Despite the general havoc the barbarians had been wreaking in the surrounding countryside, Vienne was an extraordinarily appropriate center for him to continue with his military and political education at the hands of Sallustius. Here, though it was only a provincial capital, Julian found a court and administrative center of quite some sophistication. It was the major city of the province, and through it flowed all the trade moving up and down the Rhone. The city was served by a well-maintained military road that passed through Lyons in the north and split into branches serving Reims and Paris in the northwest, and Strasbourg, Mainz, and Cologne in the northeast. The Roman army of Gaul was now in winter headquarters at Reims under General Marcellus, a cavalry officer whom Sallustius secretly scorned; and old Ursicinus, Marcellus' predecessor as commander of the army, whose well-deserved retirement Constantius had delayed in order for him to act as an adviser to, or observer of, his successor. As of yet, Julian had under his direct command in Vienne only the warrior monks who had accompanied him from Milan, and the garrisons of Vienne and several other nearby cities, a force which, if consolidated and pulled from their current duties, might total two thousand heads. And he had no illusions as to what the veteran commanders in Reims thought of the new Caesar who had been appointed to serve over them. The word 'figurehead' passed many a lip in describing his position in those days.
If, as Socrates once said, it is a wise man who realizes how little he knows, then Julian was the wisest of all, for he soon came to the conclusion that he was as ignorant in matters of civil administration as he had been of marching in step to a cadence; in this regard, fortunately, silent Sallustius was as capable an adviser as he had been a drill instructor. Though of Gallic origin, Sallustius was nonetheless fully a Roman citizen in education and taste. He was cultured, honest to a fault, loyal to his duty, and through his previous positions as an officer and district governor under Constantius' predecessor, he was much experienced in matters of administration. Most important, he looked upon Julian as an eager student, one whose survival, indeed the survival of Rome's very presence in Gaul, depended upon the skills Sallustius would be able to impart as a wise mentor to the young Caesar.
At the top of Sallustius' list was the need for Julian to familiarize himself with the province's sources of revenue, which consisted chiefly of three types of taxes, each differing to a degree in their effectiveness, but relatively similar in their cruelty. The first was outright requisition, by which those who worked small farms, that is to say, the vast majority of the province's inhabitants, were compelled to feed the Roman army through contributions of provisions. Under this system, the size of one's contribution was not necessarily calculated with a view to meeting the pressure of the immediate crisis, but rather to suit the whims of the tax collectors, who scarcely bothered even to determine whether a farmer actually owned the provisions he was called upon to contribute. When a farmer came up short, which is to say, most of the time, the poor devil was forced to look elsewhere to find the required food and fodder, often purchasing them at ruinously inflated prices from far-off locations, and then carting them to wherever the army happened to be. The net effect of such requisitioning under Constantius had been to bankrupt many who owned farms, having the perverse result of driving them off their land, thereby yielding the army even fewer provisions that it would otherwise have had.
The second method of taxation was the 'impost,' and it applied to those unfortunate souls who had been driven to the brink of starvation from the previous requisitioning, or who may have already gone under. It was a tax that fell out of the blue on those same owners to penalize them for lands that had been abandoned or taken out of production, and it remained payable even by any subsequent buyers who might attempt to take possession of the land and restore it to working order.
The third application was the 'special levies,' which might be described very quickly. These levies applied to freeholders in the cities, and were imposed seemingly at random in both timing and amount. As if this tax were not vicious enough, a few years earlier, when a pestilence had swept through the cities of the region, leaving a trail of death and vacant properties in its wake, Constantius had showed no mercy toward those freeholders who were ruined. Even then he demanded annual payment of the tax, and not merely the amount that each individual was assessed, but the amount that his deceased neighbors owed as well. This was in addition to all the other demands falling upon those residing in the walled cities, such as having to vacate the best rooms of their houses in order to accommodate troops, and wait on them like slaves, while they themselves were relegated to sleeping in the most wretched toolsheds and outhouses on the property.
As Julian was soon to learn, the province was in a virtual state of bankruptcy, with tax revenue having fallen to near zero, and enforcement actions by Constantius' normally ruthless collectors at a standstill. This, in turn, was due to the security situation: the fall of Cologne had, in fact, been symptomatic of far deeper troubles. Over the past two years, forty-five flourishing cities — Cologne, Treves, Worms, Spires, besides uncounted towns and villages — had been pillaged by the Germanics and largely reduced to ashes, a figure that did not even include citadels and minor fortifications. The barbarians had taken control of the land on the Roman side of the Rhine from its sources at Lake Constance all the way to the ocean, and had established settlements and farms as far as thirty-five miles on either side of that river. In doing so, they had driven out Roman settlers from an area three times again that distance, within which citizens could not even pasture their cattle.
Possibly the only saving grace, if one could truly call it that, was the barbarians' peculiar territorial strategy. For after invading a civilized area, they routinely failed to occupy the cities, preferring instead to simply destroy the walls and leave them abandoned or sparsely inhabited by terrorized squatters from the countryside. Strangely enough, the Alemanni preferred to camp on the outskirts or, even better, in the surrounding woods and fields. This was due to the fact that the majority of the barbarians were, in truth, savages accustomed to living only under the open skies or hidden in dense forests, and they viewed cities with a combination of fear and repulsion. As Julian was to find later, this custom, like many others, could be used to great advantage by a thinking general when reconquering a region, for it meant that although the enemy occupiers might be destructive and dangerous, they were not deep-rooted; they merely lodged in fallow cornfields rather than barricaded behind walls or entrenched in cellars.
But enough of history and geography, Brother. I find I am beginning to sound like an old schoolmaster, and part of the reason may be that I find it difficult to launch the next phase of my story. I would note, however, that if Constantius had expected his cousin to be the most pliable and unassuming of underlings, one he could appoint to an empty post and promptly forget about, Julian flatly rejected any such plans for himself, nor did he allow such a notion ever to be conveyed to the Gallic and Roman administrators over which he was the titular head. From his earliest arrival in Vienne, with Sallustius' overt encouragement, he requisitioned the quarters, supplies, and servants he needed to create a staff headquarters worthy of a newly appointed Caesar on campaign. Not lavish, mind you, for luxury and ostentation were traits that Julian despised in other men and fled in himself — but sufficient as to project the image of power and authority he felt his due.