Napoleon III
History of Julius Caesar Vol. 2 of 2
BOOK IV.
RECAPITULATION OF THE WAR IN GAUL, AND RELATION OF EVENTS AT ROME FROM 696 TO 705
CHAPTER I.
EVENTS OF THE YEAR 696
Difficulties of Cæsar’s Task.
I. IN the preceding book we have given, from the “Commentaries,” the relation of the war in Gaul, and endeavoured to elucidate doubtful questions, and to discover the localities which were the scenes of so many combats. It will now be not uninteresting to recapitulate the principal events of the eight campaigns of the Roman proconsul, separated from all their technical details. We will at the same time examine what was passing, during this period, on the banks of the Tiber, and the events which led to the Civil War.
Writers who dislike glory take pleasure in undervaluing it. They seem to wish thus to invalidate the judgment of past ages: we seek in preference to confirm it, by explaining why the renown of certain men has filled the world. To bring to light the heroic examples of the past, to show that glory is the legitimate reward of great actions, is to pay homage to the public opinion of all times. Man struggling with difficulties which seem insurmountable, and conquering them by his genius, offers a spectacle always worthy of our admiration; and this admiration will be the more justified, according to the greater disproportion between the end and the means.
Cæsar is going to quit Rome, to go far from the debates of the Forum, the agitation of the comitia, and the intrigues of a corrupt town, in order to take the command of his troops. Let us, then, for a moment lay aside the statesman, and consider only the warrior, the great captain. The Roman proconsul is not one of those barbarian chieftains who, at the head of innumerable hordes, throw themselves upon a foreign country to ravage it with fire and sword. His mission is not to destroy, but to extend to a distance the influence of the Republic, by protecting the peoples of Gaul, either against their own dissensions, or against the encroachments of their dangerous neighbours. The dangers from which Italy had been saved by the victories of Marius are not forgotten. Men’s memory still recalls the savage bravery, and, still more, the multitude of those barbarians who, before the battle of Aix, had employed six entire days in defiling in front of the camp of Marius;557 they still fear a renewal of these inundations of peoples, and Cæsar’s first duty is to avert similar perils. Already the Helvetii and their allies, to the number of 368,000, are on the road towards the Rhine; 120,000 Germans have established themselves in Gaul; 24,000 Harudes, their countrymen, have just followed the same example; others are marching after them, and more than 100,000 Suevi are preparing to cross the Rhine.
The Narbonnese forms the proconsul’s basis of operation, but it is partly composed of populations recently subjugated, whose fidelity is as yet doubtful. Rome has in Gaul allied peoples, but they have lost their preponderance. The different states, divided among themselves by intestine rivalries, offer an easy prey to the enemy; but let the Roman army come to occupy their territory in a permanent manner, and thus wound their feelings of independence, and all the warlike youth will unite, eager to begin a struggle full of perils for the invaders. Cæsar is obliged, therefore, to act with extreme prudence, to favour the ambition of some, repress the encroachments of others, and spare the susceptibility of all, taking care not to wound their religion, their laws, or their manners; he is obliged at the same time to draw a part of his forces from the country he occupies, and obtain thence men, subsidies, and provisions. The greatest difficulty experienced by the commander of an army operating in a country the good-will of which he seeks to conciliate, is to enable his troops to live without exhausting it, and to assure the welfare of his soldiers without exciting the discontent of the inhabitants. “To seek to call,” says the Emperor Napoleon I. in his Mémoires, “a nation to liberty and independence; to desire that a public spirit should form in the midst of it, and that it should furnish troops; and at the same time to take from it its principal resources, are two contradictory ideas, and to conciliate them is the province of talent.”558
Thus, to fight between two and three hundred thousand Helvetii and Germans, to hold in dominion eight millions of Gauls, and to maintain the Roman province – such is the task which Cæsar has undertaken, and, to carry it out, he has as yet only at hand a single legion. What means will he have to overcome all these obstacles? His genius and the ascendency of civilisation over barbarism.
Campaign against the Helvetii.
