Original subtitles

It's a bloody rebellion.

Thousands butchered.

Countrysides torched.

It's hell on earth.

The rebels, an ethnically mixed tribal people known as Gaul.

Their champion is the first general to unite the tribes, Vercingetorix.

His nemesis is one of the most famous and ruthless generals in ancient

Julius Caesar.

For a hundred years, the Romans have brutally oppressed the Gauls.

Now it's payback time.

The stage is set for one of the greatest military confrontations in history.

A battle of technological wonder that tests the cunning and resourcefulness of

the two generals, shapes the face of Europe for centuries to come,

and guarantees the future of an empire.

In 52 BC, for six years, Julius Caesar has been conducting a brutal campaign.

His goal is to conquer the land called Gaul and turn it into a Roman province.

By the time Caesar is given command in Gaul in 58 BC, the Roman Republic had

already expanded into North Africa, Greece, Sicily.

Corsica, Cydonia, and Spain.

But Rome could never entirely subdue its neighbor to the north, Gaul.

It had always been a little tentative about northward expansion because the

Gauls and the Romans had a long history, 300 -year history, of mutual slaughter

and antagonism. I mean, these people in the north, when they went on invasions,

were...

you know, pretty brutal people.

And they sacked Rome in the 3rd century BC as well. So a lot of bad blood.

But the Roman Republic grows stronger every day.

Now, leading more than 50 ,000 Roman soldiers, Julius Caesar fights his way

across Gaul with stunning cruelty.

Caesar was sent to Gaul by the Roman Senate as a proconsul, that is to say,

conquer the area and turn it into a province of Rome.

The interesting thing about this great general is he had never been in the

military and had absolutely no experience in combat or command at all.

So why then do we regard him as a great general is a fair question to ask. And

the answer is he was the first Roman general to leave not only his memoirs,

a detailed account of all his campaigns, which of course point to his brilliance

and nothing else.

These are rights enough about the six -year Gallic War to fill seven books.

While he regards himself as the military genius, his successes may be explained

by the quality of his army. By the time of the campaigns in Gaul, the Roman army

was almost thoroughly professionalized.

Prior to 100 BC, it had always been a militia army, so you had to raise new

troops every year, train them, and then put them in control of political

generals, and that created problems.

But military reform, instituted 50 years before Caesar comes to power, creates a

disciplined army of professional soldiers.

You might have had a, quote, amateur in charge of this thing, but there were 10

legions of professional soldiers.

That's one point which accounts for Caesar's success.

The other point, I think, is that you can always be a great general if you're

not fighting against anyone.

And in the case of the armies of Gaul, they really weren't significant armies.

Gaul is not a unified nation with a national army. It's a conglomeration of

individual tribal armies who lack discipline and cohesion.

The fundamental problem with Gaul is that it was essentially an area of 15 to

million people.

Lots of different ethnic groups.

They fought with one another for generations, and they never developed a

sophisticated military capability.

Still, conquering Gaul is more difficult than Caesar anticipates.

You couldn't just defeat one army, win a battle, and Gaul was yours. You had to

defeat hundreds of little arms.

Caesar faces each new Gallic army with growing ruthlessness.

Caesar carried out some horrendous orders.

That's a typical Roman brutality of making the case that, you know, it's

Roman friendship or Roman terror.

Caesar's really was a reign of terror.

He destroyed entire villages, killed everyone in them, and then he went on to

the next one. Absolutely brutal.

And inevitably, over a period of six years, what happened was basically Roman

control in Gaul was pretty much established.

But underneath it all was a simmering spirit of hatred for the Romans and

of revolt, just looking for a leader to spark it.

Enter Vercingetorix, a charismatic Gallic general.

Like Caesar, he's also on a mission to finally unite the hundreds of tribes of

his homeland against Caesar.

Vercingetorix is a worthy adversary to Caesar. As a younger man, he trained

and fought alongside the Roman legion.

Vercingetorix was actually a cavalryman in Caesar's army early in the Gallic

Wars.

So he knows how the Roman army worked. He knows its strengths.

He knows its weaknesses.

