Caesar's Legion: The Epic Saga of Julius Caesar's Elite Tenth Legion and the Armies of Rome Read Online Free PDF Page B

reported back to Caesar that it would not be difficult to climb, so, a little after midnight, Caesar had sent General Labienus with two legions to make the ascent, while he marched on the hill from the opposite direction with the remaining four legions. He sent his cavalry on ahead, and in advance of that again a patrol led by an officer by the name of Publius Considius.
    A little after daybreak, Caesar was only a mile and a half from the hill when Considius came galloping up to him. “Turn back, Caesar,” Caesar reports he’d breathlessly advised. “The enemy are in possession of the hilltop. I recognized their Gallic arms and their helmet crests.”
    One of Caesar’s closest aides, Colonel (later General) Gaius Asinius Pollio, would write that Caesar had a habit of accepting the reports of his c03.qxd 12/5/01 4:53 PM Page 15
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    subordinates without corroborating them. So Caesar took Considius at his word and pulled back to another hill. Only late in the day did he learn that it was General Labienus’s legions who’d occupied the hilltop at dawn, not the enemy.
    Caesar says Labienus waited all day on the hilltop for him to appear before he himself was forced to withdraw. Plutarch says that Labienus in fact engaged the Germans, but Caesar’s account of a botched operation is more credible. Labienus would have wanted answers when he reunited with his chief. An excellent commander, energetic, with a quick mind and a fine tactical sense, Labienus also became renowned for a sarcastic turn of phrase, which he tended for reserve for the lower ranks.
    “Considius lost his head,” Caesar sourly informed his deputy, in words he was to consign to his memoirs. “He was recommended to me as a first-class soldier who had served under Sulla and Crassus. But today he reported that he had seen what was not there to be seen.”
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    The legions had turned away from the Helvetii column and were marching toward Bibracte to secure grain from the Aedui when Colonel Lucius Aemilius, commander of Caesar’s Gallic cavalry, came galloping to his commander in chief from the rear.
    “The Helvetii are following us, Caesar,” Aemilius reported. “Their cavalry is harrying my rear guard, and the entire column is moving down the road to Bibracte behind us.”
    Caesar rode to the rear of the legion column and saw for himself the dust to the east raised by the feet and hooves and wagons and carts of the Helvetii trailing him in their tens of thousands. Now he ordered Colonel Aemilius to take all the cavalry and head off the Helvetii to give him enough time to prepare the legions for battle. As his four thousand mounted troops from southern and central France thundered away with Aemilius, Caesar chose a grassy hill close by as the place where he would form his battle lines, and in a hasty conference on horseback agreed unit dispositions with his generals. Soon the trumpets were sounding, standards were inclining to one side, and the legions were wheeling off the road and toward the hill.
    The 10th and the three other Spanish legions, the 7th, 8th, and 9th, were formed up in three lines halfway up the hill. The two new legions, the 11th and 12th, took up their position on the top of the hill along with the auxiliaries—Caesar didn’t have a great deal of faith in either the new c03.qxd 12/5/01 4:53 PM Page 16
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    legions or the auxiliaries. Veterans of the older legions occupied the third line, and they quickly dug entrenchments around the wagons of the baggage train, and the backpacks of all the legionaries of the army were brought and piled in the same enclosure. All this time, as lines were formed and trenches dug, the legionaries could see the Helvetii slowly flood across the plain toward them.
    Standing with his men of the 10th Legion in the first line was Centurion Gaius Crastinus. His rank evidenced by the transverse crest of