Menapii have been already mentioned,(41) had at length, eluding the vigilance of their opponents by a feigned retreat, crossed in the vessels belonging to the Menapii—­an enormous host, which is said, including women and children, to have amounted to 430,000 persons.  They still lay, apparently, in the region of Nimeguen and Cleves; but it was said that, following the invitations of the Celtic patriot party, they intended to advance into the interior of Gaul; and the rumour was confirmed by the fact that bands of their horsemen already roamed as far as the borders of the Treveri.  But when Caesar with his legions arrived opposite to them, the sorely-harassed emigrants seemed not desirous of fresh conflicts, but very ready to accept land from the Romans and to till it in peace under their supremacy.  While negotiations as to this were going on, a suspicion arose in the mind of the Roman general that the Germans only sought to gain time till the bands of horsemen sent out by them had returned.  Whether this suspicion was well founded or not, we cannot tell; but confirmed in it by an attack, which in spite of the de facto suspension of arms a troop of the enemy made on his vanguard, and exasperated by the severe loss thereby sustained, Caesar believed himself entitled to disregard every consideration of international law.  When on the second morning the princes and elders of the Germans appeared in the Roman camp to apologize for the attack made without their knowledge, they were arrested, and the multitude anticipating no assault and deprived of their leaders were suddenly fallen upon by the Roman army.  It was rather a manhunt than a battle; those that did not fall under the swords of the Romans were drowned in the Rhine; almost none but the divisions detached at the time of the attack escaped the massacre and succeeded in recrossing the Rhine, where the Sugambri gave them an asylu in their territory, apparently on the Lippe.  The behaviour of Caesar towards these German immigrants met with severe and just censure in the senate; but, however little it can be excused, the German encroachments were emphatically checked by the terror which it occasioned.

Caesar on the Right Bank of the Rhine

Caesar however found it advisable to take yet a further step and to lead the legions over the Rhine.  He was not without connections beyond the river. the Germans at the stage of culture which they had then reached, lacked as yet any national coherence; in political distraction they—­though from other causes—­fell nothing short of the Celts.  The Ubii (on the Sieg and Lahn), the most civilized among the German tribes, had recently been made subject and tributary by a powerful Suebian canton of the interior, and had as early as 697 through their envoys entreated Caesar to free them like the Gauls from the Suebian rule.  It was not Caesar’s design seriously to respond to this suggestion, which would have involved him in endless enterprises; but