R. Peake - Marching With Caesar - Conquest of Gaul

Fighting continued to rage, the accursed Gallaeci refusing to recognize the inevitable, and the battle soon degenerated into a series of smaller, more private fights involving at the most dozens of men on both sides. All sense of tactics and cohesion were gone as the situation reduced itself to its simplest denominator, that of men trying to kill each other for reasons that they could no more fathom at this point than they could express them. Finding the Pilus Prior, he was surrounded by a knot of men from my Century, so I hurried over to the group.

Catching sight of me, he called out, “It’s about time Pullus. Get over there,” he pointed to a spot where some of our men were being hard pressed by a larger group of Gallaeci, “and sort that out.”

Sketching a salute I ran over, jumping into a wild melee that resembled a tavern brawl more than any type of set battle. Men were simply bashing each other with both shield and sword, not even bothering to look for an opening or in any other way using their heads, merely trying to batter their opponents into submission. Resolving that I was going to be more logical about this, I waited as I watched two combatants who appeared to be evenly matched, looking for an opening where I could provide some help. After exchanging a series of blows, both the men stepped away from each other, panting from the exertion, their eyes only on each other. Seeing my chance, I stepped in quickly to dispatch the Gallaeci with a quick thrust. The Roman, I believe it was a man named Numerius from our Century, yelled at me in protest.

“I almost had him Pullus, you didn’t have to do that.”

I looked at him as if he had gone insane; this was not a contest or a training exercise, a point I reminded him of, not mollifying him in the slightest. “Next time, you worry about making your own kill and not wait until I soften someone up so you can just step in and take the glory,” he insisted.

I did not know how to respond, just looking at him with my mouth agape. Shaking my head, I turned my attention back to the fight, wondering if I would find someone more appreciative of my help.

Our effort to clear the second wall and move away from it took most of the day. First we would clear a section, with the Gallaeci falling back into the relative safety of the lean-tos and shacks arrayed on the slopes of the hill, but then they would reorganize and rally before we could move out from the wall. They would come rushing back, and more than once we found ourselves with our backs literally to the second wall, fighting desperately to maintain our formation and not get slaughtered piecemeal trying to claw our way back up to the parapet. After a couple of setbacks like this, we kept a reserve force standing on the parapet who would first fling whatever javelins they found to help relieve the pressure, then use the discarded longer spears that the Gallaeci favored, stabbing down at the enemy over our heads as we fought. In this manner we never had to face the prospect of trying to withdraw back over the wall, although it was a close-run thing. During one particularly vicious encounter, I was slashed down my right arm just as I was parrying a thrust from a spear, an opportunistic Gallaeci next to the man I was fighting lashing out with a short blade, scoring my arm from the elbow to just an inch or two above my wrist. While the cut was not particularly deep, it felt like someone poured liquid fire in a line down my arm; even now as I am dictating this I can see the scar clearly, although it has turned white with age. Despite myself I let out a yelp of pain, then gritted my teeth and took savage delight in gutting the man who cut me, laughing brutally into his face as he dropped to his knees, his eyes on me as he died. The blood from the wound ran freely for some time before it clotted; a wave of dizziness struck me after a few moments and I was sure that I was going to collapse on the ground, at the worst possible time. Somehow I found the reserves needed to maintain my footing, once again feeling the rage start to flow through me, giving me a burst of energy. Snarling like a wild animal, I bashed an older warrior with the boss of my shield, shoving him back to give me room to move forward while thrusting and slashing at any patch of bare flesh that I saw. The men around me began roaring their own war cries, feeding off the renewed energy as our group began pushing back away from the wall, moving steadily forward. Other smaller groups saw us and fought their way to us so that after several moments of non-stop fighting, we had gathered perhaps half the Cohort. The Pilus Prior saw our group and made his way to us, using us as a rallying point, and while he had the horns sound the command to form on the standard of our Cohort, I took the time to try binding my wound, taking the neckerchief we wore to keep our armor from chafing our necks off a dead Legionary, Plautius as it turned out, then with some help tied it around my arm. It was a bit restricting, though I was fairly confident that once we started fighting again I would not notice, which is what happened. Meanwhile, the 9th had made their way to a point where they had begun firing the shelters and other combustibles, and the wind, picking up in the day as it is prone to do in that part of the world, had begun to whip its way up the hill, sending a pall of smoke in our direction that was irritating yet not thick enough to obscure our vision. The Gallaeci, seeing us rally and form up, gave their own commands so that a large number of their warriors clustered together, ready to oppose our progress up the hill.

For however many times only the gods knew by this point, the Pilus Prior waved his sword in the air in a circle, before dropping it down and pointing at the men opposite us, bellowing, “Kill those bastards!”

Again, we responded with a roar, rushing forward. Finally, however, we could sense that this was the final push; the last fort, the last bunch of the enemy, the last battle of the campaign before we could rest. For some of us who dreamed of such things, it was also the last chance for glory, meaning that I was at the head of the Second Cohort as we smashed into our enemy.

Once it was all over, it was easily our hardest and bloodiest battle to date, which given the circumstances, was fitting. The Gallaeci fought like lions, and at some point in the final battle to finish off a last pocket of resistance, I found myself feeling very sad that we had to slaughter such worthy opponents as these. It is a feeling that I have had several times since. In fact, there have been times where I found I have more regard for the men I was killing than some of the men I was fighting with, and I know that I am not alone. On that day, we destroyed the Lucenses branch of the Gallaeci as a fighting force, or at least we thought we did, though they have proven to be a most resilient enemy. In the space of 30 years, they regained enough strength to cause the Imperator Augustus troubles that found the Legions marching once again over terrain that I had as a teenager. However, at the time we marched under the command of his adoptive father, we pacified the province, bringing the Lusitani and the Gallaeci to heel and ending the revolt. When all was said and done, the 10th Legion lost more than 200 men killed, with an equal number wounded severely enough to be dismissed from the Legion. In our Century, out of the original 91 men that made it through the final training and marched out of the camp in Scallabis, there were 74 left on active service; 12 men had been killed outright, including Optio Vinicius, and four had to be sent home. None of them were my tentmates, although five of us had been wounded to one degree or another, myself suffering two wounds, though neither of them were serious enough to see me on the sick and injured list. Vibius took a month to recover, and was left with a slight limp that showed up on cold days or at the end of a hard day’s marching, but otherwise did not slow him down. The day after we took the last Gallaeci fort, the leaders of the resistance still alive came to camp to surrender to Caesar, throwing themselves on his mercy, at a ceremony where we were paraded to watch the spectacle, which we enjoyed immensely. There are few things more satisfying than seeing an enemy humbled before the eagles of the Legions, and it was an event that never diminished in pleasure for me over the years, except when they were fellow Romans. We, the 9th and 10th, marched back south, to be met by the 7th, who had reduced Portus Cale and pacified the area, before continuing our movement until we met the 8th, still guarding their area of Lusitania for the weeks we were pursuing the end of the rebellion. It was in late September that we marched into Scallabis, to be met by adoring crowds, our standards wreathed in the traditional garlands that denote victorious Legions, with Caesar leading the procession. The 10th was given the place of honor on the march into the city, beginning a long relationship with Caesar as his favorite and most reliable Legion, a fact which we were quick to rub in the faces of the other Legions and was the source of many a brawl in the inns and wine shops of the places we were quartered through the years. We spent a month in Scallabis as the wounded men recovered, before marching to Corduba.