by R. W. Peake
The sacking of Avaricum was one of complete and total destruction, as we exacted further vengeance for the massacre at Cenabum, as well as for the trials and travails that the siege put us through. Out of the 40,000 people, men, women and children, only some 800 survived to escape through the swamp to make it to the camp of Vercingetorix. Our supply problem was temporarily assuaged, since the people of Avaricum had been living very well indeed, and we spent the next few days living off the town, eating like rich merchants. We were billeted in the town as well, staying in the houses of the people we had just slaughtered and if it were not for the misery that we endured during the siege, I believe that most of us would have elected to stay under the leather, as we said, because the thought of the restless spirits of the newly dead did not make us sleep easier. However, it was technically still winter, the weather still raw; there was often a skin of ice in our buckets in the morning, making us overlook our feelings of unease, so we settled in while we regrouped. Over the course of the siege, we lost perhaps 500 men throughout the army; in our Century, we had three more dead, bringing our strength down to 60, with perhaps another half dozen temporarily out of action with wounds. Once again, my tentmates managed to escape without injury or death, yet in my heart of hearts, I knew that it could not last forever. What worried me most was who it might be. When the Avaricum survivors arrived at the camp of Vercingetorix it triggered another crisis, with some of the allied tribes beginning to openly express misgivings about the prospects of fending off Rome. As he had before, Vercingetorix relied on his oratorical skills to avert the emergency, pointing out to his audience that he had been against the defense of Avaricum in the first place and that one could not expect to win every battle. This is a point we would have openly mocked, since we had been doing just that, but we were not there, and his rhetoric revived their flagging enthusiasm once more. He also announced that he would issue instructions for a fresh levy of troops to replace the losses suffered at Avaricum, while renewing his oath to drive us from Gaul. Sending out emissaries, he made good on at least his first promise of raising more troops, along with gaining oaths from the tribes who remained aloof to this point. Other events were taking place as well in other parts of Gaul, most worryingly among the Aedui. Some sort of disagreement erupted between two men, both contending for one office, resulting in a threat of civil war. Not wanting such unrest in our rear just when we were going to begin our campaign in earnest, Caesar kept us at Avaricum while he traveled to the lands of the Aedui to adjudicate the dispute. For us, there was a few days with nothing much to do; the bodies of the Bituriges were disposed of, the siege equipment either dismantled or destroyed, and our broken bits of gear mended or replaced. Consequently, for all intents and purposes, that period of time we spent while Caesar was off with the Aedui was our winter. The only change from the normal winter routine, besides its brevity, was that living arrangements were different, without the regularity found in our normal winter camp. Despite the Tribune in charge of billeting trying his best to group us in the same vicinity by putting all the men of one Century on the same street for example, it was not always possible. This had one unforeseen and not altogether unpleasant consequence, because it exposed us to more of our comrades in the army, so that fairly quickly what had been passing acquaintance became something closer to real friendship among some of us. There was another consequence, but this one did not surprise anyone all that much. For every new friendship formed, there were at least one or more disagreements, each of them almost invariably leading to fighting, keeping all the Centurions and Optios busy breaking up fights, yet despite our best attempts at preventing it, a few men lost their lives. Some were the losers in whatever fracas had broken out, but there were a few who were the killers and were then executed themselves. In these cases, the punishment is especially brutal, as a means of discouraging such behavior. The condemned man is required to run through a gauntlet consisting of the Century to which the murdered man belonged, each armed with axe handles or staves, and before the condemned can be put out of his misery, every bone in his body must be broken. It is a particularly painful and ignoble way to die, yet even with such penalties, men’s passions would still get the better of them and in a moment of the same kind of madness that sometimes swept through us in battle, they would seal their own fate. I am somewhat ashamed to say that one of the men of the Second Cohort was condemned and executed in this manner, and I know that like all the other men of all the other Centuries who escaped punishment, we offered a prayer of thanks to the gods that the victim had not been in our Century. To avoid that, I kept a particularly close eye on both Atilius and Didius; Atilius for his joy of fighting men from other Legions, and Didius because of his shady dice. Fortunately, neither of them gave me any problems, although Didius took my extra attention with his usual grace. The only thing that really changed between Didius and myself was that he no longer uttered the same kind of threats that he did to the rest of his tentmates, knowing full well that such words, spoken even in jest, could be punished by death. I do not think he trusted me enough not to use one of his outbursts as an excuse to be rid of him, and I cannot say that the thought did not cross my mind, but whether I hated him or not, Didius was one of the men for whom I was responsible, and part of that responsibility meant trying to keep him alive. With all of these events taking place, it was with some relief that we viewed Caesar’s return, since the discipline in the army was getting more and more difficult to enforce. It was not that we were any more lax in our enforcement of the rules, but in many ways an army is like a large pack of wolves. Once they scent blood, they will not be satisfied until their bloodlust is fully sated, and ours had just been aroused with the fall of Avaricum. The season was about to begin; we were anxious to pick up where we left off, so it was with much excitement and not a little relief on the part of the Centurions and Optios when we were given the orders to march. We were headed to a place called Gergovia.
