R. Peake - Marching With Caesar - Conquest of Gaul

“There’s no pleasing that man,” he muttered one day.

The 10th was now a week into our march, and were within two or three day’s march of the latest place we had been told to be by Caesar. We were barely into the first watch of the march when Vibius made his comment, but I knew the reaming we had taken from the Primus Pilus that morning was still fresh on his mind, as it was with everyone. Seemingly out of nowhere, with our Cohort waiting our turn to start the march, the Primus Pilus spent that time telling us how disgraced he was at our “sightseeing” pace and how we were letting Caesar down. This was not only shocking to us, it was bewildering, and our confused glances at each other confirmed I was not the only one who felt this way. We could only go as fast as the pace set for us and since our Cohort was not in the lead the day before, we were not sure where this was coming from. As we learned later, the same tongue-lashing was given by the Primus Pilus to every Cohort, along with the cavalry and the men who ran the baggage train. It made us feel somewhat better, at least as far as our feelings, yet the pace set that day was cracking and we instantly knew it was going to be a hard one. Glancing over at Vibius when he made his comment, I could see that even so early he was struggling more than he should have been, and I could only hope that the gains he had made in his fitness over the last few days did not dig so deeply into his reserves that he would have to drop from the march. His face was already red, and the sweat dripped from his nose in a steady stream, despite the coolness of the day. I replied, but even as I did so it was with some surprise, being sure I knew who “he” was referring to, and it was not the Primus Pilus.

“He’s just trying to get us there as fast as he can because he wants his best to send into battle”, I reasoned.

“Fat lot of good it'll do if when we get there, we’re too exhausted to pick up a javelin, let alone throw one,” he snapped, impatiently swiping at the sweat rolling into his eyes.

For my part, after the first few days of struggle, I adjusted fairly easily back into the campaigning rhythm, which I suspected was another reason for Vibius’ irritation. I shrugged, knowing by this time that there were times to argue with Vibius and times not to, and this was the latter. He had made up his mind that Caesar was the cause of his misery, and nothing I could say would change that. It was in this frame of mind that we kept moving, the only sound for many miles the thud of our boots and the jingling of our gear bouncing around. One thankful aspect of this country, I mused, was that it did not kick up as much dust as Hispania, something a Legionary learns to appreciate. Also, the nights were much colder than even in Narbo, so we woke up every morning shivering, and it was not unusual that there was a thin skin of ice on the water buckets that were used to water the livestock. Marching up the valley of the Rhodanus (Rhone), we passed through a number of towns and bypassed the larger ones if possible. Despite the fact the folks in the town, at least in a Roman province, might like the spectacle of an army marching by, towns and cities provided a wealth of temptation for a lot of us. In turn, this inevitably brought trouble in one form or another, so invariably whenever possible we passed them by on an outer road. After a few days, despite the area immediately along the river staying relatively flat, it was still taking a noticeably upward tilt, and the river valley soon was surrounded by hills that grew in height as we moved. The timing of the Primus Pilus’ chastisement was unfortunate in that sense; the main reason for our tardiness, if it was indeed real, was more a result of the land over which we marched than any lack of fitness on our part, at least by this point. None of this made an obol’s worth of difference to us, of course, and while I was not willing to condemn Caesar to the degree that Vibius had, I will say that even his most ardent supporters were somewhat muted when they discussed him with their comrades. At the end of the day that we received the warning from the Primus Pilus, it was like being on the first day of the march again, at least if one were to judge simply by the obvious level of fatigue. Little did we know, we were relatively as refreshed as it was possible to be, given the circumstances and what Caesar planned for us.

“Dig. Starting where those stakes are marking out. Pile the spoil on that side,” Pilus Prior Vetruvius pointed. “The ditch has to be twelve feet deep and fifteen feet wide.”

We all nodded, since this was the standard for fortifications we constructed for Caesar, but despite our understanding of the simple requirements, what was escaping all of us was….why? We were not building a camp; we had done that the day before. This was, at least to our eye, in the middle of nowhere. However, this was to be the first of the defensive fortifications for which Caesar would rightly become famous, an 18 mile wall that began at the shores of the huge lake that the locals call Geneva, to the base of the Jura Mountains. Since we never saw maps and were too lowly ranked to be in any of the officers’ briefings, we had to wait to learn from the Pilus Prior exactly why we were standing in what was nothing more than a long line of Centuries, half of them fully armed and standing watch, with the other half like us being told to show up with our digging gear. The Helvetii were out of room; this much we knew, and once the Pilus Prior sketched out a rough map in the dirt, it became clearer what their problem was. They lived in a narrow strip of land, with the huge lake to one side, and a range of small but rugged mountains on the other. If facing south, the direction they wanted to march, that lake was to their left, and behind them, hemming them in even further was the Rhenus (Rhine) River, roughly a week’s march away. Furthering their problems was that apparently the Helvetii had not been good neighbors to the tribes surrounding them, and I believe it was this knowledge that prompted Caesar to reject their request to pass through the lands to their south. Not trusting them to obey his command, he ordered us to dig a defensive ditch, of the dimensions I previously mentioned, to block the 18 mile gap. Topping the earthen wall were the palisade stakes, for which a large number of trees had to be felled and the stakes fashioned from them. Because we were the first Legion to arrive, it fell to us and a scratch force of Legion strength that was pulled from the garrisons and towns of the province. It is only now that I realize that many times when we were not told the larger reasons for our actions, it was actually in our best interests, although I would have been just as vocal protesting that idea as anyone back then. However, if we knew what we would be expected to accomplish, while we certainly would not have mutinied, there would have been considerable hard feelings. As it was, we were still none too happy, grumbling at the folly of digging a ditch and wall for only the gods knew what here in the middle of nowhere.

Originally, we started on the project at a midway point, in what we thought was an attempt to screen our intentions from the Helvetii. It is still astonishing to me, even having seen it happen as many times as I have by now, how quickly an organized, motivated and well-led group of men can achieve something of the scale as the Geneva Wall, as we came to call it. The wall took only two weeks plus a day, despite one or two attempts on the part of the Helvetii to disrupt the work. Once it was finished, Caesar spread all of his available troops along the walls, concentrating most of them at the point closest to the river, whereby we could man the walls to repel any attempts to scale it, not that there was a huge threat of this. Because it was the entire Helvetii tribe moving, what we faced was not a fast-moving, far-ranging group of warriors, so that scaling the wall would only do them limited good. It had to be breached, in a number of places, with each opening having to be at least as wide as their largest wagons. The spot that bore the most watching was where Caesar put us, the section of wall where it made a junction with the confluence of the river and the lake; the scratch troops were distributed along the rest of the way. Our wall was constructed so that part of it actually ran parallel to the Rhodanus, which is fed by the lake, for the length of a mile, giving anyone foolhardy enough to try slipping by and landing on our side of the river exposure to not just our javelins but to the artillery, the bulk of which Caesar ordered to be concentrated in this area. And if anyone was fortunate enough to make it to the point at which the wall stopped, facing them was a camp filled with men with orders to kill whoever made it that far, no matter what their status. Despite all of this, there were such attempts every night the first two or three nights; at least none of them were insane enough to try to go by in the day. Even with the cover of night, however, the passengers who slipped through on the one or two boats that made it past the initial fortifications were quickly dispatched. Fortunately, our Cohort was stationed further up; while I would have obeyed orders the same way I had obeyed such orders in the past, I certainly did not mind missing the opportunity to slaughter women and children.