II. Cæsar starts from Rome towards the middle of March, 696, and arrives in eight days at Geneva. Immediately the Helvetii, who had appointed their rendezvous on the banks of the Rhine towards the 24th of March, the day of the equinox, ask his permission to cross Savoy, with the intention of going to establish themselves in Saintonge. He adjourns his answer to the 8th of April, and employs the fifteen days thus gained in fortifying the left bank of the Rhone, from Geneva to the Pas-de-l’Ecluse, in raising troops in the Roman province, and in renewing the old bonds of friendship with the Burgundians,559 who will soon furnish him with men, horses, and provisions.
By rendering the passage of the Rhone impossible, and by binding to his cause the peoples who occupied the whole course of the Saône, from Pontailler to near Trévoux, he had cut off from the Helvetii the road to the south, and thrown difficulties in their way towards the west. Still, these persisted none the less in their design; they made an arrangement with the people of Franche-Comté, to whom the passage of the Pas-de-l’Ecluse belonged, to debouch by that defile into the plains of Ambérieux and on the plateau of the Dombes. They could thus arrive at the Saône, pass it peaceably or by force, proceed into the valley of the Loire by crossing the mountains of Charolais, and penetrate thence into Saintonge.
As soon as Cæsar was aware of this project, he immediately decided on his course of action: he foresaw that a long time would elapse before the Helvetii effected a passage across the unquiet countries of so many hosts; he reckons that an agglomeration of 368,000 individuals, men, women, and children, carrying three months’ provisions in wagons, would be slow to move; he repairs to the Cisalpine, raises two legions there, sends to Aquileia for the three who were in winter quarters there, and, crossing the Alps again, arrives, two months afterwards, at the confluence of the Rhone and the Saône, on the heights of Sathonay. He learns that the Helvetii have been employed during twenty days in crossing the Saône between Trévoux and Villefranche, but that a part of them still remain on the left bank; seizes the opportunity, attacks the latter, defeats them, and thus diminishes the number of his adversaries by one-fourth; then, crossing the Saône, he follows during fifteen days the mass of the Helvetian emigration, which was advancing towards the sources of the Bourbince. As he finds himself in want of provisions, he turns off from his road, and marches towards Bibracte (Mont Beuvray), the citadel and principal town of the Burgundians. This march to the right leads the Helvetii to believe that he is afraid of encountering them; they then march back, and attack him unexpectedly; a great battle is fought, and, with his four old legions only, Cæsar gains the victory. The immigration, already considerably diminished by the battle of the Saône, no longer counts more than 130,000 individuals, who make their retreat towards the country of Langres. The Roman general does not pursue them; he remains three days burying the dead and attending to the wounded. But his influence is already so great, that, to deprive the wreck of the vanquished army of provisions, he has only to give orders to the peoples whose territory they cross. Deprived of all resources, the fugitives discontinue their march, and make their submission. He hastens to overtake them towards Tonnerre. When he arrives in the midst of them, he adopts a generous policy, and gains, by his generous behaviour, those whom he had subjugated by his arms.
There was in the Helvetic conglomeration a people renowned for their valor, the Boii; Cæsar permits the Burgundians to receive them into the number of their fellow-citizens, and give them lands at the confluence of the Allier and the Loire. As to the other barbarians, with the exception of 6,000 who had attempted to withdraw from the capitulation by flight, he obliges them to return to their country, dismisses them without ransom, instead of selling them as slaves, and thus drawing from them a considerable profit, according to the general usage of that period.560 By preventing the Germans from establishing themselves in the countries abandoned by the immigration, he made a calculation of interest secondary to a high political sentiment, and foresaw that Helvetia, by its geographical position, was destined to be a bulwark against invasion from the north, and that, then as now, it was important for the power seated on the Rhone and the Alps to have on its eastern frontiers a friendly and independent people.561
Campaign against Ariovistus.
III. The victory gained near Bibracte has, at one blow, restored the prestige of the Roman arms. Cæsar has become the arbitrator of the destinies of a part of Gaul: all the peoples comprised between the Marne, the Rhone, and the mountains of Auvergne, obey him.562 The Helvetii have returned into their country; the Burgundians have re-conquered their ancient preponderance. The assembly of Celtic Gaul, held with his permission at Bibracte, invokes his protection against Ariovistus, and, to the far north, the people of Trèves hasten to denounce to him a threatened invasion of Germans. It had always been a part of the policy of the Republic to extend its influence by going to the succour of oppressed peoples. Cæsar could not fail to regulate his conduct upon this principle. Not only did it concern him to deliver the Gauls from a foreign yoke, but he sought to deprive the Germans of the possibility of settling on the banks of the Saône, and thus threatening the Roman province, and perhaps Italy itself.
