the Aduatuci taken prisoners were sold under the hammer en masse for the benefit of the Roman treasury.  It seemed as if the fate which had befallen the Cimbri still pursued even this last Cimbrian fragment.  Caesar contented himself with imposing on the other subdued tribes a general disarmament and furnishing of hostages.  The Remi became naturally the leading canton in Belgic, like the Haedui in central Gaul; even in the latter several clans at enmity with the Haedui preferred to rank among the clients of the Remi.  Only the remote maritime cantons of the Morini (Artois) and the Menapii (Flanders and Brabant), and the country between the Scheldt and the Rhine inhabited in great part by Germans, remained still for the present exempt from Roman invasion and in possession of their hereditary freedom.

Expeditions against the Maritime Cantons
Venetian War

The turn of the Aremorican cantons came.  In the autumn of 697 Publius Crassus was sent thither with a Roman corps; he induced the Veneti—­who as masters of the ports of the modern Morbihan and of a respectable fleet occupied the first place among all the Celtic cantons in navigation and commerce—­and generally the coast-districts between the Loire and Seine, to submit to the Romans and give them hostages.  But they soon repented.  When in the following winter (697-698) Roman officers came to these legions to levy requisitions of grain there, they were detained by the Veneti as counter-hostages.  The example thus set was quickly followed not only by the Aremorican cantons, but also by the maritime cantons of the Belgae that still remained free; where, as in some cantons of Normandy, the common council refused to join the insurrection, the multitude put them to death and attached itself with redoubled zeal to the national cause.  The whole coast from the mouth of the Loire to that of the Rhine rose against Rome; the most resolute patriots from all the Celtic cantons hastened thither to co-operate in the great work of liberation; they already calculated on the rising of the whole Belgic confederacy, on aid from Britain, on the arrival of Germans from beyond the Rhine.

Caesar sent Labienus with all the cavalry to the Rhine, with a view to hold in check the agitation in the Belgic province, and in case of need to prevent the Germans from crossing the river; another of his lieutenants, Quintus Titurius Sabinus, went with three legions to Normandy, where the main body of the insurgents assembled.  But the powerful and intelligent Veneti were the true centre of the insurrection; the chief attack by land and sea was directed against them.  Caesar’s lieutenant, Decimus Brutus, brought up the fleet formed partly of the ships of the subject Celtic cantons, partly of a number of Roman galleys hastily built on the Loire and manned with rowers from the Narbonese province; Caesar himself advanced with the flower of his infantry into the territory of the Veneti.  But these were prepared beforehand,