“Ooo-er! Why is he so touchy?” whispered Decimus Brutus.
“Because he was hoping it wasn’t as bad as he remembered,” said Fabius.
“Why should that sour his day? He can’t possibly take the place,” said Antony.
Labienus shouted with laughter. “That’s what you think, Antonius! Still, I’m glad we’ve got you. With those shoulders you’ll dig magnificently.”
“Dig?”
“And dig, and dig, and dig.”
“Not his legates, surely!”
“It all depends how far and how much. If he starts digging, we start digging.”
“Ye Gods, I’m working for a madman!”
“I wish I were half as mad,” said Quintus Cicero wistfully.
In single file the legates rode behind Caesar along the river flowing past the southern side of Alesia; Antony could see how big the flattish top was, well over a mile from west to east. How it frowned. The rocky outcrops on its flanks. A man could climb to the top easily enough, yes, but not in a military assault. He’d be too short of breath when he arrived to fight, and a target for every spearman or archer atop the walls. Even the half-mile on the eastern end was difficult work for anyone trying to gain a foothold, nor was there room to maneuver.
“They’ve got in before us,” said Caesar, pointing to the bottom of the eastern slope, where the road began to wind upward to the citadel.
The Gauls had built a six-foot wall from the banks of the north river to the south river, then fronted the wall with a ditch containing water. Two shorter walls scrambled up the north and south sides of the mount some distance behind the main one.
Manning these defenses, some of the Gallic cavalry began to call and jeer; Caesar’s response was to smile, wave. But from where the legates sat on their German nags, Caesar didn’t look at all genial.
Back on the little plain the legions were pitching camp with smooth efficiency.
“Marching camps only, Fabius,” said Caesar. “Properly done, but not more. If we’re going to finish this war here, there’s no point in expending energy on something we’ll replace within a very few days.”
His legates, gathered round, said nothing.
“Quintus, you’re the logging man. Get started at dawn. And don’t throw the promising branches away: we need sharpened stakes. Cut saplings for the breastworks, battlements and tower shielding. Sextius, take the Sixth and forage. Bring in every single thing you can find. I need charcoal, so look for it. Not for hardening sharpened stakes, they’ll have to go on ordinary fires. The charcoal is for working all the iron we’ve got. Antistius, the iron is your job. Put the smiths to building their furnaces, and tell them to search out their goad molds. Sulpicius, you’re in charge of digging. Fabius, you’ll build the breastworks, battlements and towers. As quartermaster, Antonius, your job is to keep my army adequately supplied. I’ll strip you of your citizenship, sell you into slavery and then legally crucify you if you don’t perform. Labienus, you’re the defense man. Stick to cavalry if you can—I need the soldiers for construction duty. Trebonius, you’re my second-in-command; you’ll follow me everywhere. Decimus and Hirtius, you follow me too. I need millions of everything, and I want at least thirty days’ food here, is that understood?”
No one else was asking, so Antony did. “What’s the plan?”
Caesar looked at his second-in-command. “What’s the plan, Trebonius?”
“We circumvallate,” said Trebonius.
Antony gaped. “Circumvallate?”
“It is a long word, Antonius, I agree,” said Caesar affably. “Cir-cum-val-late. It means we construct fortifications all the way around Alesia until, so to speak, our fortifications swallow their own tail. Vercingetorix doesn’t believe I can shut him up on top of that mountain. But I can. And I will.”
“It’s miles!” cried Antony, still gaping. “And there’s no flat land for most of the way around!”
“We fortify up hill and down dale, Antonius. If we can’t go around, we go over the top. The main fortifications will embrace the entire perimeter. Two ditches, the outer one fifteen feet wide and eight feet deep, with sloping sides and a trough bottom. It will be filled with water. Right behind it, the second ditch will also be fifteen feet wide and eight feet deep, but V-shaped, no foothold in the bottom. Our wall will rise straight off the back of this ditch, twelve feet of earth excavated out of the ditches. What does that tell you about our wall, Antonius?” Caesar barked.
