John D. McDermott: Red Cloud: Oglala Legend. Pierre: South Dakota Historical Society, 2015.

 

Born in 1821, during the Monroe Administration, the Oglala chief Red Cloud witnessed the ruin of his way of life at the hands of the American empire of liberty. The dispute turned, in many ways, on what ‘liberty’ means. The American meaning of liberty contradicted the Oglala meaning of liberty, and this reflected the contradiction between the regimes that drove the conquests undertaken and the empires established by the Oceti Šakowin or Lakota and the United States. The Oglala tribe numbers among the seven political groups or ‘Council Fires’ of the Lakota. The Lakota arrived in what are now southern Wisconsin, northwestern Illinois, and northeastern Iowa in the seventeenth century, driven out of Upper Mississippi by the Ojibwas or Chippewas, who called them the ‘Sioux’ (a term that may mean ‘snake’ and is therefore rejected by many Lakota). In alliance with the Hurons, the Chippewas also successfully resisted encroachments by the powerful Iroquois to the east, who had driven the Hurons out of the Finger Lakes region, earlier. 

If this suggests that northern and western North America prior to European colonization was no less roiled by warriors than Europe itself, the suggestion has merit. By the late eighteenth century, the Oglala and some of their fellow Lakota, the Brules, moved west across the Missouri River, searching for game, reaching the Black Hills of today’s South Dakota by the early nineteenth century. During this time, they fought and usually defeated the several non-Lakota tribes in the region, prompting Red Hawk, a medicine man and contemporary of Red Cloud, to pronounce his people “superior to all others of mankind.” According to the Lakota civil religion, all mankind, and indeed all of what Western philosophers call ‘Being,’ finds its unity in the Wakan Tanka or Great Spirit, which “dwelt in every object, whether of nature or of man’s making.” Such unity does not preclude hierarchy, however, and to the Lakota, “when whites tried to take them away from their lands” under the policy called ‘Indian removal,’ “they threatened not only Lakota livelihood but Lakota essence as well”—an essence the Lakota judged to be of the highest merit. The essence of the Americans was the same as the essence of the Lakota insofar as they both instantiated the same Spirit, but at very least the Lakota deserved to continue their way of life on their Spirit-granted land, having won it from the other tribes. This meant that American military victories were not mere instances of physical overpowering but called into question the (so to speak) metaphysical status of the Lakota, which they had proven to their own satisfaction in battle. 

McDermott contrasts the Lakota and American regimes. The Lakota dwelling, the tipi, with its conical shape represented “the wholeness and unity” of the world animated by the Great Spirit. So did the camp circles. The tipi is easily assembled and reassembled, designed to serve a nomadic way of life whereby the Oglala “move[d] over the land from one place to another in chase of the buffalo and to harvest fruits and other wild foods from spring through fall.” As Red Cloud put it, “no house imprisoned us.” The American settlers, by contrast, built four-cornered houses, symbols of “security and immobility, meant to protect the few who occupied it and keep out the uninvited”—in a word, property. Red Cloud, however, had no desire “to dig the earth to make food and clothing grow from it.” Such stark regime differences quite understandably led to war.

The Lakota regime was well-adapted to warfare. “Like other Oglala boys, Red Cloud received warrior training,” with battlefield courage revered as “the greatest of virtues to which a young warrior should aspire.” The virtues inculcated by the Oglala regime find parallels in the regimes of the Gauls as Julius Caesar describes them, including generosity in addition to courage. As a young man, Red Cloud claimed some 80 ‘kills’ of enemies, many of them Crows and Pawnees, becoming what a friend of his called “a terror in war with other tribes.”. When the United States Army took over the fur trading settlement, Fort Laramie, in 1849, Red Cloud “immediately saw the differences between the Lakota and white approaches to warfare,” differences again reflective of the two regimes. Lakota warriors themselves fought in a sort of ‘nomadic’ fashion, with no organized formations; the American more resembled the Romans, forming in lines. Knowledge of the American way of war proved “most useful” to Red Cloud, Red Cloud said.

“Red Cloud grew up in a world of intrigue and violence,” in which the Oglala fought the Pawnees, Omahas, Crows, Utes, Shoshonis, and other non-Sioux tribes, while also fighting one another. Red Cloud killed the leader of his grandfather’s enemy, Bull Bear, in 1841; this enhanced the young man’s prestige among his people, prestige he needed to rise in the tribal hierarchy because he was a second son, not in line to inherit a chieftainship. He continued to exhibit his prowess in the next decade and a half, by which time he had achieved the status of a chief “recognized by Lakotas and whites alike.” 

Up to the late 1840s, the few Americans Amerindians saw in the region “brought firearms and other material good that benefited Lakotas,” and such traders were welcome. The California gold rush brought an influx of travelers, not settlers, but travelers carried disease, hunted, burned wood, used the prairie grasses for grazing the livestock they brought with them. To help supply and protect Americans, the United States government established forts in Nebraska, Wyoming, and Idaho. In 1851, five tribes signed an agreement with the U.S. to guarantee safe passage to travelers and acceding to the presence of the forts in exchange for annual payments in the form of goods. But this did not settle territorial disputes between the Lakota and the Crow, who continued to fight one another; nor did it prevent a serious incident a few years later, when U.S. Army Lieutenant John L. Grattan blundered into an exchange of fire with some Brules, who killed him and the men under his command. A retaliatory expedition led by Brevet Brigadier General William S. Harney resulted in a devastating defeat for one of the Brule encampments; unintimidated, the Lakota agreed in council to “exclude whites, other than traders, from the region north of the north Platte River and West of the Missouri,” to sign no more treaties, and to make war on the Crows in order “to gain control of the buffalo country near the Powder River.” The Lakota won that war, with assistance from their Cheyenne and Arapaho allies, in 1860, as the Americans readied themselves for civil war.

Unfortunately for the Lakota, in 1858 Americans had discovered more gold and silver in what is now Colorado. “These regions became magnets drawing fortune-seeking whites in large numbers, some of whom wished to cross the Lakotas’ new sanctuary en-route.” The United States government supported their intentions, with Army Captain William F. Raynolds marking out a wagon route between the Oregon Trail and the Yellowstone-Missouri Basin, roughly along the same line as what would soon be called the Bozeman Trail, named after wagon train leader John M. Bozeman. In the wake of the Army’s victory of the eastern Sioux, resulting in the seizure of Sioux lands in Minnesota, Red Cloud went to war to prevent that from happening to his own people. “Shall we permit ourselves to be driven to and fro—to be herded like the cattle of the white men?”

One of the main problems the U.S. government faced was lack of firm control over the Army officers, travelers, and eventual settlers in this distant part of the continent—a circumstance similar to that faced by President Jackson in his dealings with Georgians covetous of Amerindian land in the 1830s. One egregious instance of such infirmity occurred in November 1864, when an Army troop under the command of Colonel John M. Chivington attacked a peaceful Southern Cheyenne and Arapaho village, killing 53 men and 110 women in what is now known as the Sand Creek massacre. The carnage “shocked even some of the most hardened Indian-haters,” and Chivington resigned his commission to escape military prosecution. Striking back, an allied force of some 3,000 Plains Indians defeated U.S. forces at Platte Ridge Station, Wyoming, with Red Cloud participating as one of the war-party leaders. “By the end of 1865, Red Cloud was fully committed to stopping white migration and settlement in the Powder River Country and to preserving the superb hunting grounds east of the Bighorn Mountains for his own people. By doing so effectively, he had inspired like minds among the Lakotas, and from then on he was a force to be reckoned with.” 

McDermott pauses to offer a telling observation about the Lakota way of war. A leader like Red Cloud would set strategy and lead his men to battle, but during the battle itself the warriors would fight as they chose, vying for “battle honors.” (As indeed Red Cloud himself had done, as a young warrior.) That is, they fought the way the Gauls fought the Romans or, for that matter, the way the Greeks fight in the Iliad. For their part, the Americans fought in imitation of European models, themselves based on Roman practice.  Regimes animated by individual honor or heroism resist military discipline.

By the mid-1860s, covered wagons weren’t the only problem faced by the Plains Amerindians. Americans were building railroads, which frightened the game and thereby deprived the Lakota of their livelihood. Red Cloud saw no alternative to continuing the war that he had thus far prosecuted with some success: “White man lies and steals. My lodges were many, but now they are few. The white man wants all. The white man must fight, and the Indian will die where his fathers died.” 

