BBC Timewatch Julius Caesars Greatest Battle
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00:00The year is 52 BC.
00:05A bloody encounter between two men is about to shape Europe's destiny.
00:11The name of one, Julius Caesar, will echo through history.
00:17And as the victor, he will write that history himself.
00:22But the other is almost unknown.
00:25A young chieftain called Vercingetorix.
00:28His people, the Gauls, are history's victims.
00:35It was a very bloodthirsty, very bloody campaign.
00:40Modern estimates seem to suggest it may be as many as one in four of the population of Gaul dies.
00:47If that's not genocide, I don't know what is.
00:52The Butcher's Bill in Gaul stands comparison with any modern conflict.
00:57Caesar killed a million men, women and children,
01:01enslaved a million more and destroyed 800 cities.
01:06So what does history teach us?
01:09Can we today enter the mindset of Caesar and Vercingetorix?
01:13I'm quite happy to allow them off the leash for this occasion.
01:17This is a chance for the troops to have revenge.
01:21If they wish to destroy the city, so be it.
01:25Can you imagine what a city of 40,000 people
01:31put to the sword by the Roman army looks like?
01:35There was wholesale, uncontrolled butchery.
01:39Men, women and children massacred 40,000 people.
01:55THE GREAT ESCAPE
02:13Caesar's conquest of Gaul, present-day France,
02:16made his name and changed our world.
02:19Without it, the Roman Empire would have looked very different.
02:24But was the outcome inevitable?
02:30Mark Corby is a Roman historian and former professional soldier.
02:36Neil Faulkner is an archaeologist with a deep suspicion of Rome.
02:41The Roman Empire is held up to us as a model of civilisation,
02:45but Vercingetorix, this great barbarian chieftain,
02:50united his people and led them in the greatest military struggle
02:54in their history in an attempt to defeat that empire
02:57and keep his country free.
02:59What drove him? Why did he fight so hard?
03:02What did it mean to be Vercingetorix?
03:13For me, Julius Caesar's conquest of Gaul
03:16was one of the epic events of world history.
03:19But how did he achieve it, against such enormous odds?
03:22By following in his footsteps,
03:24I hope to praise Caesar and not to bury him.
03:30In a journey covering more than 2,000 miles,
03:33Mark and Neil set out to retrace the events
03:36that led to the final clash between Gaul and Rome.
03:40In their efforts to understand
03:42the long-lost world of Caesar and Vercingetorix,
03:45they found themselves re-entering it.
03:52Vercingetorix is the best thing the Gauls have produced to date.
03:56He's the one thing that I'm slightly worried about.
03:59But if I can hold him down to a major battle,
04:02I think I have a very good chance of annihilating him.
04:10Caesar and I play a game,
04:14and I despise his motives and his intentions here.
04:19And I will do everything that I can
04:22in order to beat him and drive him out of Gaul.
04:29The governorship of Gaul was, for Caesar in middle age,
04:33the great opportunity to make his mark.
04:36His family background had been noble but penniless,
04:39and in the treacherous world of Roman politics,
04:42he'd made enemies at every turn.
04:46Charges of political corruption
04:48eventually laid him open to prosecution and possibly ruin.
04:54The rombustious political life of Rome means that no man goes untainted.
04:58Bribery, corruption, threats of violence are every day to us.
05:02I do what is necessary.
05:06What is necessary for Caesar will be necessary for Rome
05:10and for the Roman Empire.
05:14Six years of victories in Gaul had brought him wealth
05:17and the prospect of a return to the political fold.
05:22To guarantee no scrap of glory went unnoticed,
05:25Caesar became his own war correspondent,
05:28writing up each battle for avid consumption in Rome.
05:36The Romans suffered from an acute and long-standing fear of Gaul.
05:41Two centuries earlier,
05:4370,000 rampaging Gauls had swept into Italy and sacked Rome.
05:49All Gauls were seen as quarrelsome and fickle.
05:55The tale Caesar told was of hard-won conquest.
05:59He'd found Gaul a treacherous minefield
06:01of different and warring Celtic tribes.
06:06His genius had been to cut his way between them,
06:10making allies of some, putting others to the sword.
06:21Finally, in late 53 BC,
06:24Caesar declared that Gaul was completely pacified.
06:28He took himself back to Italy.
06:32There is political turmoil in Rome, anarchy, rioting,
06:37and so in that winter of 53-52, his eye is very firmly focused on Rome
06:42and he announces that Gaul has been pacified,
06:45partly because he hopes that it's true
06:48and partly because he desperately needs it to be true.
