Kanlaon

Perhaps self is in a state of high tension.  Feelings come over her, she knows not why.

One side effect of having so many feelings is that almost everything she reads seems significant.  Fortunately or unfortunately for dear blog readers, the book that is currently triggering all kinds of mental impulses in self (Adrian Goldsworthy’s Caesar:  Life of a Colossus) is very, very long, and is full of dense descriptions of Roman legionaires battling wild barbarian tribes in Britain, Gaul, Spain, etc  and will take forever to finish.  Forever.  It will be next week and self will still be blogging about Roman armies.  So settle down.

Anyhoo, in the section self has just been reading, Julius Caesar’s Roman army has been doing battle against a very wily enemy, the Gallic leader Vercingetorix.  This Gaul was “smarter” than other Gallic leaders:  such was the force of his charisma that he was able to implement a “scorched earth” policy against the Roman invaders –  that is, he convinced his followers to put to the torch some 20 of their own towns, to deprive the Romans of any source of food or material support.  But one town only was exempt, and that was Vercingetorix’s own town of Avaricum.  So of course Caesar laid siege to it.

The ensuing sections, which describe the Roman engineers’ skill in erecting an assault ramp higher than the towers of Avaricum, and all the (futile) attempts of the town’s defenders to set fire to it or otherwise damage it, make for very exciting reading.  In the end, the Romans succeed (of course: the skill of their engineers was unmatched in the ancient world) and a ramp is put in place against the town walls.  It had taken the Roman engineers only 25 days to construct.

The Aftermath, p. 327:

• Roman generals were always keen to encourage individual boldness . . .  the proconsul promised great prizes to the first men over the wall.
• Throughout history troops who have stormed a fortified position have been inclined to run amok once inside.  Sieges have always been difficult and dangerous operations, the actual assault even more hazardous, and it was often hard for men who had endured both to switch off once they were inside, especially since in the narrow streets they were no longer under the close gaze of their officers.

To drive home the sheer awfulness of the event, we learn that of Avaricum’s population of about 40,000, only a mere 800 survived, and these were the people who had managed to flee “the town at the first shout.”

Stay tuned, dear blog readers.  Stay tuned.