VERCINGETORIX

Vercingetorix was a prince of the Arverni, a powerful tribe of central Gaul at the time of Caesar’s occupation. His father was Celtillus. The - rix element is a title, meaning ‘king’; ver means ‘over’ or ‘higher’, and cinget means ‘warrior’. Celtillus, whose relationship to the royal Arvernian household is unknown, had been killed by the tribal elders because he had tried to seize personal power in 80 BC and declare himself king. The Arverni had suffered few casualties during Caesar’s earlier campaigns, and had shown few signs of intending further resistance, so Caesar assumed, incorrectly, that they were pacified. Vercingetorix must have had some very impressive personal qualities to have persuaded the tribal elders that he deserved the kingship. One of these must have been eloquence: Caesar tells us of Vercingetorix assembling his retainers and having ‘no difficulty in exciting their passions*. We can assume that he had inherited at least some of his father’s ambition, and a measure of Celtic pride in restoring the family honour may have been a contributory factor to his charaaer. According to Caesar’s account, another of his qualities was a ruthlessness bordering on savagery:

Himself a man of boundless energy, he terrorized waverers with the rigours of an iron discipline. Serious cases of disaffection were punished by torture and death at the stake, and even for a minor fault he would cut off a man’s ears or gouge out one of his eyes, and send him home to serve as a warning to others of the severe chastisement meted out to offenders.

By 52 BC, Caesar had secured a tenuous grip over most of Gaul. To the far north were the tribes collectively known as Belgae, and to the far northwest the Armorican tribes. The most secure part of Gaul was the narrow strip in the southeast known as Provincia (‘The Province’), which protected the overland crossing from northern Italy to the Pyrenees and down into the Iberian peninsula. The least secure part of Gaul was the Massif Central, where large and powerful tribes were kept in check by a complex series of political deals involving tribute and protection. Early in 52 BC, a senior official, Publius Clodius, was assassinated in Rome, and the senate ordered all men of military age to be sworn in. When the Celts of Gaul received news of these events, it sounded as though Rome was about to enter a period of civil turmoil. Caesar was forced to return to the Province, and so was separated from his Gallic army. Caesar tells us that the Celts thought they might be able to prevent him from rejoining his troops:

The prospect of such a chance spurred them into action. They were already smarting under their subjection to Rome, and now began to plan war with greater confidence and boldness. The leading men arranged meetings at secluded spots in the woods. . . . They complained of the miserable condition of the whole country, and offered tempting rewards to induce some of their hearers to open hostilities and risk their lives for the liberty of Gaul.

Vercingetorix must have been a key player in these meetings. The ‘secluded spots in the woods’ to which Caesar refers may well have been sacred groves, which raises the possibility that there was a strong druidic influence in the political decisions which ensued. Druids were not only priests and leaders of civic ceremonies; they also acted as judges and as political advisors. In the event, Vercingetorix received a previously unknown level of confidence and support: he was elected King of Gaul, and very quickly secured the allegiance not only of his own powerful tribe, the Arverni, but also of the Senones, Parish, Cadurci, Turoni, Aulerci, Lemovices, Andes, Pictones, Santoni and Aquitani. To the best of our knowledge, no Gaulish king had ever been afforded that title or honour.

There now began a series of internal campaigns, involving rapid political realignments. The intention was to organize before Caesar could rejoin his army. Vercingetorix marched against the Celtic tribes which had pledged allegiance to Rome, beginning with the Bituriges. The Bituriges sent for help from their overlords, the powerful Aedui. The Aedui sent cavalry and infantry, but when they reached the River Loire (which marked the boundary between Biturigan and Aeduan territory), the Aeduan forces halted and then turned back, saying that they feared treachery from the Bituriges. The Bituriges promptly ceased their resistance and joined forces with Vercingetorix. In similar campaigns and counter-campaigns, the Gallic tribes tried to decide where their best interests lay. Some, like the Aedui, had received very generous terms from Caesar and prospered as a result, while others had suffered far more severely under the Roman occupation and bitterly resented the hostages and tribute which they had been forced to send to Caesar. It was not a time for indecision: it became plain within a short while that the campaigns of this one year would probably result either in the complete Roman subjugation of Gaul or in the exact opposite, the liberation of all Gaul.