The war lasted from 1866 to 1868. Red Cloud faced U.S. forces strengthened with the end of the Civil War. He responded exactly as Vercingetorix had responded to the legions of Julius Caesar, using tactics of “stealth, swift movement, and surprise attacks designed to hurt and harass the enemy while exposing the war party to minimum risk were hallmarks of the Plains Indian military tradition,” a tradition necessarily continued because Red Cloud’s warriors “lacked up-to-date firearms, and many still depended on bows and arrows, lances, knives, tomahawks, or war clubs.” Like the great Gaul commander, Vercingetorix, who knew better than to fight the Romans alone, he offered alliance with his erstwhile enemies, the Crows, who declined to join him. By the beginning of 1868, Red Cloud, making a realistic calculation of his reduced chances, offered negotiation with the Americans, but insisted on continued Lakota rule over the Powder River valley. Seeing that there were other routes to Montana, the Grant evacuation ordered the evacuation of U.S. forts along the Bozeman Trail, signing an agreement with another prominent Lakota chief—the Brule, Spotted Tail—but not with Red Cloud. [1]

The Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868 set aside the Great Sioux Reservation in the western half of today’s South Dakota and part of today’s North Dakota. Although the treaty language stipulated that these lands were reserved “for the absolute and undisturbed use and occupancy of the Sioux,” it also stated that Americans had the right to construct railroads, wagon roads, mail stations, “or other works of utility or necessity, which may be ordered or permitted by the laws of the United States”; it identified a large area between the Black Hills and the Bighorn Mountains as a place where Reservation Indians could hunt, but only so long as the buffalo population “remained sufficiently numerous.” Once the buffalo disappeared, the land “would revert to the public domain and only Americans, not Indians, would be allowed to settle there.” That is, the treaty recognized Lakota sovereignty within the Reservation but set in motion the conditions under which that sovereignty would soon become impossible to maintain. In tacit recognition of this likelihood, the United States supplied “a variety of specialists, services, infrastructure, and equipment” to encourage the Lakota “to give up their traditional way of life and take up agriculture on the Euro-American model”—the policy of regime change the Washington Administration had successfully implemented with the five Southern Amerindian tribes, before the Georgians took it upon themselves to drive them out. Americans established an “agency” or headquarters along the Missouri River, where guaranteed food rations and clothing allotments would be distributed. The rival Crows signed a similar treaty, which established a reservation in southern Montana.

Red Cloud demurred. He did not want regime change for his people. “What he did want, he said, was some powder and lead to fight the Crows,” which Fort Laramie commander Major William Dye promptly refused. Red Cloud nevertheless agreed to peace with the Americans, since the Bozeman Trail was being abandoned by them, and that had been the casus belli. At the same time, he wanted Dye to understand that the existing regime ethos and organization of the Lakota would make “the young Lakota warriors…difficult to control.” (Indeed, Lakota chiefs and American civilian and even military authorities faced similar problems of obtaining obedience from subordinates.) Warrior regimes valorize young men; chiefs rule them by persuasion and authority, but such rule can be tenuous. Indeed, although he remained “the most influential tribal chief among the Lakotas, “the young warriors began to drift away from Red Cloud, preferring the uncompromising chiefs Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull.” In one sense, the warriors were right: the Fort Laramie Treaty “was an undeniable strategic victory for the whites because it set the stage for the eventual dispossession of the Sioux.” In another sense, Red Cloud saw more clearly than they that the Americans could no longer be stopped if the Americans chose not to be stopped. He “would spend the remainder of his days as chief attempting to ameliorate European-Americans’ impacts on his people.” He was caught in between a policy of regime change which might have preserved his people under the new conditions—although that, too, would have left them with the same risks taken by the Five Civilized Tribes of the South, which had led them to the Trail of Tears—and the predictably futile military resistance led by the war party. 

Red Cloud confirmed his prudential sense that American advance was irresistible during his visit to Washington, D.C. in June 1870. He announced his rejection of the Fort Laramie Treaty, claiming that U.S. government translators had lied to Lakota negotiators about its terms. He also made a successful speech in defense of this position to a sympathetic audience at Cooper Union in New York, including a defense of the moral character of his regime. (“We do not want riches, but we want to train our children right. Riches would do us no good”—as indeed they would not, in the eyes of a warrior.) But he saw the vast numbers of Americans and assessed their military and economic power. Sobered, when he tried to relate what he had seen to his people at home, they dismissed his stories as impossible, some “believ[ing] that the whites had been able to make Red Cloud see only what they wanted him to see,” having cast a spell over him. Nor could Red Cloud effectively resist this consensus, given “the influence of warrior societies in Lakota affairs” and the repugnance which they felt for the agrarian way of life. By 1872, seeing that war was hopeless and the conditions of peace ignoble, Red Cloud refused to ally with Lakota in northern areas who had not signed the Fort Laramie treaty: “You must carry on war yourself. I am done.” He might not be able to win consensus among his own people, but he retained his power to refuse the requests of outsiders.

He undertook rather to deal with the Americans at what had been titled the Red Cloud Agency, located just south of where he had located his camp. John J. Saville was the first agent there, and his “job was not easy.” Warriors from the northern tribes would arrive and demand supplies they were not entitled to have; when the intimidated Saville handed over the good it diminished those supplies for those who had signed the treaty. In order to determine the quantity of supplies he needed, Saville needed to take a census of those living at the Agency, but the Lakota wouldn’t stand for it, “fearing that the count would result in reduced rations.” As for Red Cloud himself, he had to deal with increasing factionalism among his people. Some did come to accept life on the reservation and the regime change the Americans wanted them to undergo; others also stayed but resisted regime change; some wanted a reservation of their own. Yet the U.S. government dealt with Red Cloud as if he were the “principal chief of the reservation Sioux and expected him to control all the reservation Oglala. Even if he could have done that, some of the residents were Brules, not Oglala, and Red Cloud had no real authority over them. The United States had assigned Saville more responsibility than his real power warranted; it had assigned Red Cloud more responsibility than his real authority warranted.

This situation might have continued for a long time. It didn’t, after General Philip Sheridan sent George Armstrong Custer to explore the Black Hills. Custer confirmed the discovery of gold, there. Red Cloud and Spotted Tail were willing to enter negotiations for the sale of the Black Hills; although “the power of Wakan Tanka was concentrated in all its multiplicity in the Black Hills,” that didn’t mean that the region was sacred and never to be sold, but rather that it was primarily a source of wealth and therefore saleable at a fair price. Those who opposed the sale at the time, notably Sitting Bull, also considered it as a place of great natural resources—a gift of Wakan Tanka to the Lakota but not sacred land. Negotiations went nowhere, as President Grant met with a Lakota delegation including Red Cloud and told them to relinquish the Black Hills or lose their government-supplied food and provisions. As the impasse continued into the summer of 1875, U.S. military commanders ordered “miners and other unauthorized whites to leave the Black Hills and the other unceded Indian territories described in the Treaty of Fort Laramie” and to stay out “until new arrangements were negotiated with the Indians.” The negotiations saw no progress, with both sides hardening their positions. 

As so often happened in U.S.-Amerindian affairs, the Army couldn’t enforce its own edicts. Miners filtered back into the Black Hills. The Army did move to enforce a command that non-treaty Indians in unceded territory move to the reservations, and when many refused to comply, the Great Sioux War of 1876-1877 began. Sheridan planned a three-pronged march against the recalcitrant Lakota and Cheyenne, intending “to force the Indians into a general area where they could be engaged by any of the columns.” For his part, Lieutenant Colonel Custer was assigned five companies of the Seventh Cavalry Regiment to block a possible Indian escape in the south by occupying the Little Bighorn Valley, believed to hold a large Indian village.” He and his men famously fell victim to their gross underestimation of Lakota, Cheyenne and Arapaho warriors in the valley. Nonetheless, the overall campaign resulted in the crushing defeat of Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse. True to his word, Red Cloud took no part in the war.

Loss of the war meant loss of the Black Hills. The U.S. government offered to pay for the Black Hills in exchange for not only the Black Hills but relocation—some to what is now South Dakota and others, including the Oglala and the Brules, to “Indian Territory” (now Oklahoma), where the land was better for farming. Red Cloud joined several other Oglala chiefs in signing the treaty, making “no secret of their displeasure in doing so.” On the American side, General George R. Crook, who had commanded one of the three Army forces in the 1876 march against the non-treaty Indians, suspected Red Cloud of secretly aiding those Indians who had continued to resist militarily. He removed him as chief of the reservation Indians, replacing him with Spotted Tail; this meant that the Brules, not the Oglala, would have their chief recognized by the United States as “overall chief of the Sioux.” 