06:53Gaul was far from pacified.
06:56With Caesar away,
06:58the bewildering resentment of the Gauls flared into life.
07:03In St Alban, present-day Orleans, Roman merchants were killed.
07:08It was the signal for a general uprising.
07:12And suddenly, at its head,
07:15there appeared the mysterious figure of Vercingetorix.
07:19Vercingetorix's sudden appearance on the scene
07:22is made to seem like lightning from a clear blue sky,
07:25but it clearly can't have been that.
07:27Evidently, Vercingetorix was plotting and planning the rebellion
07:30for a good deal longer than Caesar suggests in his commentaries.
07:34So essentially, Caesar is caught on the hop.
07:39Fighting spirit ran deep within Vercingetorix.
07:42His father had also tried to unify Gaul
07:45and was struck down by other tribal leaders for his pains.
07:49Caesar's details are sketchy,
07:52but he describes Vercingetorix as a young man of tremendous energy
07:56and fierce discipline.
07:58Could it be that the two knew each other of old?
08:02Vercingetorix was clearly a man of great significance in his tribe,
08:06so I would suspect that Caesar and Vercingetorix
08:10would have had personal dealings with each other at some point.
08:13And I think it's suggestive that Caesar doesn't mention this,
08:16because it suggests that Vercingetorix
08:18had indeed pulled the wool over Caesar's eyes.
08:22Whatever their personal history,
08:24their future and that of their people's
08:27was about to be determined in three great encounters.
08:31Their duel was beginning.
08:42In the depths of winter,
08:44Caesar began a lightning dash back across the Alps.
08:47He meant to nip the rebellion in the bud,
08:50but the weapon he would use
08:52was the one on which he prided himself above all.
08:55Speed, speed so often comes out.
08:58The speed with which he takes his adversaries by surprise.
09:02This is somebody who is moving with great control
09:07through all the woodlands and the rivers of France,
09:10because the threat is so great.
09:12This is the great crisis.
09:15In a series of forced marches,
09:17Caesar moved rapidly to reclaim the rebel city of Sinabung,
09:21taking other rebel towns en route,
09:23plundering, burning, punishing, always moving on.
09:28He pops up wherever the Gauls least expect him,
09:31and that has always been his method of generalship,
09:34is to move at enormous speed.
09:36He's a great master of blitzkrieg,
09:38and he does it to devastating effect.
09:41Nothing, it seemed, could stand in the face of Caesar's progress,
09:45but the Gauls in Getterix had no intention of standing.
09:48He meant to withdraw and to destroy everything in Caesar's path.
09:54We have to fight in a different way.
09:57By denying his great invading host
10:00the food and fodder they need in order to survive.
10:04To starve him into submission,
10:06we're going to have to adopt a policy of scorched earth.
10:10We destroy in the path of his army
10:13all of the things that might be useful in sustaining it.
10:18Fields, granaries, villages and towns were put to the torch,
10:23cutting off Caesar's food supplies.
10:26But Vercingetorix was about to meet his first test as leader.
10:31Unlike Caesar, he was not heading a professional army,
10:34but a rebellious coalition of tribes,
10:37and one tribe now refused to accept his authority.
10:42The people of Avaricum, present-day Bourges, would not burn their town.
10:49Vercingetorix is the leader of a tribal alliance,
10:51and so he can't order his men to do things
10:54in the way that Caesar can order his legions.
10:57He needs to persuade and cajole.
10:59I have to negotiate, I have to compromise,
11:01I have to keep the alliance together
11:04by accepting that our people are understandably reluctant
11:08to make the sacrifices which I think are needed for us to win the war.
11:12We have to hope that we can make a successful defence of Avaricum,
11:17but I fear that the defences of the city might not be up to it.
11:27Gauls knew how to build.
11:29Their city walls were a complex construction of stonework,
11:33heavy timbers and iron nails.
11:36Proof against both fire and the battering ram.
11:46But to the Roman army, siege warfare was second nature.
11:55Caesar's legionaries began to build an immense siege platform
11:59to overtop Avaricum's walls.
12:05All that was needed was time and patience.
12:09Caesar was short of both.
12:13With 40,000 men, I have a tremendous labour force,
12:16but even so, it's going to take at least a month of construction work
12:20to build a big enough rampart to assault this city.
12:23During this whole operation, we've been continually harassed
12:26by Vercingetorix turning up behind me
12:28and sitting across my lines of communication.
12:30He's taking my food from me.
12:32My supply lines have been threatened.
