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Updated: June 23, 2025
The existing provisions were still, when the Roman circumvallation was closed, sufficient for a month and perhaps something more; at the last moment, when there was still free passage at least for horsemen, Vercingetorix dismissed his whole cavalry, and sent at the same time to the heads of the nation instructions to call out all their forces and lead them to the relief of Alesia.
How can we believe, then, that nineteen centuries ago, Gaul, so weakly populated and so slightly organized, suddenly sent two hundred and forty thousand men to the assistance of eighty thousand Gauls besieged in the little town of Alesia by fifty or sixty thousand Romans?
Every time that the fresh Gallic army attacked the besiegers, Vercingetorix and the Gauls of Alesia sallied forth, and joined in the attack. Caesar and his legions, on their side, at one time repulsed these double attacks, at another themselves took the initiative, and assailed at one and the same time the besieged and the auxiliaries Gaul had sent them.
Nor were the insurgents more successful in detaining Caesar on the Loire; Caesar gave them no time to assemble larger masses there, and without difficulty dispersed the militia of the Haedui, which alone he found at that point Position of the Insurgents at Alesia Thus the junction of the two divisions of the army was happily accomplished.
Alesia, or Alexia, a town of the Mandubians, Alise; Caesar shuts up Vercingetorix there, C. vii. 68; surrounds it with lines of circumvallation and contravallation, ibid. 69, 72; obliges it to surrender, ibid. 89 It was built by Alexander the Great, 330 years before Christ; Caesar pursues Pompey thither, C. iii. 106
On many accounts then, and with good reason, the hazard before the walls of Alesia was famed abroad, as having produced deeds of daring and skill such as no other struggle had done; but it is most worthy of admiration that Cæsar engaged with so many thousands outside of the town and defeated them without it being known to those in the city; and still more admirable, that this was also unknown to the Romans who were guarding the wall towards the city.
The seven books of Commentaries on the Gallic War were written in Caesar's winter quarters in Gaul, after the capture of Alesia and the final suppression of the Arvernian revolt. They were primarily intended to serve an immediate political purpose, and are indeed a defence, framed with the most consummate skill, of the author's whole Gallic policy and of his constitutional position.
Could it be possible that she was intended to appear as a daughter of the house at Alesia's marriage? "You may choose your hood-stuff from chose velvets," said the Countess condescendingly to Philippa. "I trow you will have to choose your own gowns after you are wedded, so you may as well begin now." "Will Philippa be wed when I am?" yawned Alesia. "The same day," said the Lady Alianora.
The existing provisions were still, when the Roman circumvallation was closed, sufficient for a month and perhaps something more; at the last moment, when there was still free passage at least for horsemen, Vercingetorix dismissed his whole cavalry, and sent at the same time to the heads of the nation instructions to call out all their forces and lead them to the relief of Alesia.
Caesar immediately went in pursuit of the Gauls; killed, he says, three thousand, made important prisoners, and encamped with his legions before Alesia the day but one after Vercingetorix, with his fugitive army, had occupied the place as well as the neighboring hills, and was hard at work intrenching himself, probably without any clear idea as yet of what he should do to continue the struggle.
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