He is the right guy at the right time to take on Caesar.

took it into his head that perhaps this was the right time, that the Gauls had

probably finally had it, not this tribe or that tribe, but everyone, and that if

he could provoke a spark with an attack on the Romans that was successful, what

might happen is for the first time all of the main tribes of Gaul would

together and resist Roman rule, defeat Caesar, and drive the Romans out. That's

what he had in mind.

His plan to provoke Caesar succeeds.

Vercingetorix marches more than 70 ,000 soldiers into the Roman town of Orleans

and gives Caesar a taste of his own medicine.

And he fell upon it like a lion upon a rabbit and burnt the town and massacred

and murdered everybody.

The Gauls slaughter more than 5 ,000 men, women, and children.

Vercingetorix delivers a clear message to Caesar.

The Gauls will no longer stand for the Roman general's brutality.

This was the spark of revolt.

There was some signal event that would galvanize all of Gaul against the Rome,

and that's what he tried to do. He was a fairly good strategic thinker, and it

worked.

There is no turning back for Vercingetorix now.

The revolution has begun, and he and Caesar are on a collision course.

But Vercingetorix has the momentum.

Vercingetorix is scoring more victories. He has a massive army

behind him, and he's using it well.

Suddenly this guy is unstoppable.

Despite outnumbering the Romans, Vercingetorix knows that his large but

disorganized force will lose a direct, all -out battle against Caesar's highly

trained professional army.

So his strategy is to strike at Caesar's forces in small bursts of guerrilla

-style combat until he inflicts so much damage the Romans are forced to retreat

to Italy.

Vercingetorix has a policy just to keep harassing the Romans, keeping them away

from food, generally giving Caesar a headache.

To further keep the Roman troops off the balance, Vercingetorix does something

that will reverberate through all of military history.

He convinces the Gauls to torch their own towns, crops, and countryside.

It's a strategy now known as scorched earth.

Burn everything.

Burn the towns, burn the hamlets, burn the fields.

Everything. In other words, leave nothing upon which the Roman army can

In August of 52 BC, after implementing his scorched earth policy, Vercingetorix

leads a small Gallic ambush force against the Romans near modern -day

The Gauls' favorite weapon is the broadsword.

Made of iron, these heavy blades are designed to smash down with brute force.

The Roman soldier wields the gladius, 26 inches long, 2 1⁄2 inches wide.

The gladius is made of razor -sharp steel and is used as a stabbing weapon.

After fighting for several hours at Dijon, Vercingetorix, in true hit -and

style, retreats and pulls his force back.

The Gaul's strategy appears to be successful.

From Dijon, Caesar begins moving toward the Italian border.

Vercingetorix chases with his army, trying to prevent Caesar from reaching

and replenishing his forces.

He moves his army down to block Caesar's goal of going to Italy.

OK, he really arrives too late. Caesar is already south of where he comes.

So he's behind Caesar.

He's not in front of him. And he tries to go into the attack. The Romans turn

around. There's a skirmish there. There's a skirmish there and the Romans

it off.

And at that point, what Vercingetorix does is he says, you know, it's getting

tough to feed the army out here. I'm going to withdraw back into my main

base. All right. And hopefully, you know, Caesar.

We're done for the season. Caesar will go south and we'll finish this next

This proves to be a colossal mistake.

Calculating that Caesar will retreat to Rome, Vercingetorix begins to march his

army back to its base at Alesia, a fortified hilltop city.

But Caesar isn't going home.

He's going after Vercingetorix.

And what Caesar does is instead of running faithfully, he whirls around on

Kills his rear guard and begins to chase him back to Alesia.

As Caesar attacks the Gallic rear guard, Vercingetorix and the rest of the Gauls

escape to their small -walled city of Alesia.

Within days, all of Caesar's 50 ,000 reinforcements surround the city.

I mean, they just kept coming and coming.

A total of 10 Roman legions suddenly surrounded Vercingetorix.

He must have said to himself, what the hell have I gotten myself into here?

Vercingetorix had great success leading his guerrilla war against Caesar, but

now he's trapped.

And the small advantage the Gauls held has completely evaporated.