12:35Vercingetorix was still outside Avaricum,
12:38harrying the Roman forage parties as they scavenged for food.
12:42The Gauls' camp was hidden in wild marshland.
12:50But Caesar persuaded prisoners to reveal its location.
12:56Then he marched his men through the night for a surprise attack.
13:05As dawn broke, it was clear Caesar had been duped.
13:11His legions had advanced straight into a quagmire,
13:14while Vercingetorix's camp, on high ground, was impregnable.
13:20Caesar, it seemed, had met his match.
13:25The Gauls' camp had been besieged,
13:27and Caesar's legions had advanced straight into a quagmire.
13:31Caesar, it seemed, had met his match.
13:35Gaul is crawling with Caesar's spies and informants.
13:40We can play the same game and feed him false intelligence,
13:45and we've drawn part of his army to this place,
13:49and I hope that he'll launch an attack
13:52on what is an extremely strong defensive position.
13:56But Caesar, for once, was strangely reticent.
13:59He was waiting for Vercingetorix to make the first move.
14:02My men have marched since midnight to get here and are keen for action.
14:07However, the chances of success on this sort of battlefield are slim,
14:12and they are extremely unhappy about this.
14:15In the past, the Gauls have not been noteworthy
14:18for their command and discipline.
14:20They must think I'm in a fairly weak position
14:23and a fairly obvious target,
14:25and I would hope that they would actually launch a general assault.
14:29Yet Vercingetorix was not like other Gaulish commanders.
14:33It seemed that he too was prepared to bide his time.
14:36We have to fight defensively
14:38because down there is an army of professional killers.
14:43Every man down there is a mercenary fighting for pay,
14:47trained to be a soldier,
14:49trained to come and conquer the land of the Gauls.
14:52Most of the men standing in the line on the ridge here
14:55are ordinary farmers,
14:57and they're here to defend their homes, their families, their farms.
15:03And if, as Caesar would like to have happen,
15:07we were to go down onto the plain
15:10and to face an open battle with his professional killers,
15:13we will be cut down.
15:15It was a stand-off.
15:17Caesar had no choice but to march his troops back to Avaricum.
15:22A tactical withdrawal,
15:24but, for his legionaries, humiliating.
15:32The Roman revenge was swift and bloody.
15:35Under cover of heavy rain, they breached Avaricum's defences.
15:40And, with Caesar's blessing,
15:43slaughtered the entire population of that stubborn city.
15:50I'm quite happy to allow them off the leash for this occasion.
15:54This is a chance for the troops to have revenge,
15:58to have their revenge,
16:00to have their revenge,
16:02to have their revenge,
16:04to have their revenge.
16:06This is a chance for the troops to have revenge,
16:10and, if they wish to destroy the city, so be it.
16:14This is what Roman armies do to make an example of a city.
16:17Every living thing will be killed.
16:23Can you imagine what a city of 40,000 people
16:29put to the sword by the Roman army looks like?
16:33When the Romans broke in, they went completely berserk.
16:37There was wholesale, uncontrolled butchery.
16:41Men, women and children massacred 40,000 people.
16:57If the massacre was intended to break the Gauls' spirit,
17:01it was likely the opposite effect.
17:04Vercingetorix found new fire in his followers.
17:08The use of terror in war can cut in two directions.
17:12It can intimidate and break up resistance,
17:15but it can also fill people with bitterness and anger
17:19and renewed determination to fight back.
17:22Overnight, Gaul was on the turn,
17:25with fresh outbreaks of resistance in tribe after tribe.
17:29Caesar was forced to split his forces.
17:32Four legions were sent to quell rebels in the north.
17:36With the six remaining, he headed south
17:39for the tribal heartland of Vercingetorix.
17:43It's a direct insult.
17:45For a Gallic tribal leader, the measure of a man
17:48is the ability to defend his territory,
17:50defend his villages, his crops, his fields, his women, his family.
17:53Caesar knows that. That's why he goes and attacks them.
17:57He knows that Vercingetorix will respond by attacking him,
18:00because that's what the Gauls always do.
18:03But not this time.
18:05Under Vercingetorix, the Gauls were learning patience.
18:10The territory of the Arverni, today's Auvergne,
18:13was bounded by the river Allier.
18:16As Caesar marched down one bank,
18:19Vercingetorix simply kept pace on the other.
18:23He'd already destroyed the bridges.
18:26Vercingetorix, not at all cowed,
18:29not at all put out of his way by the sight of this very formidable army.
