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The year is 52 BC.

A bloody encounter between two men

is about to shape Europe's destiny.

The name of one, Julius Caesar,

will echo through history.

And as the victor,

he will write that history himself.

But the other is almost unknown.

A young chieftain called Vercingetorix.

His people, the Gauls,

are history's victims.

It was a very bloodthirsty,

very bloody campaign.

Modern estimates seem to suggest

it may be as many as one in four

of the population of Gaul dies.

If that's not genocide,

I don't know what is.

The butcher's bill in Gaul stands comparison

with any modern conflict.

Caesar killed a million men,

women and children,

enslaved a million more

and destroyed 800 cities.

So what does history teach us?

Can we today enter the mindset of

Caesar and Vercingetorix?

I'm quite happy to allow them off the leash

for this occasion.

This is a chance for the troops

to have revenge.

If they wish to destroy the city,

so be it.

Can you imagine

what a city of 40,000 people

put to the sword by the Roman army

looks like?

There was wholesale, uncontrolled, butchery.

Men, women and children

massacred 40,000 people.

Caesar's conquest of Gaul,

present day France,

made his name and changed our world.

Without it, the Roman Empire

would have looked very different.

But was the outcome inevitable?

Mark Corby is a Roman historian

and former professional soldier.

Neil Fonkner is an archaeologist

with a deep suspicion of Rome.

The Roman Empire is held up to us

as a model of civilisation.

But Vercingetorix,

this great barbarian chieftain,

united his people and led them

in the greatest military struggle

in their history in an attempt to defeat

that empire and keep his country free.

What drove him?

Why did he fight so hard?

What did it mean to be Vercingetorix?

For me, Julius Caesar's conquest of Gaul

was one of the epic events of world history.

But how did he achieve it

against such enormous odds?

By following in his footsteps,

I hope to praise Caesar and not to bury him.

In a journey covering more than 2,000 miles,

Mark and Neil set out to retrace the events

that led to the final clash

between Gaul and Rome.

In their efforts to understand

the long lost world of Caesar

and Vercingetorix,

they found themselves re-entering it.

Vercingetorix is the best thing the Gauls

have produced to date.

He's the one thing that I'm

slightly worried about.

But if I can hold him down

to a major battle,

I think I have a very good chance

of annihilating him.

Caesar and I play a game,

and I despise his motives

and his intentions here.

And I will do everything that I can

in order to beat him and drive him

out of Gaul.

The governorship of Gaul was,

for Caesar in middle age,

the great opportunity to make his mark.

His family background had been noble

but penniless,

and in the treacherous world

of Roman politics,

he'd made enemies at every turn.

Charges of political corruption

eventually laid him open to prosecution

and possibly ruin.

The rhombuscious political life of Rome

means that no man goes untainted.

Bribery, corruption,

threats of violence every day to us.

I do what is necessary.

What is necessary for Caesar

will be necessary for Rome

and for the Roman Empire.

Six years of victories in Gaul

had brought him wealth and the prospect

of a return to the political fold.

To guarantee no scrap of glory

went unnoticed, Caesar became

his own war correspondent,

writing up each battle

for avid consumption in Rome.

The Romans suffered from an acute

and long standing fear of Gaul.

Two centuries earlier,

70,000 rampaging Gauls had swept

into Italy and sacked Rome.

All Gauls were seen as quarrelsome

and fickle.

The tale Caesar told

was of hard-won conquest.

He'd found Gaul a treacherous minefield

of different and warring Celtic tribes.

His genius had been to cut his way

between them, making allies of some

putting others to the sword.

Finally, in late 53 BC, Caesar declared

that Gaul was completely pacified.

He took himself back to Italy.

There is political turmoil in Rome,

anarchy, rioting.

And so in that winter of 5352,

his eye is very firmly focused on Rome.

And he announces that Gaul has been pacified

partly because he hopes that it's true.

