Caesars general, p.17
Caesar's General, page 17
By the time they made it back to their own lines, the sun was high in the sky. The Pompeians were beaten off, with heavy losses on both sides. As they re-entered the Caesarian camp, they were greeted by Publius Cornelius Sulla, who had been left in charge of the encampment and the reserves. His face was haggard and pale.
‘Caesar, are you injured?’ he asked, voice full of anxiety.
Antony glanced at Caesar and saw his helmet, his armour, his bare forearms and his face were all streaked with congealed blood. Antony realised he must have looked the same.
‘No, I have no injuries,’ said Caesar, voice steady despite the fatigue he must have been feeling.
‘I’m relieved to see you back, Caesar,’ said Sulla. ‘I must inform you that we have repelled a strong attack by Pompeius’ forces.’
Caesar seemed to pale a bit at this, but patted his arm reassuringly. Antony was amazed. Pompey had pulled off a beautiful attack, combining misinformation, ambush and perfect timing to assault Caesar on multiple fronts. He felt completely foolish for ever having doubted Pompey’s generalship.
‘Well done, Legate. Let’s tour the defences while you give me your report.’
Antony went with them as Sulla showed them three points where Pompey had attacked. In one fort, defended by a single cohort, Sulla had brought two legions up and easily repulsed the attack. He had even had the opportunity to pursue the Pompeians, who were fleeing in disorder, but had pulled his men back into defence.
‘Quite right,’ said Caesar. ‘You are a legate. A decision to press an attack like that rightly belongs to your commander.’ He gave Antony a pointed look, who had the good grace to at least appear suitably admonished.
They visited another fort that had resisted the attackers, who seemed to have been rather half-hearted, and did not press too hard. But the third fort was a different matter.
Antony looked around at the defences and the defenders, stunned. The woodwork was in every place splintered and shattered. Every patch of ground was stained with blood. Every single defender bore at least one wound. Sulla explained that for the entire battle, three cohorts had held off an entire legion, three times their strength. He presented to Caesar the six centurions who had kept their men from breaking. Four of them had bandages and patches over ruined eyes.
A huge mound of arrows that had been fired into the fort had been gathered. The centurions proudly displayed them to Caesar, pointing out that there were three hundred bundles, each comprising a hundred arrows. Then the senior centurion showed him the shield of a junior centurion called Scaeva. It bore over a hundred holes.
Even Caesar could not help but be impressed by this. In a loud voice, so all around could hear, he praised all the defenders, promising to double their wages and their allowances of corn, clothing and food. The announcement of the increased food rations got the biggest cheer. Then he singled out Scaeva for further praise, promoting him to a senior centurion of the first rank and rewarding him with the fabulous sum of two hundred thousand sestertii.
The battered, bruised and bleeding centurion seemed to find this hard to take in, and could barely stutter out his thanks. Antony led the men in cheering for Scaeva’s bravery and good fortune.
Then Caesar made his way back to his tent. He dismissed everyone except Antony, and when the two of them were alone, he slumped into his chair. Antony thought he looked exhausted, and he poured him a strong cup of wine. Caesar waved it away.
‘We held, Marcus,’ he said.
‘We did, Caesar.’
‘We were lucky. Pompeius nearly had us.’
‘Your genius has always been leavened with fortune, Caesar.’
Caesar closed his eyes wearily. After a few moments, Antony realised he had fallen asleep. He slipped quietly out of the tent.
They had survived a near disaster. They had tasted defeat by the walls of Dyrrhachium, but had gained a victory in the Caesarian camp. Ironically, both Caesar – who had led the attack on Dyrrhachium – and Pompey – who had led the attack on the camp – had been defeated that day, each by his opponent’s subordinates. It was hard to tell who had emerged from the mess in the stronger position.