18:34This must have been pretty shaking, really, to Caesar.
18:38It must have been pretty shaking to Caesar's troops as well.
18:41They're not used to seeing that sort of confidence.
18:44We don't march down the river with our heads held low in silence.
18:49We march proudly with our trumpets blaring,
18:53our men shouting their war cries,
18:56spears crashing against shields.
18:59We're prepared to fight if we have to,
19:02but I must hold my men back from that fatal collision.
19:06If I can hold him down to a major battle,
19:09I think I have a very good chance of annihilating him.
19:12But, so far, he's managed to avoid that.
19:15If it carries on like this,
19:17I'm going to find that I'm going to have quite some problem bringing him to book,
19:21and I'm worried about my food supplies as well.
19:24Caesar's troops were feeding off the land,
19:27but the more tribes turned against him, the harder that became.
19:31Vercingetorix was in no hurry.
19:35It has to be a strategy of wearing Caesar down over time
19:39by stripping him of his allies and his supply bases in Gaul
19:43and starving his army into submission,
19:47harrying Caesar's foragers,
19:49trying to bring over the other tribes
19:51and isolating him, in effect, in a barbarian wilderness.
19:58What I've got to try and do
20:00is still maintain the initiative against Vercingetorix,
20:03keep him on the hop, keep him moving.
20:05Any problem is I'm on the wrong side of the river
20:08and I've got to somehow get across that river,
20:11and he has ripped down all the bridges.
20:14The duel was becoming a battle of wits,
20:17with Gauls matching his legions stride for stride.
20:20Caesar tried a different tactic.
20:22If he couldn't outpace Vercingetorix, he would outsmart him.
20:30Overnight, he selected two legions, 8,000 men,
20:34to conceal themselves hard by the river.
20:40The next day, the main column appeared to march off as normal,
20:45and the Gauls, unsuspecting, marched with them.
20:53It was short work for Caesar to make the river crossing behind them.
20:58Vercingetorix had been outmanoeuvred.
21:04And the first he knew was when he found Caesar on his tail.
21:08There was only one way to evade Caesar in open battle.
21:13Vercingetorix sped south.
21:17Caesar's forces have crossed the river.
21:20Downstream, they've tricked us.
21:23This isn't a flight.
21:25This is an organised retreat to keep our forces intact
21:29and holding in the hills around Gogovia.
21:43Vercingetorix was coming home.
21:46Gogovia was the citadel of the Arverni, his tribe.
21:52It was a formidable stronghold on a vast natural plateau,
21:56sheer on three sides.
21:59Now, perched high above the surrounding plain,
22:02the Gaulish army felt a new confidence.
22:06This is an immensely strong position.
22:08Not just the main mountain,
22:10but all of the high ground around this mountain.
22:13All of these hills around here are defended by our men.
22:18Caesar and his forces are down there on the low ground,
22:22so we command a position
22:24which it will be very, very difficult for him to surround.
22:28Down below, Caesar was uncomfortably aware
22:31that with just six legions,
22:33a full-scale siege was out of the question here.
22:36Looking at that obstacle behind me,
22:38and it's one of the most fearsome of all Gallic hillforts,
22:42I do sense a little fear.
22:45I am under strength here.
22:47I've got to come up with something fast and something decisive,
22:50and therefore I am going to have to throw the dice yet again.
22:55Caesar determined to exploit the one weakness
22:58he thought he'd found in Vercingetorix.
23:01He would outwit him once again.
23:07The weakest point of Gergovia's defences was on its westerly slopes.
23:12He played on Vercingetorix's fears of an attack there,
23:16manoeuvring horsemen as if to mount an assault.
23:19In fact, Caesar intended a direct attack
23:22up the stronghold's steepest ramparts.
23:25To attempt to take a site as well fortified as Gergovia
23:31was obviously a huge gamble.
23:35But Caesar was a gambler, and his gambles tended to come off.
23:55The Roman assault hit the Gauls hard.
23:58Caesar's troops quickly overran the hillfort's outposts.
24:04We simply didn't have enough men on the spot,
24:06and he broke through the outer defences and came through the main encampment.
24:14But as Vercingetorix recognised the threat,
24:17he threw reinforcements forward to plug the gap.
24:21Caesar sounded the recall to his troops, but too late.
24:28Desperate to achieve their objective, they didn't heed the trumpets.
24:34As the alarm was raised, a major battle developed,
24:38and as our line strengthened, we began to get the better of the Romans.
24:44And then our men began to push them back down the slope.
