"Vercingetorix Throws Down His Arms At the Feet of Caesar" L. Royer, 1888.
By kind permission of Forum Romanum.

"For himself he wanted a high command, an army, and a war in some field where his gifts could shine in all their brightness." Sallust, Conspiracy of Cataline, LIV.

"[Caesar] proceeded by forced marches to the territory of the Nervii, and there learnt from prisoners what was happening in [Quintus] Cicero's camp, and how critical the position was. He then induced one of his Gallic horsemen . . . to convey a letter to Cicero, which he wrote in Greek characters, for fear it might be intercepted and his plans known to the enemy. If he was unable to get into the camp, the man was to tie the letter to the thong of a javelin and throw it in over the rampart. The letter informed Cicero that Caesar was on the way with some legions and would be there shortly, and told him to keep up a bold front."  Julius Caesar, De Bello Gallico.

For almost a sixth of his life - from 58 to 49 BC- Julius Caesar lived absent from Rome, conquering one of the largest stretches of hostile territory ever brought into its Empire. The series of brilliant offensive campaigns he waged against the tribes of Gaul, Belgium and Germany rivaled and likely exceeded the skill of any Roman general before or afterwards. Caesar also had the incalculable advantage of writing reports on his 8-year-long campaigns that have become one of the greatest literary masterpieces of the western world, so we not only know infinitely more about his acctions of than the majority of Roman commanders, but his literary skill is such as to render his reports riveting as literature. As always, Caesar knew how to promote himself. He was the first commander in Roman history to build a bridge across the Rhine and carry war into the enemy's country. His venture to the island of Britannia, half-mythical to the Roman world (to which it was largely unknown), riveted the attention of political Europe. The booty ravaged from the Celts was incalculable: not only did it make Caesar one of Rome's richest men, but his regular donations of booty to his soldiers created a fanatic loyalty between commander and army that had dire implications for the future of Rome. He brought, for better or worse, the Celtic tribes of "Long-haired Gaul" firmly into the Roman Empire: with minor rebellions, Gaul would become and remain one of the bastions of Roman culture in the West. It is arguable that, without the Gallic Wars, Roman history would have been very different.

Caesar's campaigns have filled countless books, but some summarization is possible. The Gaul Caesar conquered included France (except southern France, which was already a Roman province, Gallia Narbonensis), southern Holland, Belgium, Germany west of the Rhine, and most of Switzerland. Familiar with elements of Greek and Roman culture for centuries, Caesar met a barbarian people with stable cultural similarities, their own coinage and vibrant art, walled towns and established urban centers, settled agriculture and a stable religious ethos. Political development varied in degree. Rome had influenced the Province (modern Provence), which had been linked to Rome for over a century, but her impact farther north was confined primarily to trade in wine and certain luxuries.

The Celtic tribes in general - and especially the great tribes of the Averni, the Aedui, and the Helvetii- had already abandoned hereditary kingship for annually elected magistrates, answerable to councils and public codes of law. The Northern Celts still retained their kings. The Germanic tribes beyond the Rhine positively rejected what they saw as enervating luxuries offered by Roman traders. It had been only two generations since the vast Germanic incursions of the Cimbrii and Teutones led to their defeat on a Gallic battlefield by Gaius Marius. Resentment against Rome had festered.

In spite of these many "civilized" aspects, to Caesar and the Romans of his time the Gauls remained barbarians, and became more uncouth the farther away from Rome they lived. There are frequent references to the Gallic character scattered throughout Caesar's famous commentaries on the Gallic Wars. He considered them impulsive, emotional, easily swayed; they were fickle, loved change, were credulous and prone to panic. He felt they lacked the intellectual discipline that made the Legions so formidable. Although it is obvious from his writings that Caesar viewed them with respect as worthy military adversaries, he coldly judged their struggle for freedom from Rome's sway as no more than unstable anger whipped up by agitators with ulterior personal motives. It apparently never occurred to Caesar that there were rational arguments against annexation by Rome, or that the benefits of association with Rome were not self-evident. There seems little doubt his initial moves against the Helvetii were calculated for his own political advantage, and that he carried his conquests far beyond the brief initially given him by the Senate of Rome. Again and again, as with his expeditions to Britain and the Rhine in the eight years of his command, Caesar justifies extensions of his field of operations against the many tribes by representing them as punitive expeditions, or by alleging the need to overawe the dubiously loyal, volatile Gauls.

Yet the contests against the Gauls not only taxed Caesar's military brilliance to its utmost, but also provide one of history's great panoramas of military skill and bravery. The great tribal names - the Bellovaci, Atrebates, Nervii, Eburones, Remi, Suessiones - have lived in history for two millennia, largely thanks to Caesar's magnificent reports from the front. Yet, while fighting the Gauls on the one hand with a celerity and ruthlessness that kept Gaul peacefully within the Empire for the next 400 years, he was ever mindful of his strengthening political foes in Rome itself. While he was besieging hill forts and selling whole conquered tribes into slavery, his political support in Rome began to unravel. The Senate might vote him a series of unprecedented public thanksgivings for his conquests but Pompey was edging ever closer to the Optimates and away from Caesar's interests, while Cicero's party became inflexible in its hostility.

For a detailed history of the campaigns comprising Caeasar's Gallic campaigns, see Battles: The Gallic Wars. It is also critical, however, to understand Caesar's campaigns in the context of the ongoing political difficulties confronting him in Rome.

Initially, Caesar's campaigns of 58-55 appeared largely successful. Caesar was not sent north by the Senate to make war against Gaul (a point his enemies never ceased to emphasize) but to govern the settled part of the territory. He found the excuse for conquest in the movement of the Helvetii, a tribe threatening the territory of Rome's allies, and insisted they were a threat to the Province as a whole. He carefully distinguished, in his justifications for Roman consumption, between condemnation of the aggressive tribes and of their treasonable, misguided leaders, including Ariovistus. In 57 (having vanquished the Helvetii and forcing them to return to their own lands) Caesar tackled the Belgae. By 56, an unbroken string of victories lead Caesar to claim that Gaul, including northern Gaul, was now largely pacified (to put it mildly, an optimistic forecast). Instead, it would require additional years to put out the brush fires of the sporadic Gallic revolts, as well as to prepare expeditions to the mysterious island of Britain.