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.



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.



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.



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.



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 laid siege to Gergovia, their capital and the birthplace of Vercingetorix.

The firmness and the ability of the Gallic chieftain were not inferior to such a struggle. He understood from the outset that he could not cope in the open field with Caesar and the Roman legions; he therefore exerted himself in getting together a body of cavalry numerous enough to harass the Romans during their movements, to attack their scattered detachments, to bear his orders swiftly to all quarters, and to keep up the excitement amongst the different peoplets with some hope of success. His plan of campaign, his repeated instructions, his passionate entreaties to the confederates were to avoid any general action, to anticipate by their own ravages those of the Romans, to destroy everywhere, at the approach of the enemy, stores, springs, bridges, trees, and habitations: he wanted Caesar to find in his front nothing but ruins and clouds of warriors relentless in pursuing him without getting within reach. Frequently he succeeded in obtaining from the people those painful sacrifices in the interest of the common safety; as when the Biturigians (inhabitants of the district of Bourges) burned in one day twenty of their towns or villages. Vercingetorix adjured them also to burn Avaricum (Bourges), their capital; but they refused, and the capture of Avaricum, though gallantly defended, justified the urgency of Vercingetorix, seeing that it was an important success for Caesar and a serious blow for the Gauls. Out of forty thousand combatants within the walls, it is said, scarcely eight hundred escaped the slaughter and succeeded in joining Vercingetorix, who had hovered continually in the neighborhood without being able to offer the besieged any effectual assistance. Nor was it only against the Romans that he had to struggle; he had to fight amongst his own people, against rivalry, mistrust, impatience, and discouragement; he was accused of desiring, beyond everything, the mastery; he was even suspected of keeping up, with the view of assuring his own future, secret relations with Caesar; he was called upon to attack the enemy in front, and so bring the war to a decisive issue. It is all very fine to be summoned by the popular voice to accomplish a great and arduous work; but you cannot be, with impunity, the most far-sighted, the most able, and the most in danger, because the most devoted. Vercingetorix was bearing the burden of his superiority and influence, until he should suffer the penalty and pay with his life for his patriotism and his glory. He was approaching the happiest moment of his enterprise and his destiny. In spite of reverses, in spite of Caesar's presence and activity, the insurrection was gaining ground and strength; in the north, west, south-west, on the banks of the Rhine, the Seine, and the Loire, the idea of Gallic nationality and the hope of independence were spreading amongst people far removed from the centre of the movement, and were bringing to Vercingetorix declarations of sympathy or material re-enforcements. An event of more importance took place in the centre itself. The AEduans, the most ancient allies and clients the Romans had in Gaul, being divided amongst themselves, and feeling, besides, the national instinct, ended, after much hesitation, by taking part in the uprising. Caesar, for all his care, could neither prevent nor stifle this defection, which threatened to become contagious, and detach from Rome the neighboring peoplets that were still faithful. Caesar, engaged upon the siege of Gergovia, encountered an obstinate resistance; whilst Vercingetorix, encamped on the heights which surrounded his birthplace, everywhere embarrassed, sometimes attacked, and incessantly threatened the Romans. The eighth legion, drawn on one day to make an imprudent assault, was repulsed, and lost forty-six of its bravest centurions. Caesar determined to raise the siege, and to transfer the struggle to places where the population could be more safely depended upon. It was the first decisive check he had experienced in Gaul, the first Gallic town he had been unable to take, the first retrograde movement he had executed in the face of the Gallic insurgents and their chieftain. Vercingetorix could not and would not restrain his joy; it seemed to him that the day had dawned and an excellent chance arrived for attempting a decisive blow. He had under his orders, it is said, eighty thousand men, mostly his own Arvernians, and a numerous cavalry furnished by the different peoplets his allies. He followed all Caesar's movements in retreat towards the Saone, and, on arriving at Longeau not far from Langres, near a little river called the Vingeanne, he halted, pitched his camp about nine miles from the Romans, and assembling the chiefs of his cavalry, said, "Now is the hour of victory; the Romans are flying to their province and leaving Gaul; that is enough for our liberty to-day, but too little for the peace and repose of the future; for they will return with greater armies, and the war will be without end. Attack we them amid the difficulties of their march; if their foot support the cavalry, they will not be able to pursue their route; if, as I fully trust, they leave their baggage, to provide for their safety, they will lose both their honor and the supplies whereof they have need. None of the enemy's horse will dare to come forth from their lines. To give ye courage and aid, I will order forth from the camp and place in battle array all our troops, and they will strike the enemy with terror." The Gallic horsemen cried out that they must all bind themselves by the most sacred of oaths, and swear that none of them would come again under roof, or see again wife, or children, or parent, unless he had twice pierced through the ranks of the enemy. And all did take this oath, and so prepared for the attack. Vercingetorix knew not that Caesar, with his usual foresight, had summoned and joined to his legions a great number of horsemen from the German tribes roving over the banks of the Rhine, with which he had taken care to keep up friendly relations. Not only had he promised them pay, plunder, and lands, but, finding their horses ill-trained, he had taken those of his officers, even those of the Roman knights and veterans, and distributed them amongst his barbaric auxiliaries. The action began between the cavalry on both sides; a portion of the Gallic had taken up position on the road followed by the Roman army, to bar its passage; but whilst the fighting at this point was getting more and more obstinate, the German horse in Caesar's service gained a neighboring height, drove off the Gallic horse that were in occupation, and pursued them as far as the river, near which was Vercingetorix with his infantry. Disorder took place amongst this infantry so unexpectedly attacked. Caesar launched his legions at them, and there was a general panic and rout among the Gauls. Vercingetorix had great trouble in rallying them, and he rallied them only to order a general retreat, for which they clamored. Hurriedly striking his camp, he made for Alesia (Semur in Auxois), a neighboring town and the capital of the Mandubians, a peoplet in clientship to the AEduans. Caesar immediately went in pursuit of the Gauls; killed, he says, three thousand, made important prisoners, and encamped with his legions before Alesia the day but one after Vercingetorix, with his fugitive army, had occupied the place as well as the neighboring hills, and was hard at work intrenching himself, probably without any clear idea as yet of what he should do to continue the struggle.

