Bituriges

The Bituriges held the country south of the Loire around Avaricum, now Bourges, and their name means kings of the world - a claim that may record an earlier hegemony over central Gaul before the Arverni displaced them. Their land was rich, their metalworking was among the best in Gaul, and Avaricum was reckoned the finest town in the country. That is what destroyed them. When Vercingetorix adopted a scorched-earth strategy in 52 BC and ordered every town that could not be defended to be burned so the legions would find no supplies, more than twenty Biturigan settlements were fired in a single day. The Bituriges then begged for Avaricum to be spared, arguing that its marshes and single approach made it defensible, and Vercingetorix reluctantly agreed against his own judgement. Caesar besieged it, built siege terraces in freezing rain while his troops went hungry, and took it after twenty-five days. Of some forty thousand people inside, Caesar records that about eight hundred escaped; the rest were killed without distinction of age or sex, by his own account, in reprisal for the labour of the siege. The Bituriges submitted, rose again in the winter of 51 BC, and were subdued within weeks. Their territory became part of Aquitania, and Bourges kept their name. Caesar's own account of the sack is unusually flat, which has been read both as callousness and as discomfort. Vercingetorix reportedly told the survivors he had opposed defending the town, and his authority survived the disaster. Bourges kept the Biturigan name and became one of the great cathedral cities of France.

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