History of Julius Caesar Vol. 2 of 2. Napoleon III
on the fickle minds of the Gauls, he was unwilling to leave them time for reflection, but decided on delaying battle no longer; besides, it would have been folly to give the Germans leisure to wait the return of their cavalry. Next morning their chiefs came to the camp in great numbers, to offer their justification for the previous day’s attack in defiance of the convention, but their real object was to obtain by deception a prolongation of the truce. Cæsar, satisfied at seeing them deliver themselves into his power of their own accord, judged right to make use of reprisals, and ordered them to be arrested. The Roman army, then encamped on the Niers, was only eight miles distant from the Germans.302
Rout of the Usipetes and the Tencteri.
II. Cæsar drew all the troops out of his camp, formed the infantry in three lines,303 and placed the cavalry, still intimidated by the late combat, in the rear guard. After marching rapidly over the short distance which separated him from the Germans, he came upon them totally unexpected. Struck with terror at the sudden appearance of the army, and disconcerted by the absence of their chiefs, they had the time neither to deliberate nor to take their arms, and hesitated for a moment between flight and resistance.304 While their cries and disorder announce their terror, the Romans, provoked by their perfidious conduct on the previous day, rush upon the camp. As many of the Germans as are quick enough to gain their arms attempt to defend themselves, and combat among the baggage and wagons. But the women and children fly on every side. Cæsar sends the cavalry to pursue them. As soon as the barbarians, who still resisted, hear behind them the cries of the fugitives, and see the massacre of their companions, they throw down their arms, abandon their ensigns, and rush headlong out of the camp. They only cease their flight when they reach the confluence of the Rhine and the Meuse, where some are massacred and others are swallowed up in the river.305 This victory, which did not cost the Romans a single man, delivered them from a formidable war. Cæsar restored their liberty to the chiefs he had retained; but they, fearing the vengeance of the Gauls, whose lands they had ravaged, preferred remaining with him.306
First Passage of the Rhine.
III. After so brilliant a success, Cæsar, to secure the results, considered it a measure of importance to cross the Rhine, and so seek the Germans in their homes. For this purpose, he must choose the point of passage where the right bank was inhabited by a friendly people, the Ubii. The study of this and the following campaigns leads us to believe that this was Bonn.307 From the field of battle, then, he proceeded up the valley of the Rhine; he followed a direction indicated by the following localities: Gueldres, Crefeld, Neuss, Cologne, and Bonn. (See Plate 14.) Above all, it was Cæsar’s intention to put a stop to the rage of the Germans for invading Gaul, to inspire them with fears for their own safety, and to prove to them that the Roman army dared and could cross a great river. He had, moreover, a plausible motive for penetrating into Germany – the refusal of the Sicambri to deliver up to him the cavalry of the Usipetes and Tencteri, who had taken refuge among them after the battle. The Sicambri had replied to his demand, that the empire of the Roman people ended with the Rhine, and that beyond it Cæsar had no further claims. At the same time, the Ubii, who alone of the peoples beyond the Rhine had sought his alliance, claimed his protection against the Suevi, who were threatening them more seriously than ever. It would be a sufficient guarantee for their safety, they said, to show himself on the right bank of the Rhine, so great was the renown of the Roman army among even the most remote of the German nations, since the defeat of Ariovistus and the recent victory; and they offered him boats for passing the river. Cæsar declined this offer. It did not appear to him worthy of the dignity of himself or of the Roman people to have recourse to barbarians, and he judged it unsafe to transport the army in boats. Therefore, in spite of the obstacles presented by a wide, deep, and rapid river, he decided on throwing a bridge across it.
It was the first time that a regular army attempted to cross the Rhine. The bridge was constructed in the following manner. (See Plate 15.) Two trees (probably in their rough state), a foot and a half in thickness, cut to a point at one of their extremities, and of a length proportionate to the depth of the river, were bound together with cross-beams at intervals of two feet from each other; let down into the water, and stuck into the ground by means of machines placed in boats coupled together, they were driven in by blows of a rammer, not vertically, like ordinary piles, but obliquely, giving them an inclination in the direction of the current. Opposite them, and at a distance of forty feet below, another couple of piles were placed, arranged in the same manner, but inclined in a contrary direction, in order to resist the violence of the river. In the interval left between the two piles of each couple, a great beam was lodged, called the head-piece, of two feet square; these two couples (hæc utraque) were bound together on each side, beginning from the upper extremity, by two wooden ties (fibulæ), so that they could neither draw from nor towards each other, and presented, according to the “Commentaries,” a whole of a solidity so great, that the force of the water, so far from injuring it, bound all its parts tighter together.308 This system formed one row of piles of the bridge; and as many of them were established as were required by the breadth of the river. The Rhine at Bonn being about 430 mètres wide, the bridge must have been composed of fifty-six arches, supposing each of these to have been twenty-six Roman feet in length (7·70 mètres). Consequently, there were fifty-four rows of piles. The floor was formed of planks reaching from one head-piece to the other, on which were placed transversely smaller planks, which were covered with hurdles. Besides this, they drove in obliquely, below each row of piles, a pile which, placed in form of a buttress (quæ pro ariete subjectæ), and bound in with it, increased the resistance to the current. Other piles were similarly driven in at a little distance above the rows of piles, so as to form stockades, intended to stop trunks of trees and boats which the barbarians might have thrown down in order to break the bridge.
