Apparently Caesar had endured enough of what we were doing also, for which we were thankful, because our general decided to wait on the fleet that Brutus was building, where we would then take the battle to the sea. This meant only one thing for us in the ranks; we would be sitting this fight out, which after the frustrating and futile effort we had been putting forth, was fine with us. We were marched to a spot overlooking a bay that would serve as the marshaling point for the fleet, awaiting the arrival of Brutus and his ships, making a camp on that spot. It was a matter of a few days before the word was shouted that ships were sighted; as usual Caesar had chosen his ground well, our camp being situated on a point much higher than the bay below us, giving us a perfect view of not only the bay but the immediately surrounding area. It was into the bay that our fleet sailed, and I stopped counting at a hundred ships of varying sizes. I was not a sailor, nor did I have any knowledge of nautical affairs, but I was hard pressed to see how any fleet of Gallic ships could stand up to the onslaught facing them. My opinion immediately changed when, standing with all of my friends on the ramparts of our camp to watch the show, we saw the Veneti fleet come into view.
“By the gods, they’re huge,” gasped Calienus, and coming from the normally imperturbable Tesseraurius, this alone was enough to make us worry.
The Gallic fleet was not just huge in the size of their ships, dwarfing our triremes as if they were rowboats, there were substantially more of them than was contained in the fleet Brutus was leading.
“You know what this means,” Atilius said glumly. “We’re back in that cursed swamp, filling in the ocean just to chase these bastards off.”
This was our frame of mind as we watched, expecting defeat, instead witnessing a miracle.
It was a miracle only in the sense that once again, our praefectifabrorum showed their true genius. Unable to ram the larger ships since the timbers of ours were not built to withstand the rougher water of the open ocean, our engineers contrived a way to rob the Gallic ships of their most precious asset, mobility. Unlike our ships, which used both a sail and oars, the Gallic craft were powered by sails alone, so the engineers created an implement that was little more than a long pole with an iron hook on it. Although the Gallic ships were bigger and stronger, they were also slower, especially when the wind was not in their favor, thereby allowing our oar-driven vessels to maneuver alongside. Once in position men on deck, holding the pole, would grab at the wooden horizontal crossbeam that held the sail in place, then while they were holding tight, the captain of the Roman ship would give the order to begin pulling away. The strain was such that the ropes holding the wooden cross-piece would snap, and before our very eyes, the sails on the Gallic ships began to tumble down, each craft slowing to a stop to lie dead in the water.
“That’s not good,” commented Calienus dryly, “if you’re a Veneti at least.”
We laughed at this, and in delight we watched as one by one the Gallic craft were immobilized, whereupon they were swarmed by the smaller Roman ships, the men on our vessels then clambering over the side. From our vantage point, we could not see the action on the decks because it was too far away, and were barely able to make out the figures of our men climbing up the side of the Gallic ships, but it was clear enough what was happening. One by one, the Gallic vessels were overcome in this way, until it became clear to those Veneti who were left that their cause was hopeless, whereupon they turned to flee out to the open water. That is when the gods intervened, once again showing the Romans their favor, as the wind, a stiff breeze that had been blowing the whole day, suddenly stopped for no reason. While the Gallic ships were just beginning to pull away into the distance to the point where we could no longer tell what was happening, we could at least see that suddenly our own craft caught up to them, and the remaining Gallic ships were quickly subdued. Just before dark, the wind freshened, enabling some of the Veneti craft to slip away, but the vast majority of them were taken, with the damage done. Before the day was out, the Veneti had been conquered.
As an example to the other tribes in the region, Caesar had the entire Veneti council of elders put to death. During the time we were slogging away in the marshes to the south, Sabinus and his Legions had been busy as well. The tribes that threw their lot in with the Veneti; the Lexovii, Aulerci and Eburovices, led by a man named Viridorix, were the tribes that Sabinus was sent to chastise. And chastise them he did, indeed. Using a stratagem of guile by appearing to be weak, Sabinus induced Viridorix to attack a fortified Roman camp with a mile of clear ground around it. When we heard the circumstances of the Sabinus victory, we had a good laugh at that, knowing that it was the height of folly for a Gallic tribe of any kind, having such disdain for the science of siegework as they did, to attempt an assault of a Roman camp. The battle was more of a slaughter than anything, prompting the confederation of those three tribes to immediately fall apart with our victory, so that three more tribes of Gaul found themselves at the mercy of Rome. It made one wonder when they would learn; at least that is how I looked at it.
Young Crassus was not being idle either, down in Aquitania. Sweeping all before him, he punished the recalcitrant tribes for the folly of resistance. Crassus did not use guile, instead taking a page from Caesar’s book, relying on audacity and surprise when attacking a Gallic camp. As we heard it, the issue was actually in doubt, with the Gauls asking for help from some of the tribes a little further south in Lusitania. Some of the men who answered that call and came to assist had fought under Sertorius, meaning they had learned their craft well. Because of that influence, the Gallic camp had been built in the usual Roman style, so the 7th was having a hard time of it in the beginning, until a cavalry scouting party saw that the Gauls had thrown all their troops into protecting the front wall but left the rear gate unattended. Once this was discovered, the outcome was inevitable, despite the Gauls putting up a good fight. Even with all of these successes, as this campaign season drew to a close there were still some questions hanging in the air. Two tribes on the northern coast, the Menapii and the Morini, that had entered into the alliance with the Veneti, despite being separated by hundreds of miles, still refused to submit to Rome. As far as we were concerned, that meant that there was unfinished business, and we would still have some fighting to do the next season. However, Caesar was not willing to wait until the next season, so almost before we knew it, we found ourselves again on the march. This time, we would cross more than 400 miles, marching past where we fought the Nervii, doing without the customary rest day, which Caesar could only have done with an army as seasoned as ours. Despite the fact we could take it physically, it did not make some people love Caesar any more, and even I, a man with complete faith in his judgment and abilities as a general, found myself questioning the wisdom of this move. Yes, we would reach the lands of the Morini much more quickly than they anticipated, but what shape would we be in, and how much of a season would be left? The further north we moved, the more frigid the climate, and the earlier winter comes. When we got there, it would be at the end of the month we now call August, meaning we would have at best another three weeks of true campaign season left, and that was only if the winter did not come early.