The Celts had taken their initial impetus from two circumstances: there was political turmoil in Rome, and they believed Caesar was holed up in Provincia with no opportunity to rejoin his Gallic army, because it was winter and the Cevennes mountains were impassable. They were wrong, however, as Caesar himself explains:

The Cevennes mountains, which form a barrier between the Helvii and the Arverni, were at this season - the severest part of the winter - covered with very deep snow, and the passes blocked. But the soldiers cleared stretches of the path by shovelling away drifts up to 6 feet deep, and by prodigious exertions enabled Caesar to get across into the land of the Arverni, taking them completely by surprise, for they thought that the Cevennes gave them as secure protection as a solid wall, since the passes had never been considered practicable even for single travellers at that time of year.

Once Caesar had rejoined the Gallic army, he began a series of cavalry raids to announce his presence and sow as much fear and confusion among the Gauls as possible. Vercingetorix retaliated by attacking Gorgobina, the stronghold of the Boii. The Boii were a weak tribe, clients to the more powerful Aedui, who in turn were loyal to Rome. When Vercingetorix defeated the Boii, it was the equivalent of the mediaeval throwing of the gauntlet:

This move greatly embarrassed Caesar. If he kept the legions ail together until the end of the winter, and allowed a people subject to the Aedui to be overpowered without interference, it was only too likely that the whole of Gaul would desert his cause, since it would be evident that his friends could not look to him for protection. On the other hand, if he withdrew the troops from their quarters so early in the year, he might be hard put to it to supply them with food, owing to the difficulties of transport.

In the event, Caesar had no choice but to act, and he accordingly set out for the country of the Bituriges. The war which followed was not conducted in a series of pitched battles; it became instead a series of sieges and countersieges, with control of supply lines and materials a constantly recurring factor. Vercingetorix deliberately destroyed towns, bridges and fortified oppida in an attempt to deny supplies to the legions. While the control of materials and supply routes is basic to all military strategy and is not in itself remarkable, what is immediately striking about Vercingetorix’s strategic command is its unprecedented scale in the Celtic world, and its extraordinary sophistication. Just securing simple military cohesion among so many different tribes, each with its own petty king and fierce tribal allegiances, was an extraordinary feat, but to conduct the kind of cat-and-mouse, supplyline based warfare which Vercingetorix achieved must have required extraordinary cooperation among the tribes, extremely swift and diligent information gathering from spies and scouts, and very effective intertribal communication.

The Celts also demonstrated considerable adaptability and ingenuity in siege warfare. Remember that most classical descriptions of Celts in battle portray them as frenzied, uncontrollable savages, screaming their battle shouts and scarcely answerable to their own leaders, let alone to some super-king not even of their own tribe. Caesar gives a more generous account of their skills:

To baffle the extraordinary bravery of our troops the Gauls resorted to all kinds of devices; for they are a most ingenious people, and very clever at borrowing and applying ideas suggested to them. They pulled aside our wall-hooks with lassoes, for example, and when they had made them fast hauled them inside with windlasses. They made our terraces fall in by undermining, at which they were expert because they have extensive iron mines in their country and are thoroughly familiar with every kind of underground working. . . . They countermined the subterranean galleries that we were digging towards the walls, and prevented their continuation by throwing into them stakes sharpened and hardened in a fire, boiling pitch, and very heavy stones.