Caesar at once took a resolution as unexpected as it was discreetly bold. Here was the whole Gallic insurrection, chieftain and soldiery, united together within or beneath the walls of a town of moderate extent. He undertook to keep it there and destroy it on the spot, instead of having to pursue it everywhere without ever being sure of getting at it. He had at his disposal eleven legions, about fifty thousand strong, and five or six thousand cavalry, of which two thousand were Germans. He placed them round about Alesia and the Gallic camp, caused to be dug a circuit of deep ditches, some filled with water, others bristling with palisades and snares, and added, from interval to interval, twenty-three little forts, occupied or guarded night and day by detachments. The result was a line of investment about ten miles in extent. To the rear of the Roman camp, and for defence against attacks from without, Caesar caused to be dug similar intrenchments, which formed a line of circumvallation of about thirteen miles. The troops had provisions and forage for thirty days. Vercingetorix made frequent sallies to stop or destroy these works; but they were repulsed, and only resulted in getting his army more closely cooped up within the place. Eighty thousand Gallic insurgents were, as it were, in prison, guarded by fifty thousand Roman soldiers. Vercingetorix was one of those who persevere and act in the days of distress just as in the spring-tide of their hopes. Before the works of the Romans were finished, he assembled his horsemen, and ordered them to sally briskly from Alesia, return each to his own land, and summon the whole population to arms. He was obeyed; the Gallic horsemen made their way, during the night, through the intervals left by the Romans' still imperfect lines of investment, and dispersed themselves amongst their various peoplets. Nearly everywhere irritation and zeal were at their height. An assemblage of delegates met at Bibracte (Autun), and fixed the amount of the contingent to be furnished by each nation, and a point was assigned at which all those contingents should unite for the purpose of marching together towards Alesia, and attacking the besiegers. The total of the contingents thus levied on forty-three Gallic peoplets amounted, according to Caesar, to two hundred and eighty-three thousand men; and two hundred and forty thousand men, it is said, did actually hurry up to the appointed place. Mistrust of such enormous numbers has already been expressed by one who has lived through the greatest European wars, and has heard the ablest generals reduce to their real strength the largest armies. We find in M. Thiers' History of the Consulate and Empire, that at Austerlitz, on the 2d of December, 1805, Napoleon had but from sixty-five to seventy thousand men, and the combined Austrians and Russians but ninety thousand. At Leipzig, the biggest of modern battles, when all the French forces on the one side, and the Austrian, Prussian, Russian, and Swedish on the other, were face to face on the 18th of October, 1813, they made all together about five hundred thousand men. How can we believe, then, that nineteen centuries ago, Gaul, so weakly populated and so slightly organized, suddenly sent two hundred and forty thousand men to the assistance of eighty thousand Gauls besieged in the little town of Alesia by fifty or sixty thousand Romans? But whatever may be the case with the figures, it is certain that at the very first moment the national impulse answered the appeal of Vercingetorix, and that the besiegers of Alesia, Caesar and his legions, found that they were themselves all at once besieged in their intrenchments by a cloud of Gauls hurrying up to the defence of their compatriots. The struggle was fierce, but short. Every time that the fresh Gallic army attacked the besiegers, Vercingetorix and the Gauls of Alesia sallied forth, and joined in the attack. Caesar and his legions, on their side, at one time repulsed these double attacks, at another themselves took the initiative, and assailed at one and the same time the besieged and the auxiliaries Gaul had sent them. The feeling was passionate on both sides: Roman pride was pitted against Gallic patriotism. But in four or five days the strong organization, the disciplined valor of the Roman legions, and the genius of Caesar carried the day. The Gallic re-enforcements, beaten and slaughtered without mercy, dispersed; and Vercingetorix and the besieged were crowded back within their walls without hope of escape. We have two accounts of the last moments of this great Gallic insurrection and its chief; one, written by Caesar himself, plain, cold, and harsh as its author; the other, by two later historians, who were neither statesmen nor warriors, Plutarch and Dion Cassius, has more detail and more ornament, following either popular tradition or the imagination of the writers. It may be well to give both. "The day after the defeat," says Caesar, "Vercingetorix convokes the assembly, and shows that he did not undertake the war for his own personal advantage, but for the general freedom. Since submission must be made to fortune, he offers to satisfy the Romans either by instant death or by being delivered to them alive. A deputation there anent is sent to Caesar, who orders the arms to be given up and the chiefs brought to him. He seats himself on his tribunal, in the front of his camp. The chiefs are brought, Vercingetorix is delivered over; the arms are cast at Caesar's feet. Except the AEduans and Arvernians, whom Caesar kept for the purpose of trying to regain their people, he had the prisoners distributed, head by head, to his army as booty of war."



