Prequel to The Milky Hair (1) Happy Gauls, who once burned the city of Rome
After the Gauls retired from Rome, the Romans were painfully determined, paid for their lives, reformed the military system, and continued to expand. On the contrary, the Gauls were content with the happy life in front of them and stagnated. After almost a hundred years, retribution finally came.
During this nearly hundred years, the Romans rebuilt their alliances and conquered the tribes of central Italy. Gaul in the mountains was now unable to defeat Rome. After nearly a hundred years, Rome conquered the tribes of southern Italy, crushed the combined forces of the Greek city-states represented by King Pyrrhus, and unified most of Italy. Next, it's time to settle the ledger with the Gauls.
Around 190 BC, Roman legions attacked the South Gauls. After three battles, the Romans successfully conquered Mountain Gaul and established the province of Mountain Gaul. Next, the Roman legions crossed the Alps and attacked the area of present-day France. In 120 BC, Rome occupied the coastal areas of southern Gaul, where it established the province of Narbongal, beginning further aggression and domination of Gaul. Communication between the Gauls and Romans was also more frequent. Many Of the Gauls were absorbed as allies of the Roman legions and received tactical training from the Roman army. In the Gaul region (known as Trans-Gaul), which was not yet under the direct rule of Rome, there was also a gradual infiltration of Roman forces.
In the Spartacus slave revolt, the Gauls became an important part of the rebel army.
In 58 BC, the great conqueror Caesar descended on Gaul. Caesar became governor of the province of Southern Gaul, and soon after he was governor of the province of Narbon. The ambitious Caesar would not be willing to spend his time in governorship or make a small fortune. He wanted to gain more fame and fortune for himself by conquering Gaul.
(Gaul in the time of Caesar)
Such an opportunity was finally seized by Caesar. At that time, there were three large tribes in Transcaul. Of these, the Aidui were close to Rome, while the other two tribes, the Shekwani and The Ervi, allied themselves with the powerful barbarian Germanic peoples in the north. The two sides fought fiercely, and the Shekwani even ceded land to the Germans to guide these powerful neighbors into Gaul.
In the year of Caesar's presidency, the Ervi people wanted to move elsewhere, encroaching on the Edui territory. Unable to stop the group, the Aidui made a request to caesar, the patron behind them, hoping that the Roman army would help them expel the group of guys who had come to seize the territory. Caesar was overjoyed to receive such an invitation: Lao Tzu was worried about where to find an excuse to beat you Gauls, and did not expect that you would help to get this done properly. So Caesar entered Trans-Gaul with his army. The "Gallic Wars" in Roman history officially began.
At the beginning of the war, Caesar had only a legion of five thousand men in Outer Gaul, and could not stop hundreds of thousands of Erwi people. He used the tactic of delaying the army, saying that he had come to mediate the contradictions between the two sides, and everyone could discuss them slowly. The simple Erwi people believed it to be true, but as they discussed, Caesar raced against the clock to build a fortified fortress on the elvirate's necessary road. The Erwi people, who found themselves deceived, had no choice but to abandon the main road and take a detour to a rough and narrow path. And Caesar took advantage of your illness to kill you, returned to his own province, brought five legions, followed in pursuit, killed the Erwi people into a river of blood, and the remnants obediently fled back to the old land.
Supposedly, the previous incident had been resolved, but Caesar was not ready to take it. He took advantage of the situation to present himself as an ally of the Gauls, and everywhere he "drew his sword to help each other when the road was uneven", hitting this and that. He deliberately exploited the discord between the tribes in Gaul, defeated them one by one, and defeated the Germanic tribes that entered Gaul. With these achievements, Caesar's strength and prestige became increasingly strong. By 57 BC, Caesar had occupied most of Transcaul.
At this time, the Gaulese tribes were still constantly rebelling against Caesar's rule. Caesar showed no mercy, pulling with one hand and beating with the other, resolutely suppressing. In the process of repression, Caesar traveled all over Gaul, crossed the strait with him, and wandered twice to the British Island, so that the local Celts could also taste the Roman iron fist.
But everything will not be smooth from beginning to end. Caesar's relatively solid political position in Rome was derived from the "three-headed alliance" he and Pompey and Crassus secretly formed, and the three of them supported each other mutually beneficially, which allowed Caesar to be the governor of Gaul for 10 years, and to lead the army for a long time without suspicion by the Senate. But all that changed after a few years. In 53 BC, Crassus was killed during his crusade against Parthia (the Sabbath Empire). The Big Three is one less and loses the "trilateral checks and balances." The contradictions between the remaining two men quickly sharpened, and Pompey was dissatisfied with Caesar's repeated achievements in Gaul and stole the limelight, and openly showed a hostile attitude. Caesar encountered a political crisis in Rome.
