Gaul, but left it behind him so thoroughly tamed that, during the subsequent Civil War, the once turbulent tribes made no serious attempt to rise, and to rid themselves of the wholly inadequate garrison which had been left to hold them down.

There were many things which combined to make the conquest of Gaul a less formidable undertaking than it appeared at the first glance. If numerous and warlike, the Celtic tribes were fickle and faction-ridden. A real national sentiment existed, but there were other sentiments which were stronger. Wherever Cæsar went, he found communities which were ready to join him in suppressing their neighbours, either because of ancestral feuds, or because of the self-interest of the moment. Gaul, in the first century before Christ, was much like the Highlands of Scotland in the seventeenth or eighteenth century after Christ. It sufficed that one clan should espouse one rival cause, and its neighbour out of ancient jealousy would take up the other. A power intervening from outside would be certain of support from all the enemies of the dominant tribe or chief of the moment. It has been truly said that Cæsar subdued Gaul by the arms of Gauls, just as Clive or Wellesley subdued India by the arms of Indians. In each case the conqueror had a strong nucleus of national troops in his host, but they would not have sufficed for his task if they had not been supported by thousands of local auxiliaries. Moreover, in each case powerful native states backed the invader. The Aedui and the Remi stood to Cæsar in Gaul much as the Nawabs of Oude and the Carnatic stood to the British in India. Nor was it merely inter-tribal feuds that made the foreigner's work easy. The factions within the several communities were almost as fiercely opposed, and as disloyal to the common weal, as the states in general were disloyal to the national cause of Gaul. A great

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proportion of the clans were torn to pieces by feuds between some predominant chief who aimed at regal power, and the rest of the local oligarchy. If the would-be tyrant was a nationalist, the lesser chiefs called in Cæsar to help them—if the oligarchs were nationalists, it was their ambitious rival who made the appeal.

Hence came the futility of the resistance of the Gauls to the great proconsul. They were always betraying each other, the individual sacrificing the tribe, the tribe the nation. So much we gather from Cæsar's own works: to the numerous instances which he gives there must have been many more to be added, of which we have no knowledge. Every one of Cæsar's victories, military or diplomatic, was probably aided by local feuds and jealousies, which an intelligent Gallic witness could easily have explained, but which are omitted in the pages of the Commentaries, whose author could only give the situation as it appeared to himself, not as it appeared to his foes. This is the reason why Vercingetorix, a man of real genius, failed to hold together the patriotic confederacy which he had taken such pains to build up. An appeal to Gallic national feeling might rouse the tribes for a moment, but after a few months particularism resumed its sway. Each one of the confederates suspected the rest of doing less than their share, and then, in sulky resentment, resolved not to be exploited for the benefit of the neighbouring states.

It is certain, moreover, that the Gauls, even when they came together in the largest force, cannot have put in line the enormous armies of which the Commentaries speak. It is always hard to calculate with accuracy the numbers of a tribal levée-en-masse. No doubt Cæsar often doubled or trebled the real figures of the hosts that were opposed to him. The ancients had an even smaller power of estimating or realising large numbers than the men of the

present age. If we note the tendency among generals of to-day to swell the figures of savage hordes with whom they have had to deal, we need not doubt that Cæsar was liable to the same failing. Every commander in such wars states his own resources at a minimum, and sees those of the foe through a magnifying glass. No doubt the 200,000 swords of the Belgic army at the battle on the Aisne in B.C. 57, and the 250,000 men whom Vercassivelaunus is said to have led to the relief of Alesia are wild and reckless estimates. Yet probably they represent the numbers which the Gauls believed that they had raised, and which the Romans believed that they had faced. There is no reason to think that Cæsar invented them, or added extra thousands to the figures which were reported to him. The hordes were enormous; there was no certain method of counting them. The conqueror cannot be much blamed for reproducing the current estimate. Nor can we expect him to point out another fact which was certainly a great advantage to him. Of the wild masses which formed the Gallic tribal levies, only a certain proportion were really formidable fighting men. The horse was excellent: the chiefs and their bands of sworn henchmen and "debtors" were gallant and desperate foes. But the main body of a levée-en-masse must have consisted of half-armed husbandmen, like the English fyrd at Hastings. When the pugnacious and well-armed nobility and their retainers had been killed off in the forefront of the battle, there must have been little power to resist among the ill-equipped horde which formed the bulk of the tribal host.

All this we state to explain Cæsar's triumphs, not to diminish them. If these antecedent advantages had not existed, his task would have been impossible, considering the very modest resources that were at his disposition.

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Even when all is conceded, the achievement remains marvellous. It was an intellectual and diplomatic triumph quite as much as a mere series of successful campaigns; for it required even something more than a soldier of genius to carry the business through. Cæsar fought with his brains, utilising the unrivalled knowledge of human weakness and vanity which he had acquired during twenty years of political intrigue at Rome, no less than his military skill. He discovered how to turn to account all the personal and tribal rivalries and jealousies of the Gauls. He knew how to buy and how to retain allies and auxiliaries. He could be a powerful and a liberal friend; but he was also an awe-inspiring enemy. For nothing is more striking in all his career than the way in which this affable and easy-going conqueror had recourse to massacre on the most vast and ruthless scale when he desired to strike terror into his adversaries. The reader of the Commentaries shudders at the callous fashion in which their author narrates his deeds of bloodshed, done not from any feeling of honest resentment but out of cold-blooded policy. The Veneti had placed in bonds (not murdered or tortured) some Roman officers whom Cæsar had sent into their territory. For this offence, when they had been attacked and conquered, their whole Senate was put to death, and the rest of the tribe sold as slaves. This was not the worst; there are cases where Cæsar puts it on record that his army slew not only the fighting men of a conquered enemy, but the aged, the women, the infants, every living soul.1 On other occasions he mutilated many thousands of prisoners by cutting off their right hands.2 of the case of the Usipetes and Tencteri, whose fate moved horror and compassion even among Romans,

1 As at Avaricum in B.C. 52.

2 As with the garrison of Uxellodunum in B.C. 51.

we have already had occasion to speak, while dealing with the life of Cato. Nothing can give a more sinister effect than Cæsar's own confession, that he received their ambassadors, who came to explain and apologise for a breach of truce, put them in confinement, and then marched without giving further notice against the unfortunate Germans, whom he surprised unarmed, and cut to pieces-to the number of 430,000 souls, according to the account in the Commentaries. But the most repulsive of all Cæsar's acts of ruthlessness was one which has no parallel for long-delayed and deliberate cruelty, even in the dismal annals of the Later Republic. When the gallant rebel Vercingetorix freely surrendered himself at Alesia to save the lives of his comrades, Cæsar would have done nothing strange or improper if he had ordered him to be put to death on the spot. The Arvernian himself expected no less. But for the conqueror to commit him to prison for six years, and then to bring him out at his triumph, parade him through the streets of Rome, and duly execute him in the Tullianum, shows a mixture of callousness and vanity for which no words of reproof are sufficiently hard.

After this, Cæsar's admirers persist in telling us that he was naturally clement;1 they point to the fact that during the Civil War he very rarely put to death one of his captives, and show that he pardoned some of his most irritating opponents when they fell into his hands. Remembering his awful doings in Gaul, we are driven to believe that his clemency was but a policy or a pose.

1 Twice in the Commentaries he gives himself handsome testimonials for his clemency.

2 But the cases of Lucius Cæsar and others may be remembered. It is suspicious that in so many cases Cæsar's soldiers are said to have put to death important prisoners, e.g. Faustus Sulla and Afranius, without their master's leave, and contrary to his intention.