The account of Dion Cassius is more varied and dramatic. "After the defeat," says he, "Vercingetorix, who was neither captured nor wounded, might have fled; but, hoping that the friendship that had once bound him to Caesar might gain him grace, he repaired to the Roman without previous demand of peace by the voice of a herald, and appeared suddenly in his presence, just as Caesar was seating himself upon his tribunal. The apparition of the Gallic chieftain inspired no little terror, for he was of lofty stature, and had an imposing appearance in arms. There was a deep silence. Vercingetorix fell at Caesar's feet, and made supplication by touch of hand without speaking a word. The scene moved those present with pity, remembering the ancient fortunes of Vercingetorix and comparing them with his present disaster. Caesar, on the contrary, found proof of criminality in the very memories relied upon for salvation, contrasted the late struggle with the friendship appealed to by Vercingetorix, and so put in a more hideous light the odiousness of his conduct. And thus, far from being moved by his misfortunes at the moment, he threw him in chains forthwith, and subsequently had him put to death, after keeping him to adorn his triumph."

Another historian, contemporary with Plutarch, Florus, attributes to Vercingetorix, as he fell down and cast his arms at Caesar's feet, these words: "Bravest of men, thou hast conquered a brave man." It is not necessary to have faith in the rhetorical compliment, or to likewise reject the mixture of pride and weakness attributed to Vercingetorix in the account of Dion Cassius. It would not be the only example of a hero seeking yet some chance of safety in the extremity of defeat, and abasing himself for the sake of preserving at any price a life on which fortune might still smile. However it be, Vercingetorix vanquished, dragged out, after ten years' imprisonment, to grace Caesar's triumph, and put to death immediately afterwards, lives as a glorious patriot in the pages of that history in which Caesar appears, on this occasion, as a peevish conqueror who took pleasure in crushing, with cruel disdain, the enemy he had been at so much pains to conquer.

