Marching With Caesar: Conquest of Gaul

by R. W. Peake

  Caesar ordered the 7th, 8th and 9th to prepare to march from their base in Aquileia, planning on sending them northwest towards the Helvetii. By the time one of Caesar’s Tribunes arrived in our camp, we were well into the packing up of all that would be required for the upcoming campaign, Caesar having sent word ahead that we were needed. Interspersed with all the various tasks to be done, the Centurions increased the pace of our training, having us go on twice as many forced marches as normal, with the difference being that the two extra were half-day affairs so that we could still do all of the other things that had to be done to prepare to move. For example, our artillery had to be refitted with new torsion ropes, with every other piece of equipment having to be inspected for wear; even in garrison, equipment suffers wear and tear just through our constant training. And truth be told, there is a huge difference between having everything adequate for training purposes and for going to war. Vibius stayed busy repairing or making new bits of leather gear, while I pushed the men of the Century harder than ever during our weapons training, making sure that nobody left the training field without fresh bruises and cuts, myself included. No matter how hard I pushed them, nobody except Didius and a couple other men like him in other sections complained, since everyone knew by this time that more work put in here meant the better chance of seeing another sunrise after a battle. Once more we prepared to leave camp to go on campaign, except this time was more difficult for a lot of the men. Now that they had set down some roots and were starting families, it was all that much harder to leave them behind, which is why a good number of their women and small children refused to be left. The day we formed up in the forum of the camp to begin the march north to face the Helvetii, there was a second, albeit smaller and worse equipped army waiting immediately outside the gates.

  (Diocles: To ensure accuracy, my Master has instructed me to use Caesar’s account of the campaigns against the Gauls to provide the relevant facts and dates that are crucial to his account of his experiences with Caesar.)

  The whole problem with the Helvetii started because they had decided to move from their homes to find new places to live. One difficulty posed by this idea was that the place they were interested in moving to already had people in it, and they were people that we were told had asked for Roman protection. The Helvetii had already begun the process of migrating, burning their own towns, farms and fields in order to ensure that they would not lose heart and turn back. The other consequence of this decision was that they were not liable to be persuaded, either by reason or force, a fact that we would soon discover when we faced them. First, however, we had some distance to cover to face them; being honest, the first three or four days marching at the pace Caesar had ordered was almost enough to do almost all of us in, and I was just as exhausted at the end of the day as the rest of my comrades, barely having the energy to speculate about what we were marching into as we listlessly chewed our evening meal. One of the more valuable lessons I took from this experience was that, no matter how hard you may train in garrison, there is still a large gap between the type of fitness and endurance that the army tries to maintain in peacetime, and what is needed to survive and thrive during a campaign season. Some of the hardest hit were the immunes who were excused from normal training duties, the result being that they were in even poorer condition than the rest of us. Poor Vibius looked more dead than alive at the end of the first day’s march, as I literally had to force him to eat his meal, shoving his bread down his throat and commanding him to chew. I am convinced that even as he complied, he was asleep while doing so, and was only marginally improved the next day. Regardless, he did not fall out as a straggler, ending every day’s march with the rest of us, for which I was very proud of him.

  The country we were introduced to was different than anything I had ever seen in my life. Even in the far north of Hispania, the land is not nearly as lush and green as what we passed through. These provinces were prosperous and peaceful, with everyone giving us a cheerful greeting and a wave as we passed by, the only exception to this being men with daughters, who despite their best efforts would lose some of them to the allure of the Legion tramping by. It never failed that people, not just girls but young boys and some men as well, would attach themselves to our column as we moved, using the Legion in the same manner one would hitch a ride on a bypassing cart to take them somewhere else. For our part, this would engender endless speculation on the motives of these people. Not so much with the boys, it being a foregone conclusion to us that they were lured by the romance of life as a Legionary, a fact at which we all heartily laughed, conveniently ignoring the fact that for many of us, it was the same siren call we had heard. Such is the easy disdain those on the inside show for those on the outside of something like the army. However, for the girls and women who joined the camp followers it was harder to understand, but their actions helped pass many watches spent on the road as we discussed the topic. Not that we were complaining, since almost all of these women either became the women of formerly unattached Legionaries at best, or whores servicing the rest of us at worst.

  Fortunately, much of the march was on good Roman roads, so our progress was rapid, although to hear the cursing it was hard to tell. As we had experienced and would learn until it was ingrained as an expectation that we had for ourselves, nothing was fast enough for Caesar. If we marched 28 miles in a day, it should have been 30; if 30 then it should have been 35 miles. Despite learning this was his nature, some of us never grew accustomed to it, and one of them was Vibius.

  “There’s no pleasing that man,” he muttered one day.

