History of Julius Caesar Vol. 2 of 2 - Napoleon III

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never given any judgment upon the war, as that appertained only to the general.217

      March towards the Valley of the Rhine.

      V. This agitation having been calmed, Cæsar sought information concerning the roads from Divitiacus, who, of all the Gauls, inspired him with the greatest amount of confidence. In order to proceed from Besançon to the valley of the Rhine, to meet Ariovistus, the Roman army had to cross the northern part of the Jura chain. This country is composed of two very distinct parts. The first comprises the valley of the Doubs from Besançon to Montbéliard, the valley of the Oignon, and the intermediate country, a mountainous district, broken, much covered with wood, and, without doubt, at the time of Cæsar’s war in Gaul, more difficult than at present. The other part, which begins at the bold elbow made by the Doubs near Montbéliard, is composed of lengthened undulations, which diminish gradually, until they are lost in the plains of the Rhine. It is much less wooded than the first, and offers easier communications. (See Plate 4.)

      Cæsar, as he had announced, started early on the morrow of the day on which he had thus addressed his officers, and, determined on conducting his army through an open country, he turned the mountainous and difficult region just described, thus making a circuit of more than fifty miles (seventy-five kilomètres),218 which is represented by a semi-circumference, the diameter of which would be the line drawn from Besançon to Arcey. It follows the present road from Besançon to Vesoul as far as Pennesières, and continues by Vallerois-le-Bois and Villersexel to Arcey. He could perform this distance in four days; then he resumed, on leaving Arcey, the direct road from Besançon to the Rhine by Belfort and Cernay.

      On the seventh day of a march uninterrupted since leaving Besançon, he learnt by his scouts that the troops of Ariovistus were at a distance of not more than twenty-four miles (36 kilomètres).

      Supposing 20 kilomètres for the day’s march, the Roman army would have travelled over 140 kilomètres in seven days, and would have arrived on the Thur, near Cernay. (By the road indicated, the distance from Besançon to the Thur is about 140 kilomètres.) At this moment, Ariovistus would have been encamped at 36 kilomètres from the Romans, to the north, near Colmar.

      Informed of the arrival of Cæsar, Ariovistus sent him word “that he consented to an interview, now that the Roman general had come near, and that there was no longer any danger for him in going to him.” Cæsar did not reject this overture, supposing that Ariovistus had returned to more reasonable sentiments.

      The interview was fixed for the fifth day following.219 In the interval, while there was a frequent exchange of messages, Ariovistus, who feared some ambuscade, stipulated, as an express condition, that Cæsar should bring with him no foot soldiers, but that, on both sides, they should confine themselves to an escort of cavalry. The latter, unwilling to furnish any pretext for a rupture, consented; but, not daring to entrust his personal safety to the Gaulish cavalry, he mounted on their horses men of the 10th legion, which gave rise to this jocular saying of one of the soldiers: “Cæsar goes beyond his promise; he was to make us prætorians, and he makes us knights.”220

      Interview between Cæsar and Ariovistus.

      VI. Between the two armies extended a vast plain, that which is crossed by the Ill and the Thur. A tolerably large knoll rose in it at a nearly equal distance from either camp.221 This was the place of meeting of the two chieftains. Cæsar posted his mounted legion at 200 paces from the knoll, and the cavalry of Ariovistus stood at the same distance. The latter demanded that the interview should take place on horseback, and that each of the two chiefs should be accompanied only by ten horsemen. When they met, Cæsar reminded Ariovistus of his favours, of those of the Senate, of the interest which the Republic felt in the Ædui, of that constant policy of the Roman people which, far from suffering the abasement of its allies, sought incessantly their elevation. He repeated his first conditions.

      Ariovistus, instead of accepting them, put forward his own claims: “He had only crossed the Rhine at the prayer of the Gauls; the lands which he was accused of having seized, had been ceded to him; he had subsequently been attacked, and had scattered his enemies; if he has sought the friendship of the Roman people, it is in the hope of benefiting by it; if it becomes prejudicial to him, he renounces it; if he has carried so many Germans into Gaul, it is for his personal safety; the part he occupies belongs to him, as that occupied by the Romans belongs to them; his rights of conquest are older than those of the Roman army, which had never passed the limits of the province. Cæsar is only in Gaul to ruin it. If he does not withdraw from it, he will regard him as an enemy, and he is certain that by his death he shall gain the gratitude of a great number of the first and most illustrious personages in Rome. They have informed him by their messengers that, at this price, he would gain their good-will and friendship. But if he be left in free possession of Gaul, he will assist in all the wars that Cæsar may undertake.”

      Cæsar insisted on the arguments he had already advanced: “It was not one of the principles of the Republic to abandon its allies; he did not consider that Gaul belonged to Ariovistus any more than to the Roman people. When formerly Q. Fabius Maximus vanquished the Arverni and the Ruteni, Rome pardoned them, and neither reduced them to provinces nor imposed tribute upon them. If, then, priority of conquest be invoked, the claims of the Romans to the empire of Gaul are the most just; and if it be thought preferable to refer to the Senate, Gaul ought to be free, since, after victory, the Senate had willed that she should preserve her own laws.”

      During this conversation, information was brought to Cæsar that the cavalry of Ariovistus were approaching the knoll, and were throwing stones and darts at the Romans. Cæsar immediately broke up the conference, withdrew to his escort, and forbade them to return the attack, not from fear of an engagement with his favourite legion, but in order to avoid, in case he should defeat his enemies, the suspicion that he might have taken advantage of their good faith to surprise them in an interview. Nevertheless, the arrogance of Ariovistus, the disloyal attack of his cavalry, and the rupture of the conference, were soon known, and excited the ardour and impatience of the Roman troops.

