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If these sacrifices should appear heavy or galling, that they ought to consider it much more distressing that their wives and children should be dragged off to slavery, and themselves slain; the evils which must necessarily befall the conquered. XV. This opinion having been approved of by unanimous consent, more than twenty towns of the Bituriges are burnt in one day.
Many thousands being taken, as many of the Bituriges as were able to escape the first coming of the Romans, fled to the neighbouring states, relying either on private friendship, or public alliance. In vain; for Caesar, by hasty marches, anticipated them in every place, nor did he allow any state leisure to consider the safety of others, in preference to their own.
Whilst he was dispensing justice there, the Bituriges send ambassadors to him, to entreat his aid against the Carnutes, who they complained had made war against them.
It is impossible to part from the noble king of the Arverni without a feeling of historical and human sympathy; but it is a significant trait of the Celtic nation, that its greatest man was after all merely a knight. The Last Conflicts With the Bituriges and Carnutes
It is impossible to part from the noble king of the Arverni without a feeling of historical and human sympathy; but it is a significant trait of the Celtic nation, that its greatest man was after all merely a knight. The Last Conflicts With the Bituriges and Carnutes
The story of its fall I will take from the graphic pen of Dean Merivale: "Whilst the Bituriges within their city were hard pressed by the machinery which the Roman engineers directed against their walls, the forces of the proconsul on their side were harassed by the fatigues of the siege and the scarcity of provisions.
Such expeditions were in the winter of 702-703 undertaken against the Bituriges and the Carnutes. With the Bellovaci More serious resistance was offered by the Bellovaci, who in the previous year had kept aloof from the relief of Alesia; they seem to have wished to show that their absence on that decisive day at least did not proceed from want of courage or of love for freedom.
Caesar, after having by the way caused Cenabum, the capital of the Carnutes, which had given the signal for the revolt, to be pillaged and laid in ashes, moved over the Loire into the country of the Bituriges. He thereby induced Vercingetorix to abandon the siege of the town of the Boii, and to resort likewise to the Bituriges. Here the new mode of warfare was first to be tried.
The Bituriges threw themselves at the feet of all the Gauls, and entreat that they should not be compelled to set fire with their own hands to the fairest city of almost the whole of Gaul, which was both a protection and ornament to the state; they say that "they could easily defend it, owing to the nature of the ground, for, being enclosed almost on every side by a river and a marsh, it had only one entrance, and that very narrow."
XXIX. Vercingetorix having convened an assembly on the following day, consoled and encouraged his soldiers in the following words: "That they should not be too much depressed in spirit, nor alarmed at their loss; that the Romans did not conquer by valour nor in the field, but by a kind of art and skill in assault, with which they themselves were unacquainted; that whoever expected every event in the war to be favourable, erred; that it never was his opinion that Avaricum should be defended, of the truth of which statement he had themselves as witnesses, but that it was owing to the imprudence of the Bituriges, and the too ready compliance of the rest, that this loss was sustained; that, however, he would soon compensate it by superior advantages; for that he would, by his exertions, bring over those states which severed themselves from the rest of the Gauls, and would create a general unanimity throughout the whole of Gaul, the union of which not even the whole earth could withstand, and that he had it already almost effected; that in the meantime it was reasonable that he should prevail on them, for the sake of the general safety, to begin to fortify their camp, in order that they might the more easily sustain the sudden attacks of the enemy."
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