Alesia taken, and Vercingetorix a prisoner, Gaul was subdued. Caesar, however, had in the following year (A. U. C. 703) a campaign to make to subjugate some peoplets who tried to maintain their local independence. A year afterwards, again, attempts at insurrection took place in Belgica, and towards the mouth of the Loire; but they were easily repressed; they had no national or formidable characteristics; Caesar and his lieutenants willingly contented themselves with an apparent submission, and in the year 705 A. U. C. the Roman legions, after nine years' occupation in the conquest of Gaul, were able to depart therefrom to Italy and the East for a plunge into civil war.



CHAPTER V.——GAUL UNDER ROMAN DOMINION.

From the conquest of Gaul by Caesar, to the establishment there of the Franks under Clovis, she remained for more than five centuries under Roman dominion; first under the pagan, afterwards under the Christian empire. In her primitive state of independence she had struggled for ten years against the best armies and the greatest man of Rome; after five centuries of Roman dominion she opposed no resistance to the invasion of the barbarians, Germans, Goths, Alans, Burgundians, and Franks, who destroyed bit by bit the Roman empire. In this humiliation and, one might say, annihilation of a population so independent, so active, and so valiant at its first appearance in history, is to be seen the characteristic of this long epoch. It is worth while to learn and to understand how it was.



Gaul lived, during those five centuries, under very different rules and rulers. They may be summed up under five names, which correspond with governments very unequal in merit and defect, in good and evil wrought for their epoch:

1st, the Caesars from Julius to Nero (from 49 B.C. to A.D. 68); 2d, the Flavians, from Vespasian to Domitian (from A.D. 69 to 95); 3d, the Antonines, from Nerva to Marcus Aurelius (from A.D. 96 to 180); 4th, the imperial anarchy, or the thirty-nine emperors and the thirty-one tyrants, from Commodus to Carinus and Numerian (from A.D. 180 to 284); 5th, Diocletian (from A.D. 284 to 305).

Through all these governments, and in spite of their different results for their contemporary subjects, the fact already pointed out as the general and definitive characteristic of that long epoch, to wit, the moral and social decadence of Gaul as well as of the Roman empire, never ceased to continue and spread.

On quitting conquered Gaul to become master at Rome, Caesar neglected nothing to assure his conquest and make it conducive to the establishment of his empire. He formed, of all the Gallic districts that he had subjugated, a special province which received the name of Gallia Comata (Gaul of the long-hair), whilst the old province was called Gallia Toyata (Gaul of the toga). Caesar caused to be enrolled amongst his troops a multitude of Gauls, Belgians, Arvernians, and Aquitanians, of whose bravery he had made proof. He even formed, almost entirely of Gauls, a special legion called Alauda (lark), because it bore on the helmets a lark with outspread wings, the symbol of wakefulness. At the same time he gave in Gallia Comata, to the towns and families that declared for him, all kinds of favors, the rights of Roman citizenship, the title of allies, clients, and friends, even to the extent of the Julian name, a sign of the most powerful Roman patronage. He had, however, in the old Roman province, formidable enemies, especially the town of Marseilles, which declared against him and for Pompey. Caesar had the place besieged by one of his lieutenants, got possession of it, caused to be delivered over to him its vessels and treasure, and left in it a garrison of two legions. He established at Narbonne, Arles, Biterrce (Beziers) three colonies of veteran legionaries devoted to his cause, and near Antipolis (Antibes) a maritime colony called Forum Julii, nowadays Frejus, of which he proposed to make a rival to Marseilles. Much money was necessary to meet the expenses of such patronage and to satisfy the troops, old and new, of the conqueror of Gaul and Rome. Now there was at Rome an ancient treasure, founded more than four centuries previously by the Dictator Camillus, when he had delivered Rome from the Gauls—a treasure reserved for the expenses of Gallic wars, and guarded with religious respect as sacred money. In the midst of all discords and disorders at Rome, none had touched it. After his return from Gaul, Caesar one day ascended the Capitol with his soldiers, and finding, in the temple of Saturn, the door closed of the place where the treasure was deposited, ordered it to be forced. L. Metellus, tribune of the people, made strong opposition, conjuring Caesar not to bring on the Republic the penalty of such sacrilege: but "the Republic has nothing to fear," said Caesar; "I have released it from its oaths by subjugating Gaul. There are no more Gauls." He caused the door to be forced, and the treasure was abstracted and distributed to the troops, Gallic and Roman. Whatever Caesar may have said, there were still Gauls, for at the same time that he was distributing to such of them as he had turned into his own soldiers the money reserved for the expense of fighting them, he was imposing upon Gallia Comata, under the name of stipendium (soldier's pay), a levy of forty millions of sesterces—a considerable amount for a devastated country which, according to Plutarch, did not contain at that time more than three millions of inhabitants, and almost equal to that of the levies paid by the rest of the Roman provinces.

After Caesar, Augustus, left sole master of the Roman world, assumed in Gaul, as elsewhere, the part of pacificator, repairer, conservator, and organizer, whilst taking care, with all his moderation, to remain always the master. He divided the provinces into imperial and senatorial, reserving to himself the entire government of the former, and leaving the latter under the authority of the senate. Gaul "of the long hair," all that Caesar had conquered, was imperial province. Augustus divided it into three provinces, Lugdunensian (Lyonese), Belgian, and Aquitanian. He recognized therein sixty nations or distinct cityships which continued to have themselves the government of their own affairs, according to their traditions and manners, whilst conforming to the general laws of the empire, and abiding under the supervision of imperial governors, charged with maintaining everywhere, in the words of Pliny the Younger, "the majesty of Roman peace." Luydunum (Lyons), which had been up to that time of small importance and obscure, became the great town, the favorite cityship and ordinary abiding-place of the emperors when they visited Gaul. After having held at Narbonne (27 B.C.) a meeting of representatives from the different Gallic nations, Augustus went several times to Lyons, and even lived there, as it appears, a pretty long while, to superintend, no doubt, from thence, and to get into working order the new government of Gaul. After the departure of Augustus, his adopted son Drusus, who had just fulfilled, in Belgica and on the Rhine, a mission at the same time military and administrative, called together at Lyons delegates from the sixty Gallic cityships, to take part (B.C.12 or 10) in the inauguration of a magnificent monument raised, at the confluence of the Rhone and Saone, in honor of Rome and Augustus as the tutelary deities of Gaul. In the middle of a vast enclosure was placed a huge altar of white marble, on which were engraved the names of the sixty cityships "of the long hair." A colossal statue of the Gauls and sixty statues of the Gallic cityships occupied the enclosure. Two columns of granite, twenty-five feet high, stood close by the altar, and were surmounted by two colossal Victories, in white marble, ten feet high. Solemn festivals, gymnastic games, and oratorical and literary exercitations accompanied the inauguration; and during the ceremony it was announced, amidst popular acclamation, that a son had just been born to Drusus at Lyons itself, in the palace of the emperor, where the child's mother, Antonia, daughter of Marc Antony and Octavia (sister of Augustus), had been staying for some months. This child was one day to be the emperor Claudius.



The administrative energy of Augustus was not confined to the erection of monuments and to festivals; he applied himself to the development in Gaul of the material elements of civilization and social order. His most intimate and able adviser, Agrippa, being settled at Lyons as governor of the Gauls, caused to be opened four great roads, starting from a milestone placed in the middle of the Lyonnese forum, and going, one centrewards to Saintes and the ocean, another southwards to Narbonne and the Pyrenees, the third north-westwards and towards the Channel by Amiens and Boulogne, and the fourth north-westwards and towards the Rhine. Agrippa founded several colonies, amongst others Cologne, which bore his name; and he admitted to Gallic territory bands of Germans who asked for an establishment there. Thanks to public security, Romans became proprietors in the Gallic provinces and introduced to them Italian cultivation. The Gallic chieftains, on their side, began to cultivate lands which had become their personal property. Towns were built or grew apace and became encircled by ramparts, under protection of which the populations came and placed themselves. The most learned and attentive observer of nature and Roman society, Pliny the Elder, attests that under Augustus Gallic agriculture and industry made vast progress.

But side by side with this work in the cause of civilization and organization, Augustus and his Roman agents were pursuing a work of quite a contrary tendency. They labored to extirpate from Gaul the spirit of nationality, independence, and freedom; they took every pains to efface everywhere Gallic memories and sentiments. Gallic towns were losing their old and receiving Roman names: Augustonemetum, Augusta, and Augustodunum took the place of Gergovia, Noviodunum, and Bibracte. The national Gallic religion, which was Druidism, was attacked as well as the Gallic fatherland, with the same design and by the same means; at one time Augustus prohibited this worship amongst the Gauls converted into Roman citizens, as being contrary to Roman belief; at another Roman Paganism and Gallic Druidism were fused together in the same temples and at the same altars, as if to fuse them in the same common indifference; Roman and Gallic names became applied to the same religious personification of such and such a fact or such and such an idea; Mars and Camul were equally the god of war; Belen and Apollo the god of light and healing; Diana and Arduinna the goddess of the chase. Everywhere, whether it was a question of the terrestrial fatherland or of religious faith, the old moral machinery of the Gauls was broken up or condemned to rust, and no new moral machinery was allowed to replace it; it was everywhere Roman and imperial authority that was substituted for the free, national action of the Gauls.

It is incredible that this hostility on the part of the powers that be towards moral sentiments, and this absence of freedom, should not have gravely compromised the material interest of the Gallic population. Public administration, however extensive its organization and energy, if it be not under the superintendence and restraint of public freedom and morality, soon falls into monstrous abuses, which itself is either ignorant of or wittingly suffers. Examples of this evil, inherent in despotism, abound even under the intelligent and watchful sway of Augustus. Here is a case in point. He had appointed as procurator, that is, financial commissioner, in "long-haired" Gaul, a native who, having been originally a slave and afterwards set free by Julius Caesar, had taken the Roman name of Licinius. This man gave himself up, during his administration, to a course of the most shameless extortion. The taxes were collected monthly; and so, taking advantage of the change of name which flattery had caused in the two months of July and August, sacred to Julius Caesar and Augustus respectively, he made his year consist of fourteen months, so that he might squeeze out fourteen contributions instead of twelve. "December," said he, "is surely, as its name indicates, the tenth month of the year," and he added thereto, in honor of the emperor, two others which he called the eleventh and twelfth. During one of the trips which Augustus made into Gaul, strong complaints were made against Licinius, and his robberies were denounced to the emperor. Augustus dared not support him, and seemed upon the point of deciding to bring him to justice, when Licinius conducted him to the place where was deposited all the treasure he had extorted, and, "See, my lord," said he, "what I have laid up for thee and for the Roman people, for fear lest the Gauls possessing so much gold should employ it against you both; for thee I have kept it, and to thee I deliver it." (Thierry, Histoire des Gaulois, t. iii. p. 295; Clerjon, Histoire de Lyon, t. i. p. 178-180.) Augustus accepted the treasure, and Licinius remained unpunished. In the case of financial abuses or other acts, absolute power seldom resists such temptations.

We may hear it said, and we may read in the writings of certain modern philosophers and scholars, that the victorious despotism of the Roman empire was a necessary and salutary step in advance, and that it brought about the unity and enfranchisement of the human race. Believe it not. There is mingled good and evil in all the events and governments of this world, and good often arises side by side with or in the wake of evil, but it is never from the evil that the good comes; injustice and tyranny have never produced good fruits. Be assured that whenever they have the dominion, whenever the moral rights and personal liberties of men are trodden under foot by material force, be it barbaric or be it scientific, there can result only prolonged evils and deplorable obstacles to the return of moral right and moral force, which, God be thanked, can never he obliterated from the nature and the history of man. The despotic imperial administration upheld for a long while the Roman empire, and not without renown; but it corrupted, enervated, and impoverished the Roman populations, and left them, after five centuries, as incapable of defending themselves as they were of governing.

Tiberius pursued in Gaul, but with less energy and less care for the provincial administration, the pacific and moderate policy of Augustus. He had to extinguish in Belgica, and even in the Lyonnese province, two insurrections kindled by the sparks that remained of national and Druidic spirit. He repressed them effectually, and without any violent display of vengeance. He made a trip to Gaul, took measures, quite insufficient, however, for defending the Rhine frontier from the incessantly repeated incursions of the Germans, and hastened back to Italy to resume the course of suspicion, perfidy, and cruelty which he pursued against the republican pride and moral dignity remaining amongst a few remnants of the Roman senate. He was succeeded by Germanicus' unworthy son, Caligula. After a few days of hypocrisy on the part of the emperor, and credulous hope on that of the people, they found a madman let loose to take the place of an unfathomable and gloomy tyrant. Caligula was much taken up with Gaul, plundering it and giving free rein in it to his frenzies, by turns disgusting or ridiculous. In a short and fruitless campaign on the banks of the Rhine, he had made too few prisoners for the pomp of a triumph; he therefore took some Gauls, the tallest he could find, of triumphal size, as he said, put them in German clothes, made them learn some Teutonic words, and sent them away to Rome to await in prison his return and his ovation. Lyons, where he staid some time, was the scene of his extortions and strangest freaks. He was playing at dice one day with some of his courtiers, and lost; he rose, sent for the tax-list of the province, marked down for death and confiscation some of those who were most highly rated, and said to the company, "You people, you play for a few drachmas; but as for me, I have just won by a single throw one hundred and fifty millions." At the rumor of a plot hatched against him in Italy, by some Roman nobles, he sent for and sold, publicly, their furniture, jewels, and slaves. As the sale was a success, he extended it to the old furniture of his own palaces in Italy: "I wish to fit out the Gauls," said he; "it is a mark of friendship I owe to the brave performed the part Roman people." He himself, at these sales, performed the part of salesman and auctioneer, telling the history of each article to enhance the price. "This belonged to my father, Germanicus; that comes to me from Agrippa; this vase is Egyptian, it was Antony's, Augustus took it at the battle of Actium." The imperial sales were succeeded by literary games, at which the losers had to pay the expenses of the prizes, and celebrate, in verse or prose, the praises of the winners; and if their compositions were pronounced bad, they were bound to wipe them out with a sponge or even with their tongues, unless they preferred to be beaten with a rod or soused in the Rhone. One day, when Caligula, in the character of Jupiter, was seated at his tribunal and delivering oracles in the middle of the public thoroughfare, a man of the people remained motionless in front of him, with eyes of astonishment fixed upon him. "What seem I to thee?" asked the emperor, flattered, no doubt, by this attention of the mob. "A great monstrosity," answered the Gaul. And that, at the end of about four years, was the universal cry: and against a mad emperor the only resource of the Roman world was at that time assassination. The captain of Caligula's guards rid Rome and the provinces of him.

He did just one sensible and useful thing during the whole of his stay in Gaul: he had a light-house constructed to illumine the passage between Gaul and Great Britain. Some traces of it, they say, have been discovered.

His successor, Claudius, brother of the great Germanicus, and married to his own niece, the second Agrippina, was, as has been already stated, born at Lyons, at the very moment when his father, Drusus, was celebrating there the erection of an altar to Augustus. During his whole reign he showed to the city of his birth the most lively good-will, and the constant aim as well as principal result of this good-will was to render the city of Lyons more and more Roman by effacing all Gallic characteristics and memories. She was endowed with Roman rights, monuments, and names, the most important or the most ostentatious; she became the colony supereminently, the great municipal town of the Gauls, the Claudian town; but she lost what had remained of her old municipal government, that is of her administrative and commercial independence. Nor was she the only one in Gaul to experience the good-will of Claudius. This emperor, the mark of scorn from his infancy, whom his mother, Antonia, called "a shadow of a man, an unfinished sketch of nature's drawing," and of whom his grand-uncle, Augustus, used to say, "We shall be forever in doubt, without any certainty of knowing whether he be or be not equal to public duties," Claudius, the most feeble indeed of the Caesars, in body, mind, and character, was nevertheless he who had intermittent glimpses of the most elevated ideas and the most righteous sentiments, and who strove the most sincerely to make them take the form of deeds. He undertook to assure to all free men of "long-haired" Gaul the same Roman privileges that were enjoyed by the inhabitants of Lyons; and amongst others, that of entering the senate of Rome and holding the great public offices. He made a formal proposal to that effect to the senate, and succeeded, not without difficulty, in getting it adopted. The speech that he delivered on this occasion has been to a great extent preserved to us, not only in the summary given by Tacitus, but also in an inscription on a bronze tablet, which split into many fragments at the time of the destruction of the building in which it was placed. The two principal fragments were discovered at Lyons, in 1528, and they are now deposited in the Museum of that city. They fully confirm the most equitable, and, it may be readily allowed, the most liberal act of policy that emanated from the earlier Roman emperors. "Claudius had taken it into his head," says Seneca, "to see all Greeks, Gauls, Spaniards, and Britons clad in the toga." But at the same time he took great care to spread everywhere the Latin tongue, and to make it take the place of the different national idioms. A Roman citizen, originally of Asia Minor, and sent on a deputation to Rome by his compatriots, could not answer in Latin the emperor's questions. Claudius took away his privileges, saying, "He is no Roman citizen who is ignorant of the language of Rome."