And partly because he desperately

needs it to be true.

Gaul was far from pacified.

With Caesar away,

the smoldering resentment of the Gauls

flared into life.

In Sinabum, present-day Orlion,

Roman merchants were killed.

It was the signal for a general uprising.

And suddenly, at its head, there appeared

the mysterious figure of Vercingetorix.

Vercingetorix's sudden appearance

on the scene is made to seem like

lightning from a clear blue sky.

But it clearly can't have been that.

Evidently, Vercingetorix was plotting and

planning the rebellion for a good deal longer

than Caesar suggests in his commentaries.

So, essentially, Caesar is caught on the hop.

Fighting spirit ran deep within

Vercingetorix.

His father had also tried to unify Gaul

and was struck down by other

tribal leaders for his pains.

Caesar's details are sketchy,

but he describes Vercingetorix

as a young man of tremendous energy

and fierce discipline.

Could it be

that the two knew each other of old?

Vercingetorix was clearly

a man of great significance in his tribe,

so I would suspect that Caesar

and Vercingetorix would have had personal

dealings with each other at some point.

And I think it's suggestive that Caesar

doesn't mention this, because it suggests

that Vercingetorix had indeed

pulled the wool over Caesar's eyes.

Whatever their personal history,

their future and that of their peoples

was about to be determined

in three great encounters.

Their duel was beginning.

In the depths of winter, Caesar began

a lightning dash back across the Alps.

He meant to nip the rebellion in the bud,

and the weapon he would use was the one

on which he prided himself above all.

Speed, speed so often comes out.

The speed with which he takes

his adversaries by surprise.

This is somebody who is moving

with great control through all the woodlands

and the rivers of France,

because the threat is so great.

This is the great crisis.

In a series of forced marches,

Caesar moved rapidly to reclaim

the rebel city of Sinabu,

taking other rebel towns en route,

plundering, burning,

punishing, always moving on.

He pops up wherever the Gauls

least expect him, and that has always been

his method of generalship,

is to move at enormous speed.

He's a great master of Blitzkrieg,

and he does it to devastating effect.

Nothing, it seemed, could stand

in the face of Caesar's progress.

But Vercingetorix had no intention

of standing.

He meant to withdraw,

and to destroy everything in Caesar's path.

We have to fight in a different way.

By denying his great invading host the food

and fodder they need in order to survive.

To starve him into submission,

we're going to have to adopt a policy of

scorched earth.

We destroy, in the path of his army,

all of the things that might be useful

in sustaining it.

Fields, granaries, villages and towns

were put to the torch,

cutting off Caesar's food supplies.

But Vercingetorix was about to meet

his first test as leader.

Unlike Caesar,

he was not heading a professional army,

but a rebellious coalition of tribes,

and one tribe now refused

to accept his authority.

The people of Avaricum, present-day Borges,

would not burn their town.

Vercingetorix is the leader of
a tribal alliance,

and so he can't order his men

to do things in the way that
Caesar can order his legions.

He needs to persuade and cajole.

I have to negotiate, I have to compromise,

I have to keep the alliance together

by accepting that our people are

understandably reluctant to make

the sacrifices which I think are needed

for us to win the war.

We have to hope that we can make

a successful defence of Avaricum,

but I fear that the defences of the city

might not be up to it.

Gauls knew how to build.

Their city walls were a complex

construction of stonework, heavy timbers

and iron nails, proof against

both fire and the battering ram.

But to the Roman army,

siege warfare was second nature.

Caesar's legionaries began to build

an immense siege platform

to overtop Avaricum's walls.

All that was needed was time and patience.

Caesar was short of both.

With 40,000 men,

I have a tremendous labour force,

but even so, it's going to take at least

a month of construction work to build

a big enough rampart to assault this city.

During this whole operation, we've been

continually harassed by Vercingetrix

turning up behind me and sitting

across my lines of communication.

He's taking my food from me.