This is Caesar's kind of battle, and he's about to conduct one of the most

fantastic siege operations the ancient world has ever seen.

52 BC, the city of Alesia.

The Roman military commander Julius Caesar and more than 50 ,000 Roman

have trapped 70 ,000 Gauls and their revolutionary leader Vercingetorix

the city.

Alesia is so important because it's a big final cataclysm. It's the last shot

militarily at stopping the Roman control of all of Gaul.

Elysia is the modern -day city of Elyse St. Reign, located in what is now

France.

The city is about five miles in circumference, likely surrounded by a

about six feet high.

Home to about 10 ,000 men, women, and children,

Elysia sits on a small hill some 1 ,500 feet above a valley.

Through the valley run two small rivers.

A ring of hills surround the city.

It's well protected, giving the Gauls a strong defensive position.

Nonetheless, Caesar decides to lay siege to Alesia, a military campaign unlike

any other in history.

The siege works created by Caesar are just ingenious. And

I can't find anyone or any source to say that his siege techniques that he used

there had been used before.

Caesar's army possesses the most sophisticated siege technology of the

They are equipped with a catapult called an onager, known as the wild ass for

its kick. It's capable of launching a 100 -pound projectile 400 yards.

The Romans also used the ballista.

Latin for stone thrower, the ballista fires lead shot nearly 100 yards.

Each Roman legion is equipped with 30 of these.

But siege means more than just attacking with powerful, high -tech weapons.

And Caesar knows that the right tactical move at Alesia isn't an all -out

barrage. Instead, Caesar believes that to win this battle, he shouldn't try to

drive the Gauls out. He should starve them in.

Caesar decides to build a ten -mile -long wall around Alesia to imprison the

Gauls within their own city.

What Vercingetorix thought would be a safe haven turns out to be a death trap.

First, Caesar's soldiers dig a trench 20 feet deep and 20 feet wide.

Next, they dig another trench, 15 feet wide, 8 feet deep, that can be flooded

with water.

Then, another dry pit.

And finally, work begins on a wall 12 feet high.

complete with watchtowers every 80 yards.

They call it circumvallation. You put up a wall around the city. It's

essentially putting tens of thousands of people in prison.

The purpose of that was, of course, to make sure that no one in the city could

break out.

They could get outside their own walls, but only to be trapped in a killing

ground between the Roman wooden wall and their wall. That's the first thing.

This is not the first time Caesar has shown himself to be a master of

technology.

Three years earlier, in 55 BC, 400 ,000 Germans were looking for a new homeland

and crossed the Rhine River to settle in Gaul.

Caesar immediately delivered a brutal message.

He sent 50 ,000 of his troops to the Rhine River with orders to slaughter the

Germans.

What he does next was both horrific,

Technologically astounding.

Caesar foreshadowed his engineering prowess they will eventually show at

Alessia. He built a 400 -foot long, 40 -foot wide suspension bridge over the

Rhine River so that he could chase them back to Germany and hunt them down.

Once across the river, Caesar brutally and mercilessly ravaged the countryside.

430 ,000 people, men, women, children, no survivors, in a

deliberately calculated act of political butchery designed to send a clear

message to another people.

Brutality aside, Caesar's spanning of the Rhine stands as a remarkable

engineering achievement of the ancient world. He built the entire bridge in 10

days.

It was incredible.

I mean, he built it with posts and beams and cabling. And the reason he built it

was to say to the Germans, look, the Rhine isn't a barrier. We can come and

you any time we want.

After the butchery, Caesar headed back to Gaul and immediately destroyed the

bridge.

At Alesia, Caesar uses the same Roman technological superiority to trap the

Gauls inside the city.

The Gallic general Vercingetorix watches as Caesar's wall rises up around him.

The 12 -foot -high wall is built partially from the earth dug out of the

trenches. The walls are topped with wooden ramparts, and wooden towers rise

every 80 yards.

On top of all that, they put sharpened sticks, kind of like an early version of

barbed wire, just in case someone tries to scale the thing. And except for a

couple of areas, like places with natural barriers, this wall goes

around the city.

It's a race against time.

