Caesar's Legion: The Epic Saga of Julius Caesar's Elite Tenth Legion and the Armies of Rome by Stephen Dando-Collins Read Free Book Online Page A

infantrymen of the 10th Legion in their place. He was to later c03.qxd 12/5/01 4:53 PM Page 22
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    write that by this stage he considered the legionaries of the 10th to be men in whose devotion he could rely absolutely.
    As the legionaries were mounting up, a soldier of the 10th was heard to remark, “Caesar’s being better than his word. He promised to make the 10th his bodyguard, and now he’s knighting us.” Caesar himself would have smiled when the comment was repeated to him, for he was to later include it in his memoirs.
    The meeting took place on a rise halfway between the Roman and the German camps, with the mounted men of the 10th Legion formed up three hundred yards behind their general and King Ariovistus’s big-framed cavalrymen a similar distance behind him. Accompanied by a personal escort of ten men each, and on horseback, Caesar and Ariovistus conducted a tense face-to-face conference. As the two leaders spoke at length, with each trying to convince the other to withdraw from Gaul, German cavalrymen tried to provoke the mounted legionaries of the 10th, and Caesar temporarily broke off discussions to order his men not to retaliate.
    The day’s conference ended in a stalemate, and next day Caesar sent two envoys to continue discussions on his behalf. When Ariovistus made prisoners of the envoys, his intent was clear enough. For days, the two armies jostled for position, with the Germans moving camp in an attempt to cut Caesar off from supplies coming up from Besançon, and with Caesar dividing his troops between two camps. The Germans attacked the camps, but whenever Caesar formed up his troops in battle lines, the Germans avoided a full-scale battle. Then, from prisoners, Caesar learned that the Germans believed they would not win if they fought a major encounter before the new moon. Ariovistus was stalling for time. So Caesar marched on the German camp, just fifteen miles from the Rhine River, determined to force Ariovistus to do battle before he wanted to. Even though his forty thousand men would be outnumbered, Caesar was counting on having a psychological advantage. As it turned out, pressing for a battle now had another advantage, which Caesar only later discovered: Suebi reinforcements were at that moment approaching the Rhine from the east, planning to link up with Ariovistus.
    Forced to defend their camp, the Germans tumbled into the fields outside it and formed up in their clans: the Harudes; the Tribboci; the Van-giones; the Nemetes; the Eudusii; the numerous Suebi, who gave their name to the tribe as a whole; and a clan then based in the Main valley, the Marcomanni, which would grow in size and influence and within half a century settle in Bohemia, and, another 175 years later, during the reign of Marcus Aurelius, would prove to be one of Rome’s fiercest foes. The c03.qxd 12/5/01 4:53 PM Page 23
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    German warriors were on average several inches taller than the Romans, broad-shouldered, with long hair and beards. Their nobles, better dressed and armed than the rank and file, who often wore nothing but a fur cloak and went barefoot, wore their hair tied up in the characteristic Suebian knot. The principal weapon of the Germans was the long spear.
    Caesar’s four thousand cavalry and the six thousand German cavalry held back as the legions advanced in their customary three battle lines, with the 10th Legion occupying what was now its regular position on the right wing. Caesar personally took command on the right when he saw the enemy line at its weakest on that side, and when he ordered his first two lines to charge, the men of the 10th dashed forward enthusiastically.
    Even though they had been unprepared to fight, the Germans opposite ran so quickly to the attack that the legionaries didn’t even have time to throw their javelins. Dropping them, they drew their swords as the two