These works were completed in ten days, including the time employed for the transport of the materials. Cæsar crossed the river with his army, left a strong guard at each extremity of the bridge, and marched towards the territory of the Sicambri, proceeding, no doubt, up the valley of the Sieg and the Agger, (See Plate 14.) During his march, deputies from different peoples came to solicit his alliance. He gave them a friendly reception, and exacted hostages. As to the Sicambri, at the beginning of the erection of the bridge, they had fled to the deserts and forests, terrified by the reports of the Usipetes and Tencteri, who had taken refuge among them.
Cæsar remained only eighteen days beyond the Rhine. During this time he ravaged the territory of the Sicambri, returned to that of the Ubii, and promised them succour if they were attacked by the Suevi. The latter having withdrawn to the centre of their country, he renounced the prospect of combating them, and considered that he had thus accomplished his design.
It is evident, from what precedes, that Cæsar’s aim was not to make the conquest of Germany, but to strike a great blow which should disgust the barbarians with their frequent excursions across the Rhine. No doubt he hoped to meet with the Suevi, and give them battle; but learning that they had assembled at a great distance from the Rhine, he thought it more prudent not to venture into an unknown country covered with forests, but returned into Gaul, and caused the bridge to be broken.
It was not enough for Cæsar to have intimidated the Germans; he formed a still bolder project, that of crossing the sea, to go and demand a reckoning of the Britons for the succour which, in almost all his wars, and particularly in that of the Veneti, they had sent to the Gauls.309
Description of Britain in the time of Cæsar.
IV. The Romans had but imperfect information relating to Britain, which they owed to certain Greek writers, such as Pytheas of Marseilles, who had visited the Northern Sea in the fourth century before our era, and Timæus of Tauromenium. The Gauls who visited Britain for the sake of traffic, knew hardly more than the southern and south-eastern coasts. Nevertheless, a short time before the arrival of the Romans, one of the populations of Belgic
“Acie triplici instituta.” Some authors have translated these words by “the army was formed in three columns;” but Cæsar, operating in a country which was totally uncovered and flat, and aiming at surprising a great mass of enemies, must have marched in order of battle, which did not prevent each cohort from being in column.
Attacked unexpectedly in the afternoon, while they were sleeping. (Dio Cassius, XXXIX. 48.)
The study of the deserted beds of the Rhine leads us to believe that the confluence of the Waal and the Meuse, which is at present near Gorkum, was then much more to the east, towards Fort Saint-André. In that case, Cæsar made no mistake in reckoning eighty miles from the junction of the Waal and the Meuse to the mouth of the latter river.
The following reasons have led us to adopt Bonn as the point where Cæsar crossed the Rhine: —
We learn from the “Commentaries” that in 699 he debouched in the country of the Ubii, and that two years later it was a little above (
This being admitted, it remains to fix, within the limits assigned to these two last peoples, the most probable point of passage. Hitherto, Cologne has been adopted; but, to answer to the data of the “Commentaries,” Cologne appears to us to be much too far to the north. In fact, in the campaign of 701, Cæsar, having started from the banks of the Rhine, traversed the forest of the Ardennes from east to west, passed near the Segni and the Condrusi, since they implored him to spare their territory, and directed his march upon Tongres. If he had started from Cologne, he would not have crossed the countries in question. Moreover, in this same year, 2,000 Sicambrian cavalry crossed the Rhine thirty miles below the bridge of the Roman army. Now, if this bridge had been constructed at Cologne, the point of passage of the Sicambri, thirty miles below, would have been at a very great distance from Tongres, where, nevertheless, they seem to have arrived very quickly.
On the contrary, everything is explained if we adopt Bonn as the point of passage. To go from Bonn to Tongres, Cæsar proceeded, as the text has it, across the forest of the Ardennes; he passed through the country of the Segni and Condrusi, or very near them; and the Sicambri, crossing the Rhine thirty miles below Bonn, took the shortest line from the Rhine to Tongres. Moreover, we cannot place Cæsar’s point of passage either lower or higher than Bonn. Lower, that is, towards the north, the different incidents related in the “Commentaries” are without possible application to the theatre of the events; higher, towards the south, the Rhine flows upon a rocky bed, where the piles could not have been driven in, and presents, between the mountains which border it, no favourable point of passage. We may add that Cæsar would have been much too far removed from the country of the Sicambri, the chastisement of whom was the avowed motive of his expedition.
Another fact deserves to be taken into consideration: that, less than fifty years after Cæsar’s campaigns, Drusus, in order to proceed against the Sicambri – that is, against the same people whom Cæsar intended to combat – crossed the Rhine at Bonn. (Florus, IV. 12.)
The following passage has given room for different interpretations: —
“Hæc utraque insuper bipedalibus trabibus immissis, quantum eorum tignorum junctura distabat, binis utrimque fibulis ab extrema parte distinebantur; quibus disclusis atque in contrariam partem revinctis, tanta erat operis firmitudo atque ea rerum natura, ut, quo major vis aquæ se incitavisset, hoc arctius illigata tenerentur.” (
It has not been hitherto observed that the words