Once Caesar completes the wall, nearly 10 miles in circumference, it will be

impenetrable, trapping the entire population of the city of Alesia, some

men, women, and children, as well as the new tenants, the 70 ,000 -strong Gallic

fighting force.

Vercingetorix does have some beef and corn stored up at Alessia, but it's not

going to last forever.

Caesar's men could go and try to steal some or buy some supplies, but that's

easier said than done.

Don't forget, Vercingetorix had burnt a lot of it during the Scorched Earth

campaign.

Vercingetorix knows that the winner of this battle will be the one who is able

to stave off starvation.

So he decides his only hope is to try to stop construction of the wall and stop

the Romans from gathering food.

If he can outlast Caesar in the city,

sooner or later the Roman army would find it very hard to gather supplies,

it too would wither on the vine.

What he had to do is he had to keep attacking the Roman army to prevent it

foraging from supplies.

So Vercingetorix resorts to his old tactics, hit and run.

He sends several thousand of his cavalry to harass Caesar's construction workers

and foragers.

Vercingetorix gets away with it a few times. But finally, during one of these

attacks, Caesar launches a counterattack.

We're not exactly sure how many cavalry Caesar had, but I would imagine about 5

,000 or 6 ,000 Roman cavalry and 3 ,000 to 4 ,000 mercenary cavalry.

A skirmish breaks out between Caesar's wall and Alesia.

The Roman cavalry gain the advantage and the Gauls retreat.

But Vercingetorix orders Elysia's gates closed to protect the Gauls already

inside.

Very, very heavy Gallic losses.

Guys off their horses trying to basically claw their way back into the

Vercingetorix has sentenced his men to death.

52 BC, the siege of Elysia sees its first bloodshed.

A cavalry skirmish has a deadly end for the Gauls.

Despite winning the civil skirmish, Caesar decides to up the ante in terms

the siege works.

He orders more trenches to be dug, anti -personnel devices to be installed, and

death traps to be built.

Booby traps with huge, sharpened wooden spikes called chippy are planted at the

bottom of the trenches.

Iron barbs called stimuli are spread out in front of the walls to puncture

soldiers' feet and horse hooves.

Flooded moats were there.

Trees knocked down to create obstacles.

And covering it all would be whatever field guns they had and arrows, archer

fire, slinger fire, missiles. They could literally sheath fire into an impact

zone.

After only five weeks, the 10 -mile wall equipped with pitfalls, obstacles, and

anti -personnel devices is nearly complete.

The Gallic general, Vercingetorix, is forced to take a bold gamble.

He sends his entire 15 ,000 -strong cavalry force to ride across Gaul and

recruit help from other Gallic tribes.

While this seems to be a smart move, think about this for a minute.

He had pretty good success just snipping at Caesar, harassing him, not

letting him get anywhere.

not allowing him to gather food.

But he's giving all of that up, and he says, no pun intended, send in the

cavalry.

Vercingetorix changes his tactical design and allows the Romans, in

build the siege works and feed their own.

The decision to go for help rather than continuing to try to disrupt the

foragers and construction workers is a critical military decision.

If the cavalry is caught and the other tribes don't respond, Vercingetorix and

his army are doomed.

Now, without his cavalry to send forth to harass the Roman army, they can build

the siege works at their leisure, which they do. More important than that is

they now can forage freely.

And what Caesar understands is clearly, what does he say? He orders his

commissariat to make sure you collect a 30 -day supply of grain.

Still, Caesar knows that if the Gallic cavalry does come back with

reinforcements, it can spell defeat for the Romans.

To defend against this, Caesar decides to build another wall about 400 yards

away from the first.

Caesar's first wall keeps Vercingetorix in.

His second wall will keep the reinforcement armies out.

But it will also contain 50 ,000 Roman soldiers.

who must camp in between the two walls.

Outside this wall of circumvallation, you construct a second wall called

contravallation, Latin contra, against.

And this wall ran 20 miles.

So you have a wall inside a wall and a city in the middle, kind of like looking

at from the top down, kind of looking at a layer cake.

Now, with no cavalry to harass them, the Romans have no difficulty building the

second wall.

The wall is seamless except for a small section at the base of Mount Rhea, near

where two small rivers run through the valley.

