Second Insurrection

The sagacious calculator had on this occasion miscalculated.  The fire was smothered, but not extinguished.  The stroke, under which the head of Acco fell, was felt by the whole Celtic nobility.  At this very moment the position of affairs presented better prospects than ever.  The insurrection of the last winter had evidently failed only through Caesar himself appearing on the scene of action; now he was at a distance, detained on the Po by the imminence of civil war, and the Gallic army, which was collected on the upper Seine, was far separated from its dreaded leader.  If a general insurrection now broke out in central Gaul, the Roman army might be surrounded, and the almost undefended old Roman province be overrun before Caesar reappeared beyond the Alps, even if the Italian complications did not altogether prevent him from further concerning himself about Gaul.

The Carnutes
The Arverni

Conspirators from all the cantons of central Gaul assembled; the Carnutes, as most directly affected by the execution of Acco, offered to take the lead.  On a set day in the winter of 701-702 the Carnutic knights Gutruatus and Conconnetodumnus gave at Cenabum (Orleans) the signal for the rising, and put to death in a body the Romans who happened to be there.  The most vehement agitation seized the length and breadth of the great Celtic land; the patriots everywhere bestirred themselves.  But nothing stirred the nation so deeply as the insurrection of the Arverni.  The government of this community, which had formerly under its kings been the first in southern Gaul, and had still after the fall of its principality occasioned by the unfortunate wars against Rome(45) continued to be one of the wealthiest, most civilized, and most powerful in all Gaul, had hitherto inviolably adhered to Rome.  Even now the patriot party in the governing common council was in the minority; an attempt to induce it to join the insurrection was in vain.  The attacks of the patriots were therefore directed against the common council and the existing constitution itself; and the more so, that the change of constitution which among the Arverni had substituted the common council for the prince(46) had taken place after the victories of the Romans and probably under their influence.

Vercingetorix

The leader of the Arvernian patriots Vercingetorix, one of those nobles whom we meet with among the Celts, of almost regal repute in and beyond his canton, and a stately, brave, sagacious man to boot, left the capital and summoned the country people, who were as hostile to the ruling oligarchy as to the Romans, at once to re-establish the Arvernian monarchy and to go to war with Rome.  The multitude quickly joined him; the restoration of the throne of Luerius and Betuitus was at the same time the declaration of a national war against Rome.  The centre of unity, from the want of which all previous attempts of the nation to shake off the foreign yoke had failed, was now found in the new self-nominated king of the Arverni.  Vercingetorix became for the Celts of the continent what Cassivellaunus was for the insular Celts; the feeling strongly pervaded the masses that he, if any one, was the man to save the nation.