Chapter 12: Gergovia
Caesar split the army in two parts, one under the command of Labienus, with the other under his own. Along with Labienus went the 7th, 12th, 15th and 16th, and the rest of us went with Caesar. Labienus went off to quell the tribes along the Sequana River, while Caesar’s army marched first to Noviodunum, where he installed some of the 10,000 auxiliaries that he requisitioned from the Aedui as a garrison. This put us on the east bank of the Elaver (Allier) River, from where we turned south in pursuit of Vercingetorix. Once he detected our pursuit Vercingetorix, who was on the west, or opposite side of the river, hurried to burn the bridges, although he left the pilings intact. The result was that we marched side by side for three or four days, with Vercingetorix’s advance patrols burning the bridges they found but keeping an armed force of sufficient size at the site of each bridge, telling Caesar that any attempt to repair them would be bloody and risky affairs. Yet Caesar came up with what can only be described as a brilliant solution to the problem. On the march one day, we entered a sizable forest, of sufficient size so that the whole column was hidden from sight from even the most alert of Vercingetorix’s cavalry scouts. Once the whole army was within the screening safety of the woods, the command was given to halt, then very quickly, the 9th and 10th Cohorts from each Legion were ordered out of the formation and told to stand to the side. Once that was done, we reduced the width of our column and put the extra men in the spots where the removed Cohorts had been, to give the appearance that we were the same length as when we entered the woods, knowing that a shorter column would be easier to spot from the vantage point across the river than the width, and before much time elapsed, we were on the march again. Despite there being a slight delay, such stops are very common, and just as Caesar hoped, Vercingetorix suspected nothing. Staying behind with the 12 Cohorts, Caesar ordered the army to resume its march, stop at the normal time and make camp in the usual way. Once he calculated that we had reached the end of our march for that day, Caesar ordered the 12 Cohorts into action, marching the half mile back north to the site of the latest burned bridge. With the pilings still intact, it was not much work to repair the bridge, so by midnight that night, a rider came to camp and ordered us to backtrack and cross the bridge. Leaving the camp more or less intact, we just took our stakes with us but did not burn the towers or fill in the ditch because that would alert the enemy something unusual was happening. Catching Vercingetorix completely by surprise, by the time he recovered, we already had the detached Cohorts on the other side of the river, ready to defend the bridge before anything could be done. To his credit, he reacted quickly; realizing that he could not stop us, he instead decided to put distance on us by marching towards Gergovia at a quicker pace.
Now that we were on the right side of the river, we did not try to close the distance back to the enemy, not wanting to make haste and thereby stumble into an ambush. Despite the fact we had always prevailed to this point, we did have a grudging respect for Vercingetorix, because he was proving to be the one Gallic chieftain who demonstrated that he at least knew the types of tactics that gave his army the best chance of success, even if his men were too undisciplined and untrained to execute them. In fact, that was an ongoing topic of conversation around the fires at night; whether the Gauls were capable of instilling in themselves the kind of discipline that it would take to put their people on a more equal footing with us. From what I could tell, opinion seemed to be almost equally divided.
“Look at how they’ve picked up our siegecraft,” argued Scribonius one night while I was visiting the fire of my old comrades. “And that cunnus Vercingetorix almost starved us out at Avaricum. Those are Roman tactics, so how long do you think it’ll be before we’re facing a testudo?”
“You can teach a bear to dance, but that doesn’t mean he’ll be able to sing,” Vibius shot back, provoking a hoot of laughter from all of us, even Scribonius.
“True enough, but they’re not bears, they’re men. And they’re smart men,” Scribonius countered. Vibius, and truth be told, Vellusius and Atilius, along with a couple men from another section in the Century who had taken to sitting at our fire, voiced their disagreement.
“They’re not as smart as us,” Vibius said scornfully. “Look at how they fight, Scribonius. Even since Vercingetorix has been in command, they still line up and come running at us, flailing about and howling like Cerberus, even after we cut them down like wheat before the scythe. And that hasn’t changed one bit in the years we’ve been out here.”
“I’m not saying that it won’t take them time to change,” Scribonius replied, and I could tell he knew how weak that sounded.
“It’s been five years Scribonius,” this from Atilius, his comment being met with a chorus of agreement.
There was a pause; I was staring into the fire, only gradually becoming aware that the silence was drawing out, and when I looked up, I saw all eyes were on me.