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ANCIENT WARFARE
ANCIENT ROMAN MILITARY
(continuation)
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PART II-D: Julius Caesar (100 - 44 B.C. )
Gaul to the Rubicon
"Vercingetorix Throws Down His Arms At the Feet of Caesar" L. Royer, 1888.
By kind permission of Forum Romanum.
"For himself he wanted a high command, an army, and a war in some field where his gifts could shine in all their brightness." Sallust, Conspiracy of Cataline, LIV. "[Caesar] proceeded by forced marches to the territory of the Nervii, and there learnt from prisoners what was happening in [Quintus] Cicero's camp, and how critical the position was. He then induced one of his Gallic horsemen . . . to convey a letter to Cicero, which he wrote in Greek characters, for fear it might be intercepted and his plans known to the enemy. If he was unable to get into the camp, the man was to tie the letter to the thong of a javelin and throw it in over the rampart. The letter informed Cicero that Caesar was on the way with some legions and would be there shortly, and told him to keep up a bold front." Julius Caesar, De Bello Gallico. For almost a sixth of his life - from 58 to 49 BC- Julius Caesar lived absent from Rome, conquering one of the largest stretches of hostile territory ever brought into its Empire. The series of brilliant offensive campaigns he waged against the tribes of Gaul, Belgium and Germany rivaled the successes of Rome's legendary generals. He was the first commander in Roman history to build a bridge across the Rhine and carry war into the enemy's country. His venture to the island of Britannia, half-mythical to the Roman world (to which it was largely unknown), riveted the attention of political Europe. He brought, for better or worse, the Celtic tribes of "Long-haired Gaul" firmly into the Roman Empire, with an exhausted peace that would outlast him by centuries.
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THE GALLIC TRIBES, 58-50 BC
 Caesar's campaigns have filled countless books, but some summarization is possible. The Gaul Caesar conquered included France (except southern France, which was already a Roman province, Gallia Narbonensis), southern Holland, Belgium, Germany west of the Rhine, and most of Switzerland. Familiar with elements of Greek and Roman culture for centuries, Caesar met a barbarian people with stable cultural similarities, their own coinage and vibrant art, walled towns and established urban centers, settled agriculture and a stable religious ethos. Political development varied in degree. Rome had influenced the Province (modern Provence), which had been linked to Rome for over a century, but her impact farther north was confined primarily to trade in wine and certain luxuries. The Celtic tribes in general - and especially the great tribes of the Averni, the Aedui, and the Helvetii- had already abandoned hereditary kingship for annually elected magistrates, answerable to councils and public codes of law. The Northern Celts still retained their kings. The Germanic tribes beyond the Rhine positively rejected what they saw as enervating luxuries offered by Roman traders. It had been only two generations since the vast Germanic incursions of the Cimbrii and Teutones led to their defeat on a Gallic battlefield by Faius Marius. Resentment against Rome had festered. In spite of these many "civilized" aspects, to Caesar and the Romans of his time the Gauls remained barbarians, and became more uncouth the farther away from Rome they lived. There are frequent references to the Gallic character scattered throughout Caesar's famous commentaries on the Gallic Wars. He considered them impulsive, emotional, easily swayed; they were fickle, loved change, were credulous and prone to panic. Although it is obvious from his writings that Caesar viewed them with respect as worthy military adversaries, he coldly judged their struggle for freedom from Rome's sway as no more than unstable anger whipped up by agitators with ulterior personal motives. It apparently never occurred to Caesar that there were rational arguments against annexation by Rome. There seems little doubt his initial moves against the Helvetii were calculated for his own political advantage, and that he carried his conquests far beyond the brief initially given him by the Senate of Rome. Again and again, as with his expeditions to Britain and the Rhine in the eight years of his command, Caesar justifies extensions of his field of operations against the many tribes by representing them as punitive expeditions, or by alleging the need to overawe the dubiously loyal, volatile Gauls. Yet the contests against the Gauls not only taxed Caesar's military brilliance to its utmost, but also provide one of history's great panoramas of military skill and bravery. The great tribal names - the Bellovaci, Atrebates, Nervii, Eburones, Remi, Suessiones - have lived in history for two millennia, largely thanks to Caesar's magnificent reports from the front. Yet, while fighting the Gauls on the one hand with a celerity and ruthlessness that kept Gaul peacefully within the Empire for the next 400 years, he was ever mindful of his strengthening political foes in Rome itself. While he was besieging hill forts and selling whole conquered tribes into slavery, his political support in Rome began to unravel. The Senate might vote him a series of unprecedented public thanksgivings for his conquests but Pompey was edging ever closer to the Optimates and away from Caesar's interests, while Cicero's party became inflexible in its hostility.
