In Troubadour-Land/Appendix B

B.&mdash;THE CAMPAIGN OF MARIUS.

For determining this the following points must be settled:&mdash;

I. Where was his camp?

To fix the position of his camp we must see where he could best watch the barbarians cross the Rhone, in such a place as he would have his rear covered, and where he could keep open his communications with Rome, and receive both reinforcements and victuals.

Now there is absolutely no point that answers these requirements like S. Gabriel. It was certain that the barbarians would not cross at Arles, for they could not advance thence south of the chain of Les Alpines, owing to the lagoons and morasses, and the desert of the Great Crau. They must cross below Avignon and at or above Tarascon. Now, as they would almost certainly march along the high table-land that extends from Montpellier by Nimes to Beaucaire, and not wade through the marshes below these hills, they would arrive with dry feet at Beaucaire, and there, naturally would cross and follow up the valley of the Durance. S. Gabriel was a natural watch-tower, whence Marius could observe them. It is an ancient Roman settlement. Numerous Roman remains have been found there. Marius had but to mount the heights behind the little town, and he commanded all the country to the north-west and south for a vast distance. Then, again, by means of his canal, connecting the lagoons, he was able to bring ships with supplies under his walls. His canal opened out of the Etang de Galéjon, with a station at Fos, not at the exact entrance of the canal, which was low and marshy, but at the entrance of the channel of Martigues that opens into the Etang de Berre. Through Galéjon it ran north, cutting through a chain of lagoons, passed under Mont Majeur to S. Gabriel, and there probably received the waters, the overspill of the Durance, above Château Renard. Plutarch says that it was connected with the Rhone, but this was probably an error. Its course to S. Gabriel remained in use and falling into decay in the Middle Ages as the Canal des Lonnes. Between S. Gabriel and the Etang de Galéjon it could also be traced, and bore the name of Le Vigueirat. This canal of Marius was perfectly protected from the barbarians by the morasses that intervened between it and the Rhone.

II. To determine his march.

The old pre-Roman road from Nimes to Aix certainly followed the high and dry ground to Tarascon, thence traced up the valley of the Durance. It could no longer follow the high ground, as that is broken into limestone peaks, but it followed up the river below them, carried above the rubble of the Durance. The first station after Tarascon was Glanum, now S. Remi. Then it went to Orgon, where it touched the Durance for the first time, and whence branched the roads to Italy&mdash;one by Mont Genèvre, the other by Aix and the coast. I suppose that Marius, following the barbarians, he on the heights, they in the valley, observed the direction they took to right or to left, from the precipitous crags of Orgon. It must be remembered that Marius had an army made up of demoralised soldiers, who had escaped from defeat by the barbarians, and of raw levies, and all were in deadly fear of their savage foes, so that he dare not bring them to a pitched battle till they had become accustomed to the sight of the Teutons and Ambrons, and were themselves impatient to come to blows with them.

The host of invaders turned south towards Aix. Marius pursued: there can, I think, be little question that he pursued the same tactics, exchanging a sandstone range for one of limestone, and following them steadily step by step, keeping the heights.

Now, if the camp of Marius was at S. Gabriel, and if the Teutons marched up the Durance valley to Orgon, and then turned to Aix, then, it seemed to me, on the spot, that no one save an idiot in command of the Roman soldiers could have done anything else than strike for the sandstone ridge and march along that, still observing the enemy.

Another theory relative to the Roman road is that it ran south of the chain of Les Alpines. This would not matter for the course of Marius, but would explain the fact of the monument of Marius being found at Les Baux; and Les Baux would then be the cliff whence he watched the march of the barbarians.

III. To determine the position of the battles.

Plutarch does not distinguish between sites. He says that there were two battles separated from one another by two days, and that in the first Marius defeated the Ambrons. In the second he defeated the Teutons. He leaves us to infer that both battles were fought on the same field. But there are difficulties in supposing this.

1. The field of Pourrières does not answer the description of the first battle site; it does that of the second.

2. The Ambrons alone were engaged in the first battle, and no Teutons came to their help. We may therefore fairly suppose that the two great bodies of barbarian invaders had separated. 3. There was a very tempting bait, Marseilles lying to the south, inviting attack and pillage.

Following M. Gilles in his monograph on the campaign of Marius, I believe that the first battle was fought at Les Milles, the first station out of Aix on the Marseilles road, and that the Ambrons had parted company with the Teutons so as to try their luck with Marseilles, or perhaps only so as to ravage the coast, if they could make no impression on a walled city.

Now, the sandstone ridge along which Marius and his army were marching, as I suppose, ends abruptly above Les Milles. Below flows the river Are, making a loop in which is a rich green meadow, and under the hill ooze out countless rills of water. Indeed, the bottom of the hill is dense with irises loving the slushy percolated soil. There is no water on the sandstone heights. Here, if I am right, Marius came out and saw the Ambrons below, and wanted to form his camp, but was deterred by an engagement being begun by the water-carriers of the camp going down to the river and springs with their pails, and being attacked by the Ambrons. Aix lies away to the north in a broad basin, and at some little distance, two kilos., from the river. The battle could not have happened there. There is no other place save Les Milles where we have hill, river, green plain and springs together, as in Plutarch's narrative. Let us then suppose that Marius fought the first battle at Les Milles and there defeated the Ambrons. Those not slain would fly along the Aurelian road that leads from Aix through the plain of Pourrières, crosses a low col, and enters the valley of the Argens, and leads to Fréjus, where I suppose Teutons and Ambrons designed to meet again, and pursue their course westward together. In the meantime the Teutons had been advancing up the Are valley along the Aurelian way. A mile and a half out of Aix they reached the Are, five miles above Les Milles, and thence followed up the river for three miles, when they left it. Their road now lay due east before them, across the almost level plain of Pourrières, below the limestone precipice to the north of Mont Victoire. But there is a curious formation here. South of Mont Victoire is a semicircular sandstone chain, inferior in height, precipitous towards the plain, called Le Cengle, "the Belt," dying into the limestone mountain at the point where the latter attains its greatest altitude, above the village of Puyloubier. This sandstone girdle slopes easily inward to the precipice of Mont Victoire, and its rills flow together into a little stream that reaches the Are at the point where the Aurelian road left it, i.e. seven and a half miles from Aix.

M. Gilles supposes that Marius followed on the heels of the flying Ambrons along the Aurelian way, and that he detached Marcellus at this point to go up this little stream behind the Cengle and come out farther east so as to gain Pain de Munition.

I do not think this is tenable, for there is a long tract of bare hill-slope between the extremity of the Cingle and the conical fortified hill of Pain de Munition, and even if Marcellus were concealed whilst ascending this little lateral valley, he would emerge in full view of the barbarians for the last five or six miles of his march. My belief is that Marcellus was despatched up the valley of the Infernet, behind Mont Victoire, by which means his march would be concealed throughout, nor would it be much longer.