trife with unparalleled
bitterness against his old friend and master in war. We are not
sufficiently informed either as to the character of Labienus
or as to the special circumstances of his changing sides;
but in the main his case certainly presents nothing but a further proof
of the fact, that a military chief can reckon far more surely
on his captains than on his marshals. To all appearance Labienus
was one of those persons who combine with military efficiency
utter incapacity as statesmen, and who in consequence, if they
unhappily choose or are compelled to take part in politics, are exposed
to those strange paroxysms of giddiness, of which the history
of Napoleon's marshals supplies so many tragi-comic examples.
He may probably have held himself entitled to rank alongside of Caesar
as the second chief of the democracy; and the rejection of this claim
of his may have sent him over to the camp of his opponents.
His case rendered for the first time apparent the whole gravity
of the evil, that Caesar's treatment of his officers as adjutants
without independence admitted of the rise of no men fitted to undertake
a separate command in his camp, while at the same time he stood
urgently in need of such men amidst the diffusion--which might easily
be foreseen--of the impending struggle through all the provinces
of the wide empire. But this disadvantage was far outweighed
by that unity in the supreme leadership, which was the primary condition
of all success, and a condition only to be preserved at such a cost.

Caesar's Army

This unity of leadership acquired its full power through the efficiency
of its instruments. Here the army comes, first of all, into view.
It still numbered nine legions of infantry or at the most
50,000 men, all of whom however had faced the enemy and two-thirds
had served in all the campaigns against the Celts. The cavalry
consisted of German and Noric mercenaries, whose usefulness
and trustworthiness had been proved in the war against Vercingetorix.
The eight years' warfare, full of varied vicissitudes,
against the Celtic nation--which was brave, although in a military
point of view decidedly inferior to the Italian--had given Caesar
the opportunity of organizing his army as he alone knew
how to organize it. The whole efficiency of the soldier
presupposes physical vigour; in Caesar's levies more regard was had
to the strength and activity of the recruits than to their means
or their morals.