Marching With Caesar: Conquest of Gaul

by R. W. Peake

  (My master and friend does not do himself enough credit. He is correct in saying that we have discussed this at length many times, but I do not think it was due to any persuasive measures on my part that have brought him to this relatively recent viewpoint. I do think that Titus has gained much wisdom over the years, harvested from all of the battlefields and all of his contact with men from all parts of the world. He is very much a man of the world now, although he would threaten to beat me if he heard me describe him so. He is not quite the simple old soldier that he likes to portray himself.)

  Nevertheless, we were given the town to sack, making Vibius and admittedly everyone else happy to see that something good came from all their sweat and toil, although I think the Aduatuci did not see it that way. However they had rolled the dice, and they lost, so as far as I was concerned, they had no right to bemoan their fate, although it did not stop them from doing just that. Caesar sold the entire remaining population of the town, some 53,000 people, in one lot, although he did decree that more than one of the slave traders who followed us around execute the sale so that the profits were shared. All the wailing that ensued was tedious, and admittedly somewhat heart wrenching, as we supervised the process of shackling the Aduatuci, their first introduction to their new lives. I was just thankful that I would not be present when they were sold and families were torn apart, each of them going to separate parts of the Empire, or Republic as we thought of it then. Still, it was not a pleasant task, and one that we were thankful when it was over, though once it was done, the campaign was over. The Belgae were subdued, if only for the moment as it turned out.

  Chapter 8- The Veneti

  All activity did not cease with the fall of the Aduatuci, however. Caesar, with the help of his Legions, had managed to open up a vast new territory for trade, and it was with that in mind that he sent one of the Tribunes, Servius Galba along with the 12th Legion, to open up a new route through the mountains leading to the Province. While we were subduing the Aduatuci, Publius Crassus was sent to the coast of Gaul, along with the 7th, to subdue the tribes of the Veneti, Venelli, Ausuvi and some others I forget, which he did with great success. Galba was not so fortunate, and it is with a soldier’s superstition that I say that I often wonder if it had been different if he had taken a Legion other than the 12th. They were already the most under strength Legion of the army to begin with, and while I will not belabor their spotty record, it would be a lie to say that Galba’s failure did not give even more credence to the belief that the Legion was cursed. As for the rest of the army, the 7th stayed with Crassus and wintered to the southwest. The rest of us were sent into winter quarters in various parts of the region of the Belgae, in groups of two Legions, and we were sent back to the spot where the Sabis and Mosa intersected. Meanwhile, Caesar left us once more, this time to Illyricum, which was his other province, one he had yet to set foot in, despite it going on the third year of his governorship. What we did to the Belgae was met with widespread rejoicing, and Caesar was awarded a period of fifteen days of thanksgiving in Rome, which to that time had never happened before. Most of the army was proud that he was receiving the accolades that he was, though not everyone felt that way of course. When the thanksgiving was announced at one of our morning formations, I mentally counted the heartbeats before Vibius started his grumbling once we were dismissed. I do not believe I got past ten.

  “Good for him that he’s getting all the glory, but we’re the reason he’s getting it,” Vibius declared as we walked back to our area. “And what do we get for it? Nothing, that’s what.”

  As much as I did not wish to argue with Vibius, I could not let that go unchallenged. “Gerrae! What do you call the fact that he’s splitting the proceeds of those slaves with the entire army?” I argued. “He didn’t have to do that, but he did.”

  “I’ll give you that,” Vibius admitted grudgingly, “but there’s other ways to show your gratitude, isn’t there?”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know, but I know there’s something he could do,” Vibius retorted.

  I knew better than to keep arguing about it, so I just sighed and rolled my eyes. Some things would never change, I thought as we continued in silence back to start our workday.

  The other event of note was that Caesar, Pompey and Crassus renewed their agreement, which some people called the Three Headed Monster. The Consuls for that year were Gnaeus Marcellinus and Lucius Philippus, and it was now the beginning of the third year of campaigning in Gaul. The winter passed uneventfully, at least as far as we were concerned, although there were elements among the Gallic tribes that were very busy indeed, most notably our friends the Belgae. They had not taken their defeat well, and were even now plotting revenge, yet they knew they could not beat us without help, so one more time Gauls looked across the Rhenus to their more savage cousins for help. The news of their plotting made its way to Caesar’s ears down in Illyricum, rightly causing him concern. As if this was not enough trouble, at the same time down to the south, Crassus and the 7th were running into problems with the Veneti, that tribe going so far as to seize two agents sent by Crassus to arrange for grain to supply the Legion. There were whispers of uprisings springing up all over, forcing Caesar to move from Illyricum the instant spring arrived. Deeming the situation in the south to be the most extreme since the Veneti were openly opposing young Crassus and Rome, Caesar hurried to that area, making his headquarters in what is now known as Portus Namnetus, though it was still known as Namneti for the tribe that founded it at that time. Labienus was sent with about half the cavalry up to a spot on the Mosella (Moselle) River, which empties into the Rhenus, doing such an excellent job of picking a spot for a camp that it is now known as the town of Augusta Trevorum. Quintus Sabinus was sent with the 8th, 9th and 14th Legions to the northwest of Portus Namnetus into the territories of the Curiosolites, Venelli, and the Luxovii, with orders to stop them from joining with the Veneti. The rest of the army, with the exception of two Cohorts of the 11th, who were sent to Crassus as reinforcements, stayed with Caesar at Portus Namnetus while he planned the campaign. The future traitor Decimus Brutus was given the task of both building and acquiring a fleet, since the Veneti were a seagoing tribe whose strength was in their ships. Caesar worked with his usual speed, and we were barely arrived in Portus Namnetus from our winter camp when we were given orders to march. The distance to the territory of the Veneti was perhaps 50 miles, a distance that normally could be done in a Caesar-paced two days. However, we quickly discovered that the Veneti possessed a secret ally in the terrain. It was flat enough, but after the first day’s march on our move towards the coast, we had to make several halts because our line of travel would have taken us into a tidal marsh, or an estuary of some sort. It became especially bad after we crossed a river that marked the boundary to their territory, where the ground was soft and spongy, the wagons finding the going hard as their heavy load pressed them into the turf. Caesar planned on his usual speed to surprise the Veneti, except it seemed that the earth itself was conspiring against us.

