Gallia Belgica

The northern province Caesar said was the bravest part of Gaul, largely because it was the furthest from Roman merchants. The Belgae occupied the country between the Seine and the Rhine, and Caesar attributed their toughness to distance from the luxuries of the Mediterranean and to constant fighting with Germans across the river. His campaign against them in 57 BC was the hardest of the war: the Nervii ambushed his army at the Sambre and nearly destroyed it, and the Eburones under Ambiorix wiped out a legion and a half in winter quarters the following year, after which Caesar set out to exterminate them as a people. The province Augustus organised covered modern Belgium, Luxembourg, part of the Netherlands and much of northeastern France. Durocortorum, now Reims, was the capital, and Augusta Treverorum, now Trier, later became an imperial residence with the largest surviving Roman gate north of the Alps. The province supplied wool, textiles and grain to the Rhine armies, and its economy was shaped by that military demand more than by trade with Italy. Its frontier zone was separated off as the two Germanias in the late first century. Belgica was a heavily rural province of large estates rather than cities. The name was revived in 1830 for the new kingdom of Belgium. The province was governed by an imperial legate from the first century. Trier became one of the four imperial capitals under Diocletian. Its population was concentrated in villa estates rather than towns. The Roman frontier along the Rhine ran just beyond its eastern edge. Reims remained the coronation city of French kings.

MyHistorian
A causal knowledge graph of history