My supply lines have been threatened.

Vercingetrix was still outside Avaricum,

harrying the Roman forage parties

as they scavenged for food.

The Gauls camp was hidden in wild marshland.

But Caesar persuaded prisoners

to reveal its location.

Then he marched his men through the night

for a surprise attack.

As dawn broke, it was clear

Caesar had been duped.

His legions had advanced straight into

a quagmire, while Vercingetrix's camp,

on high ground, was impregnable.

Caesar, it seemed, had met his match.

Gaul is crawling with Caesar's

spies and informants.

We can play the same game

and feed him false intelligence,

and we've drawn part of his army

to this place.

And I hope

that he'll launch an attack on what is

an extremely strong defensive position.

But Caesar, for once,

was strangely reticent.

He was waiting for Vercingetrix

to make the first move.

My men have marched since midnight

to get here, and are keen for action.

However, the chances of success

on this sort of battlefield are slim,

and they are extremely unhappy about this.

In the past, the Gauls have not been

noteworthy for their command and discipline.

They must think I'm in a fairly weak position

and a fairly obvious target,

and I would hope that they would actually

launch a general assault.

Yet Vercingetrix

was not like other Gaulish commanders.

It seemed that he, too,

was prepared to bide his time.

We have to fight defensively,

because down there is an army

of professional killers.

Every man down there is a mercenary,

fighting for pay, trained to be a soldier,

trained to come and conquer

the land of the Gauls.

Most of the men standing in the line

on the ridge here are ordinary farmers,

and they're here to defend their homes,

their families, their farms.

And if, as Caesar would like to have happen,

we were to go down onto the plain

and to face an open battle

with his professional killers,

we will be cut down.

It was a standoff.

Caesar had no choice but to march his troops

back to Avaricum.

A tactical withdrawal, but,

for his legionaries, humiliated.

The Roman revenge was swift and bloody.

Under cover of heavy rain,

they breached Avaricum's defences.

And, with Caesar's blessing, slaughtered

the entire population of that stubborn city.

I'm quite happy to allow them

off the leash for this occasion.

This is a chance for the troops

to have revenge, and, if they wish

to destroy the city, so be it.

This is what Roman armies do

to make an example of the city.

Every living thing will be killed.

Can you imagine

what a city of 40,000 people

put to the sword by the Roman army

looks like?

When the Romans broke in,

they went completely berserk.

There was wholesale, uncontrolled, butchery.

Men, women and children

massacred 40,000 people.

If the massacre was intended

to break the Gaul spirit,

it had exactly the opposite effect.

Vercingetorix found new fire

in his followers.

The use of terror in war

can cut in two directions.

It can intimidate and break up resistance,

but it can also fill people with bitterness

and anger and renewed determination

to fight back.

Overnight, Gaul was on the turn.

With fresh outbreaks of resistance

in tribe after tribe,

Caesar was forced to split his forces.

Four legions were sent to quell rebels

in the north.

With the six remaining, he headed south

for the tribal heartland of Vercingetorix.

It's a direct insult.

For a Gallic tribal leader,

the measure of a man is the ability

to defend his territory,

defend his villages, his crops,

his fields, his women, his family.

Caesar knows that.

That's why he goes and attacks them.

And he expects that Vercingetorix

will respond by attacking him,

because that's what the Gauls always do.

But not this time.

Under Vercingetorix,

the Gauls were learning patience.

The territory of the Arverni,

today's Orvern,

was bounded by the river Allie.

As Caesar marched down one bank,

Vercingetorix simply kept pace on the other.

He'd already destroyed the bridges.

You get Vercingetorix not at all cowed,

not at all put out of his way

by the sight of this very formidable army.

This must have been pretty shaking,

really, to Caesar.

It must have been pretty shaking
to Caesar's troops as well.

They're not used to seeing
that sort of confidence.

We don't march down the river

with our heads held low in silence.

