The Handy Military History Answer Book. Samuel Willard Crompton

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СКАЧАТЬ in a way that was truly unprecedented. The Macedonian phalanx, as we have seen, was incredibly powerful, but rather bulky and slow on the battlefield; the Romans developed the legion to bring out the best in speed as well as strength.

      Roughly 6,000 men strong, a legion was composed of centuries—of one hundred men apiece—and maniples, which averaged about 300. Any one of these groups or sec-tions could swiftly change direction or go from offense to defense. The Roman legionnaire was highly alert to the trumpet calls that directed the action and to the centurion—the commander of the group of one hundred—who acted much like today’s master sergeant. If the legion had any weakness, it was in cavalry, which the Romans did not form into a cohesive group. Each legion had its separate section of cavalry, and the Romans often lost when a battle was fought strictly in terms of horsemen.

      Napoleon famously declared that an army marches on its stomach.Was this true of the Romans?

      They had an excellent commissary system and better delivery of supplies than any of their opponents; even so, the Romans sometimes lived off the land. They did so in a highly disciplined manner, however, with sections of each legion specifically detailed to the task. This means that looting—in the truly wild, undisciplined sense of the word—was a rarity.

      Rome went one step beyond what Napoleon later prescribed, however: its men marched on their stomachs, but they also slept well because of the use of their shovels. Every legionnaire carried a shovel as part of his basic equipment, and each night on the march, the Romans dug a major trench around their perimeter. They adopted this practice after being surprised by foes at night, but once learned, the lesson of digging trenches was never forgotten. The typical Roman legionnaire was as skilled with the shovel as with the sword, and there were times when the former was just as important as the latter.

      Were the Roman legions composed entirely of Italians?

      In the first four centuries of the existence of the Roman Republic, this was the case. By about 100 B.C.E., however, Italy ran short of manpower. Rome, therefore, began the practice of recruiting in the provinces, and many of the soldiers who later accomplished great victories under the leadership of Julius Caesar were Spaniards, Sicilians, and even North Africans and Greeks by descent.

      Rome was so skilled in making citizenship a desirable thing that many, if not most, legionnaires from foreign countries later settled in Italy, greatly benefitting the Roman motherland. Some retired legionnaires rose to political positions and thereby added another aspect of value to the Roman state.

      It sounds as if everything was just about perfect. Did the Romans ever lose?

      They lost plenty of battles and skirmishes along the way, but they nearly always won when it counted the most. By about 60 B.C.E., there was a sense of inevitability about Roman triumphs. Of course, it helped that Rome was led during this time by its greatest military genius, Julius Caesar.

      Born in Rome in 100 B.C.E., Caesar was the epitome of the high-born Roman aristocrat, and by the age of thirty-nine he had everything—wealth, fame, and family—except military glory. His rivals in the Roman leadership scoffed, believing that Caesar was too old to launch a military career, but he quickly showed they were mistaken.

       Who formed the First Triumvirate?

      In 61 B.C.E., Gaius Pompey (104–147 B.C.E.), Marcus Licinius Crassus (112–55 B.C.E.), and Julius Caesar came together to form the First Triumvirate (“rule of three men”). The Senate remained in place, with vigorous debates being held, but most people knew that the major decisions were now made behind the scenes by the Three Triumvirs.

      How did Caesar commence his rise to military fame?

      He asked his two fellow Triumvirs for a five-year appointment in the province of Gaul. Pompey and Crassus were both suspicious: to them it seemed that Caesar was asking for too much. But the more they deliberated on it, the more Pompey and Crassus became convinced that it would be a good thing to have Caesar somewhere other than the capital city, if only because he had become too popular with the masses. They agreed to send Caesar north on a five-year-appointment.

      This did not mean Caesar’s path would be easy, not by any means. Rome claimed all of Gaul, but in 61 B.C.E. it controlled only the southernmost part. The Romans called it simply The Province, and that name has stuck to modern times: we call it Provence.

      Marcus Licinius Crassus was a Roman general who defeated the slave rebellion led by Spartacus and then joined Gaius Pompey and Julius Caesar to form the First Triumvirate.

      Whom did Caesar fight?

      Immediately upon arriving in The Province—which equates to modern-day Provence in southern France—Caesar faced a huge migration movement by the Helvetti tribe. They lived in central Switzerland but were on the move toward The Province. Caesar challenged them, saying that Rome controlled who moved through these lands. Caesar’s written report declares that 280,000 Helvetians came against him and that only one-third of that number returned. He forced them into mountainside skirmishes and battles along rivers whose banks were swollen from the spring rains. He outmaneuvered them, beat them consistently, and when all the strategic moves were accomplished, he left the field to his subordinate generals, knowing that the high efficiency of the Roman legion would prevail. He was correct.

      After the Helvetian threat was neutralized, Caesar faced an invasion by Germanic tribes from the east side of the River Rhine. Caesar consistently beat the Germans in battle, employing the same mixture of tactics that worked against the Swiss tribes.

      How about the Gauls themselves? Did they welcome Roman rule?

      Far from it. From the little documentary evidence that survives, we gather that the Gauls—who proudly proclaimed themselves Celts—detested the rectangular, square-shaped organization of the Romans and that the highest compliment one Gaul could pay another was to declare, “I greet you as a free person.”

      Gaul was still semi-independent from Rome, but Caesar’s numerous battles and campaigns threatened its autonomy. Caesar negotiated with, and sometimes bribed, leading Gallic chieftains, allowing him to pit one against another and to keep Rome’s interests in the advance. It was through this type of clever diplomacy that Caesar was able to bring legions through sections of Gaul on his way north, where he fought the Belgae tribes, ancestors to modern-day Dutch and Belgian peoples.

      What happened to the Belgae and the Britons?

      The Belgae were subdued and nearly destroyed in an enormous campaign that lasted two years. Caesar claimed to have killed or sold into slavery a total of 800,000 Belgae, but this figures seems inflated: at that rate, he would have depopulated most of Northern Europe. But there is no doubt he succeeded or that he then crossed the English Channel to fight the tribes of Britain.

      The British tribes—who were known for painting their faces blue before going into battle—had lived completely free from outside influence for hundreds of years, and they fought fiercely. They met Caesar’s men on the beaches near the mouth of the River Thames and fought them all along the southern coast. Roman discipline, as usual, prevailed, but even Caesar could see that the time was not right for the complete conquest of Britain. He left that for a later date, and it was his collateral relative Claudius who carried out the conquest, eighty years later.

       When was the first bridge across the River Rhine built?

      There may have been some makeshift bridges earlier in human history, but the first solid bridge of which we have СКАЧАТЬ