In my last episodes, I covered the fate of Arminius, the great Teutonic warlord who led a successful rebellion against the Romans, managing to rain enough bad blows on them to settle the Rhine as the permanent frontier between Germania and the Romans land. Therefore, it’s only fitting now to move to another great leader, who - half-a-century before Arminius - proved a match to the greatest general Rome ever had: Julius Caesar.

 

Rome and Gaul

Before to say anything about Vercingetorix, we need - of course - to speak about Gaul and its relation with the Romans. As Julius Caesar himself says in his work “The Gallic Wars” (a collection of letters sent to the Roman Senate while in campaign to justify his (mis)deeds):

All Gaul is divided into three parts, one of which the Belgae inhabit, the Aquitani another, those who in their own language are called Celts the third. 

Rather conveniently, Julius Caesar forgets two other parts of Gaul, which are worth talking about: the Transalpine and the Cisalpine Gauls.

 

Cisalpine Gaul

When Rome was still a shanty town trying to make ends meet by stealing the wives of neighbouring villages, the valley along the Po river was inhabited by Gallic tribes who had the demographic upper hand and  frequently raided the smaller Latin territories. In 387 BC, the Gallic chief Brennos even captured and ransomed Rome to its citizens - something which would solidify the image of the Gauls as the archenemy of the Romans for the next 4 centuries afterwards. Gauls were a huge part also of the army Hannibal, this great bogeyman of Rome, brought across the Aps during the 2nd Punic War.

                              

                                                           The Gauls, the scourge of Rome

However, the Romans were nothing if not relentless and they slowly but surely strengthened their base, grew in power and in organization and, by 82 BC, the Cisalpine Gaul was pacified and annexed into their nascent empire without much bother.

Transalpine Gaul

However, Rome still had no concern or desire towards the Gauls fatherland proper. Why would they? They had just beaten (twice!) the Carthaginians, were the master of the Western Mediterranean and had managed to get their hand on a much more interesting territory: the Iberic peninsula! However, to link this conquest to the Italian mainland, Rome needed a land route and they annexed the territory between the Pyrenees and the Alps and called it Gallia Narbonnensis, or Transalpine Gaul - or, to go even quicker: Our Province.

Now, Rome had what it had looked for, almost unwittingly, since its inception hundred of years ago: a maritime Empire centered in the Western Mediterranean, stretching from rome to the straits of Gibraltar, and from Massalia (modern day Marseilles) to the ruins of Carthage in northern Africa. 

So, the question: why did it turn suddenly north, invaded Gaul and annexed it? There was no strategic importance for Rome to attack. The answer is simple and can be summed up in two words: Julius Caesar.

 

Julius Caesar

Everyone knows about the exploits of Julius Caesar, but almost no one remembers that for a long time he was an impoverished populist politician, despised by the patrician class - and this is probably what gave him an ambition without limit. He needed money and victories to fund his political capital and challenge effectively the elites of Rome, among which his main enemy was Pompey - the most famous general of the time, who had slained the pirates, Sertorius and Mithridates.

After being consul in 59 BC, Julius Caesar received the proconsulship of Cisalpine Gaul and Transalpine Gaul. Proconsulships meant that he was to become the governor of these provinces and it was a kind of reward, a gift to former consuls, which enabled them to make money as they wished from the population - and Caesar was greatly in need of cash because he had run into huge debts because of his consulship.

But Caesar was not only in the great game of politics for the money. He had plans, a vision, and decided to use these relative backwaters as a springboard in order to gain military strength and political capital to become the number 1 in Rome... And for this he needed to manufacture a war. Any war!

And he didn’t have to wait for long: in 58 BC, the tribe of the Helvetii gave Caesar the perfect opportunity to meddle with the affairs of Gaul and prove himself as a successful general.

                                

                                                                            [Source]

The Helvetii

As indicated by their name, the Helvetii were a tribe from the territory of modern day Switzerland. Pressed by a far more aggressive tribe from Germany, they had decided to abandon their lands and to move into Gaul. 

Caesar could not allow that, knowing full well that it would lead to a domino effect and endless bitter fights between tribes, which would ultimately impact Transalpine Gaul. He therefore led his legions to intercept the Helvetii, thrashed them and made them go back to their former territory.

This short war was a diplomatic success for Caesar: the rest of the Gauls congratulated him, and two years later, when the Suebi, a Germanic tribe, tried the same trick and moved into Gaul, the Gauls themselves asked Caesar to lead the fight against the Suebi:

Caesar, on being informed of these things, cheered the minds of the Gauls with his words, and promised that this affair should be an object of his concern, [saying] that he had great hopes that Ariovistus, induced both by his kindness and his power, would put an end to his oppression

By the end of 57 BC, Caesar - victorious of the Suebi - had successfully asserted himself as the policeman of all Gaul. And it gave him extra ideas as well: he saw how divided the Gallic tribes were and it wet his appetite of glory and conquest. But as all good Roman and as all good conqueror, Caesar was not crass enough to declare war first: he needed a pretext and engineered one by letting his army camp in Gallic territory, something of a provocation, which triggered a coalition of Belgian tribes to conspire:

first, because they feared that, after all [Celtic] Gaul was subdued, our army would be led against them; secondly, because they were instigated by several of the Gauls; some of whom as [on the one hand] they had been unwilling that the Germans should remain any longer in Gaul, so [on the other] they were dissatisfied that the army of the Roman people should pass the winter in it, and settle there

Caesar now had the perfect excuse to invade and subjugate the whole of Gaul. It would take him many years, of course, many battles and many massacres and many letters to convince his own people that this was the destiny of the Roman people, but ultimately the conquest of Gaul itself is not the subject here - so I will leave it here for now and in the next episodes we’ll talk more about Vercingetorix himself.

To be continued...

 

SOURCES 

http://www.historyofwar.org/articles/wars_gallic.html

https://prezi.com/yikozvla9o9a/gallic-wars-timeline/ 

http://www.ancient.eu/vercingetorix/

http://www.livius.org/articles/person/caesar/caesar-04/

http://stcharlesprep.org/01_parents/oneil_j/Useful%20Links/AP%20Latin%20Assignments/HW/The%20Gallic%20Wars.pdf