In 1878, Red Cloud and his people did move, but not to Oklahoma. They settled along White Clay Creek, just south of the town of Pine Ridge on the today’s Nebraska-South Dakota border. The Office of Indian Affairs concurred with this decision, establishing the Pine Ridge Agency as the home of Red Cloud’s much-diminished people. “The government’s struggle to remake Lakota society would continue in earnest at Pine Ridge.” 

Spearheading the move for regime change was a thirty-year-old agent named Valentine McGillycuddy. A critic of U.S. government mistreatment of the Lakota, he had been appointed to his position after meeting with Commissioner of Indian Affairs Ezra A. Hayt and Secretary of the Interior Carl Schurz in January 1879. “McGillycuddy made it his mission to start his charges on the white man’s path through education, Christianization, and agriculture”—the longstanding American policy of regime change. Unfortunately, he was temperamentally ill-suited to be a founder, “lack[ing] patience and finesse.” He told Red Cloud, “The white man has come to stay; and wherever he places his foot the native takes a back-seat.” When Red Cloud protested that this was not right, the would-be Christian agrarian educator offered that “it is not a matter of right or wrong, but of might and destiny.” By now, Red Cloud knew all about might and destiny but continued to detest the prospect of regime change. “The Great Spirit did not make us,” the Lakota, “to work. He made us to hunt and fish. The white man can work if he wants to, but the Great Spirit did not make us to work.” The Black Hills weren’t sacred, but the Lakota way of life was; since the Black Hills had been taken from the Lakota by the “white man,” the white man therefore “owes us a living for the lands he has taken from us.” McGillycuddy had no interest in perpetuating U.S. government payments to the Lakota but rather in standing them up for self-sufficiency. The way of self-sufficiency could no longer be hunting and fishing but farming, that is, regime change. For this purpose, he intended “to settle Indian families on individual homesteads throughout the reservation,” undercutting the authority of the chiefs, which depended upon economic and social communalism. As McGillycuddy observed in a report to his superiors, the chiefs’ “glory as petty potentates will have departed,” once this policy was enacted. He went so far as to undermine Lakota family structure by “encouraging” parents “to send their children to the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.” As an alternative, Red Cloud supported the Holy Rosary Mission, established by Jesuits in 1887 near the Pine Ridge Agency. McGillycuddy didn’t much like Catholics, and had kept them out of the reservation, but the Lakota had had good relations with a Jesuit missionary, Father Pierre-Jean De Smet, who had lived in the area in the 1830s through the 1860s. McGillycuddy outright forbade Indian religious ceremonies and practices, particularly the Sun Dance, his actions reinforced by the 1883 Code of Indian Offenses issued by the Secretary of the Interior, prohibited polygamy, the practices of the traditional medicine men, and (perhaps reflecting the growing American sentiment for prohibition of alcohol) the presence of liquor on all Indian reservations.  “The code, which outlawed several key elements of Sioux culture, was a terrific blow to the Lakota people and to Red Cloud’s prestige.” The U.S. government then added the Major Crimes Act in 1885, which eliminated Indian judicial control over cases involving felony crimes, transferring that authority to federal courts. To enforce the code, McGillycuddy moved to replace the Indian police force with Americans.

Weary of “the bickering, charges and countercharges, threats, and confrontations emanating from Pine Ridge,” and perhaps none too happy with a Republican Party appointee in the position, the Cleveland Administration removed McGillycuddy in 1886. “Red Cloud had finally won.” His temporary replacement, Captain James M. Bell of the Seventh Cavalry, proved less annoying, and Hugh D. Gallagher, the permanent agent, quickly “established a rapport with Red Cloud and the other chiefs.” However, the Allotment Act of 1887, which advanced the policy of eliminating communal property and settling families on tracts of 160 acres, followed by the 1889 Sioux Act, which divided the Great Sioux Reservation into six smaller units and provided for the sale of the surplus to settlers, revived Red Cloud’s animosity. This time, he was outvoted by his own people, who acceded to the new arrangements. But with additional restrictions on Indian settlement, they were left with the task of “cultivat[ing] essentially barren land in a semi-arid climate.” 

The years 1889-1890 saw another round of deadly epidemics. This led to the Ghost Dance movement, a religious revival, which Red Cloud explained: “There was no hope on earth, and God seemed to have forgotten us. Some said they saw the Son of God; others did not see Him. If He had come, He would do some great things as He had done before.” The revival coincided with the arrival of still another agent, Daniel F. Royer, “whose political connections were his sole qualification for office.” Terrified by the Ghost Dance, he “dispatched a frantic plea for military protection.” The arrival of army troops in turn terrified the Ghost Dancers, who fled the reservation; simultaneously, a band of Minneconjou Lakota left their reservation and headed for Pine Ridge. Intercepted by U.S. cavalry at the end of December and refusing to disarm, they fought and died near Wounded Knee Creek, losing at least 175 men, women, and children while killing 25 U.S. cavalry and wounding 39 others. Red Cloud correctly predicted that the surviving “hostiles” would eventually surrender and settle in the reservation. As for himself, “My sun is set. My day is done. Darkness is stealing over me.” He died in 1909. 

Red Cloud shared with Vercingetorix what would later be called a ‘guerrilla’ strategy. This shows that military strategies suggest themselves to human beings as such, when they face similar circumstances. Both the Lakota and the Gauls loved liberty, understood as living free of rule by foreigners; this, too, may well reflect human nature. And they were both brave in battle. Yet Red Cloud, as Americans understood him, excelled Vercingetorix. as Caesar understood him, in steadiness and prudence. Constrained by young warriors who wanted only to fight and win honor, himself preferring the way of life of the hunter to that of the farmer, neither he nor his regime was quite civilized in the Roman (or the American) sense, but he had a statesmanlike quality that sets him above the Gaul. 

 

Note

1. For a careful study of Spotted Tail’s life, see Richmond L. Clow: Spotted Tail: Warrior and Statesman.  Pierre: South Dakota Historical Society, 2019.

 

 

Julius Caesar: The Gallic War. Books II-VII. In The Landmark Julius Caesar. Edited and translated by Kurt A. Raaflaub. New York: Anchor Books, 2017.

 

Caesar knows his enemy, devoting attention not only to gathering and analyzing ‘military intelligence’ but to understanding the Gallic way of life. Of the peoples inhabiting Gaul, two (three, including the Romans in Cisalpine Gaul) are not of the Gallic nation. The warlike Belgae originated in Germany and the Helvetii were the ancestors of today’s Swiss. 

In the fall of 57 B.C., Caesar returned to Cisalpine Gaul, having defeated the Nervii, a Belgic tribe in a tough campaign, temporarily pacifying Transalpine Gaul. But the Veneti, seafaring Gauls who lived along the Atlantic coast, chose not to cooperate, attacking troops under the command of the Roman general Publius Crassus and capturing several of his officers. “They appealed to other nations [i.e., Gallic tribes on the coast] to choose to keep the liberty they had inherited from their ancestors rather than endure slavery imposed by the Romans.” They soon had the region up in arms. “Many considerations urged Caesar to take up this war,” including the capture of Roman officers, the extent of the “conspiracy” among the Gallic tribes, and “most important, the need to keep the other nations from thinking that, because the actions of those in this region were ignored, they could do likewise.” Indeed, “almost all the Gauls were keen to overthrow the existing order and swift and impetuous in stirring themselves up for war.”

Caesar then makes an observation that might easily be overlooked. “He knew that all people are by nature excitable by their eagerness for liberty and loathe the state of slavery.” That is, he never supposes the Gauls to be subhuman. The love of liberty and the hatred of slavery characterize human beings as such. The Romans are no different than the Gauls, that way. What differentiates Romans from Gauls is not nature; it is civilization. The Romans are civilized, the Gauls “barbarians.” Throughout the Gallic War, Caesar gives his readers glimpses of how he understands that distinction. 

Roman civilization quite famously did not prevent the Roman army from waging war harshly. The Romans burned towns, sometimes killing ‘civilians.’ In the war with the Nervii, “the nation and the very name of the Nervii were reduced almost to annihilation,” as “the number of their councilors had been reduced from six hundred to three, and that of their men able to bear arms from sixty thousand to scarcely five hundred.” Nonetheless, Roman harshness did not foreclose Roman clemency after an enemy’s surrender, as “Caesar wished to make it known that he was merciful in dealing with miserable people and supplicants,” taking “great care for their safety, telling them to stay in their own territory and towns and ordering the leaders of their neighbors to restrain themselves and their people from committing outrages against them.” As to the Nervii, their barbarity did not prevent them from “display[ing] enormous bravery: when their front fighters fell, those behind them stood on the fallen bodies and fought from their corpses.” “They had dared to cross a very wide river, climb extremely high banks, and attack over most unfavorable terrain; the greatness of their spirit had made these excessively hard things seem easy.” Barbarity doesn’t mean cowardice.

