Caesar's Legions laid siege to Vercingetorix's Gallic army in one of the
most tactically amazing battles of all time. Outnumbered 6:1, the Romans
built siege lines facing inward and outward and prevented the Gauls from
breaking the siege. The campaign leading to the battle revealed
ingenuity on both sides, though in the end Caesar established his fame
in these actions.
In 52 BC, Caesar's continued strategy of annihilation had engendered a
spirit of desperation, which detonated into a revolt of Gallic tribes
under the leadership of the charismatic, young, Arvernian noble,
Vercingetorix. Though the Gallic people shared a common language and
culture, forging a coalition amongst the fiercely independent tribes was
a virtually impossible feat, and it was a tribute to Vercingetorix's
personality and skill.
Initially Vercingetorix's strategy was to draw the Romans into pitched
battle. Vercingetorix was soundly beaten in the open field battle
against Caesar at Noviodunum, followed by the Roman sack of Avaricum.
However, the action that followed at Gergovia amounted to the most
serious reverse that Caesar faced in the whole of the Gallic War.
Vercingetorix began a canny policy of small war and defensive maneuvers,
which gravely hampered Caesar's movements by cutting off his supplies.
For Caesar it was to be a grim summertime - his whole Gallic enterprise
faced liquidation.
In the event, by brilliant leadership, force of arms, and occasionally
sheer luck, Caesar succeeded. This culminated in the siege of Alesia
(north of Dijon), which Caesar himself brilliantly narrates (Bellum
Gallicum 7.68-89). With his 80,000 warriors and 1,500 horsemen
entrenched atop a mesa at Alesia, the star-crossed Vercingetorix
believed Alesia was unassailable. Commanding less than 50,000
legionaries and assorted auxiliaries, Caesar nevertheless began the
siege. Vercingetorix then dispatched his cavalry to rally reinforcements
from across Gaul, and in turn Caesar constructed a contravallation and
circumvallation, a double wall of fortifications around Alesia facing
toward and away from the oppidum. When the Gallic relief army arrived,
the Romans faced the warriors in Alesia plus an alleged 250,000 warriors
and 8,000 horsemen attacking from without. Caesar adroitly employed his
interior lines, his fortifications, and the greater training and
discipline of his men to offset the Gallic advantage, but after two days
of heavy fighting, his army was pressed to the breaking point. On the
third day, the Gauls, equipped with fascines, scaling ladders and
grappling hooks, captured the northwestern angle of the circumvallation,
which formed a crucial point in the Roman siege works. In desperation,
Caesar personally led the last of his reserves in a do-or-die
counterattack, and when his Germanic horsemen outflanked the Gauls and
took them in the rear, the battle decisively turned. The mighty relief
army was repulsed.
Vercingetorix finally admitted defeat, and the entire force surrendered
the next day. Alesia was to be the last significant resistance to Roman
will in Gaul. It involved virtually every Gallic tribe in a disastrous
defeat, and there were enough captives for each legionary to be awarded
one to sell as a slave. In a very real sense Alesia symbolized the
extinction of Gallic liberty. Rebellions would come and go, but never
again would a Gallic warlord independent of Rome hold sway over the
Celts of Gaul.