But time was against Caesar. The single legion he had sent to delay Scipio could not hold him forever. Soon, Pompey would be reinforced, and Caesar’s double siege of Dyrrhachium and Pompey would be endangered. Did Caesar think he could repeat Alesia? Repel an attack from outside his defences while maintaining the siege kept within? The circumstances were wholly different. Pompey may be short of water, but he wasn’t starving, like Vercingetorix. Nor were his men undisciplined barbarians. And, Antony was now starting to believe, maybe Caesar’s enemy did indeed equal him in strategic and tactical genius.
Antony returned to his own tent, tired and sore, and summoned one of his personal slaves to feed, bathe and massage him. But restoring his bodily strength was not enough. His mind had become heavy with doubt.
ante diem vii Idus Quintilas DCCVI AUC (9 July 48 BC), Dyrrhachium
The two sides settled back into their siege routines. Caesar was everywhere, praising, cajoling, admonishing… whatever was needed to raise morale. The men were clearly shaken, but his strength of personality reassured everywhere he went. Antony, too, did his bit, mingling with his men and assuring them of victory if they would just hold. It was remarkable that through all the hardships of the siege, no significant desertions from Caesar’s camp occurred.
By contrast, a steady stream of deserters from Pompey’s camp brought news that morale there was at breaking point. Hemmed in by Caesar’s defences, the Pompeians were suffering from a lack of fodder for the beasts, thirst, overcrowding, and its inevitable sequel, disease, with reports of an outbreak of typhus.
The engineers and carpenters brought the fortifications back up to their previous strength and beyond as the days passed. The walls consisted of strong forts with palisades and ditches linking them together, the fifteen-feet-high defences reinforced with boulders and blocks from the quarries, from city walls and from the homes of the local Greeks.
But even after all this time, they were not fully complete. Since the previous ambush, Caesar had begun to worry about the prospect of Pompey using his fleet to attack from the sea. He had therefore ordered the construction of a double wall to the south, where his defences met the shore, with a fifteen-foot ditch and two earthen ramparts. It was a prudent measure, but there was only so much manpower to go around, especially with all the repair work necessitated by the recent attack, on top of the routine maintenance of seventeen miles of fortifications.
And before they were finished, Roucillus and Egus deserted to Pompey.
The two brothers were the sons of a Gallic chieftain and had fought with courage in Gaul. Caesar had even, surprisingly, made them senators during his short reign as Dictator. But they had been caught embezzling funds, claiming pay for non-existent cavalry. Caesar had been lenient with them, chastising them in private and warning them of their future conduct, but their offences were common knowledge, and they were subjected to constant abuse and mockery from the men. So, one evening, they slipped through the lines with their bodyguards, a large sum of cash and a large number of horses, and defected to Pompey.
Caesar was furious, not only at the insult, but also because they were senior enough to know everything about the Caesarian defences – the fortifications, the timetables of the sentries, even the conscientiousness of the officers in charge of the watch at different forts. But he could do nothing apart from double the sentries and press on with the construction work, hoping it would be completed in time.
It wasn’t.
Antony was just waking up, in the process of splashing some water on his face from a bowl and thinking about using the commode, when the messenger rushed in.
‘Legate, an attack, from the sea.’
Antony pulled on his armour while he listened to the full report. As Caesar had feared, just before dawn, Pompey had launched an attack on the south-westernmost defences with six legions. As the sun rose, he had brought in a second strong force of light infantry by sea between the half-finished defences.
Antony summoned his tribunes and leading centurions and quickly informed them of the situation, then ordered them to form up every available man. He paced up and down in frustration while he waited, though the disciplined legionaries of the Ninth and Tenth were swift to respond. As soon as they were ready, he led them out at a fast march.
Antony’s camp, the headquarters of the Ninth, was at the south-east corner of Caesar’s lines, and Pompey’s attack from the sea was in the south-west corner, some two miles from Antony’s position. They covered the ground rapidly, but by the time they arrived, the situation was already a disaster.
It was hard to make out the details among the chaos of the battle. As far as Antony could tell, the initial defences had been overwhelmed, and the reinforcements from the nearest camp were on the verge of fleeing. Pompey’s men were assaulting the camp and there was a stream of men fleeing back towards Antony’s position.