The Gauls’ barbarity inheres partly in their inability to sustain enterprises they undertake. “Although the spirit of the Gauls is quick and eager to start wars, their minds are weak and hardly able to withstand and absorb major reversals.” This accounts for the cycle of attack, defeat, surrender, renewed attack, seen throughout the war. They lack the Romans’ steadiness of soul. This “weakness of mind” does not mean stupidity. By the following year, the Morini and Menapii refused either to disarm or sue for peace. Instead, they changed strategy,” gathering their belongings and retreated into a large area of woods and swamps, which afforded protection from easy attack. When Roman troops left camp to forage for food, these tribes attacked them, after the manner of what we now call guerrillas; the Romans would counterattack, drive the Gauls “back into the woods, killing many of them, but when they pursued them too far, into places where it was difficult to maneuver, they lost a few of their own.” That is, the Gauls readily learned from battlefield experience and just as readily adjusted their strategy accordingly. The ‘barbarian mind,’ so to speak, wages war intelligently. 

Perhaps the Gauls’ leading vice was “fickleness,” their “unstable nature.” “They easily adopt new plans and tend to be eager for political change.” This being so, Caesar “thought he should in no way rely on them.” Although he gathered information from them as best he could, he found that “they depend on vague rumors and most people give answers that are made up to suit the wishes of their questioners.” When gathering allied tribes for a military campaign, “he could not afford to give the Gauls any time to make their own plans.” Although unreliable allies, they were for the same reason vulnerable as enemies, tending to faction both among and within the tribes. “In Gaul, factions divide not only all the nations, regions, and districts but almost every single household.” There was little need to expend much energy to divide them before conquering them. It was their warlikeness and rebelliousness that made conquest difficult. And with these thumotic qualities came a sense of honor and of shame. “They who used to excel in bravery over all other peoples, were now deeply resentful at having fallen so short of this reputation that they were reduced to enduring the rule of the Roman people.”

Nor did they hesitate to enforce their chieftains’ calls to honor. “The custom of the Gauls to mark the start of a war,” in all the tribes, was to compel men of military age to assemble, fully armed. “Whoever arrives last is, in front of the crowd, subjected to every kind of torture and then killed.”

Politically, “there are only two classes of men” among the Gauls “who enjoy any kind of distinction and honor, since the common people are treated almost like slaves,” “kept down by debt or the enormous taxes they must pay,” required to “formally submit in servitude to the nobles,” their masters. Among the masters, one finds two types. The druids “are concerned with divine matters,” including not only sacrifices but judicial proceedings and education. They exercised considerable authority, inasmuch as “if any person or group does not abide by their decision, they bar them from sacrifices; this is the harshest penalty in that society.” Their training consisted of some twenty years memorizing sacred verses; “they do not consider it proper to entrust these things to writing,” lest “their system of learning be divulged to the common masses.” Among the lessons they did transmit to the others, the doctrine most zealously propagated was that of transmigration of souls, thinking this “a particular incitement to bravery, as it causes men to put aside the fear of death.” Their exemption from military service and taxation attracted many novices to their classes, “eager for such great rewards.” Studies included topics the Greeks and Romans would have associated with natural philosophy (“the heavenly bodies and their motions, the nature of things”) and theology (“the power and authority of the immortal gods”). However, theirs was no civilized religion, with sacrifice of criminals and innocents alike practiced when the gods were said to be in need of appeasement, as when serious disease struck, or a battle impended. The druids would have “immense effigies” made of wickerwork, “fill these with living persons,” and set them on fire.

The other division of the master class consisted of the military aristocracy. Given the warlike character of the Gauls, this class went into action pretty much every year. Barbarity did not preclude extensive trade—so much so that Mercury, not Mars, had “the most important cult” among the Gauls as “the inventor of every art and skill, the guide on roadways and journeys,” and the god “with the greatest power over trade and the pursuit of profit.” The “only kind of influence and power” recognized by the military aristocrats was the number of servants and dependents a man supported. Generally, within the household husbands enjoyed “the power of life and death over their wives as well as their children,” ruling in the manner of the barbaric Cyclopes Aristotle described in the Politics. As with the druids, so with the civil rulers: “The officials keep secret whatever it seems good to hide, and whatever they judge useful they make known to the people at large.” In recent years, the Gauls living near the Roman Province lost some of their military prowess, having acquired “many things to make their lives more agreeable and lavish.” This has made them “gradually become accustomed to losing in war,” making them not only less formidable to the Romans but also to the Germans.

Up to the winter of 54/53 B.C., Caesar had successfully dealt with the Gauls because his outnumbered troops were better disciplined, more mobile, with superior battle gear and weapons, and (the reader is quite accurately induced to believe) better led by their commanders. But now he expected “a larger uprising in Gaul. “Caesar though it was crucial for the attitude of the Gauls, now and in the future, to realize that the resources of Italy were so great, that, even in the event of a setback in war, the loss could not only be made good within a short time, but actually be reversed by an increase in our forces,” an increase his then-ally, the proconsul Gnaeus Pompey, readily granted. He defeated the recalcitrant Menapii in the battle season that followed, along with several other tribes, including the German Suebi.

Caesar returned to Italy in January 52, which was routine, but when he postponed his departure for Gaul a few months later the Gauls believed the false rumor that he had done so because he needed to deal with civil unrest. They began once more to conspire, “commiserat[ing] about the shared misfortune of Gaul,” “urgently searching for men who were willing, at the risk of their own lives, to unleash a war and take up the cause of restoring the liberty of Gaul.” Surely “it was better to be killed in the battle line than to fail to recover the old martial glory and the liberty they had inherited from their ancestors.” Initially, the Carnute tribe took the lead, winning pledges of support from several other tribes, then attacking and looting the town of Cenabum, killing several Roman citizens who lived there for commercial purposes, and a Roman equestrian Caesar had posted there to guard the grain supply. This activated the Gallic rumor mill, the news reaching the territory of the Arverni, 160 miles distant, in less than a day.

The Arverni had been the leading tribe in Celtic Gaul, rivaled only by the Aedui, which had gained the upper hand thanks to their alliance with the Romans. During the time of Avernian dominance, the ambitious warrior Celtillus had sought to found a kingship. He was put to death by the aristocrats. His son, Vercingetorix, “young and very powerful,” saw the Gallic rebellion as an opportunity to regather his family’s clients and complete the founding his father had attempted. But the aristocrats, “who did not think that Fortune should be tested in this way, blocked his efforts” and banished him to internal exile. “Still, he did not desist but enlisted the destitute and outcasts from the countryside”—a ‘populist’ move Caesar’s readers will recall from his account of the brief career of Orgetorix at the beginning of Book I. With this core of support, Vercingetorix persuaded most of the rest of the Avernii “to take up arms in the cause of their common liberty,” driving his opponents out of the territory. His followers proclaimed him king. At that, he reached out to the tribes that had already committed themselves to war against the Romans, and “by universal agreement, he was given the supreme military command.”

His way of ruling was distinguished by two qualities: “the utmost scrupulousness in preparation” (he especially concentrated on building up his cavalry) and “the greatest severity” in punishing those who disobeyed him or defied his laws (“when a significant crime was committed, he burned or elaborately tortured the offender to death,” while severing the ears or gouging out an eye of lesser criminals, sending the man back to his village “as a terrifying example to the rest and to deter others”). In this, he seems to have sought to emulate Roman celerity and discipline, barbarically. “By employing such brutal methods, he swiftly assembled an army.” 

His first target was the Bituriges, a tribe under the patronage of his tribe’s great rivals, the Aedui. Upon receiving an urgent request for assistance, the Aedui, acting on the advice of officials Caesar had left in-country, sent reinforcements. But these forces turned back, claiming (truly or falsely) that they had heard the Bituriges planned to betray and ambush them. Be this as it may have been, the Bituriges joined the Arverni against Rome and Rome’s Gallic allies. 

