narrator: It's a bloody rebellion. Thousands butchered, countrysides torched. It's hell on Earth. The rebels, an ethnically mixed tribal people known as Gauls. Their champion is the first general to unite the tribes, Vercingetorix. His nemesis is one of the most famous and ruthless generals in ancient history, Julius Caesar. For 100 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. Captioning presented by<font color="#0000FF">
A&E TELEVISION NETWORKS</font> narrator: It's 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. Richard: 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 where... y'know, pretty brutal people. They sacked Rome in the third century BC as well. So there's a lot of bad blood. narrator: 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. Richard: Caesar was sent to Gaul by the Roman senate as a proconsul, that is to say, to conquer the area and turn it into a province of Rome. The interesting thing about this great general is he'd 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, but a detailed account of all his campaigns which, of course, point to his brilliance and nothing else. narrator: Caesar writes enough about the six-year Gallic War to fill seven books. While he regards himself as a military genius, his successes may be explained by the quality of his army. Richard: 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. narrator: But military reforms, instituted 50 years before Caesar comes to power, creates a disciplined army of professional soldiers. Richard: You might have had an "amateur" in charge of this thing, but they were ten 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. narrator: Gaul is not a unified nation with a national army. It's a conglomeration of individual tribal armies who lack discipline and cohesion. Mark: The fundamental problem with Gaul is that it was essentially an area of 15 to 20 million people, lots of different ethnic groups. They had fought with one another for generations, and they never developed a sophisticated military capability. narrator: Still, conquering Gaul is more difficult than Caesar anticipates. Mark: You couldn't just defeat one army, win a battle, and Gaul was yours. You had to defeat hundreds of little armies. narrator: Caesar faces each new Gallic army with growing ruthlessness. Richard: Caesar carried out some horrendous slaughters as a typical Roman brutality of making the case that it's either Roman friendship or Roman terror. man: 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. Richard: And, inevitably, over a period of six years, what had happened was basically the Romans' control in Gaul was pretty much established, but underneath it all was a simmering spirit of hatred for the Romans and spirit of revolt just looking for a leader to spark it. narrator: 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 with and fought alongside the Roman Legion. David: 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. Richard: Vercingetorix 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 assemble together and resist Roman rule, defeat Caesar and drive the Romans out, and that's what he had in mind. narrator: 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. Richard: And he fell upon it like a lion upon a rabbit and burnt the town and massacred and murdered everybody. narrator: 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. Richard: This was the spark of revolt. There was some signal event that would galvanize all of Gaul against Rome. And that's what he tried to do. He was a fairly good strategic thinker, and it worked. narrator: 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. Matthew: You know, he's scoring more victories. He has a massive army behind him and he's using it well. Suddenly this guy's unstoppable. narrator: Despite outnumbering the Romans, Vercingetorix knows that his large but fairly 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. Matthew: Vercingetorix has a policy just to keep harassing the Romans, keeping them away from food, generally giving Caesar a headache. narrator: To further keep the Roman troops off 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." Richard: Burn everything. Burn the towns, burn the hamlets, burn the fields-- everything. In other words, leave nothing upon which the Roman army can survive. narrator: In August of 52 BC, after implementing his scorched-earth policy, Vercingetorix leads a small Gallic ambush force against the Romans near modern-day Dijon. 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 a gladius. 26 inches long, 2½ 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-run style, retreats and pulls his force back. The Gauls' 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 Rome and replenishing his forces. Richard: He moves his army down to block Caesar's goal in going to Italy, okay ? 