Before having recourse to arms, Cæsar, who, during his consulship, had caused Ariovistus to be declared the ally and friend of the Roman republic, undertook to try upon him the means of persuasion. He sent to demand an interview, and received only a haughty reply. Soon, informed that, three days before, the German king has crossed his frontiers at the head of a numerous army, and that, on another side, the hundred cantons of the Suevi are threatening to cross the Rhine towards Mayence, he starts from Tonnerre in haste to go forward to meet him. When he arrives near Arc-en-Barrois, he learns that Ariovistus is marching with all his troops upon Besançon. He then turns to the right, anticipates him, and takes possession of that important place. No doubt, at the news of the march of the Roman army, Ariovistus slackened his own, and halted in the neighbourhood of Colmar.
After remaining a few days at Besançon, Cæsar takes the way to the Rhine, avoids the mountainous spurs of the Jura, proceeds by Pennesières, Arcey, and Belfort, and debouches towards Cernay in the fertile plains of Alsace. The two armies are only twenty-four miles apart. Cæsar and Ariovistus have an interview; its only result is to increase their mutual resentment. The latter conceives the project of cutting the line of operation of the Romans, and, passing near the site of the modern Mulhouse, he proceeds, by a circuitous movement, to establish himself on the stream of the little Doller, to the south of the Roman army, which, encamped on the Thur, supports its rear on the last spurs of the Vosges, near Cernay. In this position, Ariovistus intercepts Cæsar’s communications with Franche-Comté and Burgundy. The latter, to restore them, distributes his troops into two camps, and causes a second camp to be made, less considerable than the first, on his right, near the little Doller. During several days, he seeks in vain to draw Ariovistus to a battle; then, learning that the matrons have advised the Germans not to tempt fortune before the new moon, he unites his legions, places all the auxiliaries on his right, marches resolutely to assault the camp of the Germans, forces them to accept battle, and defeats them after an obstinate resistance. In their flight, they take the same road by which they had advanced, and, pursued for a distance of fifty miles, they re-pass the Rhine towards Rhinau. As to the Suevi, who had assembled near Mayence, when they are informed of the disaster of their allies, they hasten to regain their country.
Thus, in his first campaign, Cæsar, by two great battles, had delivered Gaul from the invasion of the Helvetii and the Germans; all the Gauls looked upon him as a liberator. But services rendered are very soon forgotten when people owe their liberty and independence to a foreign army.
Cæsar places his troops in winter quarters in Franche-Comté, leaves the command to Labienus, and starts for Cisalpine Gaul, where he is obliged, as proconsul, to preside over the provincial assemblies. Nearer Rome during the winter, he could follow more easily the political events of the metropolis.
Sequel of the Consulship of L. Calpurnius Piso and Aulus Galbinus.
IV. While the armies were augmenting the power of the Republic without, at Rome the intestine struggles continued with new fury. It could hardly be otherwise among the elements of discord and anarchy which were at work, and which, since the departure of Cæsar, were no longer held under control by a lofty intelligence and a firm will. Moral force, so necessary to every government, no longer existed anywhere, or rather, it did not exist where the institutions willed it to be, in the Senate; and, according to the remark of a celebrated German historian, this assembly which ruled the world, was incapable of ruling the town.563 For a long time the prestige of one man in visible power was master over that of the Senate; Pompey, by his military renown, and by his alliance with Cæsar and Crassus, continued dominant, although he had not then any legal power. Cæsar had reckoned upon him to continue his work, and curb the bad passions which were in agitation in the highest regions as well as in the lowest depths of society: but Pompey had neither the mind nor energy necessary to master at the same time the arrogance of the nobles and the turbulence of certain partisans of the demagogy; he was soon exposed to the censure of both parties.564 Moreover entirely under the influence of the charms of his young wife, he appeared indifferent to what was passing around him.565
The relation of the events at Rome during the eight years of Cæsar’s abode in Gaul will only offer us an uninterrupted series of vengeances, murders, and acts of violence of every description. How, indeed, could order be maintained in so vast a city without a permanent military force; when each man of importance took with him, for his escort, his clients or slaves in arms, and thus, within it, everybody had an army except the Republic? From this moment, as we shall see, the quarrels which are about to spring up among the parties will result always in riots; the slaves and gladiators will be enrolled as the ordinary actors.
