Germans were "men of
huge stature, incredible valour, and practised skill in wars; many
a time they had themselves come across them, and had not been able
to look them in the face or meet the glare of their piercing eyes."

The Romans felt they were in an unknown land, about to fight against
an unknown foe. Violent panic seized them, "completely paralysing
every one's judgment and nerve." Some could not restrain their tears;
others shut themselves up in their tents and bemoaned their fate. "All
over the camp men were making their wills," until Caesar spoke, and
the panic ceased. Seven days' march brought them to the plain of Alsace,
some fifty miles from the Rhine. A battle was fought with the German
tribes, and "the enemy all turned tail and did not cease their flight
until they reached the Rhine." Some swam across, some found boats,
many were killed by the Romans in hot pursuit.

For the first time Romans beheld the German Rhine--that great river
that was to form a barrier for so long between them and the tribes
beyond. But Caesar's exploration was not to end here. The following
year found him advancing against the Belgae--tribes living between
the Rhine and the Seine. In one brilliant campaign he subdued the whole
of north-eastern Gaul from the Seine to the Rhine. Leaving Roman
soldiers in the newly conquered country, he returned to his province,
and was some eight hundred miles away when he heard that a general
rebellion was breaking out in that part we now know as Brittany. He
at once ordered ships to be built on the Loire, "which flows into the
ocean," oarsmen to be trained, seamen and pilots assembled.

The spring of 56 B.C. found Caesar at the seat of war. His ships were
ready on the Loire. But the navy of the Veneti was strong. They were
a sea-going folk, who knew their own low rocky coast, intersected by
shallow inlets of the sea; they knew their tides and their winds. Their
flat-bottomed boats were suitable to shallows and ebbing tides. Bows
and stern stood high out of the water to resist heavy seas and severe
gales; the hulls were built of oak. Leather was used for sails to
withstand the violent ocean storms. The long Roman galleys were no
match for these, and things would have gone badly had not Caesar devised
a plan for cutting the enemy's rigging with hooks "sharpened at the
end and fixed to long poles." With these, the Romans cut the rigging
of the enemy's ships forming the fleet of Brittany; the sail