‘Set the signal fires,’ Antony commanded, and one of the centurions hurried off to light the fire that would send a smoke signal to Caesar to inform him of the emergency.
‘Now follow me!’
Leading the charge, Antony sprinted towards the enemy front line. He was vastly outnumbered. The twelve cohorts he had brought up numbered around five thousand men, with another few thousand who had been present at the start of the attack and were now milling around in panic. The sight of Antony’s legionaries charging forward, screaming out their battle cry, stiffened the resolve of the struggling defenders, and for the most part they faced forwards again and joined the charge.
The unexpected appearance of Antony, and his unhesitating attack, stopped the Pompeian advance. His tough veterans unleashed a volley of javelins and then smashed into the Pompeian front line, which was hastily reorganising itself to receive the charge. Metal clashed on metal. Shields splintered. Cries of pain, anger and despair resounded all around.
Antony was in the thick of the action, fighting like a legionary – step forward, thrust, twist, step forward again. Their initial assault, concentrated in the centre of Pompey’s lines, forced the enemy legionaries back, away from the vulnerable camp. But the superior numbers against them soon began to tell. With some difficulty, Antony extricated himself from the front line so he could take stock of the situation and issue orders. The ability to manoeuvre was limited in the spaces between the defences, but Pompey still threatened to outflank him on both sides. He could do nothing, though, but exhort his men to hold on, and wait for Caesar to arrive with further reinforcements.
It was the best part of an hour before Caesar finally appeared. An hour of brutal, attritional warfare, both sides fatiguing, Antony giving ground against the superior numbers, but his men battling over every inch lost. It was with profound relief that he heard the signal trumpets. Caesar had gathered thirty-three cohorts, which at full strength would number around fifteen thousand men, but after the losses from a long siege, were only at around two-thirds of that strength. Still, it was enough to bolster Antony’s men, and the combined Caesarian army fought the Pompeian attack to a standstill.
Antony found Caesar, surrounded by bodyguards, a short way back from the front line, and reported the situation to him as best he could. They had held the camp, but Pompey had punched a gaping hole in Caesar’s defences, and now had access to a much wider area in which they could forage and receive supplies.
With the fighting in a lull, Caesar ordered a new fort to be hastily thrown together to provide defences against Pompey’s new position. Then scouts came up with reports that Pompey had occupied an old camp of Caesar’s that he had abandoned when he had altered the front lines.
‘We need to regain the initiative,’ said Caesar. ‘Marcus, leave two cohorts along our front and have them spread out to make it look like we have a full force there. Then bring the Ninth with me.’
Caesar led the men on an indirect route towards the old encampment, hoping to surprise the Pompeian legion that was flying its standard there. Antony marched with the Ninth, who were in good spirits, despite being badly mauled. They reached the camp without being spotted by Pompey, and Caesar immediately launched an attack on the left, taking the defenders by surprise, and forcing them off the ramparts.
The gate was blocked by a large hedgehog defence – a wooden barrier studded with vicious spikes – and Antony saw the fighting there was intense, with the Pompeians defending vigorously. Soon, though, the hedgehog was smashed apart, and the Caesarian legions rushed into the fort with a roar and began to massacre the Pompeians sheltered within.
Antony observed from the rear, where Caesar had placed him with some reserves. It looked like Caesar’s plan had paid off, he thought with satisfaction. He had lost contact with the other wing of Caesar’s army, though, which had been probing the defences to the right, with all of the Caesarian cavalry. But this didn’t seem to matter too much, as Caesar was on the verge of forcing the Pompeians out of the rear gate of the fort.
And then Pompey arrived. He had hastily assembled five legions and a large number of cavalry. The cavalry made straight for the right wing, and soon after, Caesarian cavalry came charging back in disarray. Following behind them came an ever-increasing flood of fleeing infantry. The Ninth Legion on the left saw their comrades on the right fleeing, and panic rapidly spread through their ranks. With the legion they were fighting still to their fore, and Pompey’s new legions coming up behind, they feared they would be trapped, and they broke.
