Sequani

The Sequani held the Franche-Comte between the Saone, the Rhone and the Jura, and their rivalry with the Aedui for control of the Saone river trade is the immediate cause of the Roman conquest of Gaul. The tolls on that river were worth having, and the Aedui had them. Around 71 BC the Sequani and Arverni hired Ariovistus, a Suebian war-leader from across the Rhine, to redress the balance; he beat the Aedui decisively at Magetobriga and handed the Sequani their victory. Then he stayed. Ariovistus demanded a third of Sequanian territory for his followers, then a second third for twenty-four thousand more Germans who had crossed to join him, and took hostages from the people who had invited him. The Sequani found themselves worse off than the Aedui they had beaten, and both peoples appealed to Rome. Caesar answered in 58 BC, destroyed Ariovistus near modern Belfort, drove the Suebi back over the Rhine - and did not leave either. The Sequani spent the rest of the war as unwilling hosts to Roman winter quarters, joined the general revolt of 52 BC, and submitted after Alesia, which was fought on the borders of their territory. Their capital Vesontio, now Besancon, became a substantial Roman town in a loop of the Doubs that Caesar describes as almost an island. The province of Maxima Sequanorum later took their name. Their story is the clearest case in Gaul of a people who solved a local problem by importing a larger one, and it is the reason the legions came at all.

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