Upon learning this, Caesar left Italy. Seeing the need to move quickly and undetected, he moved from the Province into Cisalpine Gaul with only a small cavalry escort, intending to join up with the army troops who had spent the winter there. He fought three successful battles with Vercingetorix, then marched to Avaricum, the largest town of the Bituriges. For his part, Vercingetorix regrouped, calling a meeting of his supporters. It was time to “pursue a very different strategy than they had employed up till now,” he told them, quite sensibly. If Gallic cavalry could not defeat Roman cavalry, it could still harry the Romans when they attempted to forage for food and other supplies. They are far from home; weaken them; fight a war of attrition, particularly by destroying anything that they can use to feed their animals. “There is no difference between actually killing the Romans and stripping them of their animals—for when they lost these, they would not be able to continue the war.” As for us, “the comfort of personal property should be considered unimportant.” Burn the villages in this region, so there will be nothing for the Romans to commandeer. This is our land, and we know how to find food in it. “If these measures seemed burdensome or harsh, then the Gauls ought to realize that it would be much more painful for their wives and children to be dragged off into slavery while they themselves were put to death: for this would be the certain fate of the conquered.” As barbarians, they may not have understood Caesar’s well-established policy of offering clemency to those who surrender. His rhetoric consists of appeals to cunning (as a people they are enormously clever”) and fear.

The strategy itself won some success. It was handicapped by the Bituriges’ tearful supplication, heeded by his troops, not to let their capital, Avaricum, be destroyed. Using his own intelligence-gathering network of scouts and messengers, Vercingetorix surveilled the Roman troops as they laid siege to Avaricum “and was able to give orders in response” to their movements, “doing great damage” to the foraging Roman forces. “This happened even though our men planned everything they could to frustrate him, varying their routes and timing their outings at irregular intervals.” Caesar’s own rhetoric invoked not fear but justice, telling his men that “it was better to endure every kind of hardship than to forgo taking bloody revenge for the Roman citizens who had perished a Cenabum through the treachery of the Gauls.” He then planned an assault on the Gauls’ encampment, protected by a swamp. Having invoked the spirit of just vengeance, he then moderated it, calming the soldiers who wanted to fight their way through. Caesar “would deserve to be judged guilty of the most terrible injustice if he did not place a higher value on their lives than on his own welfare.” He returned their attention to the siege, which ended with a storming of the city, during which the ignore plunder but, “in a frenzy, motivated by the slaughter at Cenabum and the hardships of the siege…did not spare even the aged, women, or babies.” Only 800 of the 40,000 of the residents escaped to Vercingetorix, who carefully kept them apart from his troops, fearing “that the compassion erupting among the rank and file by their massed arrival might lead to a mutiny in the camp.”

This precaution taken, he again addressed his councilors, telling them that the Romans “had won not by their bravery, and not on the battlefield, but by some cunning and by their expertise in siege warfare, in which the Gauls had been inexperienced.” The Romans had of course already defeated his soldiers several times on the battlefield, and his own strategy had scrupulously avoided an open battle, but he was able to blame this new defeat “on the shortsightedness of the Bituriges” and “the excessive willingness of the others to yield to their wishes,” as he himself “had always been opposed to defending Avaricum.” His new strategy was to bring in other Gallic tribes that had not yet joined the war effort, “thus creating a single will for the whole of Gaul, and when the Gauls were united in agreement, the whole world would not be able to resist them.” Impressed by his courage and by his reminder that he had wanted them to burn and abandon Avaricum, the Gauls stayed with him. “Whereas setbacks usually diminish the authority of a commander, his stature, by contrast, was enhanced day by day following this calamity.”

Caesar intended to lure them out of their camp into a final battle, but Aeduan messengers interrupted him with an urgent appeal. His allies, the Aedui, were wracked by political faction, as two men claimed the office of kingship. “The entire nation was in arms,” the council divided; civil war loomed. “Only Caesar’s diligence and authority, the envoys concluded, could prevent this from happening.” As a Roman, Caesar well knew “the disasters that tend to arise from civil discord.” In this case, they might include an appeal to Vercingetorix by the weaker faction. He journeyed to Decetia, the capital city, and decided the issue based upon the Aeduan law of succession. He then “exhorted the Aedui to put controversies and dissension out of their mind and, putting all these issues aside, to focus all their efforts on the war that was at present taking place” in expectation of the rewards he would distribute to them, according to their service in the battles to come.

Returning to the military campaign, Caesar found himself tracked by Vercingetorix’ troops as he pushed into the territory of the Arverni, where he intended to besiege the capital, Gergovia. Vercingetorix arrived there first, establishing himself on high ground and organizing his forces for defense—a “frightening spectacle.” Vercingetorix daily consulted with his officers and sent his units of cavalry out to harass the Romans, testing “how much fighting spirit and courage each of his followers had.” He also bribed the newly installed Aeduan king to turn against the Romans. Unanimated by gratitude, King Convictolitavis asked his fellow tribesmen, “Why should the Aedui come to Caesar and make him the arbitrator concerning their own laws within their own justice system, any more than the Romans came to the Aedui?” He deputized a man called Litaviccus to lie to the Aeduans, telling them that the Romans had executed two of the “leaders of our nation” without a trial, telling them that the same was in their future if they did not march immediately to Gergovia and fight with the Arverni. He ‘avenged’ the Aeduans for the supposed atrocities by torturing and murdering some Roman citizens who were traveling with his army, seizing their supplies. One loyal Aeduan, Eporedorix, reported these enormities to Caesar, at the same time “begg[ing] Caesar not to let the nation defect from its friendship with the Roman people because of the perverse plot of some young men.” “This news was deeply disturbing to Caesar, because he had always treated the nation of the Aedui with special favor.” He quickly marched four legions of lightly armed men to impede the Aeduans’ march, but not to kill any of them; he also dispatched Eporedorix and a close friend of his to circulate among the Aeduan troops and tell them the truth about Litaviccus’ deception. 

Meanwhile, the Gauls at Gergovia had launched an attack on the weakened Roman forces there. For their part, the Aeduans, “corrupted by the crimes they had committed and entranced by the profit they were making form the plundered goods,” continued their rebellion. Compounding the Romans’ misery, Caesar’s surprise assault on Gergovia led to defeat, when his men advanced too far on disadvantageous ground and failed to hear his call for a strategic retreat in the midst of the battle. The next day, he reprimanded them. “As much as he admired the enormous courage of his men, whom neither the camp’s fortifications nor the hill’s altitude nor the town’s walls had been able to hold back, as much did he have to condemn their lack of discipline and, yes, arrogance—that they had thought they understood better than their commander how a victory could be won and how everything would turn out. from his soldiers he needed discipline and self-control as much as courage and greatness of spirit.” That was the mark of Roman civilization, even in war, against Gallic barbarity. 

After assuring the men that the setback owed much to the “unfavorable terrain,” little to the “enemy’s bravery,” he marched towards the Aeduans, who, in accordance with Vercingetorix’s strategy, had posted cavalry at key points along the route in an attempt to block the Romans from getting to their grain supplies. Caesar briefly considered retreating to the Province and regrouping in its safety, but not only would that have been “shameful and unworthy of his reputation,” it would have put in jeopardy his colleague Labienus, whom he had deployed separately with several legions. 

With the Aeduans now enlisted on his side, Vercingetorix reiterated his strategy of using his cavalry to deny the Romans access to grain and fodder. He reminded them that mean the Gauls must accept “with equanimity rendering their own store of grain unusable and burning their own buildings”—a fit exchange for “gain[ing] power and freedom forever.” Hoping to draw Caesar back to the Province, he also began to launch raids on it. 

Caesar saw that it would be difficult to obtain reinforcements from the Province or from Italy, now that the Gallic cavalry patrolled the roads from them. Instead, he hired Germen cavalrymen and light-armed infantry from several friendly tribes there. He then marched his troops in the direction of the Province, hoping to deceive Vercingetorix into believing that he had ordered a full-scale retreat from Gaul. Vercingetorix took the bait, telling his cavalry commanders to say that “the Gauls were on the point of victory.” Do not let the Romans return and gather their forces for another campaign. Attack their baggage train, take their supplies and, not incidentally, “their prestige.” 

Unaware of the German threat, the Gallic cavalry lost a battle along the Arar River. After Vercingetorix retreated to the town of Alesia, combined German and Roman forces attacked again, winning again amidst “huge slaughter.” Vercingetorix escaped with a remnant of his cavalry. This notwithstanding, “there remained “in all of Gaul such a powerful and unanimous desire to restore their liberty and recover their old-time marital glory that people were moved neither by favors hey had received” from the Romans “nor by the memory of friendship,” instead throwing themselves “into this war with all their passion and resources,” assembling eight thousand cavalrymen and some 250,000 infantry and marching toward Alesia, to end the Roman siege. “Not a single man among them all doubted that the mere sight of such an enormous force would overwhelm any resistance.” The decisive battle occurred in November of 52 B.C., settled by another cavalry assault, which broke the Gallic force and took the town. 