We march proudly with our trumpets

blaring, our men shouting their war cries,

spears crashing against shields.

We're prepared to fight if we have to,

but I must hold my men back

from that fatal collision.

If I can hold him down to a major battle,

I think I have a very good chance

of annihilating him.

But so far he's managed to avoid that.

If it carries on like this,
I'm going to find that I'm going to have

quite some problem bringing him to book,

and I'm worried about
my food supplies as well.

Caesar's troops were feeding off the land,

but the more tribes turned against him,

the harder that became.

Vercingetorix was in no hurry.

It has to be a strategy of

wearing Caesar down over time

by stripping him of his allies

and his supply bases in Gaul

and starving his army into submission.

Harrying Caesar's foragers,

trying to bring over the other tribes,

and isolating him, in effect,

in a barbarian wilderness.

What I've got to try
and do is still maintain

the initiative against Vercingetorix,

keep him on the hop, keep him moving.

Any problem is,

I'm on the wrong side of the river,

and I've got to somehow
get across that river.

And he has ripped down all the bridges.

The duel was becoming a battle of wits.

With the Gauls matching his legions

stride for stride,

Caesar tried a different tactic.

If he couldn't outpace Vercingetorix,

he would outsmart him.

Overnight, he selected two legions,

8,000 men,

to conceal themselves hard by the river.

The next day, the main column

appeared to march off as normal.

And the Gauls, unsuspecting,

marched with them.

It was short work for Caesar

to make the river crossing behind them.

Vercingetorix had been outmaneuvered.

And the first he knew was

when he found Caesar on his tail.

There was only one way

to evade Caesar in open battle.

Vercingetorix sped south.

Caesar's forces have crossed the river.

Downstream, they've tricked us.

This isn't a flight,

this is an organized retreat

to keep our forces intact,

and hold him in the hills around Gergovia.

Vercingetorix was coming home.

Gergovia was the citadel of the Arverni,

his tribe.

It was a formidable stronghold

on a vast natural plateau,

sheer on three sides.

Now,

perched high above the surrounding plain,

the Gaulish army felt a new confidence.

This is an immensely strong position.

We hold not just the main mountain,

but all of the high ground

around this mountain.

All of these hills around here

are defended by our men.

Caesar and his forces are down there

on the low ground, so we command a position

which it will be very, very

difficult for him to surround.

Down below, Caesar was uncomfortably aware

that with just six legions,

a full-scale siege was

out of the question here.

Looking at that obstacle behind me,

and it's one of the most fearsome of all

Gallic hill forts,

I do sense a little fear.

I am under strength here.

I'd like to come up with something

fast and something decisive,

and therefore, I am going to have to

throw the dice yet again.

Caesar determined to exploit

the one weakness he thought

he'd found in Vercingetorix.

He would outwit him once again.

The weakest point of Gergovia's defences

was on its westerly slopes.

He played on Vercingetorix's

fears of an attack there,

manoeuvring horsemen

as if to mount an assault.

In fact, Caesar intended a direct attack

up the stronghold's steepest ramparts.

To attempt to take a sight

as well fortified as Gergovia

was obviously a huge gamble.

But Caesar was a gambler,

and his gambles tended to come off.

The Roman assault hit the Gauls hard.

Caesar's troops

quickly overran the hill forts' outposts.

We simply didn't have enough men
on the spot,

and he broke through the outer defences

and came through the main encampment.

But as Vercingetorix recognised the threat,

he threw reinforcements forward

to plug the gap.

Caesar sounded the recall to his troops,

but too late.

Desperate to achieve their objective,

they didn't heed the trumpets.

As the alarm was raised,

a major battle developed.

And as our line strengthened,

we began to get the better of the Romans.

And then our men began to push them back

down the slope.

Under the Gaulish onslaught,

the Romans were unnerved and in disarray.

In headlong retreat,

more and more fell to the slashing swords.

