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Gathering an army, he drove the Romans from the territory of his own people, and then marched into the country of the Sequani, whom he hoped to bring into the revolt. But the discomfiture of the Romans lasted only until they could bring their forces together. A battle ensued between the hastily-levied followers of Sabinus and a disciplined Roman army, with the inevitable result.
As for Caesar's saying that the Aedui had been styled 'brethren' by the senate, he was not so uncivilized nor so ignorant of affairs, as not to know that the Aedui in the very last war with the Allobroges had neither rendered assistance to the Romans, nor received any from the Roman people in the struggles which the Aedui had been maintaining with him and with the Sequani.
Having, therefore, as quickly as he could, provided a supply of corn, he hastened to Ariovistus by forced marches. XXXVIII. When he had proceeded three days' journey, word was brought to him that Ariovistus was hastening with all his forces to seize on Vesontio, which is the largest town of the Sequani, and had advanced three days' journey from his territories.
The Gauls then threw a strong garrison into Avaricum, which Cæsar besieged, and at length Cæsar's soldiers took it by storm. All the Gauls, with few exceptions, joined in the revolt; and the united forces, under Vercingetorix, attacked the Roman army while it was marching into the country of the Sequani, but they suffered complete defeat.
The corn expected from the Sequani, Leuci, Lingones was not to come to the Roman army in the course of their march against Ariovistus, but to be delivered at Besancon before their departure, and taken by the troops along with them; as is clearly apparent from the fact that Caesar, while pointing his troops to those supplies, comforts them at the same time with the hope of corn to be brought in on the route.
The neighbouring Celtic cantons the Sequani, Leuci, Mediomatrici were neither capable of self-defence nor trustworthy; the transplanted Germans promised to become not merely brave guardians of the frontier but also better subjects of Rome, for their nationality severed them from the Celts, and their own interest in the preservation of their newly-won settlements severed them from their countrymen across the Rhine, so that in their isolated position they could not avoid adhering to the central power.
A rupture had taken place between the two cantons respecting the tolls on the Saone, which separated the territory of the Haedui from that of the Sequani, and about the year 683 the German prince Ariovistus with some 15,000 armed men had crossed the Rhine as condottiere of the Sequani. Ariovistus on the Middle Rhine
On the other hand, the party in Gaul hostile to the Romans, which hoped to obtain a powerful reinforcement in the Helvetii, more especially the Haeduan Dumnorix brother of Divitiacus, and at the head of the national party in his canton as the latter wasat the head of the Romans, procured for them a passage through the passes of the Jura and the territory of the Sequani.
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