History of Julius Caesar Vol. 2 of 2. Napoleon III

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ of the Lingones, towards Tonnerre (see Plate 4): they had, no doubt, passed by Moulins-en-Gilbert, Lormes, and Avallon. The Lingones were forbidden to furnish the fugitives with provisions or succour, under pain of being treated like them. At the end of three days, the Roman army, having taken care of their wounded and buried the dead, marched in pursuit of the enemy.193

      Pursuit of the Helvetii.

      VII. The Helvetii, reduced to extremity, sent to Cæsar to treat for their submission. The deputies met him on his march, threw themselves at his feet, and demanded peace in the most suppliant terms. He ordered them to say to their fellow-countrymen that they must halt on the spot they then occupied, and await his arrival; and they obeyed. As soon as Cæsar overtook them, he required them to deliver hostages, their arms, and the fugitive slaves. While they were preparing to execute his orders, night coming on, about 6,000 men of a tribe named Verbigeni (Soleure, Argovie, Lucerne, and part of the Canton of Berne) fled, either through fear that, having once delivered up their arms, they should be massacred, or in the hope of escaping unperceived in the midst of so great a multitude. They directed their steps towards the Rhine and the frontiers of Germany.

      On receiving news of the flight of the Verbigeni, Cæsar ordered the peoples whose territories they would cross to stop them and bring them back, under pain of being considered as accomplices. The fugitives were delivered up and treated as enemies; that is, put to the sword, or sold as slaves. As to the others, Cæsar accepted their submission: he compelled the Helvetii, the Tulingi, and the Latobriges to return to the localities they had abandoned, and to restore the towns and hamlets they had burnt; and since, after having lost all their crops, they had no more provisions of their own, the Allobroges were ordered to furnish them with wheat.194 These measures had for their object not to leave Helvetia without inhabitants, as the fertility of its soil might draw thither the Germans of the other side the Rhine, who would thus become borderers upon the Roman province. He permitted the Boii, celebrated for their brilliant valour, to establish themselves in the country of the Ædui, who had asked permission to receive them. They gave them lands between the Allier and the Loire, and soon admitted them to a share in all their rights and privileges.

      In the camp of the Helvetii were found tablets on which was written, in Greek letters, the number of all those who had quitted their country: on one side, the number of men capable of bearing arms; and on the other, that of the children, old men, and women. The whole amounted to 263,000 Helvetii, 36,000 Tulingi, 14,000 Latobriges, 23,000 Rauraci, and 32,000 Boii – together, 368,000 persons, of whom 92,000 were men in a condition to fight. According to the census ordered by Cæsar, the number of those who returned home was 110,000.195 The emigration was thus reduced to less than one-third.

      The locality occupied by the Helvetii when they made their submission is unknown; yet all circumstances seem to concur in placing the theatre of this event in the western part of the country of the Lingones. This hypothesis appears the more reasonable, as Cæsar’s march, in the following campaign, can only be explained by supposing him to start from this region. We admit, then, that Cæsar received the submission of the Helvetii on the Armançon, towards Tonnerre, and it is there that we suppose him to have been encamped during the events upon the recital of which we are now going to enter.

      Observations.

      VIII. The forces of the two armies opposed to each other in the battle of Bibracte were about equal, for Cæsar had six legions – the 10th, which he had found in the Roman province; the three old legions (7th, 8th, and 9th), which he had brought from Aquileia; and the two new ones (11th and 12th), raised in the Cisalpine. The effective force of each must have been near the normal number of 6,000 men, for the campaign had only begun, and their ranks must have been increased by the veterans and volunteers of whom we have spoken in the first volume (page 456). The number of the legionaries was thus 36,000. Adding 4,000 cavalry, raised in the Roman province and among the Ædui, and probably 20,000 auxiliaries,196 we shall have a total of 60,000 combatants, not including the men attached to the machines, those conducting the baggage, the army servants, &c. The Helvetii, on their side, did not count more than 69,000 combatants, since, out of 92,000, they had lost one-fourth near the Saône.

      In this battle, it must be remarked, Cæsar did not employ the two legions newly raised, which remained to guard the camp, and secure the retreat in case of disaster. Next year he assigned the same duty to the youngest troops. The cavalry did not pursue the enemies in their rout, doubtless because the mountainous nature of the locality made it impossible for it to act.

      CHAPTER IV.

      CAMPAIGN AGAINST ARIOVISTUS

(Year of Rome 696.)(Book I. of the “Commentaries.”)

      Seat of the Suevi and other German Tribes.

      I. ON the termination of the war against the Helvetii, the chiefs of nearly all Celtic Gaul went to congratulate Cæsar, and thank him for having, at the same time, avenged their old injuries, and delivered their country from immense danger. They expressed the desire to submit to his judgment certain affairs, and, in order to concert matters previously, they solicited his permission to convoke a general assembly. Cæsar gave his consent.

      After the close of the deliberations, they returned, secretly and in tears, to solicit his support against the Germans and Ariovistus, one of their kings. These peoples were separated from the Gauls by the Rhine, from its mouth to the Lake of Constance. Among them the Suevi occupied the first rank. They were by much the most powerful and the most warlike. They were said to be divided into a hundred cantons, each of which furnished, every year, a thousand men for war and a thousand men for agriculture, taking each other’s place alternately: the labourers fed the soldiers. No boundary line, among the Suevi, separated the property of the fields, which remained common, and no one could prolong his residence on the same lands beyond a year. However, they hardly lived upon the produce of the soil: they consumed little wheat, and drank no wine; milk and flesh were their habitual food. When these failed, they were fed upon grass.197 Masters of themselves from infancy, intrepid hunters, insensible to the inclemency of the seasons, bathing in the cold waters of the rivers, they hardly covered a part of their bodies with thin skins. They were savages in manners, and of prodigious force and stature. They disdained commerce and foreign horses, which the Gauls sought with so much care. Their own horses, though mean-looking and ill-shaped, became indefatigable through exercise, and fed upon brushwood. Despising the use of the saddle, often, in engagements of cavalry, they jumped to the ground and fought on foot: their horses were taught to remain without moving.198 The belief in the dogma of the immortality of the soul, strengthened in them the contempt for life.199 They boasted of being surrounded by immense solitudes: this fact, as they pretended, showed that a great number of their neighbours had not been able to resist them: and it was reported, indeed, that on one side (towards the east) their territory was bounded, for an extent of 600 miles, by desert plains; on the other, they bordered upon the Ubii, their tributaries, the most civilised of the German peoples, because their situation on the banks of the Rhine placed them in relation with foreign merchants, and because, neighbours to the Gauls, they had formed themselves to their manners.200

      Two immense forests commenced not far from the Rhine, and extended, from west to east, across Germany; these were the Hercynian and Bacenis forests. (See Plate 2.) The first, beginning from the Black Forest and the Odenwald, covered all the country situated between the Upper Danube and the Maine, and comprised the mountains which, further towards the east, formed the northern girdle of the basin of the Danube; that is, the Boehmerwald, the mountains of Moravia, and the Little Carpathians. It had a breadth which Cæsar represents СКАЧАТЬ