III.—­War by Land and Sea in Gaul

When Caesar was setting out for Italy, he sent Servius Galba with the twelfth legion and part of the cavalry against the Nantuates, the Veragri, and the Seduni, who extend from the territories of the Allobroges and the Lake of Geneva and the River Rhone to the top of the Alps.  The reason for sending him was that he desired that the pass along the Alps, through which the Roman merchants had been accustomed to travel with great danger, should be opened.

Galba fought several successful battles, stormed some of their forts, and concluded a peace.  He then determined to winter in a village of the Veragri, which is called Octodurus.  But before the winter camp could be completed the tops of the mountains were seen to be crowded with armed men, and soon these rushed down from all parts and discharged stones and darts on the ramparts.

The fierce battle that followed lasted for more than six hours.  During the fight more than a third part of the army of 30,000 men of the Seduni and the Veragri were slain, and the rest were put to flight, panic-stricken.  Then Galba, unwilling to tempt fortune again, after having burned all the buildings in that village, hastened to return into the province, urged chiefly by the want of corn and provision.  As no enemy opposed his march, he brought his forces safely into the country of the Allobroges, and there wintered.

These things being achieved, Caesar, who was visiting Illyricum to gain a knowledge of that country, had every reason to suppose that Gaul was reduced to a state of tranquillity.  For the Belgae had been overcome, the Germans had been expelled, and the Seduni and the Veragri among the Alps defeated.  But a sudden war sprang up in Gaul.

The occasion of that war was this.  P. Crassus, a young man, had taken up his winter quarters with the seventh legion among the Andes, who border on the Atlantic Ocean.  As corn was scarce, he sent out officers among the neighbouring states for the purpose of procuring supplies.  The most considerable of these states was the Veneti, who have a very great number of ships with which they have been accustomed to sail into Britain, and thus they excel the rest of the states in nautical affairs.  With them arose the beginning of the revolt.

The Veneti detained Silius and Velanius, who had been sent among them, for they thought they should recover by their means the hostages which they had given Crassus.  The neighbouring people, the Essui and the Curiosolitae, led on by the influence of the Veneti (as the measures of the Gauls are sudden and hasty) detained other officers for the same motive.  All the sea-coast being quickly brought over to the sentiments of these states, they sent a common embassy to P. Crassus to say “If he wished to receive back his officers, let him send back to them their hostages.”

Caesar, being informed of these things, since he was himself so far distant, ordered ships of war to be built on the River Loire; rowers to be raised from the province; sailors and pilots to be provided.  These matters being quickly executed, he hastened to the army as soon as the season of the year admitted.