“That on the inside—our side—the wall will be twelve feet high, but on the outside—their side—it will be twenty feet high because it rises straight out of an eight-foot ditch,” said Antony.
“Thank the Gods he’s found a butt!” whispered Decimus Brutus to Quintus Cicero.
“Inevitable. Antonius is family,” said Quintus Cicero, the expert on families.
“Excellent, Antonius!” said Caesar heartily. “The fighting platform inside at the top of the wall will be ten feet wide. Above it, breastworks for looking over and battlements for dodging behind when not looking over. Understand that, Antonius? Good! Every eighty feet around the perimeter, towers three storeys higher than the fighting platform. Any questions, Antonius?”
“Yes, General. You describe these as the main fortifications. What else do you have in mind?”
“Wherever the ground is flat and likely to see massed attacks, we dig a straight-sided trench twenty feet wide and fifteen feet deep, four hundred paces—that’s two thousand feet, Antonius!—away from our water-filled ditch. Is that clear?”
“Yes, General. What do you intend to do with the four hundred paces—that’s two thousand feet, General!—between the perpendicular trench and the water-filled ditch?”
“I thought I’d plant a garden. Trebonius, Hirtius, Decimus, let’s ride. I want to measure the circumvallation.”
“What’s your estimate?” asked Antony, grinning.
“Between ten and twelve miles.”
“He’s mad,” said Antony to Fabius with conviction.
“Ah, but it’s such a beautiful madness!” said Fabius, smiling.
*
When the watchers in the citadel saw the activity begin, the surveyors moving for mile after mile all the way around the base of Alesia, the ditches and the wall starting to form, they realized what Caesar was doing. Vercingetorix’s instinctive reaction was to send out all his cavalry. But the Gauls found it impossible to conquer their fear of the Germans and went down badly. The worst slaughter occurred at the eastern end of the mount, with the Gauls in full retreat. The gates in Vercingetorix’s walls were too narrow to permit the panicked horsemen easy entrance; the Germans, in hot pursuit, cut down the men and made off with the mounts, for it was every German’s ambition to own two superb horses.
Over the next nights the surviving Gallic troopers rode off eastward across the ridge, which told Caesar that Vercingetorix now realized his fate. He and eighty thousand foot soldiers were marooned inside Alesia.
The water-filled ditch, the V-shaped ditch, the earth wall, the breastworks, battlements and towers came into being with a speed Antony, though he had thought himself fully educated in all military matters, found unbelievable. Within thirteen days Caesar’s legions had completed all of these structures over a perimeter measuring eleven miles, and dug the trench across any flat ground.
They had also finished installing Caesar’s “garden” in those four hundred paces of unused land between the water-filled ditch and the trench where it existed. Deep and perpendicular though the trench was, it could be bridged, and was; raiding parties out of Alesia harassed the soldiers working on the fortifications, and did so with increasing expertise. That Caesar had always intended to do what he did was manifest, for the smiths had been casting wicked little barbed goads since camp was established. Thousands and thousands of them, until every sow and sheet of iron plundered from the Bituriges was used up.
There were three different hazards planted in those four hundred paces of Caesar’s �
��garden.” Closest to the trench the soldiers buried foot-long logs of wood into which the iron goads had been hammered. The barbed goads projected just above the ground, which was covered with rush matting and scattered leaves. Then came a series of pits three feet deep with slightly sloping sides; viciously sharpened stakes as thick as a man’s thigh were planted in their bottoms, the pits filled in two-thirds of the way, the earth tamped down. Rush matting was laid over the ground, the tips of the stakes just poking through it, and leaves were sprinkled everywhere. There were eight courses of these devices, which the troops called “lilies,” arranged in a most complicated series of quincunxes and diagonals. Closest to the water-filled ditch came five separate and random courses of narrow trenches five feet deep, in which sharpened, fire-hardened antlered branches were fixed on a slant aiming the antlers directly into the face of a man or the breast of a horse. These the soldiers jokingly called “tombstones.”
