Caesar’s First and Last Defeat
Some call Caesar the best military general and tactician of all time also known as an engineering mastermind. Julius Caesar was one of the greatest military commanders and tacticians in the history of Rome. His bravery and cleverness in battle was renowned throughout the empire. He won great victories for the emperor against impossible odds and earned unparalleled glory across the empire. But their was one battle in his lifetime he did lose.
He standardised the weakened Roman military and improved ranks of those who stood against him for absolute loyalty to him only. No soldier or inferiorly ranked officer dared to stand in his way to ultimate control and power, and he reinforced his beliefs about loyalty and discipline quite often, killing one tenth of an entire division to wipe out any weakness or hesitation.
Ancient Rome’s greatest enemy as many say was the Gauls. The Gauls lived in what is now Northern France. The Romans sent countless expeditions to Gaul to subdue the minor tribes that rejected Roman dominance. But none of them worked since the Gauls were actually a very powerful fighting force, if they worked together. You see the Gauls were extremely divided and warlike; the smallest embers start a wildfire in a blink. They took the smallest reasons and used them as an excuse to attack and annex the other tribes. Their nature was as easy to predict as the magnitude of an earthquake 20 years before it actually occurs. Sometimes they took Rome’s side while sometimes they were against it. They were an unstable ally and Rome decided that it would probably be much better off without them and war didn’t work.
They tried diplomacy but the turbulent nature of the politics inside Rome itself was getting in the way. After centuries of war there came a time when the Gauls sacked Rome itself! Not only did this weaken the military, but the “Gaul problem” was getting in the way of almost every field of governance: the economy, supplies, trade and contact with allies and contemporary civilisations. But now the problem was getting out of control and the Gallic tribes were winning victory after victory in the hills of their homeland.
The leader of the growing military machine of the Gauls was a charismatic new person: Vercingetorix. Vercingetorix was an extremely clever tactician and he knew all about the tricks and games of the Roman military and he studied each general and leader closely to take advantage of the weakness of their personalities. He was the mastermind behind most of the recent and major Roman defeats. When Rome finally found out about him they sent Julius Caesar to finish the Gauls once and for all.
After months of chasing and small skirmishes the Gauls ran out of supplies and chose to compensate at a medium sized town called Alesia. And it would be here that he would experience his first and last defeat. The residents of the town and the army of Vercingetorix lived side by side peacefully until the supplies started to die out and things started to get fishy. Soon there was nothing to eat or drink and there were fights and cannibalism was not unheard of. Amidst of all this chaos Vercingetorix found out that Caesar had built a wooden wall five miles in circumference around the city and found out that he intended to starve the population out and then massacre them and his plan was working so far. But after several raids he managed to send out a small cavalry unit to send word out for help and reinforcements. This ended in the Gauls regaining supplies and eventually fighting their way out. That became Caesars first and last defeat.
Liked it