This was the moment

when the discipline of the Gauls

would be tested.

I could see that Caesar had his

reinforcements, his fresh troops, ready.

The worry was that as the Roman line

collapsed and our men began to surge

down the slope,

they would have gone into a trap

and been hit on both flanks

by fresh troops

piling in at the last minute.

And it could have turned into a disaster

for us.

And I ordered the retreat,

sounded the retreat.

And I'm glad to say that our men

understood the need for discipline

and rallied back.

In a frenzy of killing,

more than 700 Romans lay dead,

including almost 50 of the elite centurions.

A heavy price for a gamble by Caesar,

which had achieved precisely nothing.

Caesar can never admit to mistakes.

Therefore, the fact that
there was a defeat at Cogovia

has to be blamed on somebody.

And Caesar blames it on the

insubordination of his own men.

It has been a reverse

and it's been caused by over-enthusiasm

by the men on the ground.

My enemies will rejoice in it.

As far as I'm concerned, it is behind me.

I wanted speed here and therefore

I think it was worth the risk.

An acceptable risk with an

acceptable level of death.

But Caesar abandoned the siege.

As his legions marched disconsolately

back northwards,

there was no disguising the disaster

that had befallen them.

Cogovia is the first open defeat

that Caesar suffers, and therefore

it shatters the image of invincibility.

The news went like wildfire all across Gaul,

and just as it must have been very damaging

for Caesar,

so equally it must have persuaded

enormous numbers of tribes

who may have been sitting on the fence,

waiting to see how it would go,

to throw their lot in with Vercingetorix.

One by one, even the most loyal of

Caesar's allies now deserted him.

For Vercingetorix, the victory at Cogovia

marked a turning of the tide

in the fortunes of Gaul, and a turning

of the tables on his rival, Caesar.

We're winning the war.

Caesar, when he came here,

thought he was chasing us

and that we were in flight.

Instead, we were drawing him here

in order to hold him

and to raise revolt in the rest of Gaul.

This is a great Gaulish victory,

and all the signs are that the Romans

are going to be driven out of Gaul.

In a grand council of tribal leaders,

Vercingetorix was proclaimed

chief of all the Gaulish forces.

He had succeeded

where his father had failed.

He now commanded a unified Gaul.

This was Vercingetorix's finest hour.

Hard hit, logistically weakened,

and outmaneuvered.

It was time for Caesar to think

the unthinkable,

the abandonment of his gallic dream.

Caesar had rejoined his other legions,

and now had some 40,000 men.

But they were trapped,

deep in hostile territory,

without allies,

and with their supply lines cut.

Morale was becoming shaky.

At this black moment,
some of Caesar's officers come to him,

and they suggest that

defeat should be admitted,
that they should

hack their way back out,

try and retreat to the south.

Caesar's response to this is that

it would be shameful and humiliating,

and therefore unthinkable.

But as the Romans made their way

across country, to Vercingetorix,

they looked like a beaten army.

The Gauls had tasted blood,

and they had an appetite for more.

A fatal appetite.

Vercingetorix thought that
Caesar was retreating,

and that the Romans were defeated,

and he saw an opportunity

to finish them off once and for all.

And probably that's what Caesar
wanted him to think.

Vercingetorix abandoned

the defensive tactics

that had served him so well.

His cavalry attacked Caesar's column,

head on.

The Gaulish horsemen were defeated.

Vercingetorix fell back,

retreating with 80,000 troops

to the hilltop fortress of Alesia.

For Caesar, even outnumbered,

the bait was irresistible.

When he retreats to Alesia,

he's probably hoping
that Caesar will follow him.

He wants to wipe Caesar out,

and Vercingetorix has shown at Gogovia

that in situations like this,

the Romans can be defeated.

Alesia was a rocky stronghold

between two rivers.

A fortified town,

never taken by storm or siege.

Caesar was intent on being the first,

and he was determined not to repeat

the mistakes of Gogovia.

