54-53 B.C. exploit considerable enough to afford an excuse for retreat. Cassivellaunus promised hostages and tribute, probably with no intention of giving either, and Caesar recrossed into Gaul. His immediate object-of “rousing the islanders from their haughty security". seems certainly to have been attained. The subjection of Gaul was now complete, while both Britons and Germans had been impressed with a sense of the power of Rome; but many circumstances combined to make the Celtic nation restive under its yoke. They were ashamed when they had to confess that a nation numbering a million armed men had been subdued by fifty thousand Romans. Central Gaul and the Belgian confederacy had submitted almost without striking a blow; but the heroic resistance of the Veneti and of the Britons incited the patriotic Celts to make another attempt to recover their freedom. Even in 54 B.C., the Treveri had absented themselves from the general diet, and Caesar had carried with him into Britain their foremost men as hostages; and when the Haeduan Dumnorix refused to embark, he was pursued and cut down by Caesar's orders. His death created a deep impression all through the ranks of the Celtic nobility; every man felt that the fate of Dumnorix might be his own. The winter of 54-53 B.C. found the Roman legions quartered in northern Gaul and wrapped.in a sense of complete security. But suddenly the people arose on their conquerors and, under the leadership of Ambiorix, king of the Eburones, began a simultaneous attack on the scattered posts. One division of troops under Quintus Sabinus was annihilated and another under Quintus Cicero would have met the same fate but for the opportune arrival of Caesar with a relieving force. The Gallic army was again defeated and the various tribes soon scattered to their homes. After taking a terrible vengeance on the Eburones and making another short incursion into Germany as punishment for aid given the insurgents, Caesar crossed the Alps at the end of 53 B.C. to watch the daily increasing complications of the capital. The fire was smoth But for once Caesar had miscalculated. ered, but not extinguished. The position of affairs was most favorable for revolt. Caesar was at a distance on the other side of the Alps, while his army was encamped on the Seine. The Roman troops might be surrounded and the province overrun before he could appear, even if affairs in Italy did not prevent his return. The 52 B.C. It signal was given at Cenabum (Orléans), and all the Romans there were massacred. Everywhere the patriots were astir. Even the Arverni, the stanchest supporters of the Romans in all Gaul, were brought to join the insurrection, after a revolution which overthrew the government of the common council and made Vercingetorix, the leader of the Arvernian patriots, king. The latter soon became for the Celts what Cassivellaunus had been for the Britons. was felt that he, if any man, was to save the nation. The insurrection spread in the west from the Garonne to the Loire, and Vercingetorix was everywhere recognized as commander-in-chief. Long before he was expected, however, Caesar reappeared to direct his troops; but the summer of 52 B.C. saw the severest fighting that the Romans had yet known in Gaul. The whole country was roused and many advised a retreat over the Cevennes into the old province. Vercingetorix ordered the country to be laid waste, and it seemed impossible either to bring on a general engagement or even to procure supplies for the Roman troops. The Gauls burned their own towns, saving only those capable of defense, and in these they defied their enemy. Finally Caesar succeeded in blockading Vercingetorix in a strongly fortified position at Alesia, and it became evident that here the fate of the country was to be decided. At the moment when the Roman lines were on the point of completion, Vercingetorix dismissed all his cavalry with orders to rouse the whole nation for the relief of the city. The miserable inhabitants were turned out of the town, and perished of hunger between the lines of either side. At last the huge host of the relieving army appeared-in number amounting to 250,000 infantry and 8000 cavalry. But Caesar had prepared himself to be besieged, and his rear was protected by a strong line of entrenchments. A determined assault was made upon the Romans from without and from within; and on the second day the Celts suc ceeded, at a point where the lines ran over the slope of a hill, in filling up the trenches and hurling the defenders from the ramparts. Labienus threw himself with four legions upon the enemy. It was the crisis of the struggle, and the assailants were gradually forced back, while squadrons of cavalry attacked them in the rear and completed the rout. The The fate of Alesia and of the Celtic nation was decided. army dispersed, and the king was, by his own consent, delivered up 52 B. C. to the Romans for punishment, in order to avert as far as possible destruction from the nation, by bringing it upon his own head. Mounted on his steed and in full armor the king of the Arvernians. appeared before the Roman proconsul, and rode round his tribunal; then he surrendered his horse and arms, and sat down in silence on the steps at Caesar's feet. Five years afterwards he was led in Caesar's triumph, and beheaded at the foot of the Capitol. As after a day of gloom the sun breaks through the clouds at its setting, so destiny bestows on nations that are going down a last great man. Thus Hannibal stands at the close of the Phoenician history, and Vercingetorix at the close of the Celtic. They were not able to save the nations to which they belonged from a foreign yoke, but they spared them the last remaining disgrace, an inglorious fall. The whole ancient world presents no more genuine knight than Vercingetorix, whether as regards his essential character or his outward appearance. But man ought not to be a mere knight, and least of all the statesman. It was the knight, not the hero, who disdained to escape from Alesia, when he alone was of more consequence to the nation than a hundred thousand ordinary brave men. It was the knight, not the