R. Peake - Marching With Caesar – Civil War

“Primus Pilus.” I guessed that this man, an Optio from the First Cohort as I recall, was elected as spokesman to approach the command group with whatever these men had in mind. “We want you to go to Caesar for us.”

That was certainly guaranteed to get all of our attention, and the Primus Pilus looked nonplussed.

“For what?” he demanded.

“To convince him to send us across the ford now, so we can end this once and for all.”

There was a sudden silence. Even the buzzing group of men stopped their talking to hear this exchange. I looked at the Primus Pilus, a man named Torquatus, and while his face was expressionless, I was close enough to see the slightest twitch at the corner of his mouth. I knew that they had approached the right man. However, he was not about to give in immediately; that just is not how things work in the Legions.

“And why would I want to do that? Are you so anxious to die?” He gestured in the direction of the ford. “The last I heard, the water was neck deep, and the current was still strong. A midget like you would be swept away like a turd in the sewer.”

There was an eruption of laughter, and the Optio flushed, but his tone was calm. “That may be, Primus Pilus. But we’re all going to die anyway. I’d rather do it trying to end this war than to wait a few more days.”

That stilled the laughter immediately and I could see that he had struck a chord that, in all honesty, resonated with me just as much as with the rest of the men.

Primus Pilus Torquatus did not answer immediately, staring down at the men now gathered in front of us with narrowed eyes. Finally, he gave a curt nod, and said, “Fair enough. I’ll speak with him. Pullus,” he surprised me because I had not even been sure that he had seen me, “come with me.”

Off we went, to talk to Caesar, with the men wishing us luck on our quest.

~ ~ ~ ~

In fairness, it did not take much persuasion to get Caesar to agree. The one concession that he demanded was that we choose men who we thought were strong enough to cross through the current without being swept away. We also agreed to leave all baggage behind. Hurrying back, I gave the necessary orders while the Primus Pilus went to tell the other Primi Pili of the other Legions what we were about. Immediately, the camp was thrown into the flurry of activity that to an outsider would look like utter chaos, but which is, in fact, a well-practiced dance that most of us had performed hundreds and thousands of times, save for the raw Legions.

I let my Centurions do their job; one of the hardest things to learn for a senior Centurion is to rely on your subordinates and give them the freedom to do their jobs the best way they see fit, without constantly interfering. Having command of veterans like the 10th made everyone’s jobs easier, since every man knew exactly what he was supposed to do at any given moment, and it was this experience that saw us formed up and ready to march a little more than a third of a watch after the command. During the time we were preparing, our cavalry continued with the harassment, but Afranius’ army had managed to march a couple of miles across the plain, heading for slightly rougher country, broken with a seemingly unending series of low hills and gullies choked with brush. About five miles further began a small mountain range, with terrain so undulating that if the Pompeians could make it that far, it would be practically impossible for us to bring them to battle, thereby allowing them to escape. That made it of the utmost importance that we bring them to heel before that point, and with that in mind, we trotted in formation to the ford. Caesar ordered about a hundred of the cavalry to come back to the ford to assist with the crossing, using the same method we had used to such good effect in Gaul. About half of them entered the river above the ford, standing their horses side by side to lessen the flow of the current, with the other half forming up below the ford, ready to catch any man who lost his footing. It was in this way that, despite a few men being swept off their feet by the current, almost the entire army crossed without the loss of a single man. Still, despite the relative speed of our movements, it took more than two parts of a watch to get the whole army across, and it was a soggy, tired lot that was given the order to move out after Afranius, who used that time to continue his march south, getting a couple miles closer to the mountains. Despite how waterlogged we were, we still marched much faster than the Pompeians, who might have been dry but were still encumbered with all of their baggage and supplies.

Toward the end of the day, we came within sight of the rearguard, still being harassed by our cavalry. The Pompeians were fighting a running battle, with our forces lasting the better part of four watches now. With the sun beginning to sink, they marched to a group of small hills to occupy the high ground. While two of their Legions stood in formation on the slopes and watched, the rest began to build camp. For our part, we were still sodden and tired ourselves, but since we left our baggage behind, the best we could do was to occupy a hill a short distance away, making a cold camp without walls or ditch. We settled down the best we could, shivering in our cold clothes, the men continually grumbling about the water setting in and ruining their gear. Since we had no real way to dry and oil our armor and weapons, they worried about having to replace it, knowing it would come out of their pay. I began using handfuls of the sandy soil to scour my own equipment and the rest of the men quickly followed suit, but I knew that we would have to have a cleaning party at the first opportunity, if only to stop the complaining.

Meanwhile, our scouts were ranging ahead along the Pompeians’ line of march, surveying the country, and they came back to tell Caesar what they found. Once past the small range of hills that we were occupying, the land was fairly open and only gently rolling for four or five miles, until it reached a series of sharply defined ridges that generally blocked passage to the Iber. However, a narrow defile was there that was apparently a dry watercourse feeding into the Iber. Whoever got to that defile first could block passage to the boat bridge. As they were hurrying back with this report, the scouts captured a detachment of Pompeians sent to get water. Under interrogation, we learned that Afranius was planning on a night march, and was at that moment preparing to try and slip away. Immediately, Caesar ordered the bucina to sound the order to make ready to march, in turn issuing the corresponding commands. Between the horn and the bellowing of the Centurions, the sound rolled across the space between the hills, alerting Afranius that we had discovered his plans. He then countermanded his own marching orders, and after a lot of bustling about, things settled down again for the rest of the night.

Shortly before dawn, I was summoned along with the other Centurions to a meeting of the command group. We were standing together as the sun rose, and with the light turning the sky first gray, then the coppery blue that promised another hot day, we discussed our options. From the spot in camp where we were talking, we could see a small knot of men in the Pompeian camp and I smiled grimly to myself, thinking that their conversation was undoubtedly an exact copy of our own; what was the other side thinking? What were they going to do next? As it turned out, they did nothing for the whole day, and neither did we, other than sitting and watching each other. Since we had marched out with only the normal three-day’s rations and had not brought any of our baggage, the wagering in camp was that the Pompeians would be content to sit on that hill to starve us out. They would force us to withdraw back to the main camp for supplies, or to have a convoy sent to us, thereby providing enough of a distraction for them to slip away. Nevertheless, as proud as we were of Caesar’s skill and fortune, the Pompeians were equally wary of it. Consequently, they determined that they could not just sit and wait for something to happen. That next day passed uneventfully, but during the night, shortly before dawn, we could hear the horns sounding the orders to break camp. Almost at the same moment, Caesar gave his own orders and since we had less to break down, we were ready to move well before the Pompeians. Dawn found us moving off the hill, but this time seemingly back in the direction from which we had come, the cries of joy and the jeers of our foes carrying across the small valley to us. Normally, such calls of cowardice would have been bitter as gall to us, but now we all looked at each other, grinning from ear to ear, thankful that we were too far away for the enemy to see our faces. Once again, Caesar had pulled one over on his enemies.