  The 10th was now a week into our march, and were within two or three day’s march of the latest place we had been told to be by Caesar. We were barely into the first watch of the march when Vibius made his comment, but I knew the reaming we had taken from the Primus Pilus that morning was still fresh on his mind, as it was with everyone. Seemingly out of nowhere, with our Cohort waiting our turn to start the march, the Primus Pilus spent that time telling us how disgraced he was at our “sightseeing” pace and how we were letting Caesar down. This was not only shocking to us, it was bewildering, and our confused glances at each other confirmed I was not the only one who felt this way. We could only go as fast as the pace set for us and since our Cohort was not in the lead the day before, we were not sure where this was coming from. As we learned later, the same tongue-lashing was given by the Primus Pilus to every Cohort, along with the cavalry and the men who ran the baggage train. It made us feel somewhat better, at least as far as our feelings, yet the pace set that day was cracking and we instantly knew it was going to be a hard one. Glancing over at Vibius when he made his comment, I could see that even so early he was struggling more than he should have been, and I could only hope that the gains he had made in his fitness over the last few days did not dig so deeply into his reserves that he would have to drop from the march. His face was already red, and the sweat dripped from his nose in a steady stream, despite the coolness of the day. I replied, but even as I did so it was with some surprise, being sure I knew who “he” was referring to, and it was not the Primus Pilus.

  “He’s just trying to get us there as fast as he can because he wants his best to send into battle”, I reasoned.

  “Fat lot of good it'll do if when we get there, we’re too exhausted to pick up a javelin, let alone throw one,” he snapped, impatiently swiping at the sweat rolling into his eyes.

  For my part, after the first few days of struggle, I adjusted fairly easily back into the campaigning rhythm, which I suspected was another reason for Vibius’ irritation. I shrugged, knowing by this time that there were times to argue with Vibius and times not to, and this was the latter. He had made up his mind that Caesar was the cause of his misery, and nothing I could say would change that. It was in this frame of mind that we kept moving, the only sound for many miles the thud of our boots and the jingling of our gear bouncing around. One thankful aspect of this country, I mused, was that it d
id not kick up as much dust as Hispania, something a Legionary learns to appreciate. Also, the nights were much colder than even in Narbo, so we woke up every morning shivering, and it was not unusual that there was a thin skin of ice on the water buckets that were used to water the livestock. Marching up the valley of the Rhodanus (Rhone), we passed through a number of towns and bypassed the larger ones if possible. Despite the fact the folks in the town, at least in a Roman province, might like the spectacle of an army marching by, towns and cities provided a wealth of temptation for a lot of us. In turn, this inevitably brought trouble in one form or another, so invariably whenever possible we passed them by on an outer road. After a few days, despite the area immediately along the river staying relatively flat, it was still taking a noticeably upward tilt, and the river valley soon was surrounded by hills that grew in height as we moved. The timing of the Primus Pilus’ chastisement was unfortunate in that sense; the main reason for our tardiness, if it was indeed real, was more a result of the land over which we marched than any lack of fitness on our part, at least by this point. None of this made an obol’s worth of difference to us, of course, and while I was not willing to condemn Caesar to the degree that Vibius had, I will say that even his most ardent supporters were somewhat muted when they discussed him with their comrades. At the end of the day that we received the warning from the Primus Pilus, it was like being on the first day of the march again, at least if one were to judge simply by the obvious level of fatigue. Little did we know, we were relatively as refreshed as it was possible to be, given the circumstances and what Caesar planned for us.

  “Dig. Starting where those stakes are marking out. Pile the spoil on that side,” Pilus Prior Vetruvius pointed. “The ditch has to be twelve feet deep and fifteen feet wide.”

  We all nodded, since this was the standard for fortifications we constructed for Caesar, but despite our understanding of the simple requirements, what was escaping all of us was….why? We were not building a camp; we had done that the day before. This was, at least to our eye, in the middle of nowhere. However, this was to be the first of the defensive fortifications for which Caesar would rightly become famous, an 18 mile wall that began at the shores of the huge lake that the locals call Geneva, to the base of the Jura Mountains. Since we never saw maps and were too lowly ranked to be in any of the officers’ briefings, we had to wait to learn from the Pilus Prior exactly why we were standing in what was nothing more than a long line of Centuries, half of them fully armed and standing watch, with the other half like us being told to show up with our digging gear. The Helvetii were out of room; this much we knew, and once the Pilus Prior sketched out a rough map in the dirt, it became clearer what their problem was. They lived in a narrow strip of land, with the huge lake to one side, and a range of small but rugged mountains on the other. If facing south, the direction they wanted to march, that lake was to their left, and behind them, hemming them in even further was the Rhenus (Rhine) River, roughly a week’s march away. Furthering their problems was that apparently the Helvetii had not been good neighbors to the tribes surrounding them, and I believe it was this knowledge that prompted Caesar to reject their request to pass through the lands to their south. Not trusting them to obey his command, he ordered us to dig a defensive ditch, of the dimensions I previously mentioned, to block the 18 mile gap. Topping the earthen wall were the palisade stakes, for which a large number of trees had to be felled and the stakes fashioned from them. Because we were the first Legion to arrive, it fell to us and a scratch force of Legion strength that was pulled from the garrisons and towns of the province. It is only now that I realize that many times when we were not told the larger reasons for our actions, it was actually in our best interests, although I would have been just as vocal protesting that idea as anyone back then. However, if we knew what we would be expected to accomplish, while we certainly would not have mutinied, there would have been considerable hard feelings. As it was, we were still none too happy, grumbling at the folly of digging a ditch and wall for only the gods knew what here in the middle of nowhere.

