Caesar's Gallic Wars
Caesar conquered Gaul between 58 and 50 BC in a war he began himself and reported himself. He had bought the consulship of 59 BC into enormous debt and secured a five-year command in Cisalpine Gaul and Illyricum, later extended, which gave him legions and a frontier. The pretext arrived with the Helvetii, who were migrating westward across territory Rome claimed an interest in; he stopped them at the Saône and Bibracte and sent the survivors home. He then fought the German king Ariovistus, the Belgic tribes, the Veneti of the Atlantic coast, and made two expeditions across the Rhine and two into Britain — the Rhine crossings on a trestle bridge built in ten days, which was a statement rather than a campaign. The conquest was completed by the revolt that nearly undid it. Vercingetorix united most of the Gallic peoples in 52 BC, adopted scorched earth, beat Caesar at Gergovia, and was finally trapped at Alesia, where Caesar built a double ring of fortifications, one facing in and one facing out, and defeated a relief army while holding the siege. Plutarch's figures — a million dead and a million enslaved — are not reliable but the scale was catastrophic for Gaul. Caesar's own account, the Commentaries, is the main source, written in the third person for a Roman electorate. Gaul stayed Roman for five centuries and gave Caesar the army with which he crossed the Rubicon. Vercingetorix was kept alive for six years to be paraded in Caesar's triumph in 46 BC and then strangled in the Tullianum, which was the ordinary Roman practice for a captured enemy king.
- Category: Military