24:50Under the Gaulish onslaught, the Romans were unnerved and in disarray.
24:54In headlong retreat, more and more fell to the slashing swords.
24:59This was the moment when the discipline of the Gauls would be tested.
25:06I could see that Caesar had his reinforcements, his fresh troops, ready.
25:11The worry was that as the Roman line collapsed
25:15and our men began to surge down the slope,
25:18they would have gone into a trap and been hit on both flanks
25:22by fresh troops piling in at the last minute,
25:25and it could have turned into a disaster for us.
25:28And I ordered the retreat, sounded the retreat,
25:33and I'm glad to say that our men understood the need for discipline
25:37and rallied back.
25:40In a frenzy of killing, more than 700 Romans lay dead,
25:44including almost 50 of the elite centurions,
25:48a heavy price for a gamble by Caesar,
25:51which had achieved precisely nothing.
25:55Caesar can never admit to mistakes,
25:57therefore the fact that there was defeat at Cagovia
26:00has to be blamed on somebody,
26:02and Caesar blames it on the insubordination of his own men.
26:06It has been a reverse and it's been caused by overenthusiasm
26:10by the men on the ground.
26:12My enemies will rejoice in it.
26:14As far as I'm concerned, it is behind me.
26:16I wanted speed here and therefore I think it was worth the risk.
26:20An acceptable risk with an acceptable level of death.
26:24But Caesar abandoned the siege.
26:27As his legions marched disconsolately back northwards,
26:30there was no disguising the disaster that had befallen them.
26:34Cagovia is the first open defeat that Caesar suffers,
26:39and therefore it shatters the image of invincibility.
26:42The news went like wildfire all across Gaul,
26:45and just as it must have been very damaging,
26:47for Caesar, so equally it must have persuaded
26:50enormous numbers of tribes who may have been sitting on the fence
26:54waiting to see how it would go
26:56to throw their lot in with Vercingetorix.
26:59One by one, even the most loyal of Caesar's allies now deserted him.
27:06For Vercingetorix, the victory at Cagovia
27:08marked a turning of the tide in the fortunes of Gaul
27:11and a turning of the tables on his rivals.
27:14We're winning the war.
27:16Caesar, when he came here, thought he was chasing us
27:19and that we were in flight.
27:21Instead, we were drawing him here in order to hold him
27:25and to raise revolt in the rest of Gaul.
27:29This is a great Gaulish victory,
27:32and all the signs are that the Romans are going to be driven out of Gaul.
27:37In a grand council of tribal leaders,
27:40Vercingetorix and his army,
27:42Vercingetorix was proclaimed chief of all the Gaulish forces.
27:47He had succeeded where his father had failed.
27:50He now commanded a unified Gaul.
27:54This was Vercingetorix's finest hour.
27:57Hard hit, logistically weakened and outmanoeuvred,
28:02it was time for Caesar to think the unthinkable.
28:07The abandonment of his Gallic nation
28:10the abandonment of his Gallic dream.
28:14Caesar had rejoined his other legions and now had some 40,000 men,
28:19but they were trapped, deep in hostile territory,
28:22without allies and with their supply lines cut.
28:26Morale was becoming shaky.
28:29At this black moment, some of Caesar's officers come to him
28:32and they suggest that defeat should be admitted,
28:35that they should hack their way back out,
28:37try and retreat to the south.
28:40Caesar's response to this is that it would be shameful and humiliating
28:44and therefore unthinkable.
28:47But as the Romans made their way across country,
28:50to Vercingetorix they looked like a beaten army.
28:54The Gauls had tasted blood and they had an appetite for more.
28:58A fatal appetite.
29:01Vercingetorix thought that Caesar was retreating
29:03and that the Romans were defeated
29:05and he saw an opportunity to finish them off once and for all
29:09and probably that's what Caesar wanted him to think.
29:14Vercingetorix abandoned the defensive tactics that had served him so well.
29:18His cavalry attacked Caesar's column head on.
29:30The Gaulish horsemen were defeated.
29:32Vercingetorix fell back,
29:34retreating with 80,000 troops to the hilltop fortress of Alesia.
29:38For Caesar, even outnumbered, the bait was irresistible.
29:45When he retreats to Alesia, he's probably hoping that Caesar will follow him.
29:49He wants to wipe Caesar out
29:51and Vercingetorix has shown at Gagovia
29:53that in situations like this, the Romans can be defeated.
30:02Alesia was a rocky stronghold between two rivers.
30:09A fortified town, never taken by storm or siege.