  Originally, we started on the project at a midway point, in what we thought was an attempt to screen our intentions from the Helvetii. It is still astonishing to me, even having seen it happen as many times as I have by now, how quickly an organized, motivated and well-led group of men can achieve something of the scale as the Geneva Wall, as we came to call it. The wall took only two weeks plus a day, despite one or two attempts on the part of the Helvetii to disrupt the work. Once it was finished, Caesar spread all of his available troops along the walls, concentrating most of them at the point closest to the river, whereby we could man the walls to repel any attempts to scale it, not that there was a huge threat of this. Because it was the entire Helvetii tribe moving, what we faced was not a fast-moving, far-ranging group of warriors, so that scaling the wall would only do them limited good. It had to be breached, in a number of places, with each opening having to be at least as wide as their largest wagons. The spot that bore the most watching was where Caesar put us, the section of wall where it made a junction with the confluence of the river and the lake; the scratch troops were distributed along the rest of the way. Our wall was constructed so that part of it actually ran parallel to the Rhodanus, which is fed by the lake, for the length of a mile, giving anyone foolhardy enough to try slipping by and landing on our side of the river exposure to not just our javelins but to the artillery, the bulk of which Caesar ordered to be concentrated in this area. And if anyone was fortunate enough to make it to the point at which the wall stopped, facing them was a camp filled with men with orders to kill whoever made it that far, no matter what their status. Despite all of this, there were such attempts every night the first two or three nights; at least none of them were insane enough to try to go by in the day. Even with the cover of night, however, the passengers who slipped through on the one or two boats that made it past the initial fortifications were quickly dispatched. Fortunately, our Cohort was stationed further up; while I would have obeyed orders the same way I had obeyed such orders in the past, I certainly did not mind missing the opportunity to slaughter women and children.

  The blockade achieved the desired effect, though not for long. Since the Helvetii had already taken the drastic step of burning down their homes, farms and anything else of value, they were for all purposes camping out in their own land. Their tribal elders made the decision that instead of trying to force their way past the wall, they would instead lead their people to the opposite end of their lands to the north, then cross to the west through a gap in the mountains there. Since this was much, much larger than an army that they were trying to move, they could not accomplish anything with any real rapidity. Nonetheless, they moved much faster than we would have thought possible before seeing it with our own eyes, when we awakened one morning to a large cloud of dust hanging in the air to our north. During the impasse at the wall, they had camped within our sight as their elders debated what to do, the fires stretching for as far as the eye could see, so despite ourselves, we were impressed by how quickly they were able to move that mass of people, even if it was just a few miles. Caesar immediately spotted the danger, and knowing that one Legion, no matter how good we were, would not be enough, ordered us to move to join the 7th, 8th and 9th, who had marched from Aquileia into a blocking position. I know we felt the same way, because when we were told that Caesar was heading that direction, not only to hurry the other three Legions along, but to raise two more nobody, not even Vibius, complained about it. The Helvetii could make perhaps ten miles a day, if that; this gave us perhaps a little short of three weeks to stop them at the crossing place between the mountains. Militarily speaking, it was important to meet them in the mountains, where the narrowness of the roads and trails could negate the advantage of their huge numbers. We were told they had more than a 100,000 warriors, and that was a daunting number, no matter how confident we were in ourselves or in Caesar. Caesar left us under the command of Tit
us Labienus, the man who would end up becoming our de facto commander for the next few years. While the command is supposed to rotate among all the Legates, Caesar was not one to let tradition get in the way of doing what was best with his army. It would not be fair to say that we liked Labienus, but he had our grudging respect. This was partially because like Caesar, he had shown that he would share our same hardships and living conditions, and also because he demonstrated a good head on his shoulders that did not panic. I believe that more than intelligence, or tactical brilliance, the ability to keep one’s head when everyone around you is losing theirs, especially when it is happening literally, is the key to military success. Once our commanders were assured that this was not some attempt on the part of the Helvetii to trick us into prematurely removing us from the wall, we were given the command to march. Caesar left orders that the scratch force would now take our place, taking the reasonable risk that if the Helvetii were to turn tail and come back to the wall, it would not be in the 18 mile stretch between the river and the mountains, but where they might have the greatest chance of success. As was usual for Caesar, he was right; the Helvetii did not give it a backward glance, throwing the dice in the direction they were headed, hoping that they could steal a march on us.