Belgae

The Belgae were the confederation of peoples occupying northern Gaul between the Seine and the Rhine, and Caesar opens his account by calling them the bravest of the Gauls - a judgement he attributes to their distance from the merchants and luxuries of the Mediterranean and their constant warfare with the Germans across the river. They were partly Germanic in origin by their own tradition, having crossed the Rhine generations earlier, and included the Nervii, Bellovaci, Suessiones, Atrebates and Remi, each with its own territory and assembly. Their capacity to combine was real: in 57 BC they raised a coalition army that Caesar's own figures put in the hundreds of thousands, the largest force he faced in Gaul. It dispersed for want of supply before it could be brought to battle, which is the recurring pattern of the war. Caesar then reduced them individually - the Suessiones and Bellovaci submitted, the Nervii were nearly annihilated at the Sabis, and the Aduatuci were sold into slavery, fifty-three thousand of them by his count, for breaking a surrender. Resistance continued for another five years, and the last general revolt in the north under Correus and Commius was put down in 51 BC. The territory became Gallia Belgica, one of the three provinces of the Gauls, and the name survives in Belgium. Commius, whom Caesar had installed as king of the Atrebates and used as an envoy to Britain, ended the war fighting him and escaped across the Channel to found a dynasty in southern England. Belgic coinage is found on both sides of the strait. The name was revived in 1830 for the new kingdom of Belgium, which sits only partly on their territory.

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