to Caesar, to two hundred and eighty-three thousand
men; and two hundred and forty thousand men, it is said, did actually
hurry up to the appointed place. Mistrust of such enormous numbers has
already been expressed by one who has lived through the greatest European
wars, and has heard the ablest generals reduce to their real strength the
largest armies. We find in M. Thiers' _History of the Consulate_ and
Empire, that at Austerlitz, on the 2d of December, 1805, Napoleon had but
from sixty-five to seventy thousand men, and the combined Austrians and
Russians but ninety thousand. At Leipzig, the biggest of modern battles,
when all the French forces on the one side, and the Austrian, Prussian,
Russian, and Swedish on the other, were face to face on the 18th of
October, 1813, they made all together about five hundred thousand men.
How can we believe, then, that nineteen centuries ago, Gaul, so weakly
populated and so slightly organized, suddenly sent two hundred and forty
thousand men to the assistance of eighty thousand Gauls besieged in the
little town of Alesia by fifty or sixty thousand Romans? But whatever
may be the case with the figures, it is certain that at the very first
moment the national impulse answered the appeal of Vercingetorix, and
that the besiegers of Alesia, Caesar and his legions, found that they
were themselves all at once besieged in their intrenchments by a cloud of
Gauls hurrying up to the defence of their compatriots. The struggle was
fierce, but short. Every time that the fresh Gallic army attacked the
besiegers, Vercingetorix and the Gauls of Alesia sallied forth, and
joined in the attack. Caesar and his legions, on their side, at one time
repulsed these double attacks, at another themselves took the initiative,
and assailed at one and the same time the besieged and the auxiliaries
Gaul had sent them. The feeling was passionate on both sides: Roman
pride was pitted against Gallic patriotism. But in four or five days the
strong organization, the disciplined valor of the Roman legions, and the
genius of Caesar carried the day. The Gallic re-enforcements, beaten and
slaughtered without mercy, dispersed; and Vercingetorix and the besieged
were crowded back within their walls without hope of escape. We have two
accounts of the last moments of this great Gallic insurrection and its
chief; one, written by Caesar himself, plain, cold, and harsh as its
author; the other, by two later historians,