NARRATOR: It's a
bloody rebellion. Thousands butchered,
countrysides torched, it's hell on Earth. The rebels are 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 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. [theme music] 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. 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 pretty brutal people. I mean, they sacked Rome in
the 3rd century BC as well. So there was 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. 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. And 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,
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. 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. You might have had a,
quote, immature 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. NARRATOR: God 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 20 million people. Lots of different ethnic groups. They fought with one
another for generations, and they never developed
a sophisticated military capability. NARRATOR: Still, conquering Gaul
is more difficult than Caesar anticipates. He 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. Caesar carried out some
horrendous slaughters as a typical Roman brutality
of making the case that it's either 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 had 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
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. 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 strength. He knows its weaknesses. He is the right guy at the
right time to take on Caesar. 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. 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. This was the spark of revolt.
It 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 was no turning
back for Vercingetorix now. The revolution has
begun, and he and Caesar are on a collision course. But Vercingetorix
has the momentum. [swords clanging] He's scoring more victories. He has a massive army behind
him, and he's using it well. Suddenly, this guy
is 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. 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 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, 2 and
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 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. He moves his army down to
block Caesar's goal of going to Italy. OK. He really arrived 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. And at that point, what
Vercingetorix does is he says, it's getting tough to the
feed the army out here. I'm going to redraw back into
my main supply base, all right? 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. And what Caesar does is,
instead of running for Italy, he wheels around 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. 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 is 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 soldiers have trapped 70,000 Gauls and
their revolutionary leader Vercingetorix inside 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. NARRATOR: Alesia is the modern
day city of Alise-Sainte-Reine, located in what is now France. The city is about five
miles in circumference, likely surrounded by a small
wall about six 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. The siegeworks 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
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 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. 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. 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. Caesar foreshadowed his
engineering prowess that he 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. 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 10 days. 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 can 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. 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 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. Vercingetorix does have
some beef and corn stored up at Alesia, 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. 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. If he can outlast
Caesar in the city, 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 is, 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. Vercingetorix gets away
with this 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. NARRATOR: A skirmish breaks
out between Caesar's wall and Alesia. The Roman cavalry gained
the advantage, and the Gauls retreat. But Vercingetorix
orders Alesia'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 city. NARRATOR: Vercingetorix has
sentenced his men to death. 52 BC, the Siege of Alesia
sees its first bloodshed. A cavalry skirmish has a
deadly end for the Gauls. Despite winning
this little skirmish, Caesar decides to up the ante
in terms of the siegeworks. He orders more trenches to be
dug, anti-personnel 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. 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 sheet
fire into this impact zone. NARRATOR: 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 nipping 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
essence, to build siegeworks 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. Now, without his cavalry to
send forth to harass the Roman army, they can build the
siegeworks at their leisure, which they do. More important than that is,
they now can forge freely. And when Caesar understands
this 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
the 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 it from the top down, kind of like 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 Rea, 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 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. There's a story about one
of Vercingetorix's tribesmen saying to him, let's just
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 the last. Think of the Donner
Party in our own history. The old history books always
called 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. What he did is, 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. Having gotten rid of
this large number of people that he no longer
had to feed, then 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. All these pathetic
souls just languishing in this kind of limbo. They're literally caught in
the middle of this fight. No one wants them. NARRATOR: But in this
horrible test of wills, Vercingetorix weakens first. Finally, the gates
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 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 Comminius, an
old acquaintance of Caesar's. Comminius 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: Comminius
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 Comminius, 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. Comminius immediately
goes on the offensive. He leads his infantry and
attacks the Roman soldiers stationed on the outside. The Gauls are
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. 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. The Gauls' first
assault ends in disgrace. The battle was nearly theirs. They had four times
the number of soldiers, and still cannot defeat Caesar. This does not bode well. NARRATOR: But Vercingetorix is
not about to give up the fight. Somehow he manages to
coordinate with Comminius to launch a nighttime
multipronged attack against the Roman positions. We don't know a
lot about how much Comminius 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. [swords clanging] NARRATOR: Vercingetorix leads
a force attempting to break through the inside wall. Comminius 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. 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 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. 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. They'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 siegeworks are doing their job. The little presents
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 caught in their legs. NARRATOR: Caesar's brilliantly
planned siege of the city is proving too
much for the Gauls. Comminius 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
reign 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. It's got to be driving
Comminius 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. Caesar's 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. 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 Rea because of the Oze River,
Caesar couldn't completely connect his outer wall. It's a gap Comminius
hopes to exploit. 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. Comminius' 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. A 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. 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. He ordered
reinforcement cavalry to come around from
the northeast side to help protect the weak spot. But at the same time, the Gauls
sent another 20,000 troops into the gap in the 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 you're 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
war, they will tear it down. By now, they're at the wall. And they're just tearing
at 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 walls. Usually it's the
conquering force that's using mural
hooks, not the defenders. NARRATOR: The battle
rages on all fronts. [swords clanging] Caesar finally takes
matters into his own hands. He personally leads 2,400
more 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 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. And there is, hacking at Gauls
with his Gladius, absolutely butchering them. There is a big difference
between a commander saying "charge," and one saying
"follow me, boys." Patton wore a red cloak
just because of Caesar. Now that Caesar's
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. More than two months into the
Siege of Alesia, Julius Caesar, wearing his famous red
cloak, leads his men into battle against the Gauls. 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. [swords clanging] 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. The defeat sends the
message of a 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, the men will 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. 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. 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. You can imagine the scene. Here is 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. 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 on to that
at times when he could have tried to
go in for the kill, but he stayed 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 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. 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, a 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. 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. 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. 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. And it all was made possible,
ultimately, by the brilliance of Julius Caesar and the defeat
of Vercingetorix at the Battle and siege of Alesia.
