VII. Meanwhile, the seventh day, the period fixed for Cæsar’s return, approached. Chance, so common in war, brought about a remarkable incident. The enemy, scattered, and struck with terror, could no longer inspire the least fear. But rumour having spread beyond the Rhine, among the Germans, that all peoples were invited to ravage the country of the Eburones, the Sicambri, neighbours to the river, who had, as we have seen, received the Usipetes and Tencteri after their defeat, collect 2,000 cavalry; they pass the Rhine on rafts and boats, thirty miles below where Cæsar had built his bridge and left a guard (forty-five kilomètres below Bonn.)[457] They invade the territory of the Eburones, pick up a crowd of fugitives, and seize upon a great number of cattle. The attraction of booty draws them on farther and farther; bred in the midst of war and plundering, nothing stops them--neither marshes nor woods. On their arrival at some distance from the Meuse, they learn from prisoners the absence of Cæsar and the distance of the army, and that in three hours they can reach Aduatuca, where the riches of the Romans are deposited. They are made to believe that this fortress is defended by a garrison too weak to line the walls or venture to issue from the retrenchments. Trusting in this information, the Germans hide their booty, and, guided by a prisoner, march against Aduatuca, crossing the Meuse at Maestricht. Hitherto, Cicero had scrupulously executed Cæsar’s order, and retained the troops in the camp without even permitting a single valet to quit it; but on the seventh day, reckoning no longer on the return of the general at the term fixed, he yielded to the complaints of the soldiers, who blamed his obstinacy in keeping them shut up as though they were besieged. He believed, moreover, that the nine legions, and the numerous cavalry which scoured the country, permitted him to venture without danger to a distance of three miles from his camp, especially after the dispersion of the enemy’s forces; he therefore sent five cohorts to cut wheat in the nearest fields, situated to the north of Aduatuca, and separated from the camp only by a hill. With them went, under the same ensign, 300 men of different legions left sick, but then restored, and a multitude of valets, taking with them a great number of beasts of burden, which were in the camp.