His troops scattering and fleeing back to their tribal lands, Vercingetorix surrendered. Ever-prudent Caesar “put aside the captives from among the Aedui and Arverni, hoping to use them to restore close ties with these nations,” turning the rest of the captives over to his army—one slave per soldier. He brought Vercingetorix to Rome, displayed him in a procession, then had him executed.

In Caesar’s account, then, the Romans defeated the Gauls not because they loved liberty more or fought more bravely. Nor was their military strategy superior to the Gauls. The Romans won because they were civilized and the Gauls were barbarians. Both peoples were harsh with enemies, but the Gauls were savage; their priests practiced human sacrifice, their military and civilian rulers practiced torture. Caesar’s Romans do not engage in these excesses, although they are quite capable of destroying enemy towns and killing all the inhabitants. Further, Caesar exercises clemency with those who surrender to him. In his rhetoric, Caesar invokes spiritedness, the desire for just vengeance, while immediately moderating it; in his rhetoric, Vercingetorix deprecates Roman reason, which he calls mere cunning and skill. Caesar’s Gauls are weak-minded, unable to sustain major military reverses and prey to rumors; Caesar’s Roman are steadfast, capable of courage, not mere bravery. Gaul is ruled by priests and warriors, Rome by civilians capable of war who have subordinated the priests to civic purposes.

 

 

 

Julius Caesar: Gallic War. In The Landmark Julius Caesar. Edited and translated by Kurt A. Raaflaub. New York: Anchor Books, 2017.

 

Caesar came, saw, and conquered, frequently, but why? In his excellent introduction to this volume, Kurt A. Raaflaub remarks that the Gallic War goes well beyond military history, encompassing geopolitics, comparative politics, and ethics. He calls Caesar’s book “an education in Romanness,” and truer words have seldom been written. One may add that for Caesar, Romanness isn’t merely Roman. Romanness is the preeminent example of what man, a citizen, and a country should be. Scarcely some latter-day ‘cultural relativist,’ Caesar intends to show Romans why they deserve the vaster empire he and his men have won for them and what virtues will be needed to keep it. He does so, not in the manner of a moralist—a Seneca, a Cicero—who names and describes the virtues, inquiring into human nature, but as one who shows these virtues in actions. The original title of the book was Res gestae—simply, “achievements,” and particularly public achievements. ‘Caesar’ is the public man, almost exclusively, not the private man who married, cut business deals, and wenched. ‘Caesar’ isn’t Julius; he is the model Roman and therefore the model man and citizen, preeminently worthy of emulation, just as ‘De Gaulle’ in Charles de Gaulle’s memoirs isn’t Charles but the model Frenchman, the man ‘of Gaul’ who understands that when the French follow that part of their heritage that the Roman conquest bestowed upon them, “all is well.” 

Caesar designs the Gallic War as a narrative proof of the Roman right to empire, the justice of Romans’ claim to rule the others. The three parts into which Gaul is divided, ruled by the Belgae, the Aquitani, and the Celts, differ in languages, institutions, and laws, and the peoples of Gaul also differ from the surrounding peoples—Germans, Britons—and from the many Gallic tribes even differ from one another—the Helvetii from the Boii from the Sequani, and so on. But almost all of these tribes and peoples strive for rule by means of warfare. Some are more warlike than others, but there isn’t a commercial republic, a Venice or a Singapore, among them. In Caesar’s victories, in his way of war and his way of peace, Romanness demonstrates its superiority over Gaulishness, Germanness, Britishness. Given the universal human political purpose of ruling, and the universal human military means to that end, the Romans excel everyone because their regime, their way of life, brings them victory and sustains them in their rule over their defeated rivals.

Romanness could weaken, however. Caesar sees that, too. The “most warlike” Gauls are the Belgae “because they are the farthest from the civilized sophistication” of Transalpine Gaul, the province ruled by Rome; “merchants come to them least often with imports that foster an effeminate disposition; they are also the closest to the Germans living across the Rhine River, and they are constantly at war with them.” The Helvetii, too, “surpass all the Gauls except the Belgae in bravery,” fights the Germans “in almost daily battles, either trying to keep them out of their own country or else actually waging war in the Germans’ territory.” Potentially, Rome might endanger itself by its own civilized way of life, which might foster ‘effeminacy’ or weakness, cowardice, softness. To keep the edge of its moral sword sharp, to maintain the virtus of its citizens, it needs war, imperial rule, even if that rule might, if fully secured, lend itself to what Montesquieu would later call the decadence of the Romans.

At the same time, warlikeness alone fails on the battlefields it craves when set against Roman civilization. In 61 B.C., “the most noble and wealthy person” among the Helvetii was Orgetorix. “Tempted by desire for kingship,” he allied with the aristocrats (his fellow ambitieux) and “persuaded his nation to leave their own territory with all their forces” on a mission to “take over the whole of Gaul and rule it.” Geopolitically, “the Helvetii are closed in on all sides by natural boundaries”: the Rhine River on one side, separating them from the Germans, the mountain range separating them from the Sequani, and the waters of Lake Lemannus and the Rhône, separating them from the Roman province. We can break out of nature’s confines, Orgetorix asserted, since we “excel all others in bravery.” But Orgetorix never got out of (the future) Switzerland, betrayed by an informer and brought to trial. A ‘populist’ of sorts, as indeed Caesar himself had been and would continue to be, on his own road to kingship, Orgetorix escaped by summoning some ten thousand slaves and freedmen clients from throughout the country. He was soon hunted down and recaptured, dying by what might have been suicide.

But even so, “the Helvetii did not give up their efforts to realize their intention to migrate from their country.” In 58 B.C., with their Gallic allies, including the Boii (latterly the Bohemians or Hungarians), they planned a mission to occupy the territory of the Santones. But between that territory and Helvetia lay either the territory of the Sequani or the province of the Romans. Geographically, the route through Transalpine Gaul was the easier to traverse. News of this plan brought them to the attention of Caesar, “hastened to leave the city” of Rome and, “by the most strenuous marches possible…hurried to Ulterior [or ‘Cisalpine’] Gaul and arrived near Genava.” Repeatedly, Caesar will cite Romans’ excellent ‘intel,’ as we now call it, their “celerity,” their quickness to act in light of such information, and their energy in so acting. The surprised Helvetii assured him that they merely intended to pass through the Roman province, doing no harm. They asked permission to do so, which Caesar had no intention of granting, for several reasons. One concerns justice and memory. He “remembered well that the Helvetii had killed the consul Lucius Cassius, routed his army, and sent it under the yoke”—this, nearly fifty years earlier. That is, he “remembers” the event not from experience but from the histories he has read, and perhaps from the accounts he heard as a child. Romanness is mindful; Romanness remembers. Romans write histories. More immediately, knowing not only the plan of the Helvetii but their warlike nature, he doubts that such a people, with their “hostile attitude,” “would be disciplined enough to refrain from committing outrage against persons or property” as they passed through Roman territory. Romanness is mindful in more than justice and in memory but in prudence.

In his prudence, Caesar duly noted that his legion alone could hardly survive a battle with the Helvetii on their own territory. Temporizing, he told their emissaries that he would consider their proposal, that they should return at a set date for his answer. This would enable Roman reinforcements to arrive. Meanwhile, he set his soldiers to work building a long wall and digging a trench along it, placing outposts at intervals along these structures and fortifying them, “so that he could prevent the Helvetii from crossing over more easily if they tried to defy his orders.” When the emissaries returned, he cited “the custom and precedent of the Roman people,” which “did not allow him to let any people make their way through the Province.” Custom and precedent being defenseless in themselves, “he made it clear that he would prevent them if they tried to apply force.” This they did attempt, but his defensive measures prevented them from crossing the Rhōne. 

This left the Helvetii with the alternative possible route, thought the territory of the Sequani. Geographically, this passage was too narrow to traverse without their permission, and that was not forthcoming. They asked an ally of theirs (Caesar calls him their “friend,” in the Aristotelian sense of a political friend), an Aeduan, Dumnorix, to serve as an intermediary, as he was “very influential among the Sequani,” owing to his “kindness and generosity to them.” [1] (His bond with the Helvetii was his marriage to the daughter of Orgetorix, the originator of their planned expedition.) Like his late father-in-law, Dumnorix wanted the kingship of his people “and was eagerly scheming for political change; thus he wanted to have as many nations as possible bound to him through his favors.” He agreed to the proposed diplomatic intervention and succeeded in winning both the Sequani’s and the Aedui’s consent to Helvetian passage into the territory of the Santones.