Good things don't happen, but bad things follow. The old home is not at peace, and the people on the Gaul side are not honest. The Gaulish tribes, which had been fighting separately, finally discovered that the Roman devils were taking advantage of themselves and woke up. Led by a leader named Vicintoli, they united against the Roman army. The eighth and final "Gallic War" broke out. In the Battle of Zhilgweia, they used the tactics of false camps and ambushes on both wings to kill more than 700 Roman troops, and Caesar was hit in the head.
In order to resolve this crisis, Caesar, who was trapped at home and abroad, decided to first deal with this rebellion in Gaul, to gain a solid base for himself, and then to settle accounts with Pompey. But it's not that easy. Vicintoli was not a vegetarian, he had also been in the Roman army before, and knew that the Group of Gaulish Hillbills he was leading was not a rival to the Roman army. He also knew his advantage, that is, the number of Gallic cavalry was relatively large. So he adopted guerrilla tactics, using the mobility of the cavalry to constantly harass the Roman legions, the enemy advanced and retreated, the enemy stationed and harassed me, that is, he did not work with you with real swords and guns. This tactic made Caesar very distressed, and with the Roman side in mind, for fear of delaying Pompey's black hand for a long time, Caesar was in a dilemma. He was even angry that in his marching diary "Gaul War Record", he scolded this group of Gaul rats, a group of turtle grandchildren who only knew how to shrink and did not dare to fight with him.
The Gauls, under the leadership of Vicentoli, briefly embarrassed the Roman army and fought small victories. This short-lived victory devastated them. Overconfident, they thought they could easily overthrow Caesar, and their undisciplined shortcomings were revealed. The group disobeyed Vichyntori's command and each rushed up to fight the Roman army, only to be easily eaten by the well-equipped Roman army. The gallic allies with their losses retreated in disgrace, and Vichytoli had to take them and retreat to Alesia.
Alesia sits on a hill surrounded by river valleys, making it ideal for defense. Caesar chased after him and laughed at the sky: Lao Tzu is afraid of your guerrillas, and now that you enter the city to defend yourself, that is self-destruction! Weighing that his army was not as large as the Allied forces of Gaul, he adopted a siege strategy. In order to ensure that he could encircle this group of enemies with a small number of troops, Caesar built a wall of nearly 30 kilometers long and four meters high outside Alesia, and then dug a deep ditch in front of the wall, and then diverted the river to fill the trench and act as a "moat". In addition to these, he also arranged five layers of "yin and yang boundaries" with cut wooden stakes, and dug a pit with an oblique diagonal like a plum blossom shape, in which were placed log stakes with the thickness of human legs, sharpened on the top, and such a pit was dug in eight rows, called "lilies". In front of all these projects, a lot of wood was found, topped with strong iron hooks, not far from each other, buried in the soil, all over the place, called "kicking spurs". When everything was ready, Caesar waited to trap the Gauls in This Alesia.
(Battlefield Site)
Inside the walls, the Gallic coalition did not have much food, just enough to last a month. Seeing that the Romans only besieged and did not attack, there would soon be a food shortage. In order to ensure the supply of the army, Vichytoli ordered that all the women and children in the city be driven out. These abandoned women and children came to the walls of the Roman army and begged them to let themselves out, even if they were cows and horses. But Caesar did not agree to them, and the group was surrounded by the combined forces of The Roman and Gallic armies, neither advancing nor retreating, and finally dying outside the city of Alesia. The tragic deaths of the women and children shook the hearts of the Gallic allied troops, and the soldiers began to develop war-weariness.
Vichintoli felt that this was just waiting for death, and he ordered the whole army to break through with all his might. The battle for the breakout was extremely fierce, and although the Romans were well equipped and had good fortifications, the Gallic army was numerous, and they had no other way to survive except to break through. Just when another group of Gaul troops on the outskirts also came to reinforce the brothers, they attacked on both sides, and the Roman army struggled to support them. The Gallic army also sacrificed many brothers in front of the Roman wall, and the sharp wooden stakes in those traps made many Gallic hans cry wolf, and the inside and outside of the wall were stained with blood.
After a long stalemate, the Gaul army finally found the weakness of the Roman army's defense, where the ground was not easy to build walls, and the Gallic army rushed to that place like a tide. Caesar saw that it was almost impossible to hold on, and he also made a desperate bet, personally put on a conspicuous cloak, and rushed to the front. The Roman army saw its commander in the lead, exhausted, gritting his teeth and continuing to fight desperately. At this time, Caesar took out his own famous general's means and sent a cavalry to attack the Gallic army from behind. The Gallic army, which had reached its limit, finally could not support it, and the entire line collapsed. Vicintoli also had to surrender.
Rome won a great victory at Alesia, capturing tens of thousands of prisoners and returning to Rome. Each of the Roman armies was said to have taken at least one captive as a slave. Vicintoli, the leader of the Gaul Army, was publicly executed. After the Battle of Alesia, the various tribes of Gaul were no longer able to unite against Rome. Soon, Gaul was completely conquered by Rome and entered the "Romanized Gaulonic Period".