The day following Cæsar caused a tower to be advanced, and the works to be prosecuted with vigour; an abundant rain, and the negligence of the enemy in guarding the wall, engaged him to attempt an assault. He thereupon ordered the work to be slackened without entirely stopping it, in order not to awaken suspicions, assembled his legions under arms, sheltered behind the covered galleries (_vineas_), and informed them that they were going to reap the fruit of so many fatigues. He promised rewards to those who should be first to scale the wall of the town, and gave the signal. The Romans at once rushed forward from every side, and reached the top of the ramparts. The enemies, terrified by this unexpected attack, and thrown down from the tops of the walls and towers, sought refuge in the public places, and formed in wedges, so as to offer a resistance on all sides; but when they saw that the Romans, instead of descending into the town, went round it on the ramparts, they were afraid of being shut in, and threw down their arms and fled towards the other extremity of the _oppidum_ (where are at present the faubourgs Taillegrain and Saint-Privé). (_See Plate 20._) Most of them were killed near the gates, the narrow passage of which they blocked up; the others by the cavalry outside the town. No one among the Roman soldiers thought of plunder. Irritated by the remembrance of the massacre of Genabum, and by the fatigues of the siege, they spared neither old men, women, nor children. Of about 40,000 combatants, scarcely 800 fugitives were able to join Vercingetorix. He, fearing that their presence, if they came in a body, might excite a mutiny, had, in the middle of the night, sent trusty men and the principal chiefs a long way out, to distribute them in fractions among the camps belonging to the different tribes. The next day Vercingetorix sought, in a general assembly, to revive the courage of his countrymen, by ascribing the success of the Romans to their superiority in the art of sieges, which was unknown to the Gauls. He told them that this reverse ought not to dishearten them; that his advice, they well knew, had never been to defend Avaricum; that a signal revenge would soon console them; that, through his care, the countries separated from the common cause would enter into his alliance, animate Gaul with the one thought, and cement a union capable of resisting the whole world. Then this fearless defender of the national independence shows his genius in taking advantage even of a misfortune to subject his ill-disciplined troops to the rough labours of war, and succeeds in convincing them of the necessity of retrenching their camp in the manner of the Romans, so as to protect it from surprise.