There lived among the Arvernians, in the high mountainland, among the volcanic peaks of Auvergne, as it is now called, a young chief, whose real name is not known, but whom history calls Vercingetorix, that is, Head over a Hundred Tribes. The time was come for an united, determined, and desperate resistance. He sent messengers throughout Gaul. The downtrodden inhabitants rose to a man and invested Vercingetorix with the chief command.
In the year of Rome 702, B.C. 32, Cæsar was suddenly informed in Italy that his work of six years was threatened with ruin. Most of the Gallic nations, united under a chieftain hitherto unknown, were rising with one common impulse, and recommencing war.
Cæsar at once returned to Gaul. He had one quality, rare even amongst the greatest men, he remained cool amidst the hottest alarms. He was always quick, never hasty. He placed himself at the head of his troops, and, in the early part of March, moved to what is now Sens, the very centre of revolt, and looked round to decide where first to strike.
Vercingetorix from the outset knew that the ill-armed and worse disciplined Gauls could not cope in the open field with Cæsar and the Roman legions; he therefore formed a plan of campaign that required great sacrifices on the side of the Gauls, for the sake of the common safety. No walls, he assured the confederates, could withstand the skill of the Romans in engineering, no array maintain itself in the field against their phalanx. But he reminded them that through the winter and early spring the soil on which the enemy trod could not furnish him with provision. He must disperse his troops among the fortresses. Let then, said he, no further attempts be made to defy the Roman in the open field; let him rather be followed in detail, and cut off when separated into cantonments, and above all, let the towns that served him for magazines be destroyed by the hands of the inhabitants themselves. He recommended in fact the very course pursued more than eighteen hundred years later by the Russians against the French Cæsar, a course which proved fatal to him.
The assembled council of Gaulish states assented gallantly to this proposal. In one day twenty cities of the Bituriges were flaming, and similar havoc was made throughout the territories of the allies. But when the fate of Avaricum (Bourges) came to be discussed, the hearts of the Bituriges failed them. Their deputies knelt to the assembled chiefs and interceded for the preservation of their beautiful, and as they deemed it, impregnable city. The council yielded. In vain did Vercingetorix urge them to carry out their determination without exception. They would surrender every other city to the flames, but not their loved capital, not Avaricum.
The situation was admirably calculated for defence. It stood on rising ground, and the only approach to it then was a causeway between the river and a morass. The garrison laboured night and day to strengthen their defences with earthworks and with palisades of sharpened stakes. The Romans at once moved from Sens and surrounded the place. The story of its fall I will take from the graphic pen of Dean Merivale:—"Whilst the Bituriges within their city were hard pressed by the machinery which the Roman engineers directed against their walls, the forces of the proconsul on their side were harassed by the fatigues of the siege and the scarcity of provisions. Cæsar is lavish of praise in speaking of the fortitude with which his soldiers bore their privations; they refused to allow him to raise the siege, and when he at last led them against the enemy's army, and finding it too strongly posted for an attack, withdrew them again within their lines, they submitted to the disappointment, and betook themselves once more without a murmur to the tedious operations of the blockade. The skill of the assailants at length triumphed over the bravery of the defenders. The walls were approached by towers at various points, and mounds constructed against which the combustible missiles of the besieged were unavailing. Finally, a desperate sally was repulsed, and then, at last the constancy of the Bituriges began to fail. Taking advantage of a moment when the watch on the walls had relaxed its vigilance, Cæsar marshalled his legions behind his works, and poured them suddenly against the opposing ramparts. They gained the summit of the walls, which the defenders abandoned without a blow, rallying, however, in the middle of the town, in such hasty array as the emergency would allow. A bloody struggle ensued; both parties were numerous, and the assailants gave no quarter. The Gauls were routed and exterminated, their women and children mercilessly slaughtered, and the great central city of Gaul fell into the hands of the conquerors without affording a single captive for their triumph." After that the fate of the insurrection was sealed. The war was carried on with fluctuations of fortune even into an eighth campaign, and then the yoke of Rome, iron, and doubly weighted with the wrath of the conqueror, was riveted on to the neck of prostrate Gallia, never again to be shaken off.
[Illustration: A street corner, Bourges.]
Now, day after day at Rome during the winter had I stood before the Dying
Gaul in the Capitoline Museum, that statue of incomparable pathos:—
"He leans upon his hand—his manly brow
Consents to death, but conquers agony,
And his drooped head sinks gradually low—
From the red gash fall heavy, one by one,
Like the first of a thunder-shower; and now
The arena swims around him—he is gone,
Ere ceased the inhuman shout which hailed the wretch who won."
Childe Harold.