Alesia
About
Julius Caesar trapped Vercingetorix's Gallic army inside the hilltop fortress with a double ring of siege works, then held off a Gallic relief force of some 250,000 warriors from the outside at the same time. Vercingetorix surrendered in person, laying his weapons at Caesar's feet. The siege effectively ended organized Gallic resistance to Rome. It remains one of history's most studied feats of military engineering.
What happened here
A Roman army fights the way it camps: in lines, by drill, on ground chosen if possible. The legions form up in cohorts with gaps that let ranks rotate, throw a volley of heavy javelins at close range, and then close with the short sword, pushing behind the shield. Auxiliaries hold the flanks and do most of the cavalry work and most of the skirmishing. Battles are short and decided by whether one line breaks, and the killing happens in the pursuit rather than the fighting. The camp is dug and palisaded every night regardless. Afterwards the dead are stripped and the field is looted for days; the ground is remembered locally long after the campaign is a paragraph in someone's history.
In ancient writing
- Caesar, Bellum Gallicum 7.68–89
His own account of the double ring of works — one facing the town, one facing the relief army — with the ditches, stakes and pits described piece by piece.
Sources
Roman Maps shows the empire frozen at 11 August 117 CE, the day Trajan died — its moment of greatest territorial extent. Explore the full map →