He was no longer a general in a hurry.

He set his legionaries to dig.

I cannot really assault this fortress

as I might have tried at Gogovia,

because 80,000 men would be quite difficult

to dislodge in a major engagement.

So I'm going to go to starve them instead,

rather playing his own game
against me, in fact.

Now he's the one who's going to suffer

from lack of rations.

Caesar's first step was to build camps

overlooking the Gaulish Citadel.

Next, to join them up

with the trench system

stretching around Alesia a full 10 miles.

Now he had the Gauls where he wanted them.

I have sought this engagement.

This is exactly what I want.

I want to bring his field army

to one point and then annihilate it.

Inside the fortress,

as he watched Caesar's noose Titan,

Vercingetorix was sanguine.

Caesar might have him surrounded,

but surrounding Caesar

was the whole of Gaul, a united Gaul.

I'm confident that

the determination of the Gauls

now in the Rebel Alliance

to drive Caesar out

will ensure that a relief army is raised.

And his defences have got to be much,

much stronger if he's to resist the attacks

both of those inside the fortress

and of the relief army when it arrives.

If the Gauls can get Caesar in one spot

and then crush him in a vice,

that's the best way to get rid of him.

So both men are gambling and in a sense

both men want the same thing.

Both men want the showdown.

The prospect of fighting on two fronts

gave fresh urgency to Caesar's troops.

He set them digging a second defensive line

to protect their backs.

The Roman fortifications,

now snaked around Alesia,

are full 25 miles.

We've got a completed section here

of the fortifications that

we've just built around Alesia.

What we're looking at is a wall and

palisade in front of it ditches,

but crucially here where we are now,

we're in the anti-personnel zone.

Around his siege line Caesar laid

a spider's web of booby traps,

a complex minefield of iron spikes,

concealed pits and sharpened stakes.

A killing zone with a single purpose,

to stop attackers in their tracks.

Dead.

Our troops will be up there on those towers

and these defenses will be covered

with fire, both from javelins,

slings, catapults.

The men there are in protected positions,

have a clear view, target area.

Their enemy is going to be slowed down,

crawling, dying, whilst they have a clear

line of fire throughout the proceedings.

But with the Romans now fenced in

on two sides,

there was a nagging question.

Had Caesar himself fallen into a trap?

Every general knows

the danger of tying his men down

by nailing them to a fixed position.

As the relieving army approached

he would have no choice

but to guard the entire perimeter,

while the Gauls would be free

to strike where they wished.

Yet sealed off inside Elesia,

Vercingetorix had no idea

whether the rest of Gaul would respond

to his summons for help.

He had food for only 30 days

and his men were starting to weaken.

Hunger among a besieged garrison

acts like an acid

breaking down the solidarity and the morale

that holds fighting formations together,

as well as eating away

at the physical strength

and alertness of an army.

So we have to take radical measures

in order to maximise the length of time

that we can hold out here

as a fighting force.

His measures were simple.

Food and shelter would now go

only to those who could fight.

The townsfolk of Elesia

would have to fend for themselves.

He makes a grim decision

that all non -competents,

women, children, men who can't fight,

must be expelled.

And I think his assumption is that

the Romans will then take them as slaves,

so at least they will live.

But if Vercingetorix had expected Caesar

to discover the milk of human kindness,

he was to be disappointed.

Caesar himself tells us of how

the non competents are forced out

between the lines.

They're thrown onto the Romans' mercy.

The Romans show no mercy.

There's little we can do about it.

He may expect me to take these

idle mouths in,

which of course is absolutely impossible.

They will have to die in the ditch,

I'm afraid, here, and just rot
in between the two lines.

We cannot afford them.

One of the horrors of war.

Trapped in no man's land,

the townspeople of Elesia

were left to starve

by both Romans and Gauls alike.

Vercingetorix had proved Caesar's equal

in ruthlessness.