30:14Caesar was intent on being the first
30:17and he was determined not to repeat the mistakes of Gagovia.
30:24He was no longer a general in a hurry.
30:27He set his legionaries to dig.
30:32I cannot really assault this fortress as I might have tried at Gagovia
30:36because 80,000 men would be quite difficult to dislodge in a major engagement.
30:40So I'm going to go to starve them instead.
30:43Rather playing his own game against me, in fact.
30:45Now he's the one who's going to suffer from lack of rations.
30:50Caesar's first step was to build camps overlooking the Gaulish citadel.
30:54Next, to join them up with a trench system
30:57stretching around Alesia a full ten miles.
31:02Now he had the Gauls where he wanted them.
31:07I have sought this engagement. This is exactly what I want.
31:11I want to bring his field army to one point and then annihilate it.
31:16Inside the fortress, as he watched Caesar's noose tighten,
31:19Vercingetorix was sanguine.
31:22Caesar might have him surrounded,
31:24but surrounding Caesar was the whole of Gaul.
31:28A united Gaul.
31:37I'm confident that the determination of the Gauls
31:42now in the rebel alliance to drive Caesar out
31:46will ensure that a relief army is raised
31:50and his defences have got to be much, much stronger
31:53if he's to resist the attacks both of those inside the fortress
31:58and of the relief army when it arrives.
32:02If the Gauls can get Caesar in one spot and then crush him in a vice,
32:07that's the best way to get rid of him.
32:09So both men are gambling, and in a sense both men want the same thing.
32:13Both men want the showdown.
32:18The prospect of fighting on two fronts gave fresh urgency to Caesar's troops.
32:23He set them digging a second defensive line to protect their backs.
32:28The Roman fortifications, now snaked around Alesia, are full 25 miles.
32:38We've got a completed section here of the fortifications
32:41that we've just built round Alesia.
32:43What we're looking at is a wall and palisade,
32:46in front of it ditches, but crucially here where we are now
32:50we're in the anti-personnel zone.
32:52Around his siege line, Caesar laid a spider's web of booby traps,
32:56a complex minefield of iron spikes, concealed pits and sharpened stakes.
33:03A killing zone with a single purpose,
33:06to stop attackers in their tracks...
33:09dead.
33:11Our troops will be up there on those towers
33:14and these defences will be covered with fences
33:17Our troops will be up there on those towers
33:20and these defences will be covered with fire,
33:22both from javelins, slings, catapults.
33:25The men there are in protected positions,
33:28they have a clear view, target area,
33:30their enemy is going to be slowed down, crawling, dying,
33:34whilst they have a clear line of fire throughout the proceedings.
33:41But with the Romans now fenced in on two sides,
33:45there was a nagging question.
33:50Had Caesar himself fallen into a trap?
33:54Every general knows the danger of tying his men down
33:58by nailing them to a fixed position.
34:02As the relieving army approached, he would have no choice
34:05but to guard the entire perimeter,
34:09while the Gauls would be free to strike where they wished.
34:16Yet sealed off inside Alesia,
34:19Vercingetorix had no idea
34:21whether the rest of Gaul would respond to his summons for help.
34:25He had food for only 30 days,
34:28and his men were starting to weaken.
34:31Hunger among a besieged garrison
34:35acts like an acid,
34:38breaking down the solidarity and the morale
34:41that holds fighting formations together,
34:44as well as eating away at the physical strength
34:49and alertness of an army.
34:52So we have to take radical measures
34:55in order to maximise the length of time
34:58that we can hold out here as a fighting force.
35:11His measures were simple.
35:13Food and shelter would now go only to those who could fight.
35:21The townsfolk of Alesia would have to fend for themselves.
35:27He makes a grim decision that all non-competents,
35:31women, children, men who can't fight,
35:34must be expelled.
35:37And I think his assumption is that the Romans will then
35:40take them as slaves, so at least they will live.
35:46But if Vercingetorix had expected Caesar
35:49to discover the milk of human kindness,
35:52he was to be disappointed.
35:54Caesar himself tells us of how the non-competents
35:58are forced out between the lines.
36:01They're thrown onto the Romans' mercy.
36:04The Romans show no mercy.
36:06There's little we can do about it.
36:09They expect me to take these idle mouths in,
36:12which, of course, is absolutely impossible.
36:14They will have to die in the ditch, I'm afraid, here,
36:16and just rot in between the two lines.
36:18We cannot afford them. What are the horrors of war?
36:23Trapped in no-man's land,
36:25the townspeople of Alesia were left to starve
36:28by both Romans and Gauls alike.