Intrigues of Clodius.
V. Clodius, whose imprudent support of those who were subsequently called the triumvirs had increased his influence, continued, after Cæsar’s departure, to court a vain popularity, and to excite the passions which had been imperfectly allayed. Not satisfied with having, at the beginning of his tribuneship, re-established those religious, commercial, and political associations, which, composed chiefly of the dregs of the people, were a permanent danger to society; with having made distributions of wheat, restrained the censors in their right of exclusion, forbidden the auspices to be taken or the sky observed on the day fixed for the meeting of the comitia,566 and with having provoked the exile of Cicero, he turned his restless activity against Pompey,567 whom he soon deeply offended, by causing to be taken away and set at liberty a son of Tigranes, King of Armenia, made prisoner in the war against Mithridates, and retained as a pledge for the tranquillity of Asia.568 At the same time he began judicial proceedings against some of Pompey’s friends, and replied to the expostulations which were addressed to him, “That he was glad to learn how far the great man’s credit went.”569 The latter then conceived the idea of recalling Cicero, to oppose him to Clodius, just as, a few months before, he had raised Clodius against Cicero. We see the game of political see-saw is not new.
Pompey consults Cæsar on the Return of Cicero.
VI. Under these circumstances, the opinion of Cæsar was of great weight. Pompey wrote to consult him,570 and P. Sextius, one of those nominated as the new tribunes, repaired to Gaul to ascertain his mind.571 It appears certain that it was favourable,572 for, so early as the Calends of June, 696, hardly two months after the decree against Cicero, a tribune of the people, L. Ninnius, demanded his recall in the Senate. This proposal was on the point of being carried, when another tribune of the people, Ælius Ligus, interceded.573 The Senate, in its irritation, declared that it would take into consideration no political or administrative affair until it had voted on Cicero’s return.574 We thus judge how much the assembly took to heart the success of this measure, and how much, in supporting it, Pompey flattered the sentiments of the majority.
Pompey believes himself threatened by a Slave of Clodius.
VII. A singular occurrence determined his reconciliation with the Senate: on the 3rd of the Ides of Sextilis (the 5th of August), a slave of Clodius let a dagger fall in Pompey’s way, as he was entering the curia; arrested by the lictors, and questioned by the consul A. Gabinius, the slave declared that his master had ordered him to assassinate the great citizen.575 This attempt, whether serious or not, produced a sufficient impression on Pompey to prevent him, for a long time, from going to the Forum, or showing himself in public.576
The demands in favour of Cicero were renewed; and on the 4th of the Calends of November (the 20th of October) eight tribunes of the people, most of them men devoted to Pompey, proposed formally in the Senate the recall of the exile. One of these was T. Annius Milo, a violent, bold man, without scruples, and resembling Clodius in all things, but his open adversary. Clodius and his brother, the prætor Appius, again succeeded in defeating this motion.577 At last, with the extreme of audacity, the turbulent tribune, when near the close of his functions, dared to attack Cæsar himself, and tried to obtain the revocation of the Julian laws; but this attempt was powerless in face of the splendour of the victories gained over the Helvetii and the Germans.
CHAPTER II.
EVENTS OF THE YEAR 697
War against the Belgæ.
I. CÆSAR’S victories had awakened among the Gauls feelings of admiration, but also of distrust; they could not see without fear that it had required only six legions to scatter two invasions, each counting 100,000 combatants. There are successes which, by their very brilliancy, alarm even those who profit by them. Nearly all Gaul looks on with jealousy at events which prove the superiority of permanent armies over populations without military organization. A small number of experienced and disciplined soldiers, under the guidance of a great captain, make all the peoples tremble from the Rhine to the ocean, and even the islanders of Great Britain feel themselves unsafe against the attacks of the Roman power; the Belgæ especially, proud of having formerly alone repulsed the invasion of the Cimbri and the Teutones, feel their warlike instincts revive. Provocations which have come from the other side of the Straits increase their distrust; these picture to them the abode of the Roman army in Franche-Comté as a threat against the independence of the whole of Gaul. The greatest part of the peoples comprised between the Rhine, the Scheldt, the Ocean, and the Seine, agitate, combine, and assemble an army of 300,000 men.
