In Troubadour-Land: A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc

by S. Baring-Gould

Another theory relative to the Roman road is that it ran south of the chain of Les Alpines. This would not matter for the course of Marius, but would explain the fact of the monument of Marius being found at Les Baux; and Les Baux would then be the cliff whence he watched the march of the barbarians.

III. To determine the position of the battles.

Plutarch does not distinguish between sites. He says that there were two battles separated from one another by two days, and that in the first Marius defeated the Ambrons. In the second he defeated the Teutons. He leaves us to infer that both battles were fought on the same field. But there are difficulties in supposing this.

1. The field of Pourrières does not answer the description of the first battle site; it does that of the second.

2. The Ambrons alone were engaged in the first battle, and no Teutons came to their help. We may therefore fairly suppose that the two great bodies of barbarian invaders had separated. 3. There was a very tempting bait, Marseilles lying to the south, inviting attack and pillage.

Following M. Gilles in his monograph on the campaign of Marius, I believe that the first battle was fought at Les Milles, the first station out of Aix on the Marseilles road, and that the Ambrons had parted company with the Teutons so as to try their luck with Marseilles, or perhaps only so as to ravage the coast, if they could make no impression on a walled city.

Now, the sandstone ridge along which Marius and his army were marching, as I suppose, ends abruptly above Les Milles. Below flows the river Are, making a loop in which is a rich green meadow, and under the hill ooze out countless rills of water. Indeed, the bottom of the hill is dense with irises loving the slushy percolated soil. There is no water on the sandstone heights. Here, if I am right, Marius came out and saw the Ambrons below, and wanted to form his camp, but was deterred by an engagement being begun by the water-carriers of the camp going down to the river and springs with their pails, and being attacked by the Ambrons. Aix lies away to the north in a broad basin, and at some little distance, two kilos., from the river. The battle could not have happened there. There is no other place save Les Milles where we have hill, river, green plain and springs together, as in Plutarch's narrative. Let us then suppose that Marius fought the first battle at Les Milles and there defeated the Ambrons. Those not slain would fly along the Aurelian road that leads from Aix through the plain of Pourrières, crosses a low col, and enters the valley of the Argens, and leads to Fréjus, where I suppose Teutons and Ambrons designed to meet again, and pursue their course westward together. In the meantime the Teutons had been advancing up the Are valley along the Aurelian way. A mile and a half out of Aix they reached the Are, five miles above Les Milles, and thence followed up the river for three miles, when they left it. Their road now lay due east before them, across the almost level plain of Pourrières, below the limestone precipice to the north of Mont Victoire. But there is a curious formation here. South of Mont Victoire is a semicircular sandstone chain, inferior in height, precipitous towards the plain, called Le Cengle, "the Belt," dying into the limestone mountain at the point where the latter attains its greatest altitude, above the village of Puyloubier. This sandstone girdle slopes easily inward to the precipice of Mont Victoire, and its rills flow together into a little stream that reaches the Are at the point where the Aurelian road left it, i.e. seven and a half miles from Aix.

M. Gilles supposes that Marius followed on the heels of the flying Ambrons along the Aurelian way, and that he detached Marcellus at this point to go up this little stream behind the Cengle and come out farther east so as to gain Pain de Munition.

I do not think this is tenable, for there is a long tract of bare hill-slope between the extremity of the Cingle and the conical fortified hill of Pain de Munition, and even if Marcellus were concealed whilst ascending this little lateral valley, he would emerge in full view of the barbarians for the last five or six miles of his march. My belief is that Marcellus was despatched up the valley of the Infernet, behind Mont Victoire, by which means his march would be concealed throughout, nor would it be much longer.

Also, I do not think that Marius pursued the Teutons the whole way along the road. According to Plutarch's account, the second time he came on them so as to cause them surprise. Again, if he had pursued a certain plan up to the first engagement, and it had succeeded, it is likely that he would follow the same plan up to the second and final engagement. Now hitherto he had kept to high ground always to the south of the advancing horde. From Les Milles he very probably, as I think, only followed the traces of the flying Ambrons along the road till he struck the Are in the open plain of Pourrières, and then at once crossed to the south bank of the river, and marched along on ground that slopes up to the south, so that he had the river between him and the enemy. If, as is probable, this hill-slope, along which the rail now runs, was then, more than now, dense with broom and pine, his march would not be seen by the enemy. And so I conclude Marius by a forced march reached Trets. Then, as I have said in my text, he had the enemy in a trap. Behind them was the fortified camp of Pain de Munition into which he had thrown Marcellus, and behind him he had the chain of Mont Aurélien and Mont Olympe, with another fortified camp. Between him and the enemy was a slope, and this was cut by streams that had torn their way through a friable marly soil. Moreover, he had a natural screen of rock between him and the enemy, with the low face towards him, and an easy slope towards the barbarians.