Belgae

The Gauls whom Caesar encountered, and also the Britons, were a medley of diverse races, for both Britain and Gaul had been inhabited from the Paleolithic Age, and had since been invaded by successive hordes belonging to various stocks.

The latest, who began to arrive probably about the eighth century before our era, were the Celts or Gauls, properly so-called, whose great stature and fair hair were so often noticed by ancient writers, who imposed the Celtic language upon the existing inhabitants, and of whom the Belgae were the rearguard.

Many of them crossed the Channel and spread into Scotland and even into Ireland.

The questions originally raised by Caesar's opening words, relating to the Gauls and Britons, the two main branches of the Celtic stock, are fully discussed in the books to which I have referred.

Book 1, Chapters 1 to 9.

Campaigns against the Helvetii and Ariovistus.

Gaul, taken as a whole, is divided into three parts, one of which is inhabited by the Belgae, another by the Aquitani, and the third by a people who call themselves Celts and whom we call Gauls.

These people differ from one another in language, institutions, and laws.

He caught them near Bibracte and defeated them, and later that same year he turned on Ariovistus, a Germanic king who settled in Gaul with his followers, beat him too, and pushed his forces back across the Rhine.

He moved north the next year, in 57, against the Belgae, whom Caesar himself calls the bravest of all the Gauls in the opening line of his account, and by the end of the season much of the north had submitted.

In 56, he fought the Veneti on the Atlantic coast, a seafaring people whose war was fought primarily from ships.

Each campaign gave him a reason to keep his legions in the field, and each victory handed him a new territory that needed holding.

He'd gone to the limits of the known world, but his quest for glory would take him beyond those limits, to the remote island of Britain.

[seagulls caw] [waves crash] [seagulls caw] [bell rings] Julius Caesar was a brilliant general who conquered all of what's now France and Belgium.

How do we know? Because he tells us.

[bell rings] The only point of the campaign for Caesar was to enhance his reputation in Rome.

And now there's the Germani.

And there's the Belgae.

And you're just like, where the fuck did all of these people come from? And it's like, well, they came from...

Outside.

He'd gone to the limits of the known world, but his quest for glory would take him beyond those limits, to the remote island of Britain.

[seagulls cawing] [waves crashing] [seagulls cawing] Julius Caesar was a brilliant general who conquered all of what's now France and Belgium.

How do we know? Because he tells us.

The only point of the campaign for Caesar was to enhance his reputation in Rome.

When they crossed into Transalpine Gaul, they were not only soldiers They were builders of a story.

The tribes of Gaul, the Helvetii, the Belgae, the Arverni, and a dozen others had lived in fragile balance for centuries, trading with Rome and fighting among themselves.

Caesar knew how to exploit division.

He was not simply a general of swords, he was a general of minds.

To them, he became something more than a general, he became a myth.

For eight long years, Caesar fought in Gaul.

He crushed the Belgae in the north, subdued the Nervii after a ferocious battle that nearly cost him his life, and pacified countless smaller tribes.

He crossed the Rhine into Germania, the first Roman commander ever to do so, building a bridge of timber that stretched across the roaring river in only ten days, a feat so astonishing that it silenced even his critics.

And during all the rest of the time of his campaign in Gaul, unnoticed by Pompey, he was alternately subduing the enemy with the arms of the citizens, or capturing and subduing the citizens with the money which he got from the enemy.

But when he heard that the Belgae, who were the most powerful of the Gauls, and occupied the third part of all their country, had revolted, and had assembled unknown myriads of armed men, he turned back at once and marched thither with great speed.

He fell upon the enemy as they were plundering the Gauls that were in alliance with Rome, and so routed and destroyed the least scattered and most numerous of them, after a disgraceful struggle on their part, that the Romans could cross lakes and deep rivers for the multitude of dead bodies in them.

All the rebels who dwelt along the ocean submitted without a battle.

He also used his personal funds to raise an additional two legions.

Now, while Caesar was off doing what he was doing, trouble was brewing in Gaul yet again, because far to the north, the Belgae— who Caesar referred to as the bravest of all the Gauls, were stirring.

They looked south and saw Roman forts popping up everywhere, and they panicked.

They surmised that once Caesar finished consolidating power in central Gaul, his legions would inevitably look north and attempt to subjugate them next.

So, the Belgae decided to unite and form a quote-unquote grand coalition.

They, well, at least temporarily, determined to get past their internal blood feuds, and nearly a dozen massive northern tribes, including the Belovaci, Suessones, Veromandui, and Minervi formed a massive anti-Roman military confederation.

The tribal chiefs go so far as to exchange their own children as hostages, all this in the hopes that no tribe would back out or betray the alliance.

Finally, they appointed Galba, the respective king of the Suessones, as the supreme commander of the entire confederation.