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 break it off. At that point, what Vercingetorix does is he says, "It's getting tough to "feed the army out here. "I'm going to withdraw back "into my main supply base "and, hopefully, Caesar-- "we're done for the season. "Caesar will go south, and we'll finish this next year." narrator: 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. Richard: And what Caesar does is instead of running for Italy, he whirls around on him, kills his rear guard and begins to chase him back to Alesia. narrator: 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. David: 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 ?" narrator: 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. narrator: 52 BC. The city of Alesia. The Roman military commander Julius Caesar and more than 50,000 Roman soldiers have trapped 70,000 Gauls and their revolutionary leader, Vercingetorix, inside the city. Mark: 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. narrator: Alesia is the modern-day city of Alise-Sainte-Reine, located in what is now France. The city's about 5 miles in circumference, likely surrounded by a small wall about 6 feet high. Home to about 10,000 men, women and children, Alesia 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. Richard: 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. narrator: Caesar's army possesses the most sophisticated siege technology of the age. 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 use 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 10-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. Mark: They call it circumvallation. You put up a wall around a city. It's essentially putting tens of thousands of people in prison. Richard: 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 between-- and a killing ground-- between the Roman wooden wall and their wall. That's the first thing. narrator: 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 and technologically astounding. Mark: Caesar foreshadowed his engineering prowess they will eventually show at Alesia. 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. narrator: Once across the river, Caesar brutally and mercilessly ravaged the countryside. David: 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. narrator: Brutality aside, Caesar's spanning of the Rhine stands as a remarkable engineering achievement of the ancient world. He built the entire bridge in ten days. Matthew: It was incredible. I mean, he built it with post and beams and cabling. And the reason he built it was to say to the Germans, "Look, the Rhine "isn't a barrier. "We could come and get you anytime we want." narrator: 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. Matthew: On top of all of 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 completely around the city. narrator: 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 10,000 men, women and children, as well as the new tenants: the 70,000-strong Gallic fighting force. Mark: Vercingetorix does have some beef and corn stored up at Alesia. But it's not gonna 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. narrator: 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. Richard: If he can outlast Caesar in the city, okay, sooner or later, the Roman army would find it very hard to gather supplies and it too would wither on the vine. What he had to do was he had to keep attacking the Roman army to prevent it from foraging for supplies. narrator: 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. narrator: Vercingetorix gets away with this a few times but finally, during one of these attacks, Caesar launches a counterattack. David: We're not exactly sure how many cavalry Caesar had, but I would imagine about 5 or 6,000 Roman cavalry and 3 to 4,000 mercenary cavalry. narrator: A skirmish breaks out between Caesar's wall and Alesia. The Roman cavalry gain the advantage and the Gauls retreat. But Vercingetorix orders Alesia's gates closed to protect the Gauls already inside. Matthew: Very, very heavy Gallic losses. Guys off their horses, trying to basically claw their way back into the city. narrator: Vercingetorix has sentenced his men to death. narrator: 52 BC. The Siege of Alesia sees its first bloodshed. A cavalry skirmish has a deadly end for the Gauls. Matthew: Despite winning this little skirmish, Caesar decides to up the ante in terms of the siege works. He orders more trenches to be dug, antipersonnel devices to be installed, and death traps to be built. narrator: Booby traps with huge, sharpened wooden spikes called "cippi" 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. Richard: 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 sheathe fire into an impact zone. narrator: After only five weeks, the 10-mile wall equipped with pitfalls, obstacles and antipersonnel 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. David: While this seems to be a smart move-- think about this for a minute. He's 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." Richard: Vercingetorix changes his tactical design and allows the Romans, in essence, to build the siege works and feed their army. narrator: 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. Richard: 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. narrator: 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. Richard: 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 a-- looking at it from the top down, kind of looking at a layer cake. narrator: 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. Mark: With the wall construction coming to an end, everyone starts realizing that the thing that's gonna 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 of the beef and corn rations. narrator: 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 comes from the small rivers or wells. David: There's a story about one of Vercingetorix's tribesman saying to him, "Let's just eat the dead "soldiers and the citizens "of the town. "We could live a long time like that." Matthew: This wouldn't have been the first