Part XIV: The Home Front
(Gaul, 25 BCE - 10 BCE)
There are no horizons that can’t be reached by a valiant heart. – Serra of Alesia.
During the Roman expedition, Vercingetorix and Edorix would made regular trip back to Nemossos: but has the war ramped up with the invasion of Italy, the home front was left to the care of a woman: Edorix’ sister Carantia. Married twice, widowed twice at age 30, she carried an unlucky reputation: her first husband died while hunting, at an unspecified date, and the son they had together drowned in a river. Her second husband died fighting in a skirmish in Aquitania in 23 BCE, and her surviving son nearly died from sickness at a young age. Her noble background gave access to an education from the best, including at least two foreign tutors who gave her a view past the Arverni world: one Marcus Sinicius, a Roman scholar in exile said to be on the run from massive debts south of the border, and an ‘escaped Greek slave-girl’ whose name has been lost from records. Armed with the necessary knowledge, Carantia elbowed her way up the ladder. Gallic noblewomen weren’t foreign to politics, and with the right backing, could accumulate considerable influence and power and claim clan chiefdom. They also had a long tradition of diplomacy and arbitrators: it was with women Hannibal negotiated his passage through Gaul during the second Punic war. Carantia was a king’s daughter, apparently with a strong and brash temperament: she inherited her father’s magnetism and ability to rouse a crowd with impassioned speeches, was decently skilled with a weapon, and driven with limitless energy: “[she] was inhabited by the raging fire of life and would not stand still or rest”.
There isn’t much records of her debuts, but the meeting with Corvinus in 22 BCE shows she had reached the innermost circle of power in just a few years. While this event could be interpreted as Vercingetorix dotting on her or messing with the head of a Roman envoy, she was still present at the Conglennos after that, representing her father
in abstentia, showing he trusted in her judgement. Her primary task was to respond to day to day affairs and solicitations, and that sometime involved a military answer. She ordered an expedition in Aquitania, extracting tributes from the Ausci and Tarbelli. Serra notes that she imposed specifically harsh condition upon the Tarbelli, “holding them in contempt, for they caused her husband’s loss”.
18 BCE saw a Germanic migrating horde numbering in the 350,000 and containing around 110,000 combatants according to most estimations, washing over the eastern territories of the Sequani and Aedui. The Marcomanni, a nation of south west Germania, had swelled in numbers and spilled beyond the Rhine, pushing in front of them a loose confederation of Suebi, Tulingi, and Nemetes. Moving West, they burned their way through the Mednomatrici and Lingones, who appealed to their respective Treveri and Remi lieges for protection. But the sheer size of the German horde overwhelmed the defenders. In response to the threat, the Santone king Raucarios, appointed by the Conglennos while Vercingetorix was away at war, departed with an army to stop the invaders in the Seqanian land. With the majority of the Arverni crack troops fighting in Italy, Raucarios had to dip into the vast manpower reserve of the Arverni confederation. With a population estimated between 6.5 and 7.5 million, the Arverni and their dependents could muster hundreds of thousands of recruits, albeit modestly trained and armed. Three decades of improvement regarding logistics and organisation increased the speed of gathering to new highs: records dated from May 18 indicate 80,000 men were summoned by Raucarios in the space of a few months.
But this expedition was defeated after a series of clashes that left Vesontio in flames and Raucarios missing in action. At this point, Carantia stepped in, raising a new army on her own initiative, but the Arverni tribal council would refuse her this responsibility. She fought back by having the fates read by the Carnutes oracles of Cenabon, who confirmed that the gods of war still favoured the members of House Vercingetorix to defend their ancestral lands. Riding on popular support, Carantia accessed military leadership despite high scepticism from the ruling class; “And never a woman had wielded such might since the days of Hatchepsut”.