At the siege of Avaricum, from which the description above is taken, the faith of the tribal kings in Vercingetorix began to waver. Caesar, in siege formation about the city, had advanced on the Celtic camp by night, only to discover by daylight that his legions were in marshland with the Celts on high ground above them. To the frustration of his commanders, he withdrew his forces back to the safety of the Roman camp. Vercingetorix had established his first headquarters twenty-six kilometres (sixteen miles) from Avaricum, where marshes and forests presented better defences. He then advanced his cavalry to the higher ground closer to Avaricum where Caesar had found them. Then, after Caesar had declined battle there, Vercingetorix returned to the original Celtic camp, where the remaining kings and tribal elders had, by now, become decidedly unsettled. Caesar continues the story:

On returning to his main body Vercingetorix was accused of treachery for having moved his camp nearer the Romans, for going off with all the cavalry, and for leaving such a large army without anyone in supreme command. ... All this could not have happened by accident, they said, but must have been deliberately planned; evidently he would rather become King of Gaul by Caesar’s favour than by the gift of his fellow-countrymen.

This chessboard approach, with each move and counter-move deliberately considered, must have been very frustrating for the Celtic tribal kings, who were accustomed to much more direct approaches. Nevertheless, Vercingetorix’s command was not challenged. Caesar’s account puts in Vercingetorix’s mouth a cunning piece of political oratory which persuaded the other Celts to continue trusting him, but the speech has a very contrived Roman flavour.

Nor, astonishingly, did the Celtic kings abandon Vercingetorix when the Roman siege finally prevailed against Avaricum and its inhabitants were slaughtered. Caesar left the ruins of Avaricum smouldering behind him and advanced direaly into Arvernian territory, Vercingetorix’s own power base. He attacked the oppidum of Gergovia.

Vercingetorix had originally proposed to the other Celtic kings that Avaricum be destroyed ahead of the advancing Romans, as were the other potential sources of supply and materials cleared in the slash-and-burn plan. It was only because the Bituriges had pleaded for Avaricum’s survival that the siege and subsequent defeat had come about at all, so to some extent Vercingetorix was vindicated. He had been right after all. More significantly, he had begun to acquire that special status which is unique to inspirational military leaders: he appeared prescient and invincible. In the Celtic context, this powerful emotional appeal would have enormously strengthened his position; whatever names each tribe used for its gods, they could see the god working in the man. Here was a king who had not only the usual divine charge and energy, but a king apparently for all Gaul. He had Celtic tribesmen building siege fortifications, which even Caesar acknowledged as being ‘an unheard-of thing in Gaul’. He had different tribes moving in single formations; he had battalions commanded by kings and elders of other tribes, to whom they had never before shown allegiance, and some of whom had even been formerly in the pay of Rome. It was an astonishing political feat, and speaks greatly of Vercingetorix’s dominant character.

Shortly after Caesar had begun the siege of Gergovia, fate again appeared to step in on Vercingetorix’s side. Among the Aedui, staunch and powerful allies of Rome, there arose a petty internal dispute which refused to go away. Two candidates for the post of chief magistrate were at each other’s throats. One was Convictolitavis, a wealthy young noble. The other was Cotus, a widely connected politico whose brother had held the post the previous year. Caesar, fearful that the dispute would weaken the Aedui when he most needed their support, journeyed in person to the Aeduan capital of Decetia and resolved the dispute by announcing Cotus ineligible for the office under Aeduan (i. e. Celtic) law. Convictolitavis and his supporters were no doubt delighted. However, Caesar’s choice was proved disastrously wrong. Within a month, Convictolitavis had accepted cash bribes from the Arvemi and was openly preaching abandonment of the treaty with Rome. Within another month, the Aedui defected and Caesar was left abandoned by his most powerful Celtic ally, isolated in a hostile land with no immediate sources of supply or support, cut off from his lieutenant Labienus in the north.

When Vercingetorix next engaged the Romans, his apparent intention was to destroy the Roman cavalry, presumably because doing so would make both scouting and foraging more difficult for them; it was a continuation of the strategy of containment of supplies and materials. Vercingetorix’s forces captured the small Aeduan garrison town of Noviodunum on the Loire, to which Caesar had sent Celtic hostages captured in previous battles, stores of grain and coin, and even some of his personal baggage. The Celts stripped the town:

Accordingly they massacred the garrison of Noviodunum and the merchants who lived there, shared the money and horses, had all the hostages taken to the magistrates at Bibracte, and carried away as much grain as they had time to stow into boats, the rest being thrown into the river or burnt. The town itself they thought they could not possibly hold; so they burnt it to prevent it being of use to the Romans.