The raiding parties came no more.
“Good,” said Caesar when the eleven miles were finished. “Now we do it all again on the outside. Fourteen miles by the surveyed route—we have to go up and over the tops of most of the hills, which increases the distance, of course. Do you understand that, Antonius?”
“Yes, Caesar,” said Antony, eyes dancing; he enjoyed being Caesar’s butt, and happily played up to the image of shambling oaf. He asked the question Caesar wanted him to ask. “Why?”
“Because, Antonius, the Gauls are mustering at Carnutum at this very moment. Before too many days have gone by, they’ll arrive at Alesia to rescue Vercingetorix. Therefore we have to have fortifications to keep Vercingetorix in, and fortifications to keep the Gallic relief army out. We will exist between them.”
“Ah!” cried Antony, striking his brow with the palm of his huge hand. “Like the track laid out on the Campus Martius for the race between the October Horses! We’re on the track itself, with the fortifications forming the rails. Alesia is on the inside—the middle—and the Gallic relief army is on the outside.”
“Very good, Antonius! An excellent metaphor!”
“How long have we got before the relief army gets here?”
“My scouts say at least another thirteen days, probably more. But the outer perimeter of fortifications must be finished within the next thirteen days. That’s an order.”
“It’s three miles longer!”
“The troops,” said Trebonius, breaking in, “are three miles better experienced, Antonius. They’ll build each mile a lot faster this second time around.”
They built each mile a lot faster, though the miles were more precipitous. Twenty-six days after Caesar’s army arrived at Alesia, it was fenced in between two separate encirclements of fortifications, identical but mirror images of each other. At the same time a total of twenty-three forts were erected inside the lines, a very tall watchtower went up every thousand feet around the outside defenses, and both the legions and the cavalry went into separately fortified camps, the legions on high ground inside the lines, the cavalry on the outside near plenty of good water.
“It isn’t a new technique,” said Caesar when the inspection tour began on completion of the work. “It was used against Hannibal at Capua— Scipio Aemilianus used it twice, at Numantia and at Carthage. The idea being to keep the besieged inside and negate any possibility of aid and supplies coming from the outside. Though none of the earlier double circumvallations had to contend with relief armies of a quarter-million. There were more inside Capua than inside Alesia, and the same at Carthage. But we definitely hold the record when it comes to relief armies.”
“It’s been worth the effort,” said Trebonius gruffly.
“Yes. We won’t be afforded the luxury of an Aquae Sextiae hereabouts. The Gauls have learned since I came here. Besides, I have no intention of losing my army.” His face lit up. “Aren’t they good boys?” he asked, love in his voice. “Such good boys!”
His legates received a stern look. “It is our responsibility to do everything in our power to keep them alive, if possible unscathed. I won’t see so much work on their part go for nothing, nor so much good will. A quarter-million relief army is to err on the conservative side, so I am informed. All of this has been done to save Roman soldier lives. And to ensure victory. One way or the other, the war in Gaul will end here at Alesia.” He smiled in genuine content. “However, I do not intend to lose.”
The inner line of fortifications lay in the bottom of the vales around Alesia save for the eastern end, where it traversed the end of the ridge; the outer line crossed the beginning of the little plain on the west, climbed to the top of the mount south of Alesia, came down again to the southern river on the east, went over the top of the eastern ridge, down again to the northern river, then up onto the top of the mount north of Alesia. Two of the four infantry camps stood on the high ground of the southern mount, one on the high ground of the northern mount.
And here, where the northern mount descended, lay the only real weakness in the circumvallation. The mount to the northwest had proven too big to cross over. A cavalry camp on the outskirts had been connected back to the outer line of fortifications by a very strong extra line, but the fourth infantry camp lay on ground too difficult to strengthen in the same way. For this reason had the camp been put there; it was to protect a gap existing between the lines ascending the northwestern mount and the lines along the site of the infantry camp, which, to make matters worse, lay aslant a steep and rocky slope.