36:31Vercingetorix had proved Caesar's equal in ruthlessness.
36:40And his cold-blooded calculation was about to be rewarded.
36:49On the farthest horizon appeared the beginnings of a dust cloud.
36:55The relief army has arrived.
36:58We heard it first as a low hum in the distance beyond that ridge,
37:03and then we began to see them.
37:06First tens of thousands,
37:09then maybe 100,000,
37:12swarming down the slope on this side,
37:15maybe 200,000.
37:17It must be a quarter of a million,
37:20the biggest Gallic host that has ever assembled for war
37:24in the whole of our history.
37:28Caesar and his 40,000 troops were now beset on two sides
37:32by more than 300,000 Gauls,
37:35a daunting show of force.
37:38I am surprised by how many men he has managed to muster.
37:42My scouts say around a quarter of a million men are out there.
37:45Now, that is a fantastic achievement for a Gallic army,
37:49and I cannot afford to keep fighting this man
37:52if he's capable of organising something on this scale.
37:55I think Caesar is a man of enormous confidence and ingenuity,
38:02and sometimes that spills over into arrogance and pride.
38:08I think his decision to stand and fight in these lines here
38:13will prove to be a mistake.
38:17Caesar was used to playing for high stakes,
38:20but never before had a game of chance been so dangerous.
38:24It threatened not only the conquests he'd made in Gaul,
38:28but all his hopes and ambitions back in Rome.
38:32This is not only the climactic battle for the Roman conquest of Gaul,
38:36but also a personal climactic battle.
38:38If I make a mistake here, or I'm overwhelmed, I will disappear.
38:42I will be thrown into the latrine of history.
38:45I will completely lose everything I've got.
38:47This is a gambler's throw at the dice.
38:49It's a throw I'm quite prepared to accept.
39:02As the Gauls threw themselves forward,
39:04it seemed they must overwhelm the Roman lines,
39:07but something was wrong.
39:11Vercingetorix had at last his army of united Gauls,
39:15but no way to command them.
39:18Vercingetorix is immured within Alesia,
39:20therefore he has no contact with the relief army,
39:23therefore the coordination that he's been able to impose
39:27on the rebellion up till now is gone.
39:30And it means that command of the relief army
39:33is in the hands of people who clearly lack
39:36Vercingetorix's abilities and self-discipline.
39:39Command and control is our greatest single problem.
39:44It's extremely difficult for us to coordinate our attacks.
39:48The difficulty is that we cannot communicate across the lines.
39:52By sunset, the Gauls were beaten off.
40:01But this was only the beginning.
40:03Within 24 hours, they attacked again,
40:06and this time, darkness was their shield.
40:17We were roused by a tremendous racket,
40:20and it turned out that our men of the relief army
40:23had begun a major night attack against the Roman lines.
40:31There's a tremendous number of men involved.
40:34Many tens of thousands seem to be fighting,
40:37and the sky is a blizzard of shot,
40:40with slingstones, arrows, javelins flying through the sky.
40:45The Gauls have the advantage at the moment.
40:48They have struck first.
40:50They have to fight their way across the anti-personnel traps
40:53that we have so assiduously laid to them in front of our fortifications.
40:57As they get across there, their numbers may begin to tell.
41:04But great as their numbers were,
41:06again, the two Gaulish armies proved unable to join forces.
41:13I can just see the first faint light of dawn in the east,
41:16and it's now quite apparent that this attack has been beaten off.
41:20The Gallic relief army attacked
41:22whilst Vercingetorix still remained on his hill fort.
41:26Unfortunately for him, he has no way of communicating
41:29with his relief army on the outside, and I intend to keep it like that.
41:38The Gaulish attacks had failed to break through,
41:41but they had identified Caesar's weak spots.
41:45Most vulnerable was an outlying camp
41:48perched precariously on a steep hillside.
41:57With the attack from the relief army,
42:00Vercingetorix saw his opportunity too.
42:03He ordered troops from inside the citadel
42:05to strike at the Roman camp from the rear.
42:08Diversionary raids hindered every attempt by Caesar to kill off the threat.
42:13This is the moment of crisis.
42:15The Gauls have thrown everything at us that they possibly can.
42:19And in fact, they're fighting from the top of that hill
42:22down onto two of my legions,
42:24who are relatively hard-pressed at the moment.
42:30This is the greatest day of battle in the entire Gallic war,
42:34and this time we succeeded in coordinating our attacks
42:38against the outer defences and the inner defences,
42:41stretching Caesar's forces to the limit.