example of cannibalism, and it won't be the last. Think of the Donner Party in our own history. Mark: Y'know, the old history books always call the Gauls "barbarians," but they obviously had some humanity. Vercingetorix didn't allow this. narrator: 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. Richard: What he did is he sent them off to the Roman wall, essentially saying, "Look, let these people go. "There's no point to this. "Or, actually, take them in as slaves." narrator: Caesar rejects the offer. His own men are on the brink of starvation because the 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. Richard: 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 that 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. narrator: Some 3,000 women and children are trapped inside the no-man's-land: pawns in the struggle of wills between Vercingetorix and Caesar. Matthew: All these pathetic souls just languishing in this kind of limbo. They are literally caught in the middle of this fight. No one wants them. narrator: But in this horrible test of wills, Vercingetorix weakens first. David: Finally, the gates to Alesia open and the townspeople reenter. Caesar wins the battle of wills. Now the Gallic leader, Vercingetorix, doesn't get to transform his headache into Caesar's, and Caesar gets to remind people of just what kind of man they're dealing with. narrator: The outlook for the Gauls is bleak. But then, three days later, on the horizon, a Gallic relief army, some 60,000 strong, appears. They are led by Comminus, an old acquaintance of Caesar's. Mark: Comminus 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. narrator: Comminus wastes no time letting Caesar know he has arrived. narrator: 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 Comminus, 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. Comminus immediately goes on the offensive. He leads his infantry and attacks the Roman soldiers stationed on the outside. Matthew: 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. narrator: Caesar has no choice but to launch 5,000 cavalry to defend the wall. But they 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. Mark: Despite the incredible difference in numbers, Caesar pushes the Gauls back all the way to the hills, just massacring the archers who had been supporting the Gallic cavalry. narrator: The fight rages from noon until sunset. The Romans emerge victorious. Mark: 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. narrator: But Vercingetorix is not about to give up the fight. Somehow he manages to coordinate with Comminus to launch a nighttime multipronged attack against the Roman positions. Matthew: We don't know a lot about how much Comminus and Vercingetorix could communicate with each other. Maybe they had spies who could sneak through. But in battle, I doubt they could communicate at all. It's just chaos. narrator: Vercingetorix leads a force attempting to break through the inside wall. Comminus 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 of the city. Matthew: 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. Mark: Unfortunately for the Gauls, Caesar still has the upper hand. Up in the siege tower, he can easily see exactly what the Gauls are doing. narrator: With the high ground, Caesar's men easily repel the Gauls below. Matthew: They were launching arrows, but also just this huge supply of stones and sharp sticks. Nothing sophisticated, but I wouldn't want someone standing 12 feet over me throwing stones at my head. Mark: You're trying to fill in these ditches and moats, and the whole time, people are throwing deadly debris at you. narrator: In between the walls, Vercingetorix is getting pummeled. On the other side of the city, Caesar's siege works are doing their job. Mark: The little "presents" that Caesar planted, the antipersonnel devices, are really paying off here. Matthew: These guys can't take a step without falling 10 feet onto a huge spike or getting a hook caught in their legs. narrator: Caesar's brilliantly planned siege of the city is proving too much for the Gauls. David: Comminus is being beaten on the outside, Vercingetorix is being beaten on the inside. The antipersonnel devices are killing Gauls right and left, and they both have this constant rain of Roman throwing spears and arrows coming down on them. narrator: By daybreak, all the Gallic forces, both inside and outside the walls, are forced to retreat. Once again, Caesar is successful. David: It's gotta be driving Comminus and Vercingetorix 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. Matthew: Caesar is like a master chess player. By imprisoning Alesia, then building the second wall to repel the Gauls from the outside, he's neutralized the numbers advantage the Gauls have. Absolute genius. narrator: Five more days pass. Starvation is taking its toll on the Gauls. Desperately, the Gauls try to figure out how to stop the Romans. David: They were already beaten back twice, but they had to do something. The people inside were beyond being out of food. narrator: Finally, the Gauls discover the weak spot in the Roman outer wall near the foot of Mount Rhea. Because of the Oise River, Caesar couldn't completely connect his outer wall. It's a gap Comminus hopes to exploit. Matthew: So what they do is they sneak under cover of night to that weak spot tucked between the two hills and they stay hidden in the woods. narrator: At noon the next day, they attack. Comminus' 