History of Julius Cæsar, Vol. 2 of 2

by Emperor of the French Napoleon III

The siege of Bourges is one of the most regular and interesting of the war in Gaul. Cæsar opens the trenches, that is, he makes covered galleries which permit him to approach the place, to fill the fosse, and to construct a terrace, a veritable breaching battery, surmounted on each side by a tower. When, with the assistance of his military engines, he has thinned the ranks of the defenders, he assembles his legions under protection of the parallels composed of covered galleries, and by means of the terrace, which equals the elevation of the wall, he gives the assault and carries the place.

After the capture of Bourges, he proceeds to Nevers, where he establishes his magazines; then to Decize, to appease the disputes which had arisen, among the Burgundians, from the competition of two claimants to the supreme power. He next divides his army; sends Labienus, with two legions, against the Parisii and their allies; orders him to take the two legions left at Sens; and in person, with the six others, directs his march towards Auvergne, the principal focus of the insurrection. By means of a stratagem, he crosses the Allier at Varennes without striking a blow, and obliges Vercingetorix to retire into Gergovia with all his forces.

Placed on almost inaccessible heights, these vast Gaulish oppida, which enclosed the greater part of the population of a province, could only be reduced by famine. Cæsar was well aware of this, and resolved on confining himself to the blockade of Gergovia; but one day he judges the occasion favourable, and he risks an assault. Repulsed with loss, he thinks only of retreat, when already the insurrection surrounds him on all sides. The Burgundians themselves, who owe everything to Cæsar, have followed the general impulse: by their defection, the communications of the Roman army are intercepted and its rear threatened. Nevers is burnt, and the bridges on the Loire are destroyed; the Gauls, in their presumptuous hope, already see Cæsar humiliated, and obliged to pass with his soldiers under new Furcæ Caudinæ; but old veteran troops, commanded by a great captain, do not recoil after a first reverse; and these six legions, shut up in their camp, isolated in the middle of a country in insurrection, separated from all succour by rivers and mountains, yet immovable and unshaken in face of a victorious enemy who dares not pursue his victory, resemble those rocks beaten by the waves of the ocean, which defy the tempests, and the approach to which is so perilous that no one dare brave them.

In this extremity Cæsar has not lost hope. Far from him the thought of re-crossing the Cévennes, and returning into the Narbonnese. This retreat would bear too great a resemblance to a flight. Moreover, he has fears for the four legions entrusted to Labienus, of whom he has received no news since they went to combat the Parisii; he is anxious to rejoin them at all risks. He therefore marches in the direction of Sens, crosses the Loire by a ford, near Bourbon-Lancy, and, on his arrival near Joigny, he rallies Labienus, who, after having defeated the army of Camulogenus under the walls of Paris, had returned to Sens and hastened to meet him.

What joy Cæsar must have experienced, when he found his lieutenant, then faithful still, on the banks of the Yonne! for this junction doubled his forces, and restored the chances of the struggle in his favour. While he was re-modelling his army, calling to him a re-enforcement of German cavalry, and preparing to approach nearer to the Roman province, Vercingetorix had not lost a moment in stirring up the whole of Gaul against the Romans. The inhabitants of Savoy, as well as those of the Vivarais, are drawn into revolt; all is agitation from the coasts of the ocean to the Rhone. He communicates to all hearts the sacred fire which inflames him, and from Mont Beuvray, as its centre, its action radiates to the extremities of Gaul.

But it is granted neither to the most eminent of men to create in one day an army, nor to popular insurrection, however general, to form suddenly a nation. The foreigner has not yet quitted the territory of their country before the chiefs become jealous of each other, and rivalries break out between the different states. The Burgundians obey unwillingly the people of Auvergne; the people of the territory of Beauvais refuse their contingent, alleging that they will only make war at their own time and in their own manner. The inhabitants of Savoy, instead of responding to the appeal made to their old independence, oppose a vigorous resistance to the attacks of the Gauls, and the Vivarais shows no less devotedness to the Roman cause.

As to the Gaulish army, its strength consisted chiefly in cavalry; the footmen, in spite of the efforts of Vercingetorix, composed only an undisciplined mass; for military organisation is always a reflection of the state of society, and where there is no people there is no infantry. In Gaul, as Cæsar tells us, two classes alone were dominant, the priests and the nobles.[771] It is not surprising if, then as in the Middle Ages, the nobility on horseback formed the true sinew of the armies. Accordingly, the Gauls never incurred the risk of resisting the Romans in the open field, or rather everything was confined to a combat of cavalry, and, when their cavalry was defeated, the army retired without the infantry being engaged at all. This is what happened before Sancerre: the defeat of his cavalry had forced Vercingetorix to make his retreat; he had allowed Cæsar to continue his route undisturbed towards Bourges, and take that town, without ever daring to attack him either during his march or during the siege.

It will be the same at the battle of the Vingeanne. Cæsar directed his march from Joigny towards Franche-Comté, across the country of Langres. His aim was to reach Besançon, an important fortress, from whence he could at the same time resume the offensive and protect the Roman Province; but when he arrived at the eastern extremity of the territory of Langres, in the valley of the Vingeanne, at about sixty-five kilomètres from Alesia, his army, in march, is brought to a halt by that of Vercingetorix, whose numerous cavalry have sworn to pass three times through the Roman lines; this cavalry is repulsed by that of the Germans in Cæsar’s pay, and Vercingetorix hastens to take refuge in Alesia, without the least resistance offered by his infantry.

It is the belief of the Gauls that their country can only be defended in the fortresses, and the example of Gergovia animates them with a generous hope; but Cæsar will attempt no more imprudent assaults. 80,000 infantry shut themselves up in the walls of Alesia, and the cavalry is sent into the whole of Gaul to call to arms, and to conduct to the succour of the invested town the contingents of all the states. About forty or fifty days after the blockade of the place, 250,000 men, of whom 8,000 are cavalry, appear on the low hills which bound the plain of Laumes on the west. The besieged leap with joy. How will the Romans be able to sustain the double attack from within and from without? Cæsar has obviated all perils by the art of fortification, which he has carried to perfection. A line of countervallation against the fortress, and a line of circumvallation against the army of succour, are rendered almost impregnable by means of works adapted to the ground, and in which science has accumulated all the obstacles in use in the warfare of sieges. These two concentric lines are closely approached to each other, in order to facilitate the defence. The troops are not scattered over the great extent of the retrenchments, but distributed into twenty-three redoubts and eight camps, from which they can move, according to circumstances, on the points threatened. The redoubts are advanced posts. The camps of infantry, placed on the heights, form so many reserves. The cavalry camps are stationed on the banks of the streams.

In the plain especially, where the attacks may be most dangerous, to the fosses, ramparts, and ordinary towers are added abatis, wolf-pits, things like caltrops, means still employed in modern fortification. Thanks to so many works, but thanks also to the imperfection of the projectiles of that time, we see a besieging army, equal in number to the army besieged, three times less in force than the army of succour, resist three simultaneous attacks, and finish by vanquishing so many enemies assembled against it. It is a thing to be remarked that Cæsar, in the decisive day of the struggle, shut up in his lines, has become, in a manner, the besieged, and, like all besieged who are victorious, it is by a sally that he triumphs. The Gauls have nearly forced his retrenchments on one point; but Labienus, by Cæsar’s order, debouches from the lines, attacks the enemy with the sword, and puts him to flight: the cavalry completes the victory.