Caesar was informed that the Hehetii intended to cross the territories of the Sequani and the Aedui and then enter the country of the Santones, which is near to that of the Tolosates, a tribe living in the Roman Province. He saw that it would be very dangerous to the Province to allow such a warlike people, hostile to Rome, to become established so close to its rich cornlands, which were without any natural defences.
Julius Caesar, The Gallic War (58 bc)
The extraordinary incursions of the Cimbri and Teutones led to a revolution in Roman attitudes to Gaul. Transalpine Gaul came to be seen not only as a safe land route to Spain but also as an essential buffer zone against invasion from the north. When new developments in the middle of the first century bc threatened to destabilise the independent Gaulish tribes north of the Roman province, it was easy for Julius Caesar, newly appointed as governor of Gallia Transalpina, to persuade the Senate that military intervention was essential to protect Rome from attack. The threatened destabilisation of Gaul came from two sources. In 58 bc the Helvetii, a major Alpine tribe numbering over 300,000, decided to migrate across Gaul and resettle in Aquitania. The Helvetii had recently taken in many refugees from the Boii, who had suffered a catastrophic defeat at the hands of the Dacians a year or two earlier. Population pressure may therefore have played a part in the Helvetii’s decision, but they must also have felt vulnerable where they were, squeezed between the Romans to their south and the increasingly powerful Germanic tribes to their north. At about the same time as the Helvetii were planning their migration, the Aedui appealed to Rome for support against their neighbours, the Arverni and the Sequani. The Sequani were allied with King Ariovistus of the Germanic Suebi, who crossed the Rhine in some force. The Suebi found they liked Gaul so much that they turned on the Sequani and began to occupy their land, raising the spectre of a replay of the invasions of the Cimbri and Teutones.
These disturbances gave Caesar all the excuse he needed to intervene in Gaul: not only did they threaten to spill over into Gallia Transalpina, they also threatened to disrupt Rome’s lucrative trade with the Gauls. Caesar dealt with both the Helvetii and the Suebi quickly and with brutal effectiveness, dispatching both back to their original homelands after inflicting heavy casualties. But this was not enough for Caesar. Rome’s rapid rise from city-state to empire had placed the republican form of government under increasing strain while the professionalisation of the army had transferred real power from the Senate to a handful of politically ambitious generals. No one understood the realities of Roman power politics better than Caesar. To achieve the political influence he craved, he needed not only to win a few battles but to make conquests. These would provide more than glory, useful though that was for impressing the Roman people: they would provide the opportunity to enrich himself with plunder, which he could use to buy the loyalty of his soldiers and to maintain a network of alliances within the Roman political class. Caesar’s own brilliant, but hardly impartial, account of his campaigns in Gaul was part and parcel of his programme of political self-aggrandisement and was intended to be read aloud to gatherings of his supporters in Rome. The conquest of Gaul, the richest and most populous part of the Celtic world, would test even Caesar’s considerable military abilities.
After repulsing the Helvetii and the Suebi and forcing the Sequani and Arverni to submit, Caesar wintered his army near Vesontio (Besangon), in the territory of the Sequani, well to the north of the Roman province (Caesar himself returned to Italy every winter during the war to take care of his political interests). Learning that the tough Belgic tribes were forming a coalition to oppose him, Caesar marched north with around 40,000 legionaries and 20,000, mostly Gallic, auxiliaries to the territory of the pro-Roman Remi, which he used as a base from which to launch an invasion of Belgica in April 57. Defeated in three hard-fought battles, the Belgae submitted in September. Recognising their inferiority on the battlefield, the Gauls subsequently tried to avoid open battle, preferring to use guerrilla tactics. The following year (56) Caesar campaigned against the Armorican tribes in the maritime north-west. In the first recorded naval battle in northern waters, a hastily built fleet of light Roman galleys defeated the larger sailing ships of the Veneti, probably in Quiberon Bay, by cutting their rigging with sickles fastened to the end of poles. Caesar may have had commercial, as well as military, aims in conquering the Armoricans. The Veneti and their northern neighbours the Coriosolites controlled the most important trade route between Gaul and Britain. A subsidiary force campaigned successfully in Aquitania, despite fierce opposition. In the last campaign of the year, Caesar returned to Belgica, and put down a rebellion of the Menapii and the Morini. They proved difficult to track down in the marshes and fens of their coastal homeland and the fighting dragged on through the winter.
World History
