CÆSAR'S STRATEGY 321 Sulla had tried the method of Proscriptions, and it had T been a failure. Warned by his experience, Cæsar may have made up his mind to adopt the opposite policy in its most complete form. The Ides of March bear witness that this experiment also had its disadvantages. Augustuste reverted to the methods of Sulla, but had the art to throw most of the odium on his colleague, Mark Antony. In the actual details of Cæsar's strategy and tactics in Gaul there is much that is interesting; at first sight they seem to involve some curious puzzles and contradictions. On the one hand he was, of all the great generals whom the world has seen, the one who made the greatest use of the spade. In a single campaign he would throw up more field entrenchments than Napoleon or Hannibal constructed in the whole of their military careers. This tendency is usually the mark of a cautious commander, and has for the most part gone along with slow movements, small risks, and a preference for the defensive. But this same Cæsar, who on some occasions stockaded himself up to the eyes, and fortified every inch of ground that he covered, blossomed out at other times into the most reckless ventures. He would fly across the land with marches of almost incredible rapidity, risk undertakings that combined the maximum of danger with the minimum of profit, and stake his whole career on the most audacious strokes, all in the style of Charles XII. of Sweden. There is, however, no real incongruity in his actions. It has only to be remembered that his final object was not so much the conquest of Gaul, as the building up for himself of an unrivalled military reputation and a devoted army. His methods differed according to the necessities of the moment, political as well as military, and he was not the slave of any one system of tactics. One does not associate him with any particular order of battle, as we associate Alexander with the advance in échelon with the cavalry leading, or Frederic the Great with his famous "oblique order," or Napoleon with the intense artillery preparation followed by a blow with heavy columns at one critical point of the adversaries' line. Cæsar was the least monotonous in his tactics of all the great generals whom the world has seen. There is probably in this a trace of the fact that he was essentially an amateur of genius, who had taken to war late in life, and not a soldier steeped from his youth upwards in the study of the drill-book and the manœuvres of the barrack yard. He worked by the inspiration of the moment, rather than by the aid of the maxims of experience and the traditions of Roman military art. But, speaking generally, we may say that before he had thoroughly come to know the exact strength and value of his enemy, and when no stake of vital importance was in question, Cæsar was usually cautious. In B.C. 58, while he was still new to his legions, and while Gaul and German were still known to him by repute only, he used the spade with untiring energy, and risked as little as he possibly could. His first military act in Gaul was to fortify lines of enormous length against the Helvetii. When he first met Ariovistus he would not stir far from his camp, and entrenched every point that he seized. It was much the same when he made his earliest acquaintance with the Belge on the Aisne. He checkmated them by his impregnable position, and held them at bay till they dispersed. In the campaign about Alesia, in a similar way, he executed field-works of enormous length and magnitude, making ditch and palisade serve in place of the numbers that were insufficient, because he had not really the force required to perform the double operation of holding Vercingetorix blockaded and of keeping back the army of relief.. But even the Alesian circumvallation and contravallation seem small things compared with the CÆSAR'S ACCEPTANCE OF RISKS 323 interminable lines which Cæsar erected along the hills above Dyrrhachium during the campaign of B.C. 48. When, however, Cæsar was driven into a corner, or when he was forced to choose between compromising his reputation and career by a retreat and running a grave risk, he repeatedly staked everything on a single blow. There often arises a moment in war when a commander has to decide between a movement which will be ruinous if it fails, but decisive of the whole campaign if it succeeds, and another which is safe but indecisive. A general who is fighting merely to defend a frontier, or to hold an enemy in check, naturally chooses the latter course. But Cæsar, who was aiming at establishing a reputation and winning a dominant position among his fellowcountrymen, often chose to accept the risk; a thoroughly unsuccessful campaign, even if accompanied with no crushing defeat, would have lowered his prestige so much that his career would have been blighted. He preferred rather to hazard everything on a bold stroke: if he had failed, he would probably have chosen not to survive the day. But fortune was ever his friend, and the possible disaster never came, though it was often deserved. Cæsar did not talk of his "star" (though his friends invented one for him after his death), but he had more reason to be grateful for unearned pieces of luck than any other great general in the world's history. He might well have seen his career wrecked when he was surprised by the Nervii on the Sambre, or when he was beset by overwhelming numbers on his march to Samarobriva in B.C. 54, or when the lines of Alesia were all but pierced by the army of Vercassivelaunus. Still nearer was the risk at Dyrrhachium, when, before the arrival of his reinforcements, he seemed doomed to inevitable destruction. At Alexandria the peril was quite as great, and far more gratuitously incurred: indeed the whole Egyptian expedi tion was reckless almost beyond the bounds of sanity. But fortune never failed Cæsar on the battlefield. It seemed that he could not perish by the sword: the dagger was his appointed doom. In B.C. 50 Gaul lay completely prostrate before the victor's feet. For the first time he could turn his complete attention to Roman politics, without the fear of being distracted by some dangerous rebellion within his province. This was the greatest of all Cæsar's strokes of luck, for the breach with Pompey and the Senate was clearly at hand, and every man of whom he could dispose would be wanted on the Rubicon. It passes our conception to guess what might have happened if Vercingetorix had but delayed his great rising for two years, and the general revolt of the Gauls had occurred in B.C. 50 instead of in B.C. 52. The declaration of open war by the Optimate party might have reached Cæsar at the moment of some check, like that which he suffered before Gergovia, or in the midst of a long protracted siege like that of Alesia. He could never have concentrated his army to march on Italy: it would have been completely tied up in the difficult Gallic operations. Apparently the whole course of the world's history would have been changed if the Arvernian chief had been a little more dilatory in his organisation of the great national league. But as things actually went, Cæsar was as well prepared for the struggle as he could ever hope to be when the final crisis came. His adversaries had even been good enough to supply him with a plausible casus belli, and to refuse with contumely the many specious proposals for a pacification which he made to them. That he had ever seriously intended that these proposals should be accepted it is hard to believe. In return for a mere permission to stand in his absence for the consulship of B.C. 48, he had offered to give up the Transalpine province and eight of THE CIVIL WAR BEGINS 325 his legions. If the Optimates had accepted the terms, he must either have found some excuse for drawing back from his plighted word, or have been ruined by keeping it. The only possible deduction seems to be that he was well aware that his enemies would refuse every offer, however moderate, which he might make to them. His proposals, therefore, were only intended to influence public opinion, and to cause Cato, Pompey, and their friends to appear in the character of the foes of a reasonable peace. This was the actual result of the negotiations: he was able to pose as a well-meaning citizen, driven into war against his will, and to claim that the passage of the Rubicon was a mere act of self-defence. His ingenious pleas will not stand examination-least of all his solemn complaint that the Optimates had violated the constitution by disregarding the vetos of his friends, the tribunes Antony and Cassius. To any one who remembers how Cæsar himself had treated tribunes and their vetos during his consulship in B.C. 59, it must appear ludicrous that he should urge this particular grievance against his adversaries. We have already, when dealing with the life of Pompey, explained the meaning of Cæsar's short and brilliant Italian campaign. He had seen that at this particular moment rapidity was the one chance of success. Without waiting even for his own main body to come up, he had charged down into Italy with headlong speed, and struck his blow before the enemy could mobilise. Not only was he himself in his happiest vein, but fortune was even more propitious than usual, and his adversaries played into his hands. The folly of Domitius wrecked the last chance of the Optimates, and in the short nine weeks between December 16, B.C. 50, and February 20, B.C. 49, he had cleared the enemy out of the whole peninsula. He had seized Rome, whose possession conferred a false |
