CHAP. XXXI.
Vercingetorix sendeth away the horse: Caesar inclo∣seth Alesia with a strong wall.
VErcingetorix thought it best to dis∣misse all the horse,* 1.1 and send them away in the night, before the forti∣fications were perfected by the Ro∣mans. At their departure he com∣manded them, that every man should repair unto his own State, and send all to the warre that were able to bear arms. He layeth open his deserts towards them, and doth adjure them to have regard to his safety, and not to suffer him to be delivered over to the torture of the enemy, that had so well deserved of the common liber∣tie; wherein if they should prove negligent, fourscore thousand chosen men would perish with him in that place. And looking into their pro∣visions, he found that they had corn scarce for thirty dayes, but by sparing and good husbandry it might be made to serve longer. With these mandates he sent out the horsemen in silence about the second watch of the night, at that part of the town where the works were not per∣fected: he commanded all the corn to be brought unto him upon pain of death. The cattel he dis∣tributed to the souldiers by pole, whereof there was great store brought out from the Mandu∣bii: the corn he began to measure out very spa∣ringly. All the forces which he had placed be∣fore the town, he received within the walls; and so he purposed to attend the supplies of Gallia. Which being known by therunne-awayes and ca∣ptives, Caesar appointed to make these fortifica∣tions. He drew a ditch of twenty foot in breadth and depth, with streight sides, as broad at the bottome as at the top. The rest of the work he made fourty foot short of that ditch, which he did for these reasons; that the whole body of the Romans might not easily be inclosed about with an army of souldiers, which he thought to prevent by taking in so great a cir∣cuit of ground; and secondly, lest the enemy sallying out upon a suddain, should in the night come to destroy the works, or in the day-time trouble the souldiers with darts and casting weapons as they were busied about the works. This space of fourty foot being left, he made two ditches of fifteen foot in breadth and depth, the innermost whereof being carried through the fields and the lower ground, he filled with water drawn out of the river. Behind them he made a ditch and a rampier of twelve foot, and streng∣thened it with a parapet and pinacles, and with great boughes of trees cut in cags like unto a Harts horn, which he set where the hovels were joyned to the rampier, to hinder the enemy from climbing up; and made towers round about the whole work, in the distance of fourscore foot one from another. At the same time the Ro∣man souldiers were both to get stuffe for the fortification, to go a harvesting for provision of corn, and to make such great works. Our for∣ces being much weakened, and being to seek corn and stuffe farre off from the camp; the Galles also oftentimes attempting to destroy the works, and to sally out of the town at divers ports: there∣fore Caesar thought it fit to adde thus much more to the foresaid works, that the fortifica∣tions might be made good with the lesse number of men. He made ditches round about the works of five foot deep, and in them he planted either the bodies of trees, or great firm boughs sharpen∣ed into many pikes and snags, being bound toge∣ther at the bottome, that they might not be easi∣ly plucked up, and spreading themselves at the top into very sharp cags. There were of these five ranks, so combined and infolded one in ano∣ther, that which way soever the enemy should enter upon them, he would necessarily runne himself upon a sharp stake▪ these they called Cippi. Before these, in oblique courses, after the manner of a quincunce, were digged holes of three foot deep, narrow at the bottome like a sugar loaf: these they set with round stakes of the bignesse of a mans thigh, with a sharp hard∣ened point, in such sort that they stuck not a∣bove four fingers out of the earth; and for the better fastening of them, they stuck all a foot within the ground: the rest of the hole for the better ordering of the matter, was hid with osiers and spreads. Of these were eight courses three foot distant one from another: and these they called Lillies, from the resemblance they had to the figure of that flower. Before these were galthrops of a foot long fastened in the earth, and headed at the top with barbed hooks of iron, sowed up and down in all places in a reasonable distance one from another: and these they called Stimuli. The inner fortifica∣tions being thus perfected, he followed the even and level ground as much as the nature of the place would give him leave, and took in four∣teen miles in circuit, and made the like for∣tifications in all points against the enemy with∣out, as he had done against the town; to the end that if he were driven upon occasion to depart and leave the works, it might be no danger for him to leave the camp; forasmuch as a few men would defend it. He commanded every man to have forrage and provision of corn for thirty dayes.