With the wall construction coming to an end, everyone starts realizing that the

thing that's going to win or lose this thing is food.

Caesar knows that once the rest of the Gauls show up, he won't be able to send

his guys foraging anymore.

Meanwhile, inside the city, Vercingetorix personally takes control

and corn rations.

Around seven weeks into the siege,

Supplies inside the city are low.

They are subsisting on whatever food had been stored before the siege.

Water for close to 100 ,000 women, children, and Gallic soldiers likely

from the small rivers or wells.

There's a story about one of Vercingetorix's tribesmen saying to him,

eat the dead soldiers and the citizens of the town.

We could live a long time like that.

This wouldn't have been the first example of cannibalism, and it won't be

last. Think of the Donner Party in our own history.

You know, the old history books always called the Gauls barbarians.

But they obviously had some humanity.

Vercingetorix didn't allow this.

Vercingetorix knows there are too many hungry mouths to feed.

He devises a plan that he hopes will save the lives of some of the women and

children.

sent them off to the Roman wall, essentially saying, look, let these

there's no point to this, or actually take them in as slaves.

Caesar rejects the offer. His own men are on the brink of starvation because

land around Alesia has been left barren by Vercingetorix's scorched earth

strategy.

He has little sympathy for the desperate Gallic women and children who must

return to Alesia.

But Vercingetorix doesn't want them back either.

Having gotten rid of this large number of people that he no longer had to feed,

that Vercingetorix himself refused to allow them back in the city walls so

the women and children, large numbers of women and children, were trapped

between the outer city wall and the inner Roman wall where they were allowed

simply to die of starvation.

Some 3 ,000 women and children are trapped inside the no -man's land.

pawns in the struggle of wills between Vercingetorix and Caesar.

All these pathetic souls just languishing in this kind of limbo.

literally caught in the middle of this fight. No one wants them.

But in this horrible test of wills, Vercingetorix weakens first.

Finally, the gate to Alesia open, and the townspeople re -enter.

Caesar wins the Battle of Wills.

Now the Gallic leader, Vercingetorix, doesn't get to transform his headache

Caesar's. And Caesar gets to remind people of just what kind of man they're

dealing with.

The outlook for the Gauls is bleak.

But then, three days later, on the horizon, a Gallic relief army, some 60

strong, appears.

They are led by Commodus, an old acquaintance of Caesar's.

Commodus had been an ally to Caesar early on in the Gallic Wars.

Vercingetorix had actually fought for Caesar also.

So it was a real betrayal for Caesar to have these guys coming against him.

Commodus wastes no time letting Caesar know he has arrived.

For the first time at the siege of Alesia, Caesar looks like he might be in

trouble. 60 ,000 Gallic soldiers, led by a man named Cominus, have come to the

rescue.

They're here to help Vercingetorix, who is trapped inside the city with tens of

thousands of civilians and soldiers.

Cominus immediately goes on the offensive.

He leads his infantry and attacks the Roman soldiers stationed on the outside.

The Gauls were amazingly organized for a bunch of tribes that hadn't fought

together until recently.

They had infantry mixed in with the cavalry and covered the whole thing with

archers and slingers.

Caesar had no choice but to launch 5 ,000 cavalry to defend the wall, but

ride into a hail of arrows.

Just when it seems the Roman defenses will collapse, Caesar sends in

reinforcements.

His timing is perfect, and the fresh troops push the Gauls back.

Despite the incredible difference in numbers, Caesar pushes the Gauls back

the way to the hill, just massacring the archers who had been supporting the

Gallic cavalry.

The fight rages from noon until sunset.

The Romans emerge victorious.

The Gauls' first assault ends in disgrace.

The battle was nearly theirs. They had four times the number of soldiers and

still could not defeat Caesar.

This does not bode well.

But Vercingetorix is not about to give up the fight.

Somehow, he manages to coordinate with Commodus to launch a nighttime, multi

-pronged attack against the Roman positions.

We don't know a lot about how much Communists and Vercingetorix could

communicate with each other.

Maybe they had spies who could sneak through, but in battle, I doubt they

communicate at all. It's just chaos.