This was a humiliating reverse for Caesar, and his calm account of the events, written with hindsight, belies the exasperation he must have felt. The Loire was swollen with snow melt and apparently unfordable, and he was desperately short of supplies. It looked as though his only option now was to retreat to the Province and let Vercingetorix become King of Gaul in fact as well as in title. However; Caesar took the bolder course. He unexpectedly struck

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North to rejoin forces with Labienus. His men forded the freezing river, carrying their arms and equipment over their heads, the cavalry crossing upstream to try to break up the flow of the current. After some difficult trials and tribulations of his own, Labienus managed to rejoin Caesar and the Roman army was reassembled. To reinforce his depleted cavalry, Caesar sent for German auxiliaries from across the Rhine.

Vercingetorix, smelling victory, pressed the attack on what he thought was a thoroughly depleted and demoralized Roman army. It was a disastrous mistake. Not only did the Roman columns hold, they also inflicted heavy casualties on the Celts, with the imported German horsemen playing a particularly effective part. Vercingetorix retreated to a hilltop oppidum called Alesia, where Caesar immediately laid siege. Around Vercingetorix’s position he built an outer rampart 22 kilometres (13 miles) long, fortified at regular intervals, and an inner wall fortified with wooden towers, ditches, stakes and pits.

It was a classic siege. The defenders soon began to starve, despite the fact that Vercingetorix had organized the distribution of com and cattle with excellent military sense, imposing the death penalty on any tribesman who tried to violate the rationing arrangement - a further example of his ability to transcend the traditional tribal patterns of rank and entitlement. Vercingetorix also managed to send envoys out through the Roman lines to all the other Celtic tribes of Gaul. The whole Gallic cause was now in the balance, as Caesar himself recognized. If the Gauls survived this siege, the Romans would have no option but to retreat to Provincia.

Caesar gives us precise numbers for the Celtic tribes which responded to Vercingetorix’s call for help, but the numbers are difficult to believe. By Caesar’s account, his army of 50 000 Romans prevailed over a Celtic host of over a quarter of a million men. He gives details:

Aedui, with their dependent tribes (Segusiavi, Ambivareti,

Even if Caesar’s total is an exaggeration, and it almost certainly is, this nevertheless was, and remains, the largest Celtic army ever assembled in one battle. The Celtic relief force attacked the Roman positions, confident that they could penetrate to the central hillfort and their besieged fellow-Gauls.

Unfortunately, the one leader who could command authority among so many diverse tribes, namely Vercingetorix, was trapped in the hillfort, and unable to lead the vast Celtic army. Instead, the relieving army was led by a quartet of commanders: Commius, a king of the Atrebates who had formerly been an ally of Rome; Viridomarus and Eporedorix, Aeduan kings; and Vercassivellaunus, who was Vercingetorix’s cousin. Caesar tells us that they were accompanied by ‘associated representatives of the various tribes, to act as an advisory committee for the conduct of the campaign’. If there is anything which could be said to be definitively untypical of early Celtic society, it is an ‘advisory conunittee’ for warfare. No, these tribal representatives were not a committee, or anything like it: they were an assemblage of individuals, including kings and senior nobles from the tribal royal families, possibly with some druids and their retinues, each representing his own tribe first and foremost, and protecting its interest and good name, with the general Gallic cause as a secondary objective. What Vercingetorix had been able to do was to somehow present himself as a king for all the Gauls. Without his active command, the petty squabbling over disputes of honour returned.

