The locality occupied by the Helvetii when they made their submission is unknown; yet all circumstances seem to concur in placing the theatre of this event in the western part of the country of the Lingones. This hypothesis appears the more reasonable, as Cæsar’s march, in the following campaign, can only be explained by supposing him to start from this region. We admit, then, that Cæsar received the submission of the Helvetii on the Armançon, towards Tonnerre, and it is there that we suppose him to have been encamped during the events upon the recital of which we are now going to enter.
Observations.
VIII. The forces of the two armies opposed to each other in the battle of Bibracte were about equal, for Cæsar had six legions – the 10th, which he had found in the Roman province; the three old legions (7th, 8th, and 9th), which he had brought from Aquileia; and the two new ones (11th and 12th), raised in the Cisalpine. The effective force of each must have been near the normal number of 6,000 men, for the campaign had only begun, and their ranks must have been increased by the veterans and volunteers of whom we have spoken in the first volume (page 456). The number of the legionaries was thus 36,000. Adding 4,000 cavalry, raised in the Roman province and among the Ædui, and probably 20,000 auxiliaries,196 we shall have a total of 60,000 combatants, not including the men attached to the machines, those conducting the baggage, the army servants, &c. The Helvetii, on their side, did not count more than 69,000 combatants, since, out of 92,000, they had lost one-fourth near the Saône.
In this battle, it must be remarked, Cæsar did not employ the two legions newly raised, which remained to guard the camp, and secure the retreat in case of disaster. Next year he assigned the same duty to the youngest troops. The cavalry did not pursue the enemies in their rout, doubtless because the mountainous nature of the locality made it impossible for it to act.
CHAPTER IV.
CAMPAIGN AGAINST ARIOVISTUS
Seat of the Suevi and other German Tribes.
I. ON the termination of the war against the Helvetii, the chiefs of nearly all Celtic Gaul went to congratulate Cæsar, and thank him for having, at the same time, avenged their old injuries, and delivered their country from immense danger. They expressed the desire to submit to his judgment certain affairs, and, in order to concert matters previously, they solicited his permission to convoke a general assembly. Cæsar gave his consent.
After the close of the deliberations, they returned, secretly and in tears, to solicit his support against the Germans and Ariovistus, one of their kings. These peoples were separated from the Gauls by the Rhine, from its mouth to the Lake of Constance. Among them the Suevi occupied the first rank. They were by much the most powerful and the most warlike. They were said to be divided into a hundred cantons, each of which furnished, every year, a thousand men for war and a thousand men for agriculture, taking each other’s place alternately: the labourers fed the soldiers. No boundary line, among the Suevi, separated the property of the fields, which remained common, and no one could prolong his residence on the same lands beyond a year. However, they hardly lived upon the produce of the soil: they consumed little wheat, and drank no wine; milk and flesh were their habitual food. When these failed, they were fed upon grass.197 Masters of themselves from infancy, intrepid hunters, insensible to the inclemency of the seasons, bathing in the cold waters of the rivers, they hardly covered a part of their bodies with thin skins. They were savages in manners, and of prodigious force and stature. They disdained commerce and foreign horses, which the Gauls sought with so much care. Their own horses, though mean-looking and ill-shaped, became indefatigable through exercise, and fed upon brushwood. Despising the use of the saddle, often, in engagements of cavalry, they jumped to the ground and fought on foot: their horses were taught to remain without moving.198 The belief in the dogma of the immortality of the soul, strengthened in them the contempt for life.199 They boasted of being surrounded by immense solitudes: this fact, as they pretended, showed that a great number of their neighbours had not been able to resist them: and it was reported, indeed, that on one side (towards the east) their territory was bounded, for an extent of 600 miles, by desert plains; on the other, they bordered upon the Ubii, their tributaries, the most civilised of the German peoples, because their situation on the banks of the Rhine placed them in relation with foreign merchants, and because, neighbours to the Gauls, they had formed themselves to their manners.200
Two immense forests commenced not far from the Rhine, and extended, from west to east, across Germany; these were the Hercynian and Bacenis forests. (See Plate 2.) The first, beginning from the Black Forest and the Odenwald, covered all the country situated between the Upper Danube and the Maine, and comprised the mountains which, further towards the east, formed the northern girdle of the basin of the Danube; that is, the Boehmerwald, the mountains of Moravia, and the Little Carpathians. It had a breadth which Cæsar represents by nine long days’ march.201 The other, of much less extent, took its rise in the forest of Thuringia; it embraced all the mountains to the north of Bohemia, and that long chain which separates the basins of the Oder and the Vistula from that of the Danube.
The Suevi inhabited, to the south of the forest Bacenis, the countries situated between the forest of Thuringia, the Boehmerwald, the Inn, and the Black Forest, which compose, in our days, the Duchies of Saxe-Meiningen and Saxe-Coburg, Bavaria, and the greater part of Wurtemberg.202 To the east of the Suevi were the Boii (partly in Bohemia and partly in the north-west of Austria);203 to the north, the Cherusci, separated from the Suevi by the forest Bacenis; to the west, the Marcomanni (the upper and middle course of the Maine) and the Sedusii (between the Maine and the Neckar); to the south, the Harudes (on the north of the Lake of Constance), the Tulingi, and the Latobriges (the southern part of the Grand Duchy of Baden).
On the two banks of the Rhine dwelt the Rauraci (the territory of Bâle and part of the Brisgau); the Triboces (part of Alsace and of the Grand Duchy of Baden): on the right bank were the Nemetes (opposite Spire); the Vangiones (opposite Worms); the Ubii, from the Odenwald to the watershed of the Sieg and the Ruhr. To the north of the Ubii were the Sicambri, established in Sauerland, and nearly as far as the Lippe. Finally, the Usipetes and the Tencteri were still farther to the north, towards the mouth of the Rhine. (See Plate 2.)
The Gauls solicit Cæsar to come to their assistance.
II. The Gaulish chiefs who had come to solicit the succour of Cæsar made the following complaints against Ariovistus: – “The German king,” they said, “had taken advantage of the quarrels which divided the different peoples of Gaul; called in formerly by the Arverni and the Sequani, he had gained, with their co-operation, several victories over the Ædui, in consequence of which the latter were subjected to the most humiliating conditions. Shortly afterwards his yoke grew heavy on the Sequani themselves, to such a degree that, though conquerors with him, they are now more wretched than the vanquished Ædui. Ariovistus has seized a third of their territory;204 another third is on the point of being given up, by his orders, to 24,000 Harudes, who have joined him some months ago. There are 120,000 Germans in Gaul. The contingents of the Suevi have already arrived on the banks of the Rhine. In a few years the invasion of Gaul by the Germans will be general. Cæsar alone can prevent it, by his prestige and that of the Roman name, by the force of his arms, and by the fame of his recent victory.”
Gaul thus came voluntarily, in the persons of her chiefs, to throw herself into the arms of Cæsar, take him for the arbiter of her destiny, and implore him to be her saviour. He spoke encouragingly, and promised them his