Читать книгу Men and Deeds - John Buchan - Страница 14

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He had need for haste, for out of Gaul had come ominous news. The Helvetii were moving; in a few days they would assemble opposite Geneva, a multitude nearly four hundred thousand strong, with the purpose of crossing the Rhone, sweeping through the Roman Province, and seizing lands in the west in the vale of the Charente, where the cornfields of the Province would be at their mercy. Travelling twenty miles a day Caesar crossed the Alps, and in a week was at Geneva. It was to be nine years before he trod his native soil again.

Gaul at the time contained three great tribal conglomerations. In the south-west the Aquitani held the country between the Garonne and the Pyrenees; the Celtae occupied the Mediterranean and Atlantic seaboards, the lowlands of Switzerland and the upper Rhine, and the uplands of central France; while, in the north and north-east, the Belgae ruled from the Aisne to the Channel, and from the Seine to the Rhine. The Province itself and some parts of the interior had acquired a tincture of Roman civilisation, but elsewhere the Gauls were a primitive people, farmers and pastoralists and hunters, hardy and frugal, a big-boned, loose-limbed folk with flaxen hair and a ruddy colour, fine horsemen and stout foot-soldiers. Their mode of government varied between monarchy, oligarchy, and a rudimentary democracy, but their chief loyalty was tribal. A tribe might be a member of a confederacy, but it cherished a fierce individuality and independence.

To Rome, though she had fought its people more than once, Gaul was largely an unknown land, and being unknown it was feared. At any hour out of those northern swamps and forests might come a new torrent which no second Marius could stem. Gaul and Parthia were the danger-points of the Roman frontier. Moreover Ariovistus and his Germans, though they were for the moment quiescent, were an imminent thunder-cloud. Caesar realised that Gaul was the coming storm-centre, and that his proconsulship might begin with petty wars, but was certain to develop problems of the first gravity. He desired to make an army which would be his chief weapon in the uncertainties of the future; he desired the same kind of prestige as Pompey had won; he was as confident as Napoleon in his star, and he was conscious of his supereminent talents. But he was above all things an opportunist and was content to let his policy be shaped by events. His first duty was the defence of Italy. He knew little of the land he was bound for, and realised that he must be explorer as well as soldier; the passages in his Commentaries where he describes the nature of the country and the habits of the people show how keen was his scientific interest. Above all he welcomed a life of action under the open sky, for his health was beginning to suffer from the stuffy coulisses of Roman politics, and he faced joyfully the unplumbed chances of the years before him, for he had never feared the unknown.

He was beginning his serious military career at the age of forty-four, much the same age as Cromwell’s when he took the field. But every Roman had a smattering of military knowledge, the technique of war was still elementary, and for twenty years Caesar had been practised in commanding and influencing men. He already possessed that eye for country, that coolness in a crisis, and that speed and boldness in decision which no staff college can give. The Roman army, since the Marian reforms, was an effective fighting force. Its strength lay in its non-commissioned officers, in its iron discipline and marching powers, in its superior equipment in the way of small arms and artillery, and in its superb auxiliary services, for the Roman soldier was the best trench-digger and bridge-builder in the world. Caesar had slingers from the Balearic Isles, and archers from Numidia and Crete, and cavalry from Spain, but he intended to recruit most of his horse in Gaul itself. He began with the three legions in Cisalpine Gaul, where he presently enrolled two more, and one, the famous Tenth, in the Province^[1]—a force of some 20,000 men. He enlisted no infantry beyond the Alps, and all his conquering legions were drawn from the mixed population of Piedmont and the Lombard plain. They were a stocky type, a foot shorter than the average Gaul, but stalwart in nerve, muscle, and discipline.

The eight years of the Gallic campaigns will repay the attentive study of all who are interested in the art of war. Here we can only glance at the main movements. The first task was the migrating Helvetii. They hoped to cross the Rhone below Geneva and march through Savoy, but Caesar destroyed the existing bridge, fortified the left bank of the river, and compelled them to try the passes of the Jura. With the help of the Aeduan chief Dumnorix, the rival of Diviciacus, they had secured an unimpeded passage through the territory of the Sequani. While their long train was winding among the mountains, Caesar hurried back to Cisalpine Gaul for his new legions, recrossed the Alps by way of Mont Genèvre, hastened through Dauphiny, and came up with the Helvetii as they were crossing the Saone. There he cut off their rearguard, and headed them north into the Burgundian plain. He found himself in difficulty over supplies, and Dumnorix, who commanded his Aeduan cavalry, was not to be trusted. After fifteen days’ pursuit he forced the Helvetii to give battle near the Aeduan capital Bibracte (Mont Beuvray, near Autun), and after a long and desperate day completely routed them. He was fighting against odds of two to one, and his troops were still untempered. The remnant of the Helvetii were sent back to their old home, and he turned to the graver menace of Ariovistus.