And his cold-blooded calculation

was about to be rewarded.

On the farthest horizon appeared

the beginnings of a dust cloud.

The relief army has arrived.

We heard it first as a low hum

in the distance beyond that ridge.

And then we began to see them.

First tens of thousands,

then maybe a hundred thousand.

Swarming down the slope on this side,

maybe two hundred thousand.

It must be a quarter of a million.

The biggest Gallic host

that has ever assembled for war

in the whole of our history.

Caesar and his 40,000 troops were now beset

on two sides by more than 300,000 Gauls.

A daunting show of force.

I am surprised by how many men

he has managed to muster.

My scouts say around a quarter of a million
men are out there.

Now that is a fantastic achievement

for a Gallic army.

And I cannot afford

to keep fighting this man

if he is capable of organizing

something on this scale.

I think Caesar is a man of enormous

confidence and ingenuity.

And sometimes that spills over

into arrogance and pride.

I think his decision

to stand and fight in these lines here

will prove to be a mistake.

Caesar was used to playing for high stakes,

but never before had a game of chance

been so dangerous.

It threatened not only the conquests

he'd made in Gaul, but all his hopes

and ambitions back in Rome.

This is not only the climactic battle

for the Roman conquest of Gaul,

but also a personal climactic battle.

If I make a mistake here

or are overwhelmed, I will disappear.

I will be thrown into the latrine of history.

I will completely lose everything I've got.

This is a gambler's throw of the dice.

It's a throw I'm quite prepared to accept.

As the Gauls threw themselves forward,

it seemed they must overwhelm

the Roman lines.

But something was wrong.

Vercingetorix had, at last,

his army of united Gauls,

but no way to command them.

Vercingetorix is immune within Elesia.

Therefore, he has no contact
with the relief army.

Therefore, the coordination that

he's been able to impose on the rebellion

up till now is gone.

And it means that command of

the relief army is in the hands of people

who clearly lack Vercingetorix's

abilities and self discipline.

Command and control

is our greatest single problem.

It's extremely difficult for us

to coordinate our attacks.

The difficulty is that we cannot

communicate across the lines.

By sunset, the Gauls were beaten off.

But this was only the beginning.

Within 24 hours, they attacked again.

And this time, darkness was their shield.

We were roused by a tremendous racket.

And it turned out that our men

of the relief army had begun a major

night attack against the Roman lines.

There's a tremendous number of men involved.

Many tens of thousands seem to be fighting.

And the sky is a blizzard of shot

with sling stones, arrows, javelins

flying through the sky.

The Gauls have the advantage at the moment.

They have struck first.

They have to fight their way across

the anti-personnel traps that we have

so assidiously laid to them

in front of our fortifications.

But once passed there,

their numbers may begin to tell.

But great as their numbers were, again,

the two Gaulish armies proved

unable to join forces.

I can just see the first faint light of

dawn in the east.

And it's now quite apparent that

this attack has been beaten off.

The Gallic relief army attacked

whilst Vercingetorix still remained

on his hill fort.

Unfortunately for him,

he has no way of communicating

with his relief army on the outside.

And I intend to keep it like that.

The Gaulish attacks had

failed to break through.

But they had identified Caesar's weak spots.

Most vulnerable was an outlying camp

perched precariously on a steep hillside.

With the attack from the relief army,

Vercingetorix saw his opportunity too.

He ordered troops from inside the citadel

to strike at the Roman camp from the rear.

Diversionary raids hindered every attempt

by Caesar to kill off the threat.

This is the moment of crisis.

The Gauls have thrown everything at us

that they possibly can.

And in fact, they're fighting

from the top of that hill down onto

two of my legions, who are relatively

hard-pressed at the moment.

This is the greatest day of battle

in the entire Gallic War.

And this time we succeeded

in coordinating our attacks

against the outer defences

and the inner defences,

stretching Caesar's forces to the limit.

