VIII. The forces of the two armies opposed to each other in the battle of Bibracte were about equal, for Cæsar had six legions--the 10th, which he had found in the Roman province; the three old legions (7th, 8th, and 9th), which he had brought from Aquileia; and the two new ones (11th and 12th), raised in the Cisalpine. The effective force of each must have been near the normal number of 6,000 men, for the campaign had only begun, and their ranks must have been increased by the veterans and volunteers of whom we have spoken in the first volume (page 456). The number of the legionaries was thus 36,000. Adding 4,000 cavalry, raised in the Roman province and among the Ædui, and probably 20,000 auxiliaries,[196] we shall have a total of 60,000 combatants, not including the men attached to the machines, those conducting the baggage, the army servants, &c. The Helvetii, on their side, did not count more than 69,000 combatants, since, out of 92,000, they had lost one-fourth near the Saône.
In this battle, it must be remarked, Cæsar did not employ the two legions newly raised, which remained to guard the camp, and secure the retreat in case of disaster. Next year he assigned the same duty to the youngest troops. The cavalry did not pursue the enemies in their rout, doubtless because the mountainous nature of the locality made it impossible for it to act.
[Sidenote: Seat of the Suevi and other German Tribes.]
I. On the termination of the war against the Helvetii, the chiefs of nearly all Celtic Gaul went to congratulate Cæsar, and thank him for having, at the same time, avenged their old injuries, and delivered their country from immense danger. They expressed the desire to submit to his judgment certain affairs, and, in order to concert matters previously, they solicited his permission to convoke a general assembly. Cæsar gave his consent.
After the close of the deliberations, they returned, secretly and in tears, to solicit his support against the Germans and Ariovistus, one of their kings. These peoples were separated from the Gauls by the Rhine, from its mouth to the Lake of Constance. Among them the Suevi occupied the first rank. They were by much the most powerful and the most warlike. They were said to be divided into a hundred cantons, each of which furnished, every year, a thousand men for war and a thousand men for agriculture, taking each other's place alternately: the labourers fed the soldiers. No boundary line, among the Suevi, separated the property of the fields, which remained common, and no one could prolong his residence on the same lands beyond a year. However, they hardly lived upon the produce of the soil: they consumed little wheat, and drank no wine; milk and flesh were their habitual food. When these failed, they were fed upon grass.[197] Masters of themselves from infancy, intrepid hunters, insensible to the inclemency of the seasons, bathing in the cold waters of the rivers, they hardly covered a part of their bodies with thin skins. They were savages in manners, and of prodigious force and stature. They disdained commerce and foreign horses, which the Gauls sought with so much care. Their own horses, though mean-looking and ill-shaped, became indefatigable through exercise, and fed upon brushwood. Despising the use of the saddle, often, in engagements of cavalry, they jumped to the ground and fought on foot: their horses were taught to remain without moving.[198] The belief in the dogma of the immortality of the soul, strengthened in them the contempt for life.[199] They boasted of being surrounded by immense solitudes: this fact, as they pretended, showed that a great number of their neighbours had not been able to resist them: and it was reported, indeed, that on one side (towards the east) their territory was bounded, for an extent of 600 miles, by desert plains; on the other, they bordered upon the Ubii, their tributaries, the most civilised of the German peoples, because their situation on the banks of the Rhine placed them in relation with foreign merchants, and because, neighbours to the Gauls, they had formed themselves to their manners.[200]