Chapter 12: Gergovia
Caesar split the army in two parts, one under the command of Labienus, with the other under his own. Along with Labienus went the 7th, 12th, 15th and 16th, and the rest of us went with Caesar. Labienus went off to quell the tribes along the Sequana River, while Caesar’s army marched first to Noviodunum, where he installed some of the 10,000 auxiliaries that he requisitioned from the Aedui as a garrison. This put us on the east bank of the Elaver (Allier) River, from where we turned south in pursuit of Vercingetorix. Once he detected our pursuit Vercingetorix, who was on the west, or opposite side of the river, hurried to burn the bridges, although he left the pilings intact. The result was that we marched side by side for three or four days, with Vercingetorix’s advance patrols burning the bridges they found but keeping an armed force of sufficient size at the site of each bridge, telling Caesar that any attempt to repair them would be bloody and risky affairs. Yet Caesar came up with what can only be described as a brilliant solution to the problem. On the march one day, we entered a sizable forest, of sufficient size so that the whole column was hidden from sight from even the most alert of Vercingetorix’s cavalry scouts. Once the whole army was within the screening safety of the woods, the command was given to halt, then very quickly, the 9th and 10th Cohorts from each Legion were ordered out of the formation and told to stand to the side. Once that was done, we reduced the width of our column and put the extra men in the spots where the removed Cohorts had been, to give the appearance that we were the same length as when we entered the woods, knowing that a shorter column would be easier to spot from the vantage point across the river than the width, and before much time elapsed, we were on the march again. Despite there being a slight delay, such stops are very common, and just as Caesar hoped, Vercingetorix suspected nothing. Staying behind with the 12 Cohorts, Caesar ordered the army to resume its march, stop at the normal time and make camp in the usual way. Once he calculated that we had reached the end of our march for that day, Caesar ordered the 12 Cohorts into action, marching the half mile back no
rth to the site of the latest burned bridge. With the pilings still intact, it was not much work to repair the bridge, so by midnight that night, a rider came to camp and ordered us to backtrack and cross the bridge. Leaving the camp more or less intact, we just took our stakes with us but did not burn the towers or fill in the ditch because that would alert the enemy something unusual was happening. Catching Vercingetorix completely by surprise, by the time he recovered, we already had the detached Cohorts on the other side of the river, ready to defend the bridge before anything could be done. To his credit, he reacted quickly; realizing that he could not stop us, he instead decided to put distance on us by marching towards Gergovia at a quicker pace.
Now that we were on the right side of the river, we did not try to close the distance back to the enemy, not wanting to make haste and thereby stumble into an ambush. Despite the fact we had always prevailed to this point, we did have a grudging respect for Vercingetorix, because he was proving to be the one Gallic chieftain who demonstrated that he at least knew the types of tactics that gave his army the best chance of success, even if his men were too undisciplined and untrained to execute them. In fact, that was an ongoing topic of conversation around the fires at night; whether the Gauls were capable of instilling in themselves the kind of discipline that it would take to put their people on a more equal footing with us. From what I could tell, opinion seemed to be almost equally divided.
“Look at how they’ve picked up our siegecraft,” argued Scribonius one night while I was visiting the fire of my old comrades. “And that cunnus Vercingetorix almost starved us out at Avaricum. Those are Roman tactics, so how long do you think it’ll be before we’re facing a testudo?”
“You can teach a bear to dance, but that doesn’t mean he’ll be able to sing,” Vibius shot back, provoking a hoot of laughter from all of us, even Scribonius.
“True enough, but they’re not bears, they’re men. And they’re smart men,” Scribonius countered. Vibius, and truth be told, Vellusius and Atilius, along with a couple men from another section in the Century who had taken to sitting at our fire, voiced their disagreement.
“They’re not as smart as us,” Vibius said scornfully. “Look at how they fight, Scribonius. Even since Vercingetorix has been in command, they still line up and come running at us, flailing about and howling like Cerberus, even after we cut them down like wheat before the scythe. And that hasn’t changed one bit in the years we’ve been out here.”
