Carnutes

The Carnutes held the country around the middle Loire, between Orleans and Chartres, and their territory was regarded as the sacred centre of Gaul: Caesar records that the druids of the whole country assembled there once a year at a consecrated place to judge disputes, and that Gaul's geographical middle was reckoned to lie in their land. That gave them a standing out of proportion to their military strength. It also made them the natural place for a revolt to begin. In the winter of 53 BC the Carnutes killed the Roman traders and the commissary officer at Cenabum, now Orleans, and the news was relayed across Gaul the same day by shouting from field to field - Caesar says it reached the Arverni, a hundred and fifty miles away, before the first watch of the night. That was the signal for the general rising under Vercingetorix. Caesar's answer was to storm Cenabum, kill or enslave its population and burn it. The Carnutes fought on through 52 BC, were hunted through the winter of 51 in a campaign specifically designed to prevent them from planting or harvesting, and submitted. Their territory became part of Gallia Lugdunensis. The druidic assembly was suppressed under Claudius, and Cenabum was rebuilt as Aurelianum. The annual druidic assembly is the only pan-Gallic institution Caesar describes, and its suppression removed the one body that might have spoken for Gaul as a whole. Whether the sacred site lay at Chartres, whose cathedral stands on much older ground, is guesswork. The signal relay he describes is the earliest recorded instance of long-distance shouted communication in Europe.

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