n return impossible,
the Helvetii had burnt their towns and villages; and their long
trains of waggons, laden with women, children, and the best part
of their moveables, arrived from all sides at the Leman lake near
Genava (Geneva), where they and their comrades had fixed their
rendezvous for the 28th of March(33) of this year. According
to their own reckoning the whole body consisted of 368,000 persons,
of whom about a fourth part were able to bear arms. As the mountain
chain of the Jura, stretching from the Rhine to the Rhone, almost
completely closed in the Helvetic country towards the west,
and its narrow defiles were as ill adapted for the passage
of such a caravan as they were well adapted for defence, the leaders
had resolved to go round in a southerly direction, and to open up
for themselves a way to the west at the point, where the Rhone
has broken through the mountain-chain between the south-western
and highest part of the Jura and the Savoy mountains, near
the modern Fort de l'Ecluse. But on the right bank here the rocks
and precipices come so close to the river that there remained only
a narrow path which could easily be blocked up, and the Sequani,
to whom this bank belonged, could with ease intercept the route
of the Helvetii. They preferred therefore to pass over, above the point
where the Rhone breaks through, to the left Allobrogian bank,
with the view of regaining the right bank further down the stream
where the Rhone enters the plain, and then marching on towards
the level west of Gaul; there the fertile canton of the Santones
(Saintonge, the valley of the Charente) on the Atlantic Ocean
was selected by the wanderers for their new abode. This march led,
where it touched the left bank of the Rhone, through Roman territory;
and Caesar, otherwise not disposed to acquiesce in the establishment
of the Helvetii in western Gaul, was firmly resolved not to permit
their passage. But of his four legions three were stationed far
off at Aquileia; although he called out in haste the militia
of the Transalpine province, it seemed scarcely possible with so small
a force to hinder the innumerable Celtic host from crossing
the Rhone, between its exit from the Leman lake at Geneva
and the point of its breaking through the mountains, over a distance
of more than fourteen miles. Caesar, however, by negotiations
with the Helvetii, who would gladly have effected by peaceable means
the crossing of the river and the