48
CAESAB DEFEATED BT VERCINGETORIX.
especially on. account of the proofs which it affords of Caesar s
greatness as a general. His military superiority enabled him
to destroy numberless hosts of the enemy. He does not give
a detailed account of the operations, yet it occupies the whole
of the seventh book, which consists of ninety chapters. Ihe
whole country, from the Saone to the ocean and from
the Loire to the Cevennes, was in arms. The war was
conducted by the Aedui and Arverni, who had formerly
always been rivals, but the Aedui joined the insurrection
later than the Arverni. Vercingetorix, an Arvernian, had
the supreme command, and was worthy of his post. The
breaking out of the insurrection was accompanied with acts of
great cruelty and savageness. At Genabum, the modern Or-
leans, all the Bomans were put to the sword. Caesar was at
the time in the north ; but he quickly assembled his troops and
marched to the south, and the Belgians, notwithstanding the
opportunity they now had for shaking off the Roman yoke,
remained perfectly quiet. Caesar conquered Orleans, and took
revenge for the murder of the Romans. He then captured
Avaricum (Bourges), after a long siege and a brave defence on
the part of its inhabitants, and advanced into the interior of
Auvergne. The war was carried on for a long time in the
neighbourhood of Gergovia, above Clermont. Here Caesar
suffered a defeat : one legion was cut off and he was obliged to
raise the siege. As the Aedui likewise now revolted, the war
was transferred to Alesia, in the neighbourhood of Autun and
Langres, in the country of the Aedui. Many thousand Gauls
flocked to Alesia. Caesar besieged it with all the military arts
that he could devise. The great Vercingetorix pressed him
on the other side with a very powerful army. The issue of
the contest was very uncertain. Caesar himself, on one occasion,
fell into the hands of the Gauls; and it was only owing to a
piece of good luck, or to the work of Providence, that he
escaped, through the folly of a Gaul. This is the account
which Caesar himself afterwards gave of the affair7; but
it is more probable, that it was an occurrence similar to
that which happened to Napoleon, in the month of May,
1800; when, being on a reconnoitering excursion with his
staff, he fell in with an Austrian patrol, the officer of which
was induced by bribes to let his prisoners escape. When
, Serv. ad Viry. Acλ. xi. 743.
Suebender of Vercingetorix.
49
famine had reached its highest point at Alesia, and the
troops who were sent to its relief became desponding and dis-
persed, Vercingetorix, whom I hold to be one of the greatest
men of antiquity, had the magnanimity to Comeforward among
the citizens of Alesia, and to request them to deliver him up
to the enemy as the author of the war, and advised them
to endeavour to save their own lives. This was done ac-
cordingly, and Vercingetorix surrendered himself. When
he appeared before Caesar, he reminded him of then former
acquaintance and mutual esteem ; but Caesar here again acted
badly. He ought to have treated his enemy in a different
manner from that which the Romans had adopted towards C.
Pontius: he ought to have been more than a Roman, and
have kept him somewhere in libera custodia; instead of this,
however, he ordered him to be chained, and dragged him
about with him until his triumph, and afterwards had him put
to death.
After Caesar had gained this victory, there occurred some
trifling insurrections, and the Belgians also now began to stir
when it was too late; the Bellovaci, in the neighbourhood of
Beauvais and Chartres, also rose, but it was an easy matter for
Caesar to conquer them. In these occurrences we cannot help
seeing the finger of Providence, which made Rome great, and
intended to bring all the then known nations under the domi-
nion of Rome. The subject-nations always acted either too early
or too late. HadVercingetorix deferred the insurrection of the
Gauls but a few years, and waited till the outbreak of the war
between Caesar and Pompey, the Gauls might have recovered
their freedom; whereas now their strength had become ex-
hausted, and during the time of the civil war no one was
able to move.
LECTURE XCVI.
When his term of office in Gaul was coming to a close, Caesar’s
relations to the republic were so unfortunate, that it was beyond
human power to end them in a happy or satisfactory manner.
VOL. Ill, E