Caesar’s lightning speed, which had routed the Helvetii, proved also the undoing of the German chieftain. Ariovistus was then in upper Alsace. The victory of Bibracte had swung over the doubting Gallic tribes to the Roman side, and they were eager to fling off the superiority which he had imposed on them. Caesar began with diplomacy, asking only that further German immigration west of the Rhine should cease, but he received a haughty reply, and the news that a fresh army of Suebi was mustering on the east bank of the river. He delayed no longer, but marched straight for Vesontio (Besançon), the capital of the Sequani, which he made his base. He had some trouble with his troops, especially with the unwarlike military tribunes, who were awed by the legendary prowess of the Germans, and he restored confidence by one of those speeches which he knew how to direct straight to men’s hearts. ‘If no one else follows me,’ he said, ‘I go on with the Tenth legion alone, and I make it my bodyguard.’

He marched through the Gap of Belfort and found Ariovistus on the Rhine near Mülhausen. Some days were wasted in idle negotiations, during which the treachery of the Germans became clear. Then Ariovistus marched his army westward along the foot-hills of the Vosges, with the obvious intention of cutting the Roman line of supply. Six days later Caesar forced him to give battle, by threatening him in flank and rear. The engagement of September 18th was fought on the plan of Austerlitz, the weak Roman right forming a hinge on which the rest of the army swung to break the enemy’s right and centre. Caesar’s left was for some time in a critical position, and was saved by young Publius Crassus, the son of Marcus, the commander of the cavalry, who flung in his reserves at the critical moment. The enemy was cut to pieces, Ariovistus fled across the Rhine, and for several centuries the German overflooding of Gaul was stayed.

In the autumn of 58 Caesar withdrew his troops into winter quarters in the country of the Sequani, and, leaving Titus Labienus in command, returned to Cisalpine Gaul. He had technically broken the provisions of his own Julian law by leading his army beyond his province, and to winter it outside Roman territory was a still more daring innovation. His formal justification was that he had the express instructions of the Senate to protect the Aedui, and that this was the only way of doing it; his real defence was the compulsion of facts. He had come to realise the weakness of Gaul, split up among a hundred jealous tribes; if he could bring it under Roman sway he would not only make the frontier secure, but would add to the empire a race which he greatly admired, and which, he believed, would be an invaluable possession for the future. His dream was shaping itself of a new kind of empire, the strength of which would lie not in its wealth and its relics of an older civilisation but in the quality of its people. In the free air of the north he felt his body invigorated and his mind clarified, and he was now convinced beyond a peradventure of his genius for war. That winter he perfected his plans for the conquest of all Gaul.

In the spring of 57 he set out on his great errand. Central and southern Gaul were his, but the fierce people of the north, the Belgae, were unconquered, and he had word that they were mustering to drive out the Romans. He had enrolled two new legions in Lombardy, which gave him a total of eight—perhaps 40,000 men. From Besançon he marched into Champagne, where he made the Remi, who dwelt around Rheims and Châlons, a Roman nucleus like the Aedui further south. He found two of the chief Belgic tribes, the Suessiones (dwelling around Soissons) and the Bellovaci (around Beauvais), drawn up on the heights north of the Aisne. He crossed the river in the neighbourhood of Berry-au-bac, and built an entrenched camp as his advanced base. The enemy found this position impregnable, and, being in difficulties about supplies, began to retreat. They were pursued by Labienus and the cavalry, who punished them severely. Caesar swung westward and took order with the Bellovaci and the Suessiones, capturing the chief town of the latter. Then he marched north against the heart of the Belgic confederacy, the strong nation of the Nervii, who dwelt in the woody flats along the Scheldt and the Sambre, that land which was destined to be the cockpit of later history. Here he encountered an enemy worthy of his steel. The Nervii at some point between Charleroi and Namur surprised the Romans, and there ensued a soldier’s battle like Malplaquet, fought not very far from the scene of Marlborough’s victory. Caesar himself was compelled to fight in the ranks to maintain the spirit of his troops, till the arrival of his brigade of Guards, the Tenth legion, turned the tide. The Nervii were all but annihilated, the Belgic confederacy was dissolved, and the campaign was won. They were of all the enemies he encountered the one whom he most admired, and his sober prose kindles almost to a sober poetry when he describes their unavailing courage.

