They attempted to open a way for themselves by force of arms; but the Eburones would not enter into any close combat, and contented themselves with discharging their missiles from their unassailable positions into the dense mass of the Romans. Bewildered, as if seeking deliverance from treachery at the hands of the traitor, Sabinus requested a conference with Ambiorix; it was granted, and he and the officers accompanying him were first disarmed and then slain. After the fall of the commander the Eburones threw themselves from all sides at once on the exhausted and despairing Romans, and broke their ranks; most of them, including Cotta who had already been wounded, met their death in this attack; a small portion, who had succeeded in regaining the abandoned camp, flung themselves on their own swords during the following night. The whole corps was annihilated.
Cicero Attacked
This success, such as the insurgents themselves had hardly ventured to hope for, increased the ferment among the Celtic patriots so greatly that the Romans were no longer sure of a single district with the exception of the Haedui and Remi, and the insurrection broke out at the most diverse points. First of all the Eburones followed up their victory. Reinforced by the levy of the Aduatuci, who gladly embraced the opportunity of requiting the injury done to them by Caesar, and of the powerful and still unsubdued Menapii, they appeared in the territory of the Nervii, who immediately joined them, and the whole host thus swelled to 60,000 moved forward to confront the Roman camp formed in the Nervian canton. Quintus Cicero, who commanded there, had with his weak corps a difficult position, especially as the besiegers, learning from the foe, constructed ramparts and trenches, -testudines- and moveable towers after the Roman fashion, and showered fire-balls and burning spears over the straw-covered huts of the camp. The only hope of the besieged rested on Caesar, who lay not so very far off with three legions in his winter encampment in the region of Amiens. But--a significant proof of the feeling that prevailed in Gaul- for a considerable time not the slightest hint reached the general either of the disaster of Sabinus or of the perilous situation of Cicero.
Caesar Proceeds To His Relief The Insurrection Checked
At length a Celtic horseman from Cicero's camp succeeded in stealing through the enemy to Caesar. On receiving the startling news Caesar immediately set out, although only with two weak legions, together numbering about 7000, and 400 horsemen; nevertheless the announcement that Caesar was advancing sufficed to induce the insurgents to raise the siege. It was time; not one tenth of the men in Cicero's camp remained unwounded. Caesar, against whom the insurgent army had turned, deceived the enemy, in the way which he had already on several occasions successfully applied, as to his strength; under the most unfavourable circumstances they ventured an assault upon the Roman camp and in doing so suffered a defeat. It is singular, but characteristic of the Celtic nation, that in consequence of this one lost battle, or perhaps rather in consequence of Caesar's appearance in person on the scene of conflict, the insurrection, which had commenced so victoriously and extended so widely, suddenly and pitiably broke off the war. The Nervii, Menapii, Aduatuci, Eburones, returned to their homes. The forces of the maritime cantons, who had made preparations for assailing the legion in Brittany, did the same. The Treveri, through whose leader Indutiomarus the Eburones, the clients of the powerful neighbouring canton, had been chiefly induced to that so successful attack, had taken arms on the news of the disaster of Aduatuca and advanced into the territory of the Remi with the view of attacking the legion cantoned there under the command of Labienus; they too desisted for the present from continuing the struggle. Caesar not unwillingly postponed farther measures against the revolted districts till the spring, in order not to expose his troops which had suffered much to the whole severity of the Gallic winter, and with the view of only reappearing in the field when the fifteen cohorts destroyed should have been replaced in an imposing manner by the levy of thirty new cohorts which he had ordered. The insurrection meanwhile pursued its course, although there was for the moment a suspension of arms. Its chief seats in central Gaul were, partly the districts of the Carnutes and the neighbouring Senones (about Sens), the latter of whom drove the king appointed by Caesar out of their country; partly the region of the Treveri, who invited the whole Celtic emigrants and the Germans beyond the Rhine to take part in the impending national war, and called out their whole force, with a view to advance in the spring a second time into the territory of the Remi, to capture the corps of Labienus, and to seek a communication with the insurgents on the Seine and Loire. The deputies of these three cantons remained absent from the diet convoked by Caesar in central Gaul, and thereby declared war just as openly as a part of the Belgic cantons had done by the attacks on the camps of Sabinus and Cicero.
And Suppressed
The winter was drawing to a close when Caesar set out with his army, which meanwhile had been considerably reinforced, against the insurgents. The attempts of the Treveri to concentrate the revolt had not succeeded; the agitated districts were kept in check by the marching in of Roman troops, and those in open rebellion were attacked in detail. First the Nervii were routed by Caesar in person. The Senones and Carnutes met the same fate. The Menapii, the only canton which had never submitted to the Romans, were compelled by a grand attack simultaneously directed against them from three sides to renounce their long-preserved freedom. Labienus meanwhile was preparing the same fate for the Treveri. Their first attack had been paralyzed, partly by the refusal of the adjoining German tribes to furnish them with mercenaries, partly by the fact that Indutiomarus, the soul of the whole movement had fallen in a skirmish with the cavalry of Labienus.