the very heart of the Arverni—their main stronghold, Gergovia. Vercingetorix, he may have reasoned, while willing enough to urge others to abandon their cities, could hardly let Gergovia fall. He would therefore be forced to abandon his policy of laying waste the land and conducting a guerrilla strategy out of the forests, and have to stand and fight. Vercingetorix did withdraw into the fortress-capital, but Caesar had underestimated the strength of the place. Gergovia, standing on a natural hill, furnished with water, well-garrisoned and full of provisions, could only be forced to yield by a frontal assault. The strength of Gergovia, as of so many great fortresses, lay not in its walls, towers and ditches, but in its natural site—a plateau standing over 2,000 feet above the surrounding land. He “despaired of taking it by force,” thus leaving himself with no option but a prolonged siege—carried out in a hostile land and with no certainty that his so-called friends such as the Aedui would keep him supplied.