And as they attacked, we succeeded in

coming out in huge numbers from

the main defence to support that attack.

The Gaulish pincer movement

had the Romans trapped fast.

Three times Caesar struggled

to send in fresh troops, to no avail.

As the light started to fade,

the question was stark.

Is this the moment when I throw

my last reserves into the battle?

The enemy look exhausted,

we are exhausted.

We're fighting hand to hand.

The fighting here is absolutely ferocious.

The thrust of steel into unprotected groin,

absolute mayhem going on here.

I have to decide

whether I commit my last reserves

and I emphasise last reserves.

Once I throw it,

I don't have a second chance.

This is the key moment for both men.

Total triumph, total defeat.

If the Romans win,

Gaul will be secured for the Republic,

and Caesar will have the glory,

will have the reputation

that he came to Gaul to seek.

If Vercingetorix wins,

Gaul will be freed of Rome,

so the stakes could not be higher.

The whole future

of a Romanised Western Europe

is hanging in the balance.

And on this final, greatest gamble,

Caesar was about to stake his own life.

This is a moment where the supreme commander

has to lead in person.

It will put a bit of fire back into them.

They are exhausted now.

They have been fighting for the best part

of four to five hours.

They need something.

In his red cloak,

as commander-in-chief,

Caesar was unmistakable,

the most conspicuous figure

on the battlefield.

His appearance was guaranteed

to provoke the enemy to rage and to fear.

We saw Caesar himself leading

the final attack, his scarlet cape

flying in the wind at the head of

his final reserve, and we knew that

he was there because this was

the moment of decision.

This was the last reserve going in

at the end of the battle, and that

last attack had to be decisive.

When I saw it, the final reserve,

led by the Roman commander in person,

my heart sank

at the prospects for the Gauls.

Suddenly, the legionaries cheer

because they see a flash of red.

The scarlet cloak of their commander,

Caesar is coming, and Caesar has come up

in the rear of the Gauls,

so now it's the Gauls who are caught

in the pincer movement,
and they're slaughtered.

It was like shattering a pane of glass.

One moment, intense combat.

The next second, a terrifying cry rattled

across their army when they felt

they had been betrayed
and taken from both sides,

and complete exhaustion and panic broke out,

and they flayed in all directions.

An army is a mob trying to get out,

they say, and at that moment,

the mob broke out, and every man

suddenly broke, suddenly became

a panic-stricken individual,

desperately trying to escape.

And the battle ended

in our forces thrown back and defeated

the last hope of the Gauls.

The last hope of Vercingetorix II had gone.

With the rout of his army,

the short-lived alliance of the

tribes of Gaul was also at an end.

His fellow tribal leaders delivered him

into the embrace of their enemy.

Caesar let it be known that he expected

Vercingetorix to surrender in person.

This was a moment of theatre

for Caesar and his army.

So Vercingetorix put on his best armour

and rode to Caesar's camp,

where the Romans were drawn up in parade.

He was surrounded by his legionary

commanders, his centurions,

his own bodyguard, the legionary standards.

Vercingetorix arrives,

wearing his finest armour.

Vercingetorix threw down his arms,

took off his armour and abased himself.

And he said these words,

Harbae fortem wyrim,

wyr fortissime wikisti.

Here I am, a strong man,

defeated by an even stronger one.

It was an admission of his total

and absolute defeat.

Theatre and ritual, in peace and in war,

were everything.

Ritually, Caesar had Vercingetorix

taken back to Rome in chains.

Where in prison, ritually,

he awaited Caesar's judgement.

Six years on, blinking in the sun,

he found Caesar not inclined to mercy.

The memory of Elesia,

a battle so nearly lost, still raw.

Julius Caesar now had his place in history.

He was absolute master of Rome.

But for Vercingetorix, Rome's rebel,

history would have no voice.

Ritually, Caesar had him strangled.

Transcript format and synch by Andante