42:44And as they attacked,
42:46we succeeded in coming out in huge numbers from the main defence
42:51to support that attack.
42:55The Gaulish pincer movement had the Romans trapped fast.
43:00Three times Caesar struggled to send in fresh troops, to no avail.
43:05As the lights started to fade, the question was stark.
43:10Is this the moment when I throw my last reserves into the battle?
43:14The enemy look exhausted, we are exhausted.
43:17We're fighting hand to hand.
43:19The fighting here is absolutely ferocious.
43:21The thrust of steel into unprotected groin.
43:24Absolute mayhem going on here.
43:26I have to decide whether I commit my last reserves,
43:29and I emphasise last reserves.
43:31Once I throw it, I don't have a second chance.
43:34This is the key moment for both men.
43:37Total triumph, total defeat.
43:42If the Romans win, Gaul will be secured for the Republic
43:47and Caesar will have the glory,
43:49will have the reputation that he came to Gaul to seek.
43:53If Vercingetorix wins, Gaul will be freed of Rome,
43:57so the stakes could not be higher.
44:00The whole future of a Romanised Western Europe
44:03is hanging in the balance.
44:08And on this final, greatest gamble,
44:11Caesar was about to stake his own life.
44:14This is a moment where the Supreme Commander has to lead in person.
44:18It will put a bit of fire back into them.
44:20They are exhausted now.
44:22They have been fighting for the best part of four to five hours.
44:25They need something.
44:28In his red cloak, as Commander-in-Chief,
44:31Caesar was unmistakable,
44:33the most conspicuous figure on the battlefield.
44:38His appearance was guaranteed to provoke the enemy to rage and to fear.
44:45We saw Caesar himself leading the final attack,
44:49his scarlet cape flying in the wind at the head of his final reserve,
44:54and we knew that he was there because this was the moment of decision.
44:58This was the last reserve going in at the end of the battle
45:01and that last attack had to be decisive.
45:04When I saw it, the final reserve,
45:07led by the Roman commander in person,
45:10I could look at the prospects for the Gauls.
45:13Suddenly, the legionaries cheer because they see a flash of red,
45:17the scarlet cloak of their commander.
45:20Caesar is coming, and Caesar has come up in the rear of the Gauls,
45:24so now it's the Gauls who are caught in the pincer movement
45:27and they're slaughtered.
45:32It was like shattering a pane of glass.
45:34One moment, intense combat,
45:36the next second, a terrifying cry rattled across their army
45:39and they felt they had been betrayed and taken from both sides
45:42and complete exhaustion and panic broke out
45:45and they fled in all directions.
45:48An army is a mob trying to get out, they say,
45:52and at that moment, the mob broke out
45:56and every man suddenly broke,
45:58suddenly became a panic-stricken individual,
46:01desperately trying to escape,
46:03and the battle ended in our forces thrown back
46:06and defeated the last hope of the Gauls.
46:23The last hope of Vercingetorix, too, had gone.
46:27With the rout of his army,
46:29the short-lived alliance of the tribes of Gaul was also at an end.
46:34His fellow tribal leaders delivered him
46:37into the embrace of their enemy.
46:46Caesar let it be known
46:48that he expected Vercingetorix to surrender in person.
46:52This was a moment of theatre for Caesar and his army.
46:56So Vercingetorix put on his best armour
47:00and rode to Caesar's camp,
47:02where the Romans were drawn up in parade.
47:11He was surrounded by his legionary commanders,
47:14his centurions, his own bodyguard, the legionary standards.
47:18Vercingetorix arrives, wearing his finest armour.
47:27Vercingetorix threw down his arms, took off his armour
47:31and abased himself.
47:39And he said these words,
47:41HARBE FORTEM WIRUM
47:44VIA FORTISSIME WICISTI
47:48Here I am, a strong man, defeated by an even stronger one.
47:53It was an admission of his total and absolute defeat.
48:01Theatre and ritual, in peace and in war, were everything.
48:07Ritually, Caesar had Vercingetorix taken back to Rome in chains,
48:12where in prison, ritually, he awaited Caesar's judgement.
48:19Six years on, blinking in the sun,
48:22he found Caesar not inclined to mercy.
48:25The memory of Alesia, a battle so nearly lost, still roared.
48:32Julius Caesar now had his place in history.
48:35He was absolute master of Rome.
48:38But for Vercingetorix, Rome's rebel, history would have no voice.
48:44Ritually, Caesar had him strangled.
49:01THE END
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