[Sidenote:  Account of northern nations.] [Sidenote:  Their strange customs.] [Sidenote:  Well-trained horses.]

Caesar gives, in his narrative, very extraordinary accounts of the customs and modes of life of some of the people that he encountered.  There was one country, for example, in which all the lands were common, and the whole structure of society was based on the plan of forming the community into one great martial band.  The nation was divided into a hundred cantons, each containing two thousand men capable of bearing arms.  If these were all mustered into service together, they would form, of course, an army of two hundred thousand men.  It was customary, however, to organize only one half of them into an army, while the rest remained at home to till the ground and tend the flocks and herds.  These two great divisions interchanged their work every year, the soldiers becoming husbandmen, and the husbandmen soldiers.  Thus they all became equally inured to the hardships and dangers of the camp, and to the more continuous but safer labors of agricultural toil.  Their fields were devoted to pasturage more than to tillage, for flocks and herds could be driven from place to place, and thus more easily preserved from the depredations of enemies than fields of grain.  The children grew up almost perfectly wild from infancy, and hardened themselves by bathing in cold streams, wearing very little clothing, and making long hunting excursions among the mountains.  The people had abundance of excellent horses, which the young men were accustomed, from their earliest years, to ride without saddle or bridle, the horses being trained to obey implicitly every command.  So admirably disciplined were they, that sometimes, in battle, the mounted men would leap from their horses and advance as foot soldiers to aid the other infantry, leaving the horses to stand until they returned.  The horses would not move from the spot; the men, when the object for which they had dismounted was accomplished, would come back, spring to their seats again, and once more become a squadron of cavalry.

[Sidenote:  Caesar’s popularity with the army.] [Sidenote:  Caesar’s military habits.] [Sidenote:  His bridge across the Rhine.]

Although Caesar was very energetic and decided in the government of his army, he was extremely popular with his soldiers in all these campaigns.  He exposed his men, of course, to a great many privations and hardships, but then he evinced, in many cases, such a willingness to bear his share of them, that the men were very little inclined to complain.  He moved at the head of the column when his troops were advancing on a march, generally on horseback, but often on foot; and Suetonius says that he used to go bareheaded on such occasions, whatever was the state of the weather, though it is difficult to see what the motive of this apparently needless exposure could be, unless it was for effect, on some special or unusual occasion.  Caesar would ford or swim