Vercingetorix leads a force attempting to break through the inside wall.

Communists and his men attempt to scale the outside wall.

A third Gallic force.

also on the outside, tries to break through the outer wall on the far side

the city.

The Gauls are learning, trying different tactics.

This time they've got the cover of darkness on their side, and they've got

ladders and wall hooks to scale the walls.

Unfortunately for the Gauls, Caesar still has the upper hand. Up in the

tower, he can easily see exactly what the Gauls are doing.

With the high ground, Caesar's men easily repel the Gauls below.

There are launching arrows, but also just this huge supply of stones and

sticks. Nothing sophisticated, but I wouldn't want someone standing 12 feet

me throwing stones at my head.

You're trying to fill in these ditches and moats, and the whole time people are

throwing deadly debris at you.

In between the walls, Vercingetorix is getting pummeled.

On the other side of the city, Caesar's siege works are doing their job.

The little presence that Caesar planted, the anti -personnel devices, are really

paying off here.

These guys can't take a step without falling 10 feet onto a huge spike or

getting a hook cut in their legs.

Caesar's brilliantly planned siege of the city is proving too much for the

Gauls.

Cominus is being beaten on the outside.

Vercingetorix is being beaten on the inside.

The anti -personnel devices are killing Gauls right and left.

And they both have this constant rain of Roman throwing spears and arrows coming

down on them.

By daybreak, all the Gallic forces, both inside and outside the walls, are

forced to retreat.

Once again, Caesar is successful.

It's got to be driving Cominus and Driss and Cedric crazy.

They have three times the army.

Yet they're spending most of their time filling up ditches and dying at the

hands of the Romans.

Caesar's like a master chess player. By imprisoning Alessia, then building the

second wall to repel the Gauls from the outside, he's neutralized the numbers

advantage the Gauls have.

Absolute genius.

Five more days' path.

Starvation is taking its toll on the Gauls.

Desperately, the Gauls try to figure out how to stop the Roman.

They were already beaten back twice, but they had to do something.

The people inside were beyond being out of food.

Finally, the Gauls discover the weak spot in the Roman outer wall near the

of Mount Rhea.

Because of the Ose River, Caesar couldn't completely connect his outer

It's a gap commonest hopes to exploit.

So what they do is they sneak under cover of Nye to that weak spot tucked

between the two hills, and they stay hidden in the woods.

At noon the next day, they attack.

Commodus' men flood through the opening in the wall and ravage the Roman

infantry.

At another part of the wall, A second Gallic force attempts to break in.

The second Gallic force begins to overwhelm the wall.

The Romans are simply running out of stuff to throw at them.

At the same time, Vercingetorix attacks from the inside.

Caesar watches this three -pronged Gallic attack from his siege tower.

Historians like to debate whether Caesar was really such a great tactician. But

what he did at that final battle, it was like conducting an orchestra.

Caesar decides to commit 3 ,600 reinforcements to his defenses at the

wall.

He ordered reinforcement cavalry to come around from the northeast side to help

protect the weak spot.

But at the same time, the Gauls send another 20 ,000 troops into the gap in

wall.

But you see, 20 ,000 men isn't going to do you a lot of good when you're trying

to funnel them through essentially a narrow gap between two rivers while

being opposed on both sides by legion camps and in the front by a ditch and a

wall.

Caesar watches as the Gauls switch tactics.

If they can't go through the wall, They will tear it down.

By now, they're at the wall.

And they're just tearing at these with these mural hooks.

They're iron hooks designed for tearing down the walls of a besieged town.

Everything's kind of backwards because of Caesar's Wall. Usually it's the

conquering force that's using mural hooks, not the defenders.

The battle rages on all fronts.

Beezer finally takes matters into his own hands. He personally leads 2 ,400

men into battle.

He takes command of four cohorts of infantry himself, puts on his famous red

cloak. He always thought it important that troops should see their commander

battle, and leads these four cohorts right into the fray.

The Roman line was ready to break until Caesar arrived at the last minute with

the reinforcements.

And there he is, hacking a call for the gladius, absolutely butchering them.

