Next year (B.C. 57) Cæsar conducted a campaign against the Belgæ, whose joint tribes had raised a force of three hundred and fifty thousand men. By prompt action and concessions he seduced one tribe from the coalition, and by a well-timed diversion into the land of another, weakened the aggressiveness of the latter. He had won a number of Gallic allies. Curiously enough, all his cavalry throughout the war was native, the Roman cavalry being neither numerous nor good. All told, he had some seventy thousand men. The Belgæ attacked him at the River Axona, but by dexterous management Cæsar held his own, inflicted enormous losses on them, and finally, from lack of rations, they dispersed, thus enabling Cæsar to handle them in detail. Many gave in their submission; others were reduced by force; disunited they were weak. The Nervii, however, surprised Cæsar at the River Sabis, from ambush, and came near to annihilating his army. He had forgotten Hannibal’s lesson of Lake Trasymene. Nothing but stubborn courage and admirable discipline--the knowledge, too, that defeat meant massacre--saved the day. Cæsar headed his legionaries with superb personal gallantry, and his narrow escape made him thereafter much more cautious on the march. Out of sixty thousand Nervii, barely five hundred were left when the battle ended. Their fighting had been heroic beyond words. Their defeat and the capture of a number of cities induced many tribes to submit to the inevitable. The best praise of this splendid campaign is its own success. The energy, rapidity, clear-sightedness, and skill with which Cæsar divided, attacked in detail, and overcame the Belgian tribes with their enormous numbers, is a model for study. But he still committed serious errors, of which the careless march without proper scouting, which led to the surprise by the Nervii, was a notable example. He was not yet master of his art. During the succeeding winter the Belgæ again banded together, and the Veneti seized some Roman officers seeking corn (B.C. 56). This act Cæsar considered in the light of a revolt, and determined summarily to punish. The Veneti were a maritime people, living in what is now Brittany, whose strongholds could only be reached by sea. Cæsar’s attempts to attack them by land proved abortive, but his admiral, with a fleet built for the occasion, worsted the Venetan squadron, and Cæsar, with needless cruelty and distinct bad policy, put the Senate to death and sold the tribe into slavery. Cæsar was personally humane. These acts of extermination are the less pardonable. His lieutenants, meanwhile, had subdued a part of Aquitania. All Gaul, save only the tribes opposite the British coast, had, after a fashion, been reduced. This third year in Gaul redounds to Cæsar’s credit for the general scheme; to his lieutenants for the detailed campaigns.