und no occasion to submit
to the conqueror of Ariovistus. Moreover, as was already remarked,
very close relations subsisted between the Belgae and the Germans
over the Rhine, and at the mouth of the Rhine also Germanic tribes
made themselves ready to cross the stream. In consequence of this
Caesar set out with his army, now increased to eight legions,
in the spring of 697 against the Belgic cantons. Mindful of the brave
and successful resistance which fifty years before they had
with united strength presented to the Cimbri on the borders of their
land,(38) and stimulated by the patriots who had fled to them
in numbers from central Gaul, the confederacy of the Belgae sent
their whole first levy--300,000 armed men under the leadership of Galba
the king of the Suessiones--to their southern frontier to receive
Caesar there. A single canton alone, that of the powerful Remi
(about Rheims) discerned in this invasion of the foreigners
an opportunity to shake off the rule which their neighbours
the Suessiones exercised over them, and prepared to take up
in the north the part which the Haedui had played in central Gaul.
The Roman and the Belgic armies arrived in their territory almost
at the same time.

Conflicts on the Aisne
Submission of the Western Cantons

Caesar did not venture to give battle to the brave enemy six times
as strong; to the north of the Aisne, not far from the modern
Pontavert between Rheims and Laon, he pitched his camp on a plateau
rendered almost unassailable on all sides partly by the river
and by morasses, partly by fosses and redoubts, and contented himself
with thwarting by defensive measures the attempts of the Belgae
to cross the Aisne and thereby to cut him off from his communications.
When he counted on the likelihood that the coalition would speedily
collapse under its own weight, he had reckoned rightly. King Galba
was an honest man, held in universal respect; but he was not equal
to the management of an army of 300,000 men on hostile soil.
No progress was made, and provisions began to fail; discontent
and dissension began to insinuate themselves into the camp
of the confederates. The Bellovaci in particular, equal to
the Suessiones in power, and already dissatisfied that the supreme
command of the confederate army had not fallen to them, could no longer
be detained after news had arrived that the Haedui as allies
of the Romans were making preparations to enter the Bellovacic territory.