While Cæsar was in Britain, the oppression of the Romans, and the lawlessness of the soldiers, caused the grand rising of the Eburones under Ambiorix: this was the most propitious undertaking which this people could have attempted. A whole legion under L. Titurius was annihilated, and another under Q. Cicero nearly so. Had not Cæsar given up his somewhat Quixotic expedition to Britain, Q. Cicero would even have been utterly lost; luckily, however, he returned. On the other hand, the Aquitanians were conquered by Crassus; and thus Cæsar, in the beginning of the seventh year of his proconsulship, was master of the whole of Gaul. An insurrection then broke out which had been long brewing, that of Vercingetorix, and among those tribes which until then had always been faithful to the Romans. This war, from its vastness, from the rage and dogged determination of the Gauls, and also on account of Cæsar’s great generalship in it, highly deserves indeed to be read. Cæsar here overcame, by sheer superiority of talent, armies which far outnumbered his own. Headed by the Æduans and Arvernians, who, before that had always been jealous of each other,—the Æduans, however, rose somewhat later,—the peoples from the Saone to the Ocean, and from the Loire to the Cevennes, were in open revolt: the Arvernian Vercingetorix showed himself worthy of the choice which his nation had made of him. The outbreak of the war was attended with barbarity and cruelty: in Genabum, the present Orleans, all the Romans who happened to be there, were massacred. Cæsar was then in the north of Gaul; but he instantly started for the south, the Belgians in his rear remaining perfectly still. He reduced Orleans and avenged the murder of the Romans, and he also took Bourges, after a long siege and a very brave defence: then he penetrated into what is now Auvergne. Near Gergovia, above Clermont, the war was for some time at a stand. Cæsar himself suffered a defeat, in which he lost a legion, and found himself obliged to raise the siege. The Æduans also having now risen, the seat of war was transferred to Alesia, between Autun and Langres, in their country. This town, into which many thousand Gauls had thrown themselves, Cæsar besieged with the utmost skill: on the other hand, he was pressed upon by the great Vercingetorix with a powerful army. In one of those skirmishes which took place in many points with varying success, Cæsar was once made prisoner by the Gauls; but good luck, or rather providence, which had destined him to great things, enabled him to escape owing to the folly of a Gaul. This was the account which Cæsar himself gave of this matter.[9] But it is much more likely, that just as Napoleon, in May 1800, bribed an Austrian patrol into the hands of which he had fallen when reconnoitring, Cæsar also got off by offering money to a Gallic soldier. If he told the man that he would give him a million, the fellow would be sure to let him go free, as Vercingetorix would at most have