  Making matters worse were the Veneti themselves, in the way that they situated their defenses. Constructing a series of forts to protect their harbors and the towns surrounding them, they placed them in such a way that, despite our best attempts, we could not carry them and thereby gain entrance to the towns. The forts were not much to look at; it would take only scaling ladders and a few of our artillery for us to get over the wall to subdue the men inside, but it was where they were built that was the problem. The Veneti would find a spit of land that projected into the water, of which there were countless inlets, coves, estuaries and such in that region to choose from, where it was only accessible during low tide. At high tide the finger of land that connected the fort to the mainland would disappear, and we tried a number of different ways to deal with this. Finally settling on a method, Caesar simply had us throw a foundation of stone dragged from nearby quarries and the like, followed by enough dirt to the point
that a mole was built that we could march out on to assault the fort, but this would be where the second advantage of the fort would become apparent, with the garrison simply boarding the Veneti ships and sailing away to the next position. It was in this manner that we began subduing the Veneti, except it was incredibly time consuming, and in our view, tiring and frustrating. Each day would see us caked in mud and filth from the tidal pools, mud flats and marshes that served as our source of raw materials, with not even the most vigorous scrubbing completely removing the stench of salt and decay that oozes from the ground in that part of the world. Very quickly we developed a healthy hatred for this region, and for the Veneti, who continued their tactics of delay, moving from one fort to another. I do not think we killed a hundred men during those weeks, merely playing a kind of a game of chase, moving from one inlet to another. Tempers grew short around the fire as the summer passed, a summer that was the least profitable in every sense since we started campaigning in Gaul.

  “No battle, no booty, no women, nothing but this cursed mud and trying to fill in the ocean,” griped Vellusius one night, somewhat surprising me since he was not the sort to make comments like this, but it told me that the mood was getting grim.

  Vellusius was only saying what the rest of them are thinking, I told myself, while yet again I was confronted by the paradox of command, because essentially I agreed with them. I could not say it, however, because it was my job to keep this kind of talk confined to the interior of our tent or around our fire, as long as it was not too loud or too sharp. All soldiers complain; we consider it a right given to us by both Mars and Bellona, although I have heard some soldiers laughingly suggest that the right to carp and complain has to come from the female god of war and not the male. In that moment, I could see the heads nodding at Vellusius’ comment, so automatically I looked at Vibius, waiting for him to speak, but I was surprised because he said nothing, instead contenting himself with looking vacantly at the fire while gnawing a piece of bread, spitting out the kernels of grain that had escaped being ground down. By this time we had just “taken” our fifth fort, if by taking one means that we occupied its vacant space once the Veneti had embarked on their ships, and all we knew at the time was that the orders were to march the next morning.

  Apparently Caesar had endured enough of what we were doing also, for which we were thankful, because our general decided to wait on the fleet that Brutus was building, where we would then take the battle to the sea. This meant only one thing for us in the ranks; we would be sitting this fight out, which after the frustrating and futile effort we had been putting forth, was fine with us. We were marched to a spot overlooking a bay that would serve as the marshaling point for the fleet, awaiting the arrival of Brutus and his ships, making a camp on that spot. It was a matter of a few days before the word was shouted that ships were sighted; as usual Caesar had chosen his ground well, our camp being situated on a point much higher than the bay below us, giving us a perfect view of not only the bay but the immediately surrounding area. It was into the bay that our fleet sailed, and I stopped counting at a hundred ships of varying sizes. I was not a sailor, nor did I have any knowledge of nautical affairs, but I was hard pressed to see how any fleet of Gallic ships could stand up to the onslaught facing them. My opinion immediately changed when, standing with all of my friends on the ramparts of our camp to watch the show, we saw the Veneti fleet come into view.

  “By the gods, they’re huge,” gasped Calienus, and coming from the normally imperturbable Tesseraurius, this alone was enough to make us worry.

