On the arrival of these re-enforcements, the whole aspect of things changes: the wounded raise themselves, and support themselves on their bucklers in order to take part in the action; the valets, seeing the terror of the enemy, throw themselves unarmed upon men who are armed; and the cavalry,[265] to efface the disgrace of their flight, seek to outdo the legionaries in the combat. Meanwhile the Nervii fight with the courage of despair. When those of the first ranks fall, the nearest take their places, and mount upon their bodies; they are slain in their turn; the dead form heaps; the survivors throw, from the top of this mountain of corpses, their missiles upon the Romans, and send them back their own _pila_. "How can we, then, be astonished," says Cæsar, "that such men dared to cross a broad river, climb its precipitous banks, and overcome the difficulties of the ground, since nothing appeared too much for their courage?" They met death to the last man, and 60,000 corpses covered the field of battle so desperately fought, in which the fortune of Cæsar had narrowly escaped wreck.
After this struggle, in which, according to the "Commentaries," the race and name of the Nervii were nearly annihilated, the old men, women, and children, who had sought refuge in the middle of the marshes, finding no hopes of safety, surrendered.[266] In dwelling on the misfortune of their country, they said that, of 600 senators, there remained only three; and that, of 60,000 combatants, hardly 500 had survived. Cæsar, to show his clemency towards the unfortunate who implored it, treated these remains of the Nervii with kindness; he left them their lands and towns, and enjoined the neighbouring peoples not only not to molest them, but even to protect them from all outrage and violence.[267]
[Sidenote: Siege of the _Oppidum_ of the Aduatuci.]
VIII. This victory was gained, no doubt, towards the end of July. Cæsar detached the 7th legion, under the orders of young P. Crassus, to reduce the maritime peoples of the shores of the ocean: the Veneti, the Unelli, the Osismii, the Curiosolitæ, the Essuvii, the Aulerci, and the Redones. He proceeded in person, with the seven other legions, following the course of the Sambre, to meet the Aduatuci, who, as we have seen above, were marching to join the Nervii. They were the descendants of those Cimbri and Teutones who, in their descent upon the Roman province and Italy in the year 652, had left on this side the Rhine 6,000 men in charge of as much of the baggage as was too heavy to be carried with them. After the defeat of their companions by Marius, and many vicissitudes, these Germans had established themselves towards the confluence of the Sambre and the Meuse, and had there formed a state.