The news of this decisive battle created a profound sensation in Rome. The Senate, after Caesar’s despatch had been read, decreed a public thanksgiving of fifteen days—Pompey had only had ten days for Mithridates. Affairs in the capital were in a curious position. Clodius, Caesar’s party manager, had kept the Populares active by every kind of fantastic law and criminal outrage. But popular feeling was turning against that demagogue, and Caesar was beginning to see the need for calling off his hound. He was always prepared to make use of blackguards; he did not like the pious rogue, and preferred his ruffians to be naked and unashamed; but he never permitted the rascality of an agent to go beyond the bounds of policy. He made no objection to the recall of Cicero as a concession to the respectable classes, and that homesick exile was given a great popular reception when he returned in September. Pompey had found a jackal of his own, the tribune Milo, who was ready to stand up to Clodius, and it was very necessary to keep Pompey in good humour. Cicero, grateful to his laggard patron, carried a proposal in the Senate to give Pompey for five years complete control of the Roman corn supply and the supervision of all ports and markets in the empire, and Caesar’s agents readily agreed. Something had to be done for Pompey to prevent him growing jealous of the repute which Caesar was winning so fast. But Pompey was not satisfied. He saw that he was now only a figure-head; he wanted real power once more, and that meant an army and an independent command; and he did not see how he could get it without alienating those conservatives who were now sedulously cultivating him, and who were whispering in his ear that he was the only hope of the republic.

In the year 56 the Gallic operations languished. Caesar paid a visit to his other province of Illyria, leaving it to his lieutenants to deal with the Aquitani in the south-west, and the maritime tribes of the Atlantic coast. Labienus on the Moselle kept an eye on the Germans, and Publius Crassus had a short and brilliant campaign against the Aquitani. But the Veneti in southern Brittany gave more trouble, and a fleet had to be collected and partly built on the Loire, with which Decimus Brutus, during a long summer’s day while the legions looked on from the mainland cliffs, won one of the most curious naval battles in history. Caesar behaved to the conquered tribes with what may seem extreme brutality, for he put the chiefs to death and sold the rest of the males as slaves. His defence, which he states frankly, was that they had broken the law as to the inviolability of envoys, and that, in order to protect his future supplies, it was necessary to read them a sharp lesson. Then he turned east along the Channel coast and subdued the Morini and the Menapii, Belgic tribes who had been allies of the Veneti and who dwelt in the Pas de Calais and Flanders. From the shore he saw the distant cliffs of the ‘white land,’ and his explorer’s interest was awakened in the strange island of the north from which the secret religion of the Gauls drew its inspiration.

If in that year the Gallic war had few notable incidents, it was otherwise with the political game in Rome. Authority seemed to have gone both from the senatorian conservatives and from the great capitalists, and a younger set, without morals or policy, people like Mark Antony and Curio and Caelius, were casting their lines in the troubled waters. Catullus, the genius of the decadence, was abusing Pompey and Caesar in the lofty conservative vein which is only possible for an aspiring scion of the middle classes. Pompey was finding his life intolerable from the mischievous pranks of Clodius on the one side and the pedantic denunciations of Cato on the other. Caesar, watching the political game from north of the Po, saw that things were nearing a crisis, and that that crisis must be averted if he was to complete his work in Gaul. Domitius Ahenobarbus, a rich and stubborn senatorian, was candidate for next year’s consulship, and he made no secret of his intention to demand Caesar’s recall. Cicero, too, in the beginning of April proposed in the Senate that Caesar’s Campanian land policy should be put down for discussion in the following month. Unless immediate action were taken the arrangement of 59 would crumble.

Caesar acted promptly. He invited Pompey and Crassus to meet him in the middle of April at Luca (Lucca) in the extreme south of his province. Thither they duly came, attended by a host of senators and political aspirants, and there the triumvirate was re-established, since the three, if they were but agreed, were omnipotent. Caesar offered liberal terms—far too liberal if he had consulted his own interests; but he was eager to have the matter settled and to get on with his work in the north, he liked Pompey, and he was determined to do nothing to hurt his beloved Julia. Pompey and Crassus were to be next year’s consuls, and thereafter to have the governorships of Spain and Syria respectively for a term of five years. Pompey might stay in Rome and administer Spain by lieutenants, but Crassus was to be permitted to realise the dream of his life and lead from his province an army to the conquest of Parthia. Caesar was to be confirmed in his proconsulship of Gaul for a second space of five years—that is to the beginning of 49.

The terms were gladly and gratefully accepted, for they relieved Pompey from an impossible position and they gave Crassus all that he had ever dreamed. Somehow Clodius was put on the leash, and Cicero’s support was not long in doubt. In June in the Senate the latter made one of the best of all his speeches in defence of the Luca arrangements, and he praised Caesar’s Gallic exploits with insight and eloquence. The conquest of Gaul, he said, was not the mere annexation of a province, but the dispersion of the one menace to the empire. The Alps had been piled by Heaven as a rampart for Italy, but now they might sink to earth, since Italy had nothing to fear. There is something more in the speech than forensic rhetoric; there is a real admiration for Caesar’s greatness. Cicero had been snubbed and ignored by arrogant senatorians and left in the lurch by Pompey, and he turned to his boyhood’s friend who had always treated him kindly. ‘Since those who have no power,’ he wrote to Atticus, ‘will have none of my love, let me take care that those who have the power shall love me.’ Caesar met him half-way. He took his brother Quintus as one of his general officers, corresponded with him regularly on literary matters, read and praised his bad verses, and lent him money. For the moment Cicero was an ardent Caesarian, convinced, as he said, by his judgment, his sense of duty and the promptings of his heart. ‘I burn with love for him.’

