Gallic Wars

• 1. Introduction

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  The Gallic Wars were fought between 58 and 50 BC, and the man at their center claimed to have killed over a million Gauls while losing almost none of his own. That man was Julius Caesar. The number is a lie. Modern historians read his book, the Commentarii de Bello Gallico, as propaganda, prone to exaggeration and built to make Caesar appear far grander than he was. Yet beneath the inflated body counts sits a real and brutal conquest. Over eight years, the lands of present-day France, Belgium, and Switzerland fell to Rome. So how did one indebted politician turn a war against the peoples of Gaul into the springboard for absolute power? Why did the Gauls, whose collective armies matched the Romans in strength, lose? And what does a single book of unadorned Latin prose, still taught to students today, hide and reveal about the man who wrote it? Caesar opened that book with a line schoolchildren would memorize for two thousand years: Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres, Gaul is a whole divided into three parts.

• 2. Debt And Ambition

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  Becoming consul in 59 BC, the highest office in the Roman Republic, left Caesar buried in significant debts. The war that followed was, in the words of historian Kate Gilliver, an aggressive war of expansion led by a general who was seeking to advance his career. Caesar himself described the invasion as preemptive and defensive, but historians agree he fought primarily to boost his political career and to pay off what he owed. His own stated ambition was blunt. He wanted to conquer and plunder territory to get himself out of debt.

  Through the First Triumvirate, the alliance with Marcus Licinius Crassus and Pompey, Caesar engineered his command. The Lex Vatinia handed him the provinces of Cisalpine Gaul and Illyricum as proconsul. When Metellus Celer, governor of Transalpine Gaul, died unexpectedly, that province too was awarded to Caesar, urged on by Pompey and his father-in-law Lucius Calpurnius Piso Caesoninus. The grant ran five years, not the traditional single year, which meant he could campaign without fear of being replaced mid-conquest.

  Four veteran legions stood under his direct command at the start: Legio VII, Legio VIII, Legio IX Hispana, and Legio X. He had governed Hispania Ulterior in 61 BC and campaigned against the Lusitanians, so he knew most of these men personally. Gaul may not even have been his first choice. He may have been eyeing a campaign against the Kingdom of Dacia in the Balkans, until a mass migration of Gallic tribes in 58 BC handed him a convenient casus belli.

• 3. A Wealthy Enemy

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  Roman merchants knew the tribes of Gaul long before the legions arrived, trading with what archaeologists call the La Tène culture. The Gauls were civilized and wealthy. They struck coins, built cities that mirrored those of the Mediterranean, and shipped iron, grain, and many slaves to Rome in exchange for wealth and a taste for Roman wine. Some tribes, like the Aedui, were governed by republics and had held stable alliances with Rome.

  The writer Diodoros recorded a telling detail about the Roman sense of Gallic barbarity. The Gauls drank their wine straight, while the supposedly civilized Romans watered theirs down first. Even so, Rome knew these were formidable fighters and reckoned the most barbaric tribes the fiercest, supposedly uncorrupted by Roman luxuries.

  Gallic dread ran deep in the Roman memory. In 390 BC the Gauls had sacked Rome, leaving an existential fear of barbarian conquest that never faded. In 121 BC Rome carved out the province of Transalpine Gaul. Only 50 years before Caesar's war, in 109 BC, Italy was invaded from the north and saved by Gaius Marius, Caesar's maternal uncle, after several bloody battles. Around 63 BC the Sequani and Arverni, with the Germanic Suebi, defeated Rome's ally the Aedui at the Battle of Magetobriga, and Rome turned a blind eye.

• 4. Two Ways Of War

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  Discipline was the Roman weapon. The army stood standing between conflicts, built mostly of heavy infantry, with auxiliary units drawn from less disciplined allies, some of them Gauls as the war wore on. The Gauls were an irregular force and a warrior culture, prizing individual courage and keeping their skills sharp through constant raiding of neighbors. They carried longer swords, fielded far superior cavalry, and stood generally taller than the Romans, a fact that seems to have embarrassed Rome and gave the Gauls a reach advantage. Some fought in intricately decorated armor, others in the nude, but Roman formation usually won the hand-to-hand fight.

  The cohort came of age in these wars. First described by Polybius as an administrative unit used in battle in 206 BC, it had become a tactical unit by the 130s, replacing the smaller and less effective maniple. A cohort held 480 men. Crucially it mixed rich and poor in a single uniform unit, lifting morale by removing resentment. Ten cohorts plus cavalry, engineers, and officers made a legion of around 5,000 men.

  Logistics shaped every campaign. Each legionary, following a practice as old as Scipio Aemilianus, carried his own gear and several days of rations, letting a legion march well ahead of its train. Still, a legion needed around a thousand beasts of burden, and on the march it stretched roughly 2.5 miles. Those animals required grass or fodder, which limited campaigning to the warmer seasons and forced Caesar's hand again and again.

• 5. The Migration And The Massacres

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  On the 28th of March in 58 BC, the Helvetii began their migration, a confederation of about five tribes from the Swiss plateau. They burned their villages and stores so there could be no turning back. When they asked to cross Roman lands, Caesar stalled, refused, then attacked them unprovoked after they had turned north and avoided Rome entirely. At the river Saône he caught them mid-crossing, slaughtering the roughly one quarter who had not yet crossed, then bridged the river in a single day.