Identified bust of Carantia. (1)
She took the fields with 65,000 men and a cadre of veterans from her father’s circle, joining the 50,000 or so from Raucarios’ army still able to fight. But rather than attacking the Germans head on, she constructed fortified camps on the Dubis and Arar river and waged attrition warfare all summer. Unable to live off the land any longer at the eve of Fall, the Germanic horde attempt a massed assault on Cabilionon on the Dubis. But the Gauls had dug trenches and erected towers on the way, decimating the invaders before engaging them in intense close combat. The few units of Braers at Carantia’s disposition held a strategic ford on the river, bottlenecking the Germans. She was herself in the melee, dedicated to the tradition of leading from the front. When reinforcements from Aeduis and Senones finally arrived on the gallic side, the attackers gave up and fled.
The horde split apart: the Marcomanni led by King Vangio retreated toward Vesontio, while the rest, a loose group of tribes led by the Tulingi warchief Odomar moved North. By 17 BCE, with the help of returning, hardened troops from Italy, Carantia defeated Vangio in open battle and liberated Sequania. Vanquished, the Marcomanni moved into the territory previously occupied by the Mednomatrici, near the Mosella river. Threatened with more action, Vangio sued for conciliation and gave his son Maroboduus in hostage to the Arverni. In exchange, his people would be a rampart against the Treveri in the North, and other hostile German tribes in the East.
Odomar would be caught on the next year, as he wandered through Mandubia and Lingonia. The Lingones, battered and leaderless after the defeat of the Remi, begged for help. Edorix, freshly returned, took command of the operations and dispatched the Tulingi at Andematunnon with ‘only’ 50,000 warriors. In the end, the last Germanic invaders either scattered or surrendered at the beginning of 14 BCE, and peace returned. The Arverni eastern flank took a beating, but their Remi and Treveri rivals were also severely weakened, negating the threat they could represent for a Confederation seriously strained by the war effort. The riches and loot from Italy barely compensated for the expenditure, and the territories gained in Southern Gaul needed to be distributed, and properly managed. The local Volcaes didn’t even know yet they had changed master!
While the campaign in Italy had made Edorix into an excellent war chief and a genius tactician, managing state affairs still prove troublesome to him. He was for instance pressured to marry a Pictone noble lady, but at the same time refused to dismiss a German slave who already gave him a son. While royalty could accommodate polygamy, housing together a princess and a foreign bed-slave was scandalous. Vercingetorix assigned to him the management of the Volcaes, hoping it would be a new learning experience for his hot-head son. When a new war with the Remi broke out in 11 BCE, “he was so sorely disappointed to not have been asked to participate [in the war], he went to ride out in the country for two days during which no one knew of his whereabouts.” Carantia, who already proved to be capable leader, would probably have made a better heir, but the tradition still favoured her brother. Nonetheless, Edorix maintained important relation with the Romans, notably Corvinus Messala after he became proconsul of Narbonensis. The lasting peace between the two countries increased the circulation of new ideas and the diffusion of Gallic culture: no longer pictured savage, their artistic production became fashionable. Jewellery and engraving became a trend in Rome, while Greco-Roman statuary and monumental architecture raised interest in Gaul. Roman style aqueducts and public fountains came to relieve increasedly overcrowded Gallic towns.
A Gallo-Roman style villa discovered near Gergovia, including private baths. (2)
Immaterial knowledge circulated even more, facilitated by linguistic proximity, with treatise from Cicero translated in Gaulish, and soon Serra’s epics translated in Latin. The Gauls have been using the Roman alphabet for informal written communication for more than a century, but anything truly cultural, such as druidic wisdom or bardic epics, stayed fiercely oral so far. But the liberalization of writing broke the taboo, letting the local literary production bloom by 1 CE.
With the Remi definitively defeated and submitted in 10 BCE, there were no major military threats left, allowing the Arverni Confederation to extends their influence deep into Aquitania and Armorica. The small nations of theses part of Gaul could not resist: the Ausci and Sociates made act of submission, and even the Aulerci asked for Arverni arbitration in their internal dispute. If there was a challenge left, it would lie beyond the sea.
(1) Statue by Elizabeth Black, photographic credit: Barrie Hartwell / Irish Time
(2) Credit: Hervé Paitier