“If they scout well enough they’ll find the weakness,” said Labienus, his leather cuirass creaking as he leaned back to show his eagle’s profile against the sky; alone among the senior staff, he rode his own high-stepping Italian horse. “A pity.”
“Yes,” Caesar agreed, “but a worse pity if we ourselves were not acutely aware it exists. The infantry camp will protect it.” He looped one leg around the two front pommels—a habit of his—and turned in the saddle to point back into the southwest. “That’s my vantage spot, up there on the southern hill. They’ll concentrate on this western end; they’ll have too many horse to attack on the north or south. Vercingetorix will come down the western end of Alesia to attack our inside fortifications at the same spot.”
“Now,” sighed Decimus Brutus, “we have to wait.”
Perhaps because these days he had no access to wine, Mark Antony found himself so alert, so quivering with interest and energy that he drank in every word the legates said, every look on Caesar’s face as well as every word he uttered. To be here at such a moment! Nothing like Alesia had ever been attempted, no matter what Caesar said about Scipio Aemilianus. Fewer than sixty thousand men defending a racetrack twelve miles in circumference, lying between eighty thousand enemy on its inside and a quarter of a million on its outside…
I’m here! I’m a part of it! Oh, Antonius, you have luck too! I am a part of it! That’s why they labor for him, why they love him almost as much as he loves them. He’s their passage to eternal fame because he always shares his victories with them. Without them, he’s nothing. But he knows it. Gabinius didn’t. Nor any of the others I’ve served with. He knows how they think. He speaks their language. Watching him with them is like watching him stroll through a crowd of women at a party in Rome. There’s lightning in the air. But I have it too. One day they’ll love me the way they love him. So all I have to do is pick up his tricks, and then when he’s too old for this life, I’m going to march into his place. One day Caesar’s men will be Antonius’s men. Ten more years and he’ll be past it. Ten more years and I’ll be coming into my own. And I’ll be more than Gaius Julius Caesar. Nor will he be there to eclipse me.
*
Vercingetorix and his thanes stood atop the western walls of Alesia where the flat top narrowed to a point jutting further west, like a wayward crystal grown out of the diamond.
“It looks as if,” said Biturgo, “they’ve just finished riding all the way around their defenses. That’s Caesar in the scarlet cloak. Who’s the one on
the only good horse?”
“Labienus,” said Vercingetorix. “I take it that the others have donated their Italian beasts to the German beasts.”
“They’ve been in that same spot for a long time,” said Daderax.
“They’re looking at the gap in their fortifications. But how when the relief army arrives can I send word to it about the weakness? It’s not visible from anywhere but here,” Vercingetorix said. He turned away. “Inside. It’s time to talk.”
There were four: Vercingetorix, his cousin Critognatus, Biturgo and Daderax.
“Food,” said the King, his own increasing emaciation lending the word poignancy as well as significance. “Daderax, how much have we left?”
“The grain is gone, but we still have cattle and sheep. A few eggs if there are any chickens left unstrangled. We’ve been on half-rations for four days. If we halve that again, perhaps another four or five days. After that, we eat shoe leather.”
Biturgo brought his fist down on the table so thunderously that the other three jumped. “Oh, Vercingetorix, stop pretending!” he cried. “The relief army should have been here four days ago, we all know that! And there’s something else you’re not saying, though you should say it. That you don’t expect an army to come.”
A silence ensued; Vercingetorix, seated at the end of the table, put his hands upon it and turned his head to stare out the huge window aperture behind him, shutters open on the mild spring day. He had been growing a beard and moustache since they had realized they were immured in Alesia, and it was easy to see now why he alone had been clean-shaven: his facial hair was scant and silver-white. Nor had he donned his crown, carefully put away.
“If it were coming,” he said at last, “I believe it would be here by now.” He sighed. “My hope has gone, it won’t come. Therefore the food is our first consideration.”
“The Aedui!” snarled Daderax. “The Aedui have betrayed us!”
“Do you mean to surrender?” asked Biturgo.
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