  At the Battle of Bibracte the two armies fought for most of the day. Caesar set his legions on a hillside so the Gauls had to fight uphill, then the Boii and Tulingi outflanked his right. With his men surrounded, the legion's last line turned to face the rear, fighting on two fronts, a move Gilliver calls brilliant. The Helvetii were routed, and the Romans chased the Boii and Tulingi to their camps, killing fighters, women, and children. Caesar claimed a captured census written in Greek showed 368,000 Helvetii, 92,000 of them able-bodied men, with only 110,000 survivors. Historians put the real total closer to 20,000 to 50,000.

  The killing only grew. In 55 BC, after the Celtic Usipetes and Tencteri crossed the Rhine seeking a home, Caesar attacked their defenseless camp and slaughtered men, women, and children, claiming 430,000 dead. Modern scholars find that number impossible, yet his enemies in the Senate were so appalled they wished to prosecute him for war crimes once his governorship ended.

• 6. Stunts Across Two Rivers

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  Crossing the Rhine took ten days of carpentry. Rather than use boats or pontoons, Caesar built a timber bridge, walked across, raided the Suebic countryside, and retreated before the Suebi could mobilize, then burned the bridge behind him. Gilliver calls the whole of his 55 BC activity a publicity stunt, driven by a need for prestige while Pompey and Crassus held the consulship and could buy public opinion. The first Roman army across the Rhine made its lightning campaign in just 18 days.

  Britain was the next feat no Roman army had managed. Caesar left well after midnight on the 23rd of August with only two legions, his cavalry unable to make the crossing. He aimed for Kent but found the Britons waiting, and his men hesitated to land until the Tenth legion's standard bearer leapt into the sea and waded ashore, shaming the rest to follow. Without cavalry he could not pursue, and he soon withdrew across the Channel having achieved little beyond landing. Rome hailed him anyway, granting an unprecedented 20-day thanksgiving.

  The second crossing, in 54 BC, was a true invasion. Caesar took five legions and 2,000 cavalry against a Britonic army under Cassivellaunus, king of the Catuvellauni, whose chariots and cavalry harassed the Romans. After storming his stronghold near modern Wheathampstead, Caesar extracted grain, slaves, and an annual tribute. Marcus Cicero summed up Roman disappointment, writing that there was not a scrap of silver on the island and no hope of booty except for slaves.

• 7. The King Who United Gaul

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  Vercingetorix, the charismatic king of the Arverni, assembled an unprecedented grand coalition of Gauls over the winter before 52 BC. What finally united tribes who had always been divided was fear for their sacred lands. In 53 BC Caesar declared Gaul a Roman province subject to Roman law and religion, threatening the holy ground watched over by the Carnutes, where the druids met each year to mediate between tribes.

  Vercingetorix chose starvation over open battle, raiding foraging parties and supply trains while abandoning weaker oppida so their stores could not feed the Romans. At Avaricum, defended against his own wishes after the Bituriges Cubi persuaded him, the Romans built a sturdy siege camp in 25 days through fierce winter weather. Caesar struck during a rainstorm when the sentries were distracted, broke the wall with ballista artillery, and took no prisoners, claiming 40,000 slain. That the coalition held together afterward is a testament to Vercingetorix's leadership.

  Gergovia handed the Gauls a notable victory. Caesar claimed he had sounded a retreat that no one heeded, but Gilliver finds it more likely he meant to take the settlement all along and invented the retreat to distance himself from an overwhelming Roman failure. He admitted 700 dead, including 46 centurions, though the true figure was likely higher. The defeat drew still more tribes to Vercingetorix, and even the Aedui, long Rome's allies, joined the revolt.

• 8. Alesia And After

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  Some 25 miles of fortifications rose around Alesia over a single month. After Gergovia, Caesar abandoned direct assault and chose to starve out Vercingetorix and his 70,000 to 100,000 warriors. He dug two lines, one facing the defenders and one facing the relieving army Vercingetorix had summoned, with trenches, an anti-cavalry moat, towers at intervals, and booby traps. Archaeology suggests the works were not as complete or continuous as Caesar describes, but they held. When the coordinated attacks of defenders and relievers both failed, the relieving army melted away. Vercingetorix surrendered.

  He was held prisoner for six years, then paraded through Rome and ceremonially garroted at the Tullianum in 46 BC. The last embers of resistance were stamped out at Uxellodunum in 51 BC, where Gaius Caninius Rebilus diverted the spring that fed the Cadurci stronghold through tunnels. When the water failed, the Gauls took it as a sign from the gods and surrendered. Caesar neither killed nor enslaved them. He cut off their hands and scattered them so all could see they would never bear arms against Rome again.

  The conquest opened almost five centuries of Roman rule. Latin took root and evolved into Old French, giving the modern language its Latin foundation. Gaul itself would not become formal Roman provinces until the reign of Augustus in 27 BC, and Gilliver thinks unrest may have lingered as late as 70 AD. Caesar pulled his legions out in 50 BC as the Roman Civil War loomed, the wealth and legendary reputation of Gaul in hand, ready to make himself dictator. His Commentarii survives as one of the best examples of unadorned Latin prose, and the comic Astérix still imagines one Gallic village holding out against his legions.