Informed in Italy of these preparations, Cæsar raises two new legions, rejoins his army in Franche-Comté, and decides immediately on invading the country of the Belgæ. The first who present themselves on his road are the people of Champagne. Surprised by his sudden arrival, they submit, and even offer him subsidies and auxiliaries. Cæsar is able to add to his eight legions and his light troops the contingents from Rheims, and join them with those of Burgundy and Trèves. In spite of this augmentation of his forces, the enemy he has to combat is four times more numerous. To defeat them, he sends the Burgundians to make a diversion and ravage the territory of Beauvais, then he crosses the Aisne at Berry-au-Bac, and selects, behind the Miette, a marshy stream, a defensive position which he renders inexpugnable.
The Belgæ, whose army occupies, on the right bank of the Miette, an extent of twelve kilomètres, are powerless to force the position of the Romans, and fail in all their attempts to cross the Aisne at Pontavert. Soon, discouraged by the want of provisions, disputes among themselves, and the news that the Burgundians have just invaded the territory of Beauvais, they separate, because each, believing his own country threatened, thinks only of going to its defence. The Belgian league is thus dissolved almost without combat. Cæsar then hastens to chastise each people one after the other; he seizes in their turn Soissons and Breteuil, the principal citadels of the Soissonais and Beauvaisis, and arrives at Amiens.
But the coalitions of the peoples of the north succeed each other like the waves of the sea; after the Helvetii, the Germans; after the Germans, the people of the Beauvaisis; after them, the inhabitants of Hainault. These have assembled on the Sambre, and wait to be re-enforced by the peoples of German origin established in the neighbourhood of Namur. Cæsar then marches towards the Sambre by its left bank. When he arrives near the enemy concealed in the woods of the right bank, on the heights of Haumont, he unites six legions, places the two others in reserve with the baggage of the army, and, reaching the heights of Neuf-Mesnil, begins to fortify his camp; but hardly have the soldiers commenced their work, when the Belgæ debouch from all the issues of the forest, cross the shallow waters of the Sambre, scale the abrupt slopes, and fall upon the Romans, who, taken by surprise and unable to form their line of battle, range themselves without order under the first ensigns which offer themselves. The confusion is extreme; Cæsar is obliged, sword in hand, to throw himself into the thick of the fight. Nevertheless, the fortune of the battle is gradually restored; the centre and left wing have repulsed their assailants; the latter arrives to succour the right wing in its peril; the two legions of the rear-guard hasten to the field of battle; then victory decides for the Romans, and the peoples of Hainault are nearly annihilated. In this engagement the experience and valour of the old veteran soldiers save the Roman army from the impetuosity of the Belgæ. After this exploit, Cæsar marches towards Namur, in which the inhabitants of the whole country have shut themselves up on the news of the defeat of their allies, and he makes himself master of that place.
While he was completing the conquest of Belgic Gaul, one of his lieutenants, the young Publius Crassus, detached, after the battle of the Sambre, into Normandy and Brittany, reduced to submission the peoples of those provinces, so that at that time the greatest part of Gaul acknowledged the authority of the Republic: the effect of Cæsar’s victories was such that the Ubii, a German people from beyond the Rhine, established between the Maine and the Sieg, sent their congratulations to the conqueror with the offer of their services.
Before leaving for the Cisalpine, Cæsar sent a legion into the Valais, to chastise the inhabitants of those Alpine valleys, who, at the beginning of the year, had attacked in their march the two new legions on their way from Italy; it was his aim also to open easy communications with the Cisalpine by the Simplon and Saint-Bernard. But his lieutenant Galba, after a sanguinary battle, was obliged to retreat and take up his winter quarters in Savoy. Thus Cæsar’s designs could not be realised. It was reserved for another great man, nineteen centuries afterwards, to level that formidable barrier of the Alps.
Return of Cicero.