Antony immediately moved his reserves forward to prevent a rout, but it was hopeless. Even with Caesar present, shouting and haranguing his men, the chaos was absolute. Every man fought for his own life, against the enemy, against his own side, giving in to the animalistic panic to get away. Antony fought his way towards Caesar, who was standing with just a couple of bodyguards, shouting in impotent rage at his men’s cowardice.
A standard-bearer, his bearskin head-covering flapping behind him, rushed past Caesar, his terror blinding him to the presence of his general. Caesar stepped in front of him, hand out.
‘Halt. You are a signifer of the Ninth. Turn and do your duty.’
The signifer stopped and stared at Caesar for the briefest moment, then pulled his standard back and, with a cry, prepared to thrust the sharp butt into Caesar’s torso. Antony cried out a warning, but was too far away to stop it. The standard thrust out.
Then Caesar’s bodyguard hacked downwards against the signifer with all his might. His gladius bit all the way through the man’s upper arm, and the standard, still clutched in the signifer’s severed limb, fell to the ground. The man dropped to his knees, clutching the spurting stump. Antony doubted he would survive the injury, but didn’t care.
He reached Caesar’s side.
‘You can do nothing more. We need to get you to safety.’
Caesar seemed numbed, stunned by the sudden reverse, his men’s cowardice, and the attempt on his life. He let Antony and his bodyguards lead him off the battlefield. Antony found them horses, and together they cantered back to their own lines.
‘It’s over,’ said Caesar when they dismounted. ‘Pompeius has every advantage now. He just has to continue his attack, and we cannot resist.’
Antony tried to think of words of encouragement, but none came. He didn’t have Caesar’s experience, but even he could tell when a position was lost.
Now they just had to await the arrival of Pompey, bearing the executioner’s axe.
ante diem vi Idus Quintilas DCCVI AUC (10 July 48 BC), Dyrrhachium
But Pompey did not come. For reasons Antony could not comprehend, he called off the attack. It was certainly not due to sentiments of mercy. Word came to them from deserters that Labienus had rounded up the Caesarian prisoners, paraded them in front of his men, insulted them, and then executed them all. Was Pompey concerned he was overcommitting? Or was he just scared of Caesar, terrified that his opponent was in fact the better general? Had this all been a plot to lure the bulk of his forces into a trap?
Whatever the reasoning, Caesar was able to bring the majority of his men back to safety behind his defences. As soon as the wounded had been taken to the hospital station, and the rest of the legionaries had returned to their units, he sent word to withdraw the garrisons from the forts, and to assemble the entire army so he could address them.
‘Loyal soldiers of Rome,’ he called out in his clear tones. His voice carried far, and was relayed by centurions even further, so every man could hear every word. ‘By the favour of Fortuna, we took Italy without bloodshed. We pacified both Spanish provinces despite their belligerent soldiers and experienced leaders. We control all the provinces needed to supply us with grain. And we have been lucky enough to cross from Italy when the enemy fleets infested the waters. But sometimes, we must look to our own efforts rather than simply trusting always to fortune. This reverse is not my doing. I gave you the opportunity to fight on good ground, I took the enemy camp, and I drove them out. Whether it was your nervousness or a mistake, or just bad luck, the victory was snatched from our grasp. So I require you to make good on this damage with your courage. If you do so, our loss will become our success, as after Gergovia, and those who are afraid will clamour to offer themselves for the fight.’
Cheers resounded around the gathered soldiers, and Antony joined in, a full-throated roar. But, though he understood that Caesar could not admit an error to the rank and file, he wondered if the general was really so self-assured.
Caesar went on to demote some standard-bearers who had fled the battle – a truly light punishment – and he left the men cheering his name and vowing to restore the damage to their reputation.
Caesar then gathered his legates and tribunes around, and received reports of the casualty list.