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WAR ON TWO FRONTS Initially, Caesar's campaigns of 58-55 appeared largely successful. Caesar was not sent north to make war against Gaul (a point his enemies never ceased to emphasize) but to govern the settled part of the territory. He found the excuse for conquest in the movement of the Helvetii, a tribe threatening the territory of Rome's allies, and insisted they were a threat to the Province as a whole. He carefully distinguished, in his justifications for Roman consumption, between condemnation of the aggressive tribes and of their treasonable, misguided leaders, including Ariovistus. In 57 (having "settled" the Helvetii through victories), Caesar tackled the Belgae. By 56, an unbroken string of victories leads Caesar to imply that northern Gaul was pacified (to put it mildly, an optimistic forecast). Instead, it would require additional years to put out the brush fires of the sporadic Gallic revolts, as well as to prepare expeditions to the mysterious island of Britain.  By 55, Caesar's term as proconsul was drawing to a close. He had not fully pacified Gaul and he knew it. In 56, to ensure additional time to complete conquest of the territory, he had summoned Pompey to Luca in northern Italy (just barely within the borders of Caesar's province) where he, Caesar, and Crassus hammered out an extension of their power-sharing" triumvirate," securing Caesar an additional extension of his command for another five years, until December 30, 49 BC, and granting Pompey and Crassus profitable governorships as well. But in 54, his daughter Julia, married to Gnaeus Pompey, died in childbirth, weakening his links to Pompey. In 53, Crassus perished miserably in Parthia following his disastrous defeat at Carrhae. Now Pompey, perhaps jealous of Caesar's increasing military fame, was growing balky in protecting Caesar's interests while moving closer to the Optimate party, Caesar’s obdurate enemies since his consulship in 59. Towards the end of 52, Pompey (after being sole consul for most of that year) was granted the governorship of Spain for an additional five years; since Lucca, against all constitutional practice, he had exercised governorship by deputy since he dared not leave Rome. Caesar asked to stand for election to the consulate for 49 notwithstanding his absence from the capital; although this request had been granted to others, in this case the Senate, controlled by the anti-Caesarian party, refused.
A stark dilemma confronted Caesar. On the day he lost his imperium and command of his legions in Gaul, he would become vulnerable to any charges of illegality or corruption his enemies might wish to levy for deeds dating from his Consulship and covering all actions during his conquests. With his political enemies in control, the very best he could expect was confiscation of all property, public disgrace, and permanent banishment from Rome. It was essential to his political survival that he step directly from command into the consulship, in which he would again be protected from prosecution. But Pompey and the Senate refused to effectively grant Caesar the right to stand for the consulship in absentia.
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VERCINGETORIX AND THE GALLIC ALLIANCE While Rome flared in unrest following the murder of Publius Clodius in January, 52, Gaul (which Caesar had thought largely pacified) rose in in a firestorm of renewed, united rebellion under the brilliant Vercingetorix. Caesar concentrated all his efforts to destroy the great Gaul's confederacy. For the next 18 months, events in Rome would have to wait upon almost constant, ever more savage, battles against almost every major tribe in Long-haired Gaul. Caesar captured Avaricum; was forced to abandon the siege of Gergovia with heavy losses; was victorious in the neighborhood of Dijon; and finally surrounded Vercingetorix and much of his army in Alesia, fighting off the combined Celtic levies attempting to relieve him in one of the most brilliant sieges in history. He accepted the surrender of Vercingetorix, who walked in Caesar's Gallic triumph six years later before his ritual murder. All through 51 Caesar fought with increasing brutality to bring the remaining Gallic tribes under control, while in Rome the Optimates begin repeated attempts in the Senate to prematurely end his command. Perhaps in response to these attempts, Caesar began publication of his own version of his accomplishments in roughly 52, the first of his seven books on the Gallic Wars. It is likely he used the annual drafts of the reports he had been required to send to the Senate since taking command. In them he cooly estimated that over a million Gauls had been killed, a further million enslaved, in the eight years of his campaigns.  The year 50 brought the tensions of the state to breaking point. Throughout the year, the Optimates, headed by Cato, Bibulus and the Consul Marcellus, repeatedly moved to recall Caesar and bring him to trial. Only Caesar's client tribune, C. Curio, prevented the passing of a decree by repeatedly imposing a veto. His proposals were simple: if Caesar [an alleged danger to the state] must give up his armies, then Pompey [once considered such] must also give up his legions. Two of Caesar’s legions had, in fact, been “loaned” him from Pompey’s army in the days of the triumvirate. The anti-Caesarians deftly agreed that Pompey would cooperate by giving up one of his legions – coincidentally, the one remaining with Caesar. Thus Caesar effectively lost two loyal legions, which cost Pompey nothing.