II. Let us now resume the account of events in Rome subsequent to the Calends of January, 697 (20th of December, 696). The consuls who entered upon their office were P. Cornelius Lentulus Spinther and Q. Cecilius Metellus Nepos; the first, a friend of Cicero; the second, favourable to Clodius from hatred to the celebrated orator who had offended him.578
Lentulus brought forward the question of the recall of the exile.579 L. Aurelius Cotta, a man of esteem and of consular dignity, declared that the banishment of Cicero, pronounced in the sequel of extreme acts of violence, carried in itself the cause of its nullity; and that, therefore, there was no need of a law to revoke an act that was contrary to the laws.580 Pompey combated the opinion of Cotta, and sustained that it was necessary that Cicero should owe his recall, not only to the authority of the Senate, but also to a vote of the people. Nothing further was proposed but to present a plebiscitum to the comitia. Nobody opposed it, when Sextus Atilius, tribune of the people, demanded the adjournment,581 and, by those dilatory manœuvres so familiar to the Romans, obliged the Senate to defer the presentation of the law to the 22nd of the same month. When the day arrived, the two parties prepared to support their opinion by force. Q. Fabricius, tribune of the people, favourable to Cicero, sought in the morning to gain possession of the rostra. Clodius was no longer tribune, but he continued to guide the populace. To the professional agitators in his pay he had joined a troop of gladiators, brought to Rome, by his brother Appius, for the funeral of one of his kinsmen.582 The troop of Fabricius was easily put to the rout; a tribune, M. Cistius, had hardly presented himself, when he was driven away. Pompey had his toga covered with blood, and Quintus Cicero, whom he had brought with him to the Forum to speak to the people in favour of his brother, was obliged to hide himself; the gladiators rushed upon another tribune, P. Sextius, and left him for dead. “The struggle was so violent,” Cicero says, “that the corpses obstructed the Tiber and filled the sewers, and the Forum was inundated with blood to such a degree that it was found necessary to wash it with sponges. A tribune was killed, and the house of another was threatened with fire.”583 The amazement was so great, that the question of the recall of the exile was again adjourned. It was thus by the sword that everything was decided in Rome in its disorder and abasement.
In fact, to obtain the recall of Cicero, the Senate saw itself obliged to oppose riot to riot, and to make use of P. Sextius, who had recovered from his wounds, as well as of Milo, who had organised, with military discipline, an armed band in condition to make head against the rioters.584 At the same time, it hoped to intimidate the urban mob by bringing into Rome, from all parts of Italy,585 the citizens upon whom it relied. In fine, the very men who had, two years before, engaged Bibulus to embarrass all Cæsar’s measures by observing the sky,586 now prohibited, under pain of being considered as an enemy of the Republic,587 those religious artifices which suspended all deliberations. The result was that the law of recall was passed.
Cicero re-entered Rome on the eve of the Nones of September (the 15th of August, 697), in the midst of the warmest demonstrations of joy. The Senate had thus at last triumphed over the factious opposition of Clodius; but it was not without great efforts, nor without frequently having had recourse on its own side to violence and arbitrary acts.
Pompey is charged with the Supplying of Food.
III. From the first moment of his return, Cicero gave all his care to augmenting the influence of Pompey and reconciling him with the Senate. The famine under which Italy suffered that year furnished him with the occasion. The populace rose suddenly, hurried first to a theatre, where games were celebrating, and afterwards to the Capitol, uttering threats of death and fire against the Senate, to which they attributed the public distress.588 Before this, in July, at the time of the Apollinarian games,589 a riot had occurred from the same motive.
Cicero, by his persuasive eloquence, calmed the irritated mob, and proposed to entrust to Pompey the care of provisioning, and to confer upon him for five years proconsular powers in Italy and out of Italy.590 The senators, in their terror, adopted this measure immediately. It was, as at the time of the war of the pirates, to give to one man an excessive power over all the earth, according to the words of the decree. Fifteen lieutenants were associated with him, of whom Cicero was one.591 But the creation of this new office did not put an end to the discontent of the multitude. Clodius tried to persuade the people that the famine was fictitious, and that the Senate had created it, in order to have a pretext for making Pompey master over everything.592 He overlooked no occasion for stirring up troubles.
