Alesia 52 BC: Caesar's 25 Miles of Walls Against Vercingetorix

Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode!

By 53 BC Julius Caesar, deep in debt after buying his consulship, had spent years carving up Gaul tribe by tribe as proconsul. When he declared Gaul a Roman province and threatened the sacred lands of the Carnutes, where the druids met each year, the tribes found a common cause and a leader in Vercingetorix, a young noble of the Arverni. Vercingetorix burned his own country to starve the legions. Caesar massacred some 40,000 people at Avaricum, by his own count, but then lost 700 men, including 46 centurions, at Gergovia. Vercingetorix next withdrew about 80,000 men into the hilltop oppidum of Alesia, planning to hold Caesar in place while a relief army arrived to crush him.

Caesar answered with an 11-mile inner contravallation and, on learning of the relief force, a 14-mile outer circumvallation, about 25 miles of works built in a month by roughly 50,000 legionaries. Caesar claimed a relief army of 250,000; modern estimates say 50,000 to 100,000. On the third day of fighting, 60,000 Gauls under Vercassivellaunus struck a camp on a downslope near Labienus. Caesar arrived in his red cloak and sent Germanic cavalry around the walls to hit the Gauls from behind. Vercingetorix surrendered, spent five years in the Tullianum, and was strangled after Caesar's triumph in 46 BC.

• The Romans planted sharpened trunks called tombstones, hidden stake pits called lilies in a quincunx pattern, and barbed iron spurs called stimuli.
• Facing outward, Caesar dug a 20-foot trench and flooded an inner moat by diverting local rivers.
• Vercingetorix expelled the Mandubii civilians, and Caesar refused to let them through, leaving them to starve between the lines.
• The Senate voted 20 days of thanksgiving but demanded Caesar disband his legions, leading to the Rubicon crossing in 49 BC.
• In the 1860s Napoleon III funded excavations at Alesia and raised a bronze statue of Vercingetorix on the site.