CHAPTER XVI.
THE WATCHTOWER OF USELLA.
Our castle's strength
Will laugh a siege to scorn.
Macbeth.
The watchtower in which Caius Crispus and his gang had taken refuge from the legionaries, was one of those small isolated structures, many of which had been perched in the olden time on the summits of the jutting crags, or in the passes of the Appennines, but most of which had fallen long before into utter ruin.
Some had been destroyed in the border wars of the innumerable petty tribes, which, ere the Romans became masters of the peninsula, divided among themselves that portion of Italy, and held it in continual turmoil with their incessant wars and forays.
Some had mouldered away, by the slow hand of ruthless time; and yet more had been pulled down for the sake of their materials, which now filled a more useful if less glorious station, in the enclosures of tilled fields, and the walls of rustic dwellings.
From such a fate the watchtower of Usella had been saved by several accidents. Its natural and artificial strength had prevented its sack or storm during the earlier period of its existence—the difficulty of approaching it had saved its solid masonry from the cupidity of the rural proprietors—and, yet more, its formidable situation, commanding one of the great hill passes into Cisalpine Gaul, had induced the Roman government to retain it in use, as[pg 169] a fortified post, so long as their Gallic neighbors were half subdued only, and capable of giving them trouble by their tumultuous incursions.