There were several impressive assaults on the Roman positions, conducted with typical Celtic courage and impetuosity, but with little overall coordination. At one point, it looked as though a night attack might allow the relieving force to get through to Vercingetorix, but the attack failed. The details of Caesar’s account are illuminating:

Meanwhile, hearing the distant shouting, Vercingetorix sounded the trumpet and led his men out of the town. The Roman troops moved up to the posts previously allotted to them at the entrenchments, and kept the Gauls at a distance with slingstones, bullets, large stones and stakes which were placed ready at intervals along the rampart, while the artillery pelted them with missiles. It was too dark to see, and casualties were heavy on both sides. The generals Mark Antony and Gaius Trebonius, who had been detailed for the defence of this particular sector, reinforced the points where they knew the troops were hard pressed with men brought up from redoubts well behind the fighting line. As long as the Gauls were at a distance from the entrenchments, the rain of javelins which they discharged gave them some advantage. But when they came nearer they suddenly found themselves pierced by the goads or tumbled into the pits and impaled themselves, while others were killed by heavy siege-spears discharged from the rampart and towers. Their losses were everywhere heavy, and when dawn came they had failed to penetrate the defences at any point. . . . The besieged lost much time in bringing out the implements

That Vercingetorix had prepared for the sortie and in filling up the first stretches of trench, and before they reached the main fortifications heard of the retreat of the relief force. So they returned into the town without effecting anything.

Every detail about the Roman strategy speaks of preparedness: strategically placed towers and ramparts; pre-dug pit traps; fresh reinforcements kept well behind the battle lines. Everything about the Celtic strategy speaks of impetuosity and confusion: abandoning strong positions; rushing into unfamiliar ground; failing to bring men and materials into position in an orderly, timely fashion; lack of communication and coordination.

The relieving army made a few more sorties, but when Sedullus, king of the Lemovices, was killed, and Vercassivellaunus, Vercingetorix’s cousin, was captured, the Celts lost heart. They scattered, and those few who managed to escape the Roman pursuits returned to their tribal homelands. Vercingetorix surrendered to Caesar the following day.

Plutarch tells us that over a million men died during the Gallic wars, and a further million were made slaves. After Vercingetorix’s rebellion had failed, the Romans subdued and pacified the remaining tribes with purposeful severity. After defeating a small Celtic army at Uxellodunum, Caesar had every captured Gaul brought forward to have his hands cut off, to serve as an example to others of what happened to those who dared to take up arms against Rome. Even more severe were the general privations inflicted on the defeated tribes; famine was widespread, yet Caesar insisted on punitive levels of tribute. By contrast, Caesar himself made vast capital out of his conquest of the Gauls; literally, in the gold and other wealth which he took back to Rome to finance his political campaigns, and metaphorically in the public acclaim which his victories brought him - a thanksgiving festival of twenty days was proclaimed in his honour, an unprecedented statement of popular approval.

Vercingetorix was taken prisoner and brought to Rome, where Caesar left him languishing in prison for six years, an imprisonment which must have been a severe torment to the Celtic leader’s soul, knowing how deeply his people were suffering. We have to presume that Caesar saw some advantage in keeping Vercingetorix alive as a prisoner - perhaps he was more effective alive as a symbol of the hopelessness of the pan-Gallic cause than dead as a potential martyr to it. Finally, however, in 46 BC, Caesar held a public triumph at which Vercingetorix was paraded in chains before the people, then brought back to the city centre for ritual disembowelling and execution.

Since Alesia was Vercingetorix’s last stronghold, and Vercingetorix has exercised the French imagination for many centuries, there were prolonged debates about where exactly Alesia was. Two small towns vied for the honour: Alaise, in Franche-Comte, and the slightly larger Alise-Sainte-Reine in Burgundy, on the lower Seine, where shrines to the Celtic horse-goddess Epona have been found, along with images of the Matrones and other deities.

Napoleon III had excavations conducted at Alise-Sainte-Reine, and an archaeological expedition of 1861-1865 produced bones of humans and horses, equipment, weapons and all the signs of a major battle, plus the most convincing evidence, signs of a defensive ditch 5.5 metres (18 ft) wide, and other entrenchments and fortifications. Alise-Sainte-Reine is still a relatively small and uncommercialized town, but it is proud of its apparent Vercingetorix connection.