Well informed as always, Caesar learned of this and liked it no more than the Helvetii’s preferred route through the Province. In this, he displayed his prudential sense of geopolitical advantage. The Santones lived near the Province; Helvetian occupation of that territory “would place the Province in great danger with a warlike population, enemies of the Roman people, right next to land that was open to attack and very abundant in grain crops.” Again exhibiting Roman celerity and energy, “he rushed to Italy by long marches,” enrolled reinforcements and returned to Transalpine Gaul “by the shortest way through the Alps.” By June of 58, he had five legions poised across the Rhône from the Helvetii. Calling attention to Roman prudence again, he notes that before leaving for Italy he had installed his legate Titus Labienus as the officer in charge of the fortifications along the river. Labienus was a tribune of the Roman plebeians; Caesar’s political and military friendship with him betokens Caesar’s own ‘populist’ strategy in Roman politics. Caesar is the wiser Orgetorix; where the ambitious Gaul failed, he will succeed, both as conqueror of Gaul and, not so long afterwards, king of the empire he expanded far northward. 

He attacked and routed the Tigurini, one of the four Helvetian tribes, along the east side of the Arar River (today’s Saône). This was the tribe that had killed Lucius Cassius and sent his army under the yoke. “Thus, whether it was by chance or by the design of the immortal gods, the part of the Helvetian people that had brought this immense calamity on the Roman people was the first to suffer punishment”; having been elected Pontifex Maximus, Caesar allows himself the occasional glance at Rome’s civil religion. And the occasional glance at his family: “Caesar was avenging not only a public outrage but a private one as well,” as “the Tigurini had killed the legate Lucius Piso, the grandfather of his father-in-law, in the same battle in which they had killed Cassius.” The Roman memory is long, and so is the reach of its justice.

Caesar had his soldiers built a bridge over the river in order to pursue the other Helvetii, who “were very disturbed at his sudden arrival.” They had taken twenty days to get across the river but Caesar, in his celerity—made possible by Rome’s superior civilization in the form of military engineering—got across in only one. The unpleasantly surprised Helvettii sent emissaries to him, and the head of the delegation argued as follows: make peace with us and we will go and stay wherever you say, but if you continue to wage war, “remember the Romans’ past misfortune and the warlike spirit the Helvetii had always shown.” Our virtue is bravery, not cunning—evidently a suggestion that Caesar’s surprise maneuver must have been some sort of trick. The emissary thinks and speaks like a citizen of Crete or Sparta as described in the opening of Plato’s Laws. Caesar replies that he does indeed remember the Romans’ past misfortune at the hands of the Helvetii, “and to the extent that the Roman people had not deserved what had happened to them, he was even more outraged.” You Helvetians were the tricksters, then, catching the Romans off guard by attacking them for no reason. And currently, they had attempted to trespass on Roman territory and had “rendered the lives of” Rome’s Gallic allies, the Aedui, Ambarri, and Allogbroges, “miserable.” As for your past victory, again speaking as Pontifex Maximus, with Roman auctoritas, “it was the habit of the immortal gods,” whose memories are even longer than those of the Romans, when they wished to take vengeance on people for a crime, to give them unusually good luck for some time and hold off punishing them in order to cause them even more pain later from the drastic change in their circumstances.” All this notwithstanding, Caesar exhibited another Roman virtue, magnanimity; he would overlook these acts of injustice if the Helvetii provided hostages (insurance against any treaty violation) and compensated the Aedui and the Allobroges for the damages they had inflicted upon them. The Helvetian rejected the offer, proudly announcing that the Helvetian way was “to receive hostages, not give them”—thereby illustrating the difference between Roman magnanimity and Helvetian hubris.

Preparing to continue the war, Caesar demanded the grain his Aeduan allies had promised for his troops and animals. He then learned something about the Aeduan regime. Their “highest official” admitted to him that the unofficial and real rulers of the Aedui were holding back the grain and making patriotic appeals to the Gauls to expel the Romans. The hapless man protested that “there was no way that he could gain control over these people,” and that in betraying their secret plan he was putting his own life at risk. The Aeduan regime was no ally of Rome, at all, and Caesar suspected that its head was Dumnorix, the Aeduan who had ties with both the Helvetii and the Sequani. Liscus admitted as much in a private conference, explaining that Dumnorix, “a man with singular boldness, armed with huge influence among the lower classes because of his generosity,” had obtained lucrative conflicts by intimidating all rivals, thereby “accumulat[ing] lavish means for bribery” and supporting a small private army. He hated the Romans because he calculated, as the husband of a Helvetian, that the Helvetii would support his ambitions for a kingship, while the Romans, if victorious, would reduce the influence he had amassed. 

Caesar would have done just that, except that Dumnorix’s brother, Diviciacus, had long exhibited “the highest devotion to the Roman people, the greatest goodwill toward himself, and outstanding loyalty, justice, and moderation”; Caesar “was afraid that punishment of Dumnorix would strike Diviciacus to the heart.” The true Roman exhibits fides, trustworthiness. Moreover, to rule like a Roman, one must understand political friends and enemies alike, not only in their political ambitions but in their family connections. In their interview, Diviciacus tearfully confessed that he knew of his brother’s treachery, acknowledged that he had even undermined Diviciacus’ own position among the Aedui, but still begged Caesar not to deal with him “too harshly.” He asked this out of “brotherly love” and also because all the Gauls would assume that it was Diviciacus who had betrayed his brother to the Romans. In response, “Caesar took his right hand. He calmed him and asked him to stop begging. He said that Diviciacus’ friendship was worth so much to him that he would refrain from punishment for the outrage done to the Roman state and overlook his own hurt feelings in order to accommodate Diviciacus’ wish and requests.” He contented himself by bringing Dumnorix before him, laying out the charges against him, then letting him off with a warning and taking the precaution of “assign[ing] guards to Dumnorix so that he could be informed of what he did and with whom he spoke.” 

Having thus assured himself allied support, he moved against the Helvetii. At the town of Bibracte he fought and won a “long and bitterly contested battle,” which resulted in Helvetian surrender with the exception of 6,000 men from the tribe of the Verdigeni, who fled across the Rhine into German territory. Caesar ordered their pursuit and capture, punishing them with death. As for the remaining Helvetii, he ordered them to return to their own territory after they rebuilt the towns and villages they’d burned. “He did not want the land they had left to remain empty; it was good land for agriculture”; without them on it, “the Germans living across the Rhine would cross from their own territory into that of the Helvetiii and thus become the neighbors of the Gallic Province and especially of the Allobrogres.” A Roman understands the need for geopolitical buffers.

The war finished, Caesar received emissaries from “nearly all of Gaul,” who offered congratulations on his victory. Although they knew he’d waged war for the sake of Rome, “the outcome had proven no less useful” to them. “The Helvetii had been extremely prosperous in their homeland, but they had left it with the intention to wage war on Gaul in its entirety, to establish their rule over it, and to choose, out of a great number of possibilities in the Gallic territory, whatever area seemed most suitable and fertile, turning all the other nations into tribute-paying dependents.” With Caesar’s permission, they requested a secret meeting amongst themselves, the outcome of which was a petition to Caesar, delivered by Diviciacus. 

Caesar’s political friend explained that Gaul had many tribes but only two main factions, the Aedui leaders of one, the Averni of the other. With their principal allies, the Sequani, the Aedui had attempted to break the military deadlock by inviting the Germans into Gaul. “Then, when these wild barbarians got a taste for the fertile land, the way of life, and the wealth of the Gauls,” they brought over still more troops, which now numbered around 120,000. The Aedui and their client states had “lost their whole leading class, their whole council, the whole of their cavalry class” in war with this coalition, either in battle or as hostages. Even the Germans’ Sequani allies had had a third of their lands confiscated by order of the German king, the tyrannical Ariovistus. He had ordered them out of another third. “It would not be many years before all the Gauls were driven out of their own territory and all the Germans had crossed the Rhine.” Only Rome could prevent this. 

