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Updated: May 9, 2025
The enemy was checked. The two legions from the rear, who had learnt the danger from the flying camp-followers, came up. Labienus, from the opposite hill, saw what had happened, and sent the 10th legion back. All was now changed. The fugitives, ashamed of their cowardice, rallied, and were eager to atone for it.
The municipal magistrates told the commandants that they could not refuse to entertain Caius Caesar, who had done such great things for the Republic. The officers fled. The garrisons joined Caesar's legions. Even a colony planted by Labienus sent a deputation with offers of service. Steadily and swiftly in gathering volume the army of the north came on. At Capua all was consternation.
The noble senators overheard their slaves whispering, how it was rumoured on the street or in the Forum that Cæsar was in full advance on the city, that his cavalry were close to the gates. Cæsar at the gates! Why had they not remembered how rapidly he could advance? Why had they trusted the assurance of the traitor Labienus that the legions would desert their Imperator? Resist? By what means?
In general, political deserters lose their value and power in the very act, and bring little more than their treason to the new cause which they espouse: "Fortis in armis Caesaris Labienus erat; nunc transfuga vilis." But Burke was mighty in either camp; and it would have taken two great men to effect what he, by this division of himself achieved.
The Remi alone of all the Gauls had continued faithful in the rising of Vercingetorix. The Bellovaci, led by Commius of Arras, were preparing to burn the territory of the Remi as a punishment. Commius was not as guilty, perhaps, as he seemed. Labienus had suspected him of intending mischief when he was on the Seine in the past summer, and had tried to entrap and kill him.
While these events were taking place on the banks of the Dordogne, Labienus, in a cavalry engagement, had gained a decisive advantage over a part of the Treviri and Germans; had taken prisoner their chief, and thus subjected a people who were always ready to support any insurrection against the Romans. The Aeduan Surus fell also into his hands.
"Ten or twelve cohorts of the Praetorians and a handful of horse." "Then indeed his head is in the lion's mouth," cried Sulpicius, a hot-headed youth from the African Pentapolis. "How was he received?" "Coldly enough. There was scarce a shout as he came down the line." "They are ripe for mischief," said Labienus.
And here the conqueror of Mithridates a stout, soldierly man of six-and-fifty, whose best quality was a certain sense of financial honesty, and whose worst an extreme susceptibility to the grossest adulation told them that he had received letters from Labienus, Cæsar's most trusted lieutenant in Gaul, declaring that the proconsul's troops would never fight for him, that Cæsar would never be able to stir hand or foot against the decrees of the Senate, and that he, Labienus, would desert him at the first opportunity.
But after Correus had met his death in a skirmish with the Roman foragers, the resistance here too was broken; the victor proposed tolerable conditions, to which the Bellovaci along with their confederates submitted. The Treveri were reduced to obedience by Labienus, and incidentally the territory of the outlawed Eburones was once more traversed and laid waste.
There was between Labienus and the enemy a river difficult to cross and with steep banks: this neither did he himself design to cross, nor did he suppose the enemy would cross it. Their hope of auxiliaries was daily increasing. These words are quickly carried to the enemy, since out of so large a number of cavalry composed of Gauls, nature compelled some to favour the Gallic interests.
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