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Vercingetorix vs. Caesar By JJ Jouffroy and Aaren Johnson
Vercingetorix was known for mainly two things throughout his life. One was that he united Gaul (now France) and the other was that he rebelled against the mighty Caesar. In 53 BC, Caesar left his campaign of Gaul to rest during the winter season. While he was away, Vercingetorix tried to unite the Gallic tribes to fight their common enemy. There were only a couple Roman soldiers left in Gaul, so it was the perfect time to unite the Gauls. Vercingetoirx was successful in doing so, and he started to organize a rebellion. The problem was that Caesar had heard of this rebellion, so he rushed back to Gaul. ''The very vigor and speed of his march in such wintry conditions,'' said Plutarch, ''was a sufficient advertisement to the natives that an unconquered and unconquerable army was bearing down upon them.'' The Gauls knew that the great army was coming back so in desperation Vercingetorix ordered a scorched-earth policy. The point of this was to burn all the farms and villages so that the Romans would be deprived of food and supplies. One tribe had torched about twenty towns, so they refused to burn down the capital of their tribe located at Avaricum. The capital was one of the finest places in all of Gaul. Vercingetorix couldn't go against the general, so in result he relented to the generals demands. The Gauls fortified the town because they knew Caesar would come and attack this town. The town held a large amount of the grain supply that was greatly needed by Rome. Caesar came and started what would become a twenty- seven day siege. The Romans used two wheel towers to try and overcome the Gauls. The eighty- feet high towers were created in less than a month. To counter the towers, the Gauls raised their own. While Roman workers were making their towers even higher, the Gauls would attack them and tunnel under the terrace to fell the immense towers. The Gauls grew increasingly desperate. Caesar wrote, ‘‘They felt that the fate of Gaul depended entirely on what happened at that moment, and performed before our eyes an exploit so memorable that I felt I must no leave it unrecorded.'' It was during the night when the Gauls were lighting up one of the Roman towers. They kept on throwing fat at it to make the fire greater. They were killed one by one trying to stop the siege towers.
Vercingetorix Julius Caesar
The surrender of Vercingetorix
A couple days later, it started to rain heavily on the land of France. The Gauls ran for shelter, but the Romans saw the great opportunity and pressed on. They were able to knock down the walls of the fortified town of Gaul. As the Gauls saw the Romans scramble in, they threw down their arms and fled. The Romans had only one thought in their mind and that was to kill. The Gauls were seen as barbaric by the Romans, but in this case the Romans were the barbarians. They killed everyone in their sight. Women and children weren't spared. They massacred the exasperated people of Gaul until no one was left in the penetrated town. About forty thousand Gauls were killed in the massacre and only about eight hundred were able to flee unharmed.
The Gauls started to flee to avoid the Romans. They went to one of the greatest generals, Vercingetorix. But later that year, the Gauls were trapped in the stronghold of Alesia. Caesar and his army circled the stronghold and once again began constructing siege works. The Gauls were in bad shape. They had food for only about a month, so Caesar wanted to starve them into surrender before the reinforcements arrived. The area where the Romans surrounded the stronghold extended for about ten miles. Therefore, the Romans had to make defenses in different places around Alesia. Also, they dug trenches to avoid surprise attacks from the Gauls. Still, the Romans were attacked, but the siege works were strengthened. The Romans buried sharpened trunks and branches into the ground at an angle to try and repel the Gauls.
Vercingetorix had sent for reinforcements, but Caesar had heard of it right away. He set up the same kind of defense, but in the other direction to stop any other forces. The food supply was becoming scarcer, so Vercingetorix decided to turn out anyone who couldn't fight. They implored the Romans to take them as slaves, but Caesar refused and was denied any refuge. The population, mainly of women and children, were left to die of hunger between the two armies. Caesar wrote that about 250,000 infantry and 8,000 cavalry gathered to free the town. The Gauls couldn’t communicate with each other since Caesar and his army was in the way. The now surrounded Romans were able to defend themselves against the first assault. Then, the Gauls launched another attack during the middle of the night, but as the Gauls attacked from both sides they couldn’t see well with the darkness. They ended up running into the sharpened branches or falling in the trenches or also killed by the heavy siege spears launched from the towers. Before Vercingetorix could reach the trenches his men were falling back and fleeing from the Romans. The Gauls attacked again, but this time they filled the trenches with dirt and sticks. They drove the Romans away from the towers. As the Gauls attacked, a Roman cavalry unit arrived and tore them down forcing them to flee.
Gaul warriors
Vercingetorix was forced to surrender to Romans. He was paraded and help prisoner in Tullianum at Rome for five years. He was then publicly decapitated as part of the Caesar’s triumph in 46 BC. A mere two years later Caesar was assassinated.
![Vercingetorix[1]](http://im.glogster.com/media/3/6/98/40/6984078.jpg "Vercingetorix[1]")
![France_Vercingetorix[1]](http://im.glogster.com/media/3/6/98/42/6984248.jpg "France_Vercingetorix[1]")
![julius_caesar[1]](http://im.glogster.com/media/3/6/98/45/6984597.jpg "julius_caesar[1]")