“I’m not saying that it won’t take them time to change,” Scribonius replied, and I could tell he knew how weak that sounded.
“It’s been five years Scribonius,” this from Atilius, his comment being met with a chorus of agreement.
There was a pause; I was staring into the fire, only gradually becoming aware that the silence was drawing out, and when I looked up, I saw all eyes were on me.
“So what do you think, Tit……I mean Optio?” I glared at Vibius; we had talked several times about his habit of forgetting to address me by my rank in the presence of others.
It is not that I cared particularly, but addressing a superior above the rank of Sergeant by their praenomen is technically an offense, and I was worried that someone like Didius would report this to the Pilus Prior if he ever got mad at Vibius, which in turn might force Pulcher to act. Feeling I made my point with a look, I considered the question carefully before answering, realizing that as Optio, no matter what my relationship had been with these men, I was still their superior, and rankers tend to take what their superiors tell them as if it came from the lips of Caesar himself.
“I don’t think the Gauls are as stupid as you think Vibius,” I began, and I could see his eyes narrow a bit, a sure sign that he was close to being angry, so before he could say anything that would put us both in difficulty, I hurriedly continued, “but you can’t deny that no matter what the reason, they’re not picking up our tactics. So maybe it’s not intelligence but some other fault in their character.”
Even as I mentally congratulated myself on such a diplomatic answer, Vibius pressed me further. “So what’s this character flaw, if it’s not that they aren’t as intelligent as we are?”
Now I was on the spot, because truth be told, I had just made this up as a way to avoid an argument, since the truth was that I agreed with Scribonius. My mind raced for an answer as I looked at Vibius, sitting across the fire, his arms folded, giving me what I knew to be his triumphant look at outwitting me. He knows me too well, I thought wryly; he saw through my ruse and was putting me on the spot now.
“Constancy,” I blurted out.
“Constancy? What by Pluto’s thorny cock does that even mean? Is that an officer’s word?” Vibius laughed, pleased at his own wit, and I felt my ears beginning to burn as blood rushed to my face.
“No Vibius, it’s not an officer’s word. Everyone knows what it means.”
“So what does it mean?”
Despite having only a very vague idea, I had long since learned that sounding confident in your answer was half the battle to being believed, so I plunged in.
“It’s the aspect of your character that’ll see you through tough and dangerous times.”
“That’s just bravery,” Vibius countered, and I shook my head, the idea of what I meant taking more substantial form.
“It’s not just bravery though. It’s the part of your character that gets you through difficult but not dangerous tasks as well, like……..our training.”
That was it, I thought, and I could see heads that had been still or even shaking back and forth at what I was saying start to stop. Now to get them to nod up and down, I thought, as I finished my thought.
“The training is tough, but it doesn’t require all that much courage, or bravery, whatever you want to call it. It’s just like at Avaricum. Caesar gave us the opportunity to call off the siege, but to a man, we all refused. It wasn’t bravery, because we’re all veterans and we know that if we aren’t going to fight that day, we’ll be fighting on the next, so bravery played no part in our decision. At least it didn’t in mine. No, it was more about seeing a job through, no matter how hard or unpleasant. That’s constancy.”
Now the heads were nodding, and I saw with some relief that even Vibius seemed to accept that my response made sense. Not wanting to lose the advantage, I finished.
“And that’s what I think is missing from the Gauls. It’s not bravery; we’ve seen enough examples to know that it’s not through a lack of bravery that we defeat them. It’s just when things get tough, or they require a lot of hard work, with little immediate payoff, the Gauls aren’t capable of seeing things through.”
And that is what I believe to this day.
At the end of our fifth day on the march, we came within sight of Gergovia. Hardened veterans we may have been, but the sight of that hilltop town still gave us pause. Like most Gallic forts that grow into towns, it was perched on a hill, except this one was higher and more massive than any we faced before. Approaching from the north, it was easy to see that the slope on that side was almost vertical, immediately telling us that there would be no assault from that direction. Despite it being at the end of our marching day, Caesar pushed us on to swing around to the east, while he and his bodyguard rode around the base of the hill looking for a weak point. It turned out that the east side was just as bad as the north, although we did find a good spot for a camp, southeast of the hill, beginning the process while Caesar continued exploring. The site for our camp was on a low hill, giving a clear view of the town to our northwest, with a small valley perhaps two miles wide between the two points. Caesar returned shortly before dark, calling a meeting of his staff and the Primi Pili of the Legions, leaving the rest of us to sit and speculate about what would happen next.