There's a big difference between a commander saying, charge, and one

follow me, boy.

Patton wore a red cloak just because of Caesar.

Now that Caesar's there, the Roman legions put down all these pilum and

and things that they were throwing from a distance, and they pick up their

swords, and they just charge the Gauls.

Caesar has the momentum, and he's going in for the kill.

More than two months into the siege of Alesia, Julius Caesar, wearing his

red cloak, leads his men into battle against the Gauls.

And the texts say that what was happening is that the Roman line was

break until Caesar arrived at the last minute with these four cohorts with the

reinforcements. And at the same time, you know, increasing Roman morale

they saw their commander fighting with them with the red cloak.

By evening, Caesar had the momentum. He chases the Gauls to their camp, cuts

them down like animals.

The defeat.

sends the message of kind of despair to the other tribes in the coalition.

And after a day or two, one by one, as they had done so many times in the past,

they then wander back to their own tribal lands.

And even Vercingetorix understands that the game is over.

And he's the one who takes the initiative and opens negotiations with

Romans.

Caesar had made a name for himself by wiping out entire tribes.

But uncharacteristically, after this battle, he decides to spare the Gallic

warriors.

Caesar was pretty lenient.

Way out of character for the guy who is famous for annihilating whole tribes.

Maybe he sensed that in order to keep insurgents down, he had to change

Maybe he even acquired a newfound respect.

for the way they had performed in battle.

But of course, Vercingetorix had darted this.

He had to be made an example.

October 2nd, 52 BC.

After almost two months of bloodshed, Vercingetorix finally surrenders.

Vercingetorix puts his best armor on and marches through the gate.

Coming right up to Caesar.

And tens of thousands of Romans behind him.

You can imagine the scene. Here's this guy who had dared to challenge Caesar,

coming face to face with him.

A valiant warrior.

but one who has committed a basic tactical error.

He had a plan not to take Caesar head on, but to skirmish, cut his

communication, cut his supply lines, just harass him at every turn. He held

to that at times when he could have tried to go in for the kill, but he

disciplined. Then he suddenly scrapped the whole idea. He sends his best

fighters to go get help, help that didn't end up doing much good.

It's fascinating. He had hung to the original strategy right to the point

it was succeeding, and then, for whatever reason, changes the strategy,

cost him dearly.

While many of the Gauls are freed, Vercingetorix is brought to Rome and

executed.

And as the story goes, for which there's probably not much evidence, that during

one of Caesar's triumphs, he was strangled.

in full public view, more likely he was simply executed in a Roman dungeon.

The Romans were not, I mean, they had no problems with public execution.

But in this case, they were just well to be rid of what was called the firebrand

of the Gauls, the men who were afraid that would light Gaul on fire.

Caesar spends the winter extinguishing the dying embers of the rebellion.

Rome will not have to fight the Gauls for another 400 years.

One can compare Caesar, to William Tecumseh Sherman of the March Through

fame.

In 1867, he was given the job of breaking the resistance of the Indians

West.

He used the exact same tactics, scorched earth, massacre, removal, starvation,

against the Amerindian tribes that Caesar had against the Gallic tribes,

with the same results.

He won.

The Amerindians were settled on reservations.

and became American.

Alesia was a great personal victory for Julius Caesar, who at times was the

besieged as well as the besieger.

But the outcome of this battle is more than just dramatic material for Caesar's

own writings.

The Battle of Alesia in the long run was one of the most beneficial things that

happened to all of Europe because what it did is it allowed the thorough

Romanization

of an enormous area from the Rhine all the way to the Pyrenees, what today we

would call Western Europe, was civilized and organized as a province of Rome and

then became, under the empire, essentially Italy and Rome itself.

It got to a point where the Gauls never thought of themselves as anything except

Romans.

Some say that Caesar's campaign was really a reign of terror.

But Adalisia, He used brilliant tactics to defeat a large Gallic army that

attacked from two directions.

The result was that Caesar not only destroyed the Gauls, he united the land

would become a significant part of Western Europe.

And it all was made possible, ultimately, by the brilliance of a

and the defeat of Vercingetorix at the Battle and Siege of Alessia.