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. Mark: The second Gallic force begins to overwhelm the wall. The Romans are simply running out of stuff to throw at them. narrator: At the same time, Vercingetorix attacks from the inside. Caesar watches this three-pronged Gallic attack from his siege tower. Mark: 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. narrator: Caesar decides to commit 3,600 reinforcements to his defenses at the gap in the wall. Matthew: 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 the wall. Richard: But, you see, 20,000 men isn't going to do you a lot of good when you are trying to funnel them through, essentially, a narrow gap between two rivers while you are being opposed on both sides by legion camps and in the front by a ditch and a wall. narrator: Caesar watches as the Gauls switch tactics. If they can't go through the wall, they will tear it down. David: 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. Mark: Everything's kind of backwards because of Caesar's walls. Usually it's the conquering force that's using mural hooks, not the defenders. narrator: The battle rages on all fronts. Caesar finally takes matters into his own hands. He personally leads 2,400 more men into battle. Richard: 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 in 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. Mark: And there he is, hacking at Gauls with his gladius, absolutely butchering them. David: There's a big difference between a commander saying, "Charge," and one saying, "Follow me, boys." Patton wore a red cloak just because of Caesar. Mark: Now that Caesar is there, the Roman legions put down all these pilum and javelins and things that they were throwing from a distance and they pick up their swords and they just charge the Gauls. narrator: Caesar has the momentum, and he's going in for the kill. narrator: More than two months into the Siege of Alesia, Julius Caesar, wearing his famous red cloak, leads his men into battle against the Gauls. Richard: And the texts say that what was happening is that the Roman line was ready to break until Caesar arrived at the last minute with these four cohorts with the reinforcements, and at the same time, increasing Roman morale because they saw their commander fighting with them with the red cloak. narrator: By evening, Caesar has the momentum. He chases the Gauls to their camp and cuts them down like animals. Despite the impending defeat, Vercingetorix fights on. His strategy of uniting the Gallic tribes to fight against Roman oppression has failed. Vercingetorix soon realizes he has lost. Richard: 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 began to 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 the Romans. narrator: Caesar had made a name for himself by wiping out entire tribes. But uncharacteristically, after this battle, he decides to spare the Gallic warriors. David: 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 tactics. Maybe he even acquired a newfound respect for the way they had performed in battle. But of course, Vercingetorix had started this. He had to be made an example of. narrator: October 2, 52 BC. After almost two months of bloodshed, Vercingetorix finally surrenders. David: Vercingetorix puts his best armor on and marches through the gate, comes right up to Caesar... narrator: And tens of thousands of Romans behind him. Matthew: You can imagine the scene. Here's this guy who had dared to challenge Caesar, coming face-to-face with him. narrator: A valiant warrior, but one who has committed a basic tactical error. Mark: 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 onto that at times when he could have tried to go in for the kill, but he stayed disciplined. Matthew: 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. Richard: It's fascinating. He had hung to the original strategy right 'til the point where it was succeeding, and then, for whatever reason, changes the strategy and it cost him dearly. narrator: While many of the Gauls are freed, Vercingetorix is brought to Rome and executed. Richard: 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-- 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 man they were afraid that would light Gaul on fire. narrator: Caesar spends the winter extinguishing the dying embers of the rebellion. Rome will not have to fight the Gauls for another 400 years. David: One can compare Caesar to William Tecumseh Sherman of the "March through Georgia" fame. In 1867, he was given the job of breaking the resistance of the Indians in the West. He used the exact same tactics-- scorched earth, massacre, removal, starvation-- against the Amerindian tribes that Caesar had against the Gallic tribes, and with the same results. He won. The Amerindians were settled on reservations and became "American." narrator: 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. Richard: 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'd 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. narrator: Some say that Caesar's campaign was really a reign of terror. But at Alesia, 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 that would become a significant part of Western Europe. Richard: And it all was made possible, ultimately, by the brilliance of a Julius Caesar and the defeat of Vercingetorix at the Battle and Siege of Alesia. Captioning presented by<font color="#0000FF">
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