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Updated: May 24, 2025
As a piece of practical politics, it sounds like Frederick Barbarossa threatening to avenge the defeat of Crassus upon Saladin, or like the French of the revolutionary wars making the Pope Pius of those days answerable for the wrongs of Vercingetorix. The thing sounds like comedy, almost like conscious comedy.
XVIII. When the towers had now approached the walls, Caesar ascertained from the captives that Vercingetorix, after destroying the forage, had pitched his camp nearer Avaricum, and that he himself with the cavalry and light-armed infantry, who generally fought among the horse, had gone to lay an ambuscade in that quarter to which he thought that our troops would come the next day to forage.
Undismayed by the calamity, Vercingetorix made use of it to sustain the determination of his followers. He pointed out to them that he had himself opposed the defence. The Romans had defeated them, not by superior courage, but by superior science.
The legionaries, excited by the remembrance of Gien and the long resistance, slew every human being that they found, men, women, and children all alike. Out of forty thousand who were within the walls, eight hundred only, that had fled at the first sound of the attack, made their way to the camp of Vercingetorix.
The massacre at Gien was known in a few hours in the south, and the Auvergne country, which had hitherto been entirely peaceful, rose in reply, under a young high-born chief named Vercingetorix. Gergovia, the principal town of the Arverni, was for the moment undecided.
By order of Vercingetorix more than twenty townships of the Bituriges perished in the flames on one day; the general decreed a similar self-devastation as to the neighbour cantons, so far as they could be reached by the Roman foraging parties. Caesar before Arvaricum
The resolute and talented Bellovacian Correus, to whom the chief conduct of the war had fallen, waged warfare as Vercingetorix had waged it, and with no small success.
He demanded an unconditional surrender, and the Gauls, starving and hopeless, obeyed. The Roman general sat amidst the works in front of the camp while the chiefs one by one were produced before him. The brave Vercingetorix, as noble in his calamity as Caesar himself in his success, was reserved to be shown in triumph to the populace of Rome. The whole of his army were prisoners of war.
And La Mothe le Vayer gives expression to similar doubts with reference to other nations. There is no agreement as to the antiquity of the Chaldeans, the age of Homer, the existence of Zoroaster, the two empires of Assyria. Quintus Curtius has manufactured fables. Plutarch gives the lie to Herodotus. We should have a different idea of Cæsar if Vercingetorix had written his Commentaries.
But those within, whilst they bring forward those things which had been prepared by Vercingetorix for a sally, fill up the nearest trenches; having delayed a long time in executing these movements, they learned the retreat of their countrymen before they drew nigh to the fortifications. Thus they returned to the town without accomplishing their object.
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