  The Gallic fleet was not just huge in the size of their ships, dwarfing our triremes as if they were rowboats, there were substantially more of them than was contained in the fleet Brutus was leading.

  “You know what this means,” Atilius said glumly. “We’re back in that cursed swamp, filling in the ocean just to chase these bastards off.”

  This was our frame of mind as we watched, expecting defeat, instead witnessing a miracle.

  It was a miracle only in the sense that once again, our praefecti fabrorum showed their true genius. Unable to ram the larger ships since the timbers of ours were not built to withstand the rougher water of the open ocean, our engineers contrived a way to rob the Gallic ships of their most precious asset, mobility. Unlike our ships, which used both a sail and oars, the Gallic craft were powered by sails alone, so the engineers created an implement that was little more than a long pole with an iron hook on it. Although the Gallic ships were bigger and stronger, they were also slower, especially when the wind was not in their favor, thereby allowing our oar-driven vessels to maneuver alongside. Once in position men on deck, holding the pole, would grab at the wooden horizontal crossbeam that held the sail in place, then while they were holding tight, the captain of the Roman ship would give the order to begin pulling away. The strain was such that the ropes holding the wooden cross-piece would snap, and before our very eyes, the sails on the Gallic ships began to tumble down, each craft slowing to a stop to lie dead in the water.

  “That’s not good,” commented Calienus dryly, “if you’re a Veneti at least.”

  We laughed at this, and in delight we watched as one by one the Gallic craft were immobilized, whereupon they were swarmed by the smaller Roman ships, the men on our vessels then clambering over the side. From our vantage point, we could not see the action on the decks because it was too far away, and were barely able to make out the figures of our men climbing up the side of the Gallic ships, but it was clear enough what was happening. One by one, the Gallic vessels were overcome in this way, until it became clear to those Veneti who were left that their cause was hopeless, whereupon they turned to flee out to the open water. That is when the gods intervened, once again showing the Romans their favor, as the wind, a stiff breeze that had been blowing the whole day, suddenly stopped for no reason. While the Gallic ships were just beginning to pull away into the distance to the point where we could no longer tell what was happening, we could at least see that suddenly our own craft caught up to them, and the remaining Gallic ships were quickly subdued. Just before dark, the wind freshened, enabling some of the Veneti craft to slip away, but the vast majority of them were taken, with the damage done. Before the day was out, the Veneti had been conquered.

  As an example to the other tribes in the region, Caesar had the entire Veneti council of elders put to death. During the time we were slogging away in the marshes to the south, Sabinus and his Legions had been busy as well. The tribes that threw their lot in with the Veneti; the Lexovii, Aulerci and Eburovices, led by a man named Viridorix, were the tribes that Sabinus was sent to chastise. And chastise them he did, indeed. Using a stratagem of guile by appearing to be weak, Sabinus induced Viridorix to attack a fortified Roman camp with a mile of clear ground around it. When we heard the circumstances of the Sabinus victory, we had a good laugh at that, knowing that it was the height of folly for a Gallic tribe of any kind, having such disdain for the science of siegework as they did, to attempt an assault of a Roman camp. The battle was more of a slaughter than anything, prompting the confederation of those three tribes to immediately fall apart with our victory, so that three more tribes of Gaul found themselves at the mercy of Rome. It made one wonder when they would learn; at least that is how I looked at it.

  Young Crassus was not being idle either, down in Aquitania. Sweeping all before him, he punished the recalcitrant tribes for the folly of resistance. Crassus did not use guile, instead taking a page from Caesar’s book, relying on audacity and surprise when attacking a Gallic camp. As we heard it, the issue was actually in doubt, with the Gauls asking for help from some of the tribes a little further south in Lusitania. Some of the men who answered that call and came to assist had fought under Sertorius, meaning they had learned their craft well. Because of that influence, the Gallic camp had been built in the usual Roman style, so the 7th was having a hard time of it in the beginning, until a cavalry scouting party saw that the Gauls had thrown a
ll their troops into protecting the front wall but left the rear gate unattended. Once this was discovered, the outcome was inevitable, despite the Gauls putting up a good fight. Even with all of these successes, as this campaign season drew to a close there were still some questions hanging in the air. Two tribes on the northern coast, the Menapii and the Morini, that had entered into the alliance with the Veneti, despite being separated by hundreds of miles, still refused to submit to Rome. As far as we were concerned, that meant that there was unfinished business, and we would still have some fighting to do the next season. However, Caesar was not willing to wait until the next season, so almost before we knew it, we found ourselves again on the march. This time, we would cross more than 400 miles, marching past where we fought the Nervii, doing without the customary rest day, which Caesar could only have done with an army as seasoned as ours. Despite the fact we could take it physically, it did not make some people love Caesar any more, and even I, a man with complete faith in his judgment and abilities as a general, found myself questioning the wisdom of this move. Yes, we would reach the lands of the Morini much more quickly than they anticipated, but what shape would we be in, and how much of a season would be left? The further north we moved, the more frigid the climate, and the earlier winter comes. When we got there, it would be at the end of the month we now call August, meaning we would have at best another three weeks of true campaign season left, and that was only if the winter did not come early.