The Luca conference gave Rome a brief interlude of peace. In the year 55, Caesar, to complete his conquests, had to look to the Rhine frontier. Two powerful German tribes, the Usipetes and the Tencteri, had been forced by the Suebi to cross to the west bank of the river, and were now a dangerous element on the edge of Gaul, since these bold mercenaries were being courted by all the Gallic malcontents. He determined to crush this coalition so sternly that it would never again revive. He marched against the newcomers and ordered them back. They prevaricated and argued, and some of their horse made a treacherous attack on a body of Roman cavalry; with this as his justification Caesar detained their chiefs, who had come to confer, and launched his legions against the leaderless hordes; there was a great massacre and few recrossed the Rhine. It is a ghastly tale, the ugliest episode of the Gallic wars, and it was unsparingly condemned in the Senate by Cato and by more reasonable men than Cato. But Caesar, merciful both by temperament and policy, seems to have had no doubt about the justice of his action. The German peril was not to be trifled with, and the German demand for westward expansion could only be answered ‘by sharp pens and bloody ink.’ Then he proceeded to deal with the Sugambri, a tribe east of the Rhine; they had been giving trouble to the Ubii, who were allies of Rome. His purpose was to teach the powerful Suebi that if they threatened Gaul he could assuredly threaten Germany. He bridged the Rhine at a point between Coblenz and Andernach, a marvellous feat of engineering, and remained eighteen days on German soil, while the Sugambri fled to the dark forests of the interior.

The rest of the summer was occupied with the first expedition to Britain. On August 26 he sailed from Portus Itius (between Calais and Boulogne, perhaps Wissant), and found himself early next morning off the coast west of Dover. The tide carried him down channel, and the landing was made on the low shores of Romney marsh. It was not seriously opposed, but the unfamiliar tides played havoc with his ships. While they were being repaired, an attack of the natives was beaten off and the local tribes sued for peace. After taking hostages he put to sea again, and reached Gaul in safety. It had been only a reconnaissance, but the second expedition was a more serious affair. All winter ships were being built, and on the 20th day of the following July—after some trouble with his Gallic horse, in which the Aeduan Dumnorix was killed—Caesar sailed again, with five legions and a considerable body of cavalry. He landed on the beach at Deal, entrenched a camp, and marched into the interior. He found himself opposed by a strange people, who tattooed their bodies with a blue dye, and were uncommonly skilful in their use of war chariots. Their king was one Cassivelaunus (Cadwallon), whose capital was near St. Albans. Caesar crossed the Thames, and after some desultory fighting forced the king to submit. But it was impossible to winter his legions there, and the conquest of the country was clearly a large undertaking with little hope of profit. After taking the usual hostages and fixing a tribute which was certainly never paid, Caesar returned to Deal and recrossed the Channel. His purpose had been partly scientific—to see for himself a mysterious land and people; partly military, for to Britain could be traced some of the threads of Gallic unrest; and largely political. The crossing of the Channel, like the bridging of the Rhine, was the kind of feat that fired the imagination of Rome, and gave to its performer a mystic aura of invincibility.

When he returned from Britain in the autumn of 54, Caesar may well have regarded the conquest of Gaul as a thing accomplished. He had carried the Roman arms to every corner of the land, and even beyond the Rhine and the narrow seas. He had been merciless when mercy seemed to him short-sighted, as in the case of the Veneti and the German invaders, but his general policy had been one of conciliation. He had made partisans of many of the Gallic leaders, and he had provided a profession for warlike youth by forming a new Fifth legion, the ‘Lark,’ entirely from Gauls. As for the situation in Rome, he was spending the immense sums he had won from his proconsul’s perquisites in lending money to needy citizens and in erecting superb public buildings as gifts to the people. Pompey and Crassus were attached to him by strong ties of self-interest, and Cicero had become a friend and a panegyrist instead of a critic. He looked forward to five years more in Gaul in which he could make the province a loyal daughter of Rome, and then to a second consulship when he could realise the ideas which were slowly growing up in his mind as to the future shaping of the empire.

These happy forecasts were rudely shattered. He had still to face the inevitable reaction. During three desperate years he had to reconquer Gaul, and then find himself forced unwillingly to conquer the world.

[1] Caesar was probably the first man to number his legions, thereby giving them identity and a continuity of tradition.