hero, who gave himself up as a sacrifice, when the only thing gained by the sacrifice was that the nation publicly dishonored itself, and with equal cowardice and absurdity employed its last breath in proclaiming that its great historical death-struggle was a crime against its oppressor. How very different was the conduct of Hannibal in similar positions! It is impossible to part from the noble king of the Arverni without a feeling of historical and human sympathy; but it is characteristic of the Celtic nation, that its greatest man was after all merely a knight. After the fall of Alesia no united effort was made to continue the insurrection; the league fell to pieces, and every clan made what terms it could with the conqueror. Caesar was anxious. for many reasons to bring the war to a close, and the easy temperament of the Gauls met him halfway. Where there was a strong Roman party, as among the Haedui and Arverni, the cantons obtained a complete restoration of their former relations with Rome, and their captives were released without ransom, while those of the other clans became the slaves of the legionaries. But not a few cantons refused to make submission, until the Roman troops ap 51-46 B.C. peared within their borders. Such expeditions were undertaken in the winter and in the following summer against the Bituriges and Carnutes, the Bellovaci and other Belgic cantons. The Bellovacian king Correus offered a brave resistance, but was at last slain in a skirmish. On the Loire strong bands assembled which required a considerable Roman force to defeat them. The last remnant of opposition was at Uxellodunum on the Lot, where Drappes and Lucterius, the brave adjutant of Vercingetorix, shut themselves up. The town was taken only after Caesar had appeared in person, and the spring from which the garrison derived water had been diverted. The whole garrison were dismissed to their homes after their hands had been cut off. Thus Gaul was finally subdued after eight years' war. Hardly a year later the Roman troops had to be withdrawn, owing to the outbreak of civil war; yet the Celts did not rise against the foreign yoke, and Gaul was the only part of the Roman empire where there was no fighting against Caesar. Later disturbances, like the rising of the Bellovaci in 46 B.C., were easily dealt with by the local governors. This state of peace was, it is true, purchased to a large extent by allowing the more distant districts to withdraw themselves de facto from the Roman allegiance; but however unfinished the building of Caesar may have been, its foundations remained firm and unshaken. For the present the newly acquired provinces were united with the province of Narbo, but when Caesar gave up this governorship, in 46 B.C., two new governorships, of Gaul proper and Belgica, were formed. The individual cantons of course lost their independence, and paid to Rome a fixed tribute which they levied themselves. The total was two million dollars, but masses of gold from the treasures of temples and of rich men also flowed to Rome to such an extent that, as compared with silver, gold fell twenty-five per cent. Existing arrangements were everywhere allowed to remain. as far as possible; the hereditary kingships, the feudal oligarchies, even the system of clientship by which one canton was dependent on another still existed. Caesar's sole object was to arrange matters in the interest of Rome, and to bring into power the men favorably disposed to Roman rule. Cantons where the Roman party was strong and trustworthy, such as the Remi, the Lingones, and the Haedui, received the right of alliance which gave them much. 51-46 B.C. greater communal freedom, and were invested with the hegemony over other cantons. The national worship and its priests were preserved as much as possible. At the same time Caesar did what he could to stimulate the Romanization of Gaul. A number of Celts of rank were admitted to Roman citizenship- perhaps into the Roman senate; Latin was made the official language in several cantons; and while smaller money might be coined by the local authorities for local circulation, this might only be done in conformity with the Roman standard, and the coinage of gold and of denarii was reserved for the Roman magistrates alone. Hereafter the organization of the cantons approached more nearly to the Italian urban constitution, and both. the common councils and the chief towns became of far greater importance than hitherto. If Caesar did little in the way of founding colonies-only two settlements can be traced to him, that of Noviodunum and that of the Boii-it was because circumstances did not allow him to exchange the sword for the plow. No one probably saw more clearly than himself the military and political advantages of establishing a series of Transalpine colonies as bases of support for the new center of civilization. Gaul as a nation had ceased to exist; it was absorbed in a politically superior nationality. The course of the war was significant enough of the character of the nation: at the outset only single districts, and those German or half German, offered energetic resistance; and when foreign rule was established, the attempts to shake it off were either without plan or were the work of certain prominent nobles, and with the death or capture of an Indutiomarus or a Vercingetorix the struggle was at an end. But the ruin of the Celtic nation was not the most important result of Caesar's wars. Nothing but the insight and energy of Caesar prevented Gaul from being overrun by the Germans, in whom the Roman statesman saw the rivals and antagonists of the Graeco-Roman world. By his conquests and organization he gained time for the West to acquire that culture which the East had already assumed: but for him the great migration of peoples which took place five hundred years later would have taken place under Ariovistus. Had it so happened, our civilization would hardly have stood in any more intimate relation to the Romano-Greek than to the Indian and Assyrian culture. That there is a bridge connecting the past glory of Hellas and Rome with the prouder fabric of modHist. Nat. III 21 |