The nervous tension built throughout that fateful year. Cicero, governing Cilicia but frantically seeking information, wrote and received invaluable letters from which help us almost know almost month by month the state of the growing breach between Pompey (now firmly on the side of the Optimates) and Caesar (playing for time and hoping for accommodation). By the end of the year, when the decision for or against Caesar was imminent, Cicero's letters and Caesar's own writings give vivid snapshots of the granite impasse between the two men: [From Caesar's message to Pompey, December 50] It made me angry that my enemies should, out of spite, wrest from me a privilege conferred by the Roman people and, robbing me of six months of my command, drag me back to Rome, when the people had decreed that I should be allowed to stand [for election] in absentia at the next elections."Caesar, Civil War, 1.9 (2)[Saaben-Clare]. Cicero was horrified at the approaching disaster, and in his letter to Atticus of December 26/27 (mere days before the Rubicon) rather pathetically took both sides of the argument himself, concluding "'Then we must give way to Caesar's wishes.' But just think of his first consulship and then imagine him being consul again. 'Ah yes' you say, 'weak as he then was, he was more than a match for the whole state.' So what do you think he will be like now?" Cicero to Atticus, 7.9 [Saaben-Clare]. Meanwhile, Gaius Marcellus, consul for December, noted that Caesar had casually moved his headquarters to Ravenna, ostensibly to hear legal cases in Cisalpine Gaul. Curio, whose latest move was to suggest that both Pompey and Caesar lay down their commands, forced a vote in the Senate, which fell resoundingly in favor of peace; by a vote of 370 to 22, it was agreed that both proconsuls should retire. Marcellus merely overlooked the vote and went straight to Pompey, offering him Rome’s sword to defend her from Caesar’s anticipated actions. On December 10, Curio’s term as tribune ended, but Caesar's deputy, Antony, took over, still regularly imposing the tribune’s veto to derail motions against Caesar. The posturing on both sides was unrelenting. Caesar was willing to do almost anything to be - or to appear to be - accommodating. His final offer was that, as a compromise, he would give up eight legions and command in Transalpine Gaul. He even offered to keep merely two legions and Cisalpine Gaul – or at least one legion and Illyricum - until he could be elected consul. It was too late.
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"LET THE DICE FLY HIGH!" In the first days of January 49, motions were renewed to strip Caesar of his command. This time, the majority of the Senate voted against Caesar’s most recent offer and ignored the vetoes of his two tribunes of the plebs, who were physically roughed up in the turmoil. The inviolable veto of the tribunes had been infringed. Antony and Caelius, together with Curio, immediately left to bring word to Caesar that the Senate had formally declared against him. The news reached Caesar at Ravenna with lightning speed, probably on January 10, 49 BC. It must have been clear to him that the senatorial party was now placing the greatest legal authority of the Empire in the hands of his enemies. Suetonius states that Caesar immediately and secretly left Ravenna after sunset (having previously sent ahead 10 cohorts of his soldiers towards Ariminum, across the border into Italy). The southern frontier of Caesar’s province was the small, northern Italian stream called Rubicon which Caesar’s party reached at dawn. Caesar hesitated for a long time on the "legal" side of that small stream. What his thoughts were cannot be guessed. When he crossed the bridge, Caesar would become, not the national hero and revered general of many legions, but an enemy of the state. To a man who prized his position among his peers and in history above all things, he knew he would be forever stigmatized for marching against his native land and had used every maneuver in his arsenal to avoid it. One of the most famous images in history is of Caesar pausing on the northern side of the river, telling his staff,” We may still draw back but once across that little bridge, we shall have to fight it out.” 
The Rubicon River in northern Italy, separating Italy from Cisalpine Gaul As the Gallic Wars had made Caesar's military prowess the stuff of household fame, so Vercingetorix and the Gallic alliance, in their first and last great attempt at confederacy, showed barbarians throughout the Roman world that, even united, Rome could not be defeated when led by generals of genius. It is impossible to imagine Caesar's future career without the political capital, wealth and fighting skills he earned while contesting with the warriors of Gaul for its future. It is impossible to imagine the future history of France, Belgium, and so many countries of Western Europe without Caesar's drive to be first in Rome
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Continuation of Part II-D Ancient Roman Military: Julius Caesar
The Civil War |
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