from their earliest years,
to ride without saddle or bridle, the horses being trained to obey
implicitly every command. So admirably disciplined were they, that
sometimes, in battle, the mounted men would leap from their horses and
advance as foot soldiers to aid the other infantry, leaving the horses
to stand until they returned. The horses would not move from the spot;
the men, when the object for which they had dismounted was accomplished,
would come back, spring to their seats again, and once more become a
squadron of cavalry.

[Sidenote: Caesar's popularity with the army.]
[Sidenote: Caesar's military habits.]
[Sidenote: His bridge across the Rhine.]

Although Caesar was very energetic and decided in the government of his
army, he was extremely popular with his soldiers in all these campaigns.
He exposed his men, of course, to a great many privations and hardships,
but then he evinced, in many cases, such a willingness to bear his share
of them, that the men were very little inclined to complain. He moved
at the head of the column when his troops were advancing on a march,
generally on horseback, but often on foot; and Suetonius says that he
used to go bareheaded on such occasions, whatever was the state of the
weather, though it is difficult to see what the motive of this
apparently needless exposure could be, unless it was for effect, on some
special or unusual occasion. Caesar would ford or swim rivers with his
men whenever there was no other mode of transit, sometimes supported, it
was said, by bags inflated with air, and placed under his arms. At one
time he built a bridge across the Rhine, to enable his army to cross
that river. This bridge was built with piles driven down into the sand,
which supported a flooring of timbers. Caesar, considering it quite an
exploit thus to bridge the Rhine, wrote a minute account of the manner
in which the work was constructed, and the description is almost exactly
in accordance with the principles and usages of modern carpentry.

[Sidenote: System of posts.]
[Sidenote: Their great utility.]

After the countries which were the scene of these conquests were pretty
well subdued, Caesar established on some of the great routes of travel a
system of posts, that is, he stationed supplies of horses at intervals
of from ten to twenty miles along the way, so that he himself, or the
officers of his army, or any couriers whore he might have occasion to
send with dispatches could tr