      Two days afterwards, Ariovistus made a proposal for a renewal of the conference, or for the sending to him of one of Cæsar’s lieutenants. Cæsar refused, the more so because, the day before, the Germans had again advanced and thrown their missiles at the Romans, and that thus his lieutenant would not have been safe from the attacks of the barbarians. He thought it more prudent to send as his deputy Valerius Procillus, the son of a Gaul who had become a Roman citizen, who spoke the Celtic language, and who was on familiar terms with Ariovistus, and M. Mettius, with whom the German king was bound by the rights of hospitality. They had hardly entered the camp of Ariovistus, when he ordered them to be thrown into fetters, under pretence that they were spies.222

      Movements of the two Armies.

      VII. The same day, the German king broke up his camp and took another position at the foot of the Vosges (sub monte), at a distance of 6,000 paces from that of Cæsar, between Soultz and Feldkirch, not far from the Lauch. (See Plate 6.) Next day he crossed the Thur, near its confluence with the Ill, ascended the left banks of the Ill and the Doller, and only halted at Reiningen, after having gone two miles (three kilomètres) beyond the Roman camp. By this manœuvre, Ariovistus cut off Cæsar’s communication with Sequania and the Æduan country, but he left open the communications with the country of the Leuci and the Lingones.223 (See the Map of Gaul, 2.) The two armies thus encamped at a short distance from each other. During the five following days, Cæsar drew out his troops each day, and formed them in order of battle at the head of his camp (pro castris suas copias produxit), but was not able to provoke the Germans to fight; all hostility was limited to cavalry skirmishes, in which the latter were much practised. To 6,000 horsemen was joined an equal number of picked men on foot, among whom each horseman had chosen one to watch over him in combat. According to circumstances, the horsemen fell back upon the footmen, or the latter advanced to their assistance. Such

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<p>217</p>

De Bello Gallico, I. 41.

<p>218</p>

There has been much discussion on the meaning of the words millium amplius quinquaginta circuitu. Some pretend that the number of fifty miles means the whole distance, and that thus Cæsar would have taken seven days to travel fifty miles, which would make about seven kilomètres a day: this supposition is inadmissible. Others pretend, on the contrary, that we must add fifty miles to the direct distance. This last interpretation is refuted by a passage in the “Commentaries” (De Bello Civili, I. 64). We read there, Ac tantum fuit in militibus studii, ut, millium vi. ad iter addito circuito, &c. This shows that when Cæsar means to speak of a turn of road, to be added to the total length of the route, he is careful to indicate it. We consider it more simple, therefore, to admit that the fifty miles are only a part of the distance performed during the seven days’ march; that is, that after making a circular détour of fifty miles, which required three or four days, Cæsar had still to march some time before he met the enemy, following the direct road from Besançon to the Rhine. The study of the ground completely justifies this view, for it was sufficient for Cæsar to make a circuit of fifty miles (or seventy-five kilomètres) to turn the mass of mountains which extends from Besançon to Montbéliard.

<p>219</p>

It is probable that, during the negotiations, Ariovistus had approached nearer to the Roman camp, in order to facilitate intercommunication; for, if he had remained at a distance of thirty-six kilomètres from Cæsar, we should be obliged to admit that the German army, which subsequently advanced towards the Roman camp, in a single day, to within nine kilomètres, had made a march of twenty-five kilomètres at least, which is not probable when we consider that it dragged after it wagons and women and children.

<p>220</p>

De Bello Gallico, I. 42.

<p>221</p>

Planities erat magna, et in ea tumulus terrenus satis grandis… (De Bello Gallico, I. 43) – This phrase would be sufficient itself to prove that the encounter of the two armies took place in the plains of Upper Alsace. We may ask how, in spite of a text so explicit, different writers should have placed the field of battle in the mountains of the Jura, where there is nowhere to be found a plain of any extent. It is only at Mulhausen, to the north of the Doller, that the vast plain of the valley of the Rhine opens.

Cæsar employs three times the word tumulus to designate the eminence on which his interview with Ariovistus took place, and he never calls it collis. Is it not evident from this that we must consider this tumulus as a rounded knoll, insulated in the plain? Now it is to be considered that the plain which extends to the north of the Doller, between the Vosges and the Rhine, contains a rather large number of small rounded eminences, to which the word collis would not apply, and which the word knoll or tumulus perfectly describes. The most remarkable of these are situated, one near Feldkirch, the other between Wittenheim and Ensisheim. We may suppose that the interview took place on one of these knolls, marked 231 on Plate 6.

General de Gœler has adopted as the place of the interview an eminence which rises on the left bank of the Little Doller, to the north of the village of Aspach-le-Bas. Cæsar would have called this eminence collis, for it is rather extensive, and, by its elongated form, but not rounded, does not at all represent to the eye what is commonly called a knoll or tumulus; moreover, contrary to the text, this elevation is not, properly speaking, in the plain. It is only separated from the hills situated to the south by a brook, and the plain begins only from its northern slope.

<p>222</p>

De Bello Gallico, I. 47.

<p>223</p>

It is not unworthy of remark that Cæsar’s communications with the Leuci and the Lingones remained open. We have seen that, in his address to the troops at Besançon, he reckoned on obtaining from these peoples a part of his supplies.