Caesar assured them that he could and would. The Aedui were longtime allies of Rome. “Given the greatness of the empire of the Roman people,” he considered their distress “extremely shameful both to himself and to his state.” German expansion was also dangerous “to the Roman people,” given the unlikelihood that such “a wild and barbarous people” as the Germans would content themselves with the conquest of Gaul, only. Marauding German tribes had descended into the Italian peninsula before. To these threats to Roman honor and Roman lives, he added the character of Ariovistus, who had become “so proud and arrogant that his behavior was no longer tolerable.” His regime was tyrannical, the enemy of Roman republicanism. Moreover, “Caesar came to believe that he should take action against this threat as quickly as possible” because the Gauls who had talked with his own soldiers had frightened them with tales of German military prowess. “Panicked babbling” threatened to make cowards of them all, de-Romanizing them, undermining not only the Roman empire but the Roman regime that had cultivated the virtues by which Romans had won that empire, preeminently courage.

After Ariovistus refused to meet Caesar’s emissaries, Caesar called a meeting of his officers. As a citizen of the Roman republic, Caesar had studied the art of rhetoric, and he now exhibited it. He argued as follows: Ariovistus “would not reject either Caesar’s or the Roman people’s friendship,” once he had duly considered his proposals. “But if, driven by insane rage, he should start a war, what did they actually have to fear? Why had they lost trust in their own bravery or Caesar’s competence?” The Cimbrian and Teutonic tribes had in fact been defeated, decades earlier, by troops under the command of Gaius Marius. The Roman army had also put down a slave rebellion in Italy, winning a dangerous civil war. Given these victories, “it could be judged how beneficial firmness of courage is”—in contrast to the insane rage of the barbarian tyrant, which is no virtue at all. Indeed, the Germans had often been defeated by the Helvetii in their never-ending wars, and we just defeated the Helvetii. The only reason Ariovistus had rolled up his victories against the Gauls was that the Gauls were war-weary and because the Germans had surprised them. “His victory had thus been achieved by calculation and planning rather than bravery”—the same argument the Helvetian emissary had deployed against Caesar. “Though such a strategy could work against inexperienced barbarians” like the Gauls, “not even Ariovistus himself could hope that our armies would be fooled by it.” If any of your fellow officers conceal their fear “by pretending concern for the grain supply or the narrow roads,” you should understand that they are as arrogant as the Helvetii had been, “lacking confidence in their general’s ability to do his duty or else by daring to tell him how to do it.” As a matter of fact, Rome’s Gallic allies have already guaranteed the grain supply and he, Caesar, had mapped out a good route into German-ruled territory. His authority derives not only from his capability but his virtue: “Whenever armies had refused to obey their general’s orders, it was because of a setback when the general’s luck failed, or lese some crime had been found out and financial misconduct prover,” but “his own life had been shown to be blameless throughout, and his good fortune was apparent from the war with the Helvetii.” Having readied a just and reasonable peace offer, having exposed his enemy’s irrationality, having exhibited his own good fortune, owing to his own courage and prudence, and relying on his officers’ fides with respect to their commander’s authority and on the officers’ and soldiers’ courage—the virtue Gallic gossip about Ariovistus’ enormities had tested—it was now time to act. He drew the logical conclusion, a command to action: “move camp during the fourth watch of the coming night, in order to find out as soon as possible whether his soldiers were motivated by self-respect and duty or by cowardice.” However that may turn out, he still has his 10th Legion, “about which he could not have any doubts and which would in the future serve in the function of a praetorian cohort,” a just honor in return for their fidelity and courage. No worry of that, however, since “By the time Caesar had ended his speech, the attitude of all those present was marvelously transformed, and they were filled with the greatest enthusiasm and passion to start the war.”

Tyrants being moved more by the actions than by the words of others, Ariovistus, recovering his reason, now agreed to the meeting he’d earlier refused. With a precautionary guard, Caesar came to the enemy camp, offering an alliance. Reminding Ariovistus of gifts he’d received from Caesar and the Senate in the past and of the Romans’ firm alliance with the Aedui. The Aedui had enjoyed “a position of leadership” among the Gauls before their alliance with Rome. Rome had done nothing to ruin that position, it being “the habit of the Roman people to wish not only that their allies and friends were not deprived of anything that belonged to them but also that their influence, status, and honor were enhanced.” Germans too can enjoy such an alliance, if they desist from making war on the Aedui or their allies, return the hostages, and bring no more men across the Rhine. To this, Ariovistus replied that he crossed the Rhine at the invitation of the Gauls; the Gallic lands he ruled were granted to him by the Gauls; the Gauls started the war against him, and he won; he was prepared to renew the war if the Gauls offered war, but in any case, he had fought an exclusively defensive war. As to the Romans, he had arrived in Gaul “before the Romans did.” The Romans “were wrong in obstructing him in pursuing his rights.” He doubted the alleged firmness of the Roman-Aedui alliance, in view of the lack of mutual military support in recent wars. If it came to war between himself and Caesar and if he killed Caesar, “he would be doing a favor to many noblemen and leaders of the Roman people,” who disliked and distrusted the ambitious general, but if Caesar left and agreed to his “unlimited control over Gaul, Ariovistus would reward him on a grand scale, and whatever wars he wanted waged, he would carry them out for him with no effort or danger on his own part.”

Drawing upon Roman memory, preserved in Roman histories, Caesar denied that the Germans’ claim on Gaul predated that of the Romans, recalling the victory of Quintus Fabius Maximus over the Averni and Ruteni and 121 B.C. At the time, “the Roman people had forgiven them and neither turned their country into a province nor forced them to pay tribute,” unlike Ariovistus. The Senate had decreed Gallic freedom: “after it had been defeated in war, [it] was to live by its own laws.” This implies that the gradual conquest of Gaul the Germans were undertaking could have no legitimacy in the eyes not only of Caesar but of the Roman republic. 

Sure enough, while this talk was going on, Ariovistus’ horsemen had been moving closer to the site, harassing the Roman troops. Ending the discussion, Caesar withdrew with his soldiers, making sure that a report of this conduct and of Ariovistus’ words circulated throughout his camp. “The army was fired up much more and inspired with an even greater keenness to fight.” Upon receiving another invitation to parley, Caesar declined to attend personally, sending emissaries instead, whom Ariovistus put in chains. This was a just casus belli. In September 58, the two armies fought along the Dubis River. Though outnumbered, the Romans won and the Germans fled, as did Ariovistus. 

“Having, in a single summer, brought two very significant wars to a conclusion, Caesar led the army to winter quarters among the Sequani.” Leaving Labienus in charge, he then returned to Cisalpine Gaul where, as provincial governor, he presided over the judicial hearings—that is, returning to civil life in peacetime and the rule of justice under law, which must be secured before it can be practiced. Such is Roman gravitasi, seriousness.

The First Book of the Gallic War shows why a statesman like de Gaulle rested content with the historical memory of the Roman conquest while bitterly resisting the Germans. In his estimation, from antiquity to the midpoint of the 20th century, Germany never really abandoned its barbaric ethos. Despite its vaunted Kultur, German still remained the home of “sublime and glaucous monsters,” with a military elite that perpetually overreached itself because it lacked mesure. German thinkers often despised mere ‘civilization,’ contrasting it with that Kultur, and that, in de Gaulle’s view, typified the problem. By contrast, the Caesar of the Gallic War embodies a measured, balanced, civilized regime, exhibiting the classical virtues of courage, moderation, justice, and prudence, along with the crowning virtue of magnanimity. Frenc grandeur, as de Gaulle understood it, owed its origin to this Roman greatness, blended with the energy and independence, the passion for self-government, native to the Gauls and later refined by the influence of a Christianity both Roman and rightly ‘imperial’ or ‘catholic.’ 

Neither de Gaulle nor Caesar saw anything unrealistic about these virtues, as Machiavelli famously proclaimed, arguing instead for what he called virtù, which substitutes vulpine shrewdness for classical prudence and leonine rage for classical courage, eschewing justice and moderation, and ignoring magnanimity. Contra Machiavelli, the classical virtues lend themselves to mindfulness of what de Gaulle calls “the realities”: provisioning and organizing troops, forming alliances, seeking knowledge of shifting political and military alliances, knowing how to speak to military officers and soldiers alike. He does not show how to speak to civilians from patricians to plebs, although he indicates that he can do that, too; in this, de Gaulle was far more instructive. But he does show that military virtues can entitle the victors to rule an empire, if those virtues encompass a substantially wider range than a warrior people’s characteristic bravery and cunning. In the Gallic War, Caesar teaches Romanness to his readers, elevating the ambitious souls of those who study it with the most ardor to citizenship in Rome and to civilization in the world.

 

Note

1. The political friendship illustrated here is the friendship between equals. Political friendships or alliances may or may not be between equals; in Latin, the words for equal and unequal friendships are not the same.