He tells us how great was the effect of his own presence on the shore, though the battle was carried on under young Brutus at sea. “What remained of the conflict,” he says, after describing their manœuvres, “depended on valour, in which our men were far away the superior; and this was more especially true because the affair was carried on so plainly in the sight of Cæsar and the whole army that no brave deed could pass unobserved. For all the hills and upper lands, from whence the view down upon the sea was close, were covered by the army.”
Of course he conquers the Veneti and other sea-going tribes, even on their own element. Whereupon they give themselves and all their belongings up to Cæsar. Cæsar, desirous that the rights of ambassadors shall hereafter be better respected among barbarians, determines that he must use a little severity. “Gravius vindicandum statuit;”—“he resolved that the offence should be expiated with more than ordinary punishment.” Consequently, he kills all the senate, and sells all the other men as slaves! The pithy brevity, the unapologetic dignity of the sentence, as he pronounced it and tells it to us, is heartrending, but, at this distance of time, delightful also. “Itaque, omni senatu necato, reliquos sub coronâ vendidit;”—“therefore, all the senate having been slaughtered, he sold the other citizens with chaplets on their heads;”—it being the Roman custom so to mark captives in war intended for sale. We can see him as he waves his hand and passes on. Surely he must be a god!
His generals in this campaign are equally successful. One Viridovix, a Gaul up in the Normandy country,—somewhere about Avranches or St Lo, we may imagine,—is entrapped into a fight, and destroyed with his army. Aquitania surrenders herself to Crassus, after much fighting, and gives up her arms.
Then Cæsar reflects that the Morini and the Menapii had as yet never bowed their heads to him. Boulogne and Calais stand in the now well-known territory of the Morini, but the Menapii lie a long way off, up among the mouths of the Scheldt and the Rhine,—the Low Countries of modern history,—an uncomfortable people then, who would rush into their woods and marshes after a spell of fighting, and who seemed to have no particular homes or cities that could be attacked or destroyed. It was nearly the end of summer just now, and the distance between, let us say, Vannes in Brittany, and Breda, or even Antwerp, seems to us to be considerable, when we remember the condition of the country, and the size of Cæsar’s army. But he had a few weeks to fill up, and then he might feel that all Gaul had been “pacified.” At present there was this haughty little northern corner. “Omni Galliâ pacatâ, Morini Menapiique supererant;”—“all Gaul having been pacified, the Morini and Menapii remained.” He was, moreover, no doubt beginning to reflect that from the Morini could be made the shortest journey into that wild Ultima Thule of an island in which lived the Britanni. Cæsar takes advantage of the few weeks, and attacks these uncomfortable people. When they retreat into the woods, he cuts the woods down. He does cut down an immense quantity of wood, but the enemy only recede into thicker and bigger woods. Bad weather comes on, and the soldiers can no longer endure life in their skin tents. Let us fancy these Italians encountering winter in undrained Flanders, with no walls or roofs to protect them, and ordered to cut down interminable woods! Had a ‘Times’ been then written and filed, instead of a “Commentary” from the hands of the General-in-chief, we should probably have heard of a good deal of suffering. As it is, we are only told that Cæsar had to give up his enterprise for that year. He therefore burned all their villages, laid waste all their fields, and then took his army down into a more comfortable region south of the Seine, and there put them into winter quarters,—not much to the comfort of the people there residing.
CHAPTER V.
FOURTH BOOK OF THE WAR IN GAUL.—CÆSAR CROSSES THE RHINE, SLAUGHTERS THE GERMANS, AND GOES INTO BRITAIN.—B.C. 55.
In the next year certain Germans, Usipetes and others, crossed the Rhine into Gaul, not far from the sea, as Cæsar tells us. He tells us again, that when he drove the Germans back over the river, it was near the confluence of the Meuse and the Rhine. When we remember how difficult it was for Cæsar to obtain information, we must acknowledge that his geography as to the passage of the Rhine out to the sea, and of the junction of the Rhine and the Meuse by the Waal, is wonderfully correct. The spot indicated as that at which the Germans were driven into the river would seem to be near Bommel in Holland, where the Waal and the Meuse join their waters, at the head of the island of Bommel, where Fort St André stands, or stood.[8]
Those wonderful Suevi, among whom the men alternately fight and plough, year and year about, caring more, however, for cattle than they do for corn, who are socialists in regard to land, having no private property in their fields,—who, all of them, from their youth upwards, do just what they please,—large, bony men, who wear, even in these cold regions, each simply some scanty morsel of skin covering,—who bathe in rivers all the year through, who deal with traders only to sell the spoils of war, who care but little for their horses, and ride, when they do ride, without saddles,—thinking nothing of men to whom such delicate appendages are necessary,—who drink no wine, and will have no neighbours near them,—these ferocious Suevi have driven other German tribes over the Rhine into Gaul. Cæsar, hearing this, is filled with apprehension. He knows the weakness of his poor friends the Gauls,—how prone they are to gossiping, of what a restless temper. It is in the country of the Menapii, the tribe with which he did not quite finish his little affair in the last chapter, that these Germans are settling; and there is no knowing what trouble the intruders may give him if he allows them to make themselves at home on that side of the river. So he hurries off to give help to the poor Menapii.
Of course there is a sending of ambassadors. The Germans acknowledge that they have been turned out of their own lands by their brethren, the Suevi, who are better men than they are. But they profess that, in fighting, the Suevi, and the Suevi only, are their masters. Not even the immortal gods can stand against the Suevi. But they also are Germans, and are not at all afraid of the Romans. But in the proposition which they make they show some little awe. Will Cæsar allow them to remain where they are, or allot to them some other region on that side of the Rhine? Cæsar tells them that they may go and live, if they please, with the Ubii,—another tribe of Germans who occupy the Rhine country, probably where Cologne now stands, or perhaps a little north of it, and who seem already to have been forced over the Rhine,—they, or some of them,—and to have made good their footing somewhere in the region in which Charlemagne built his church, now called Aix-la-Chapelle. There they are, Germans still, and probably are so because these Ubii made good their footing. The Ubii also are in trouble with the Suevi; and if these intruders will go and join the Ubii, Cæsar will make it all straight for them. The intruders hesitate, but do not go, and at last attack Cæsar’s cavalry, not without some success. During this fight there is double treachery,—first on the part of the Germans, and then on Cæsar’s part,—which is chiefly memorable for the attack made on Cæsar in Rome. It was in consequence of the deceit here practised that it was proposed by his enemies in the city that he should be given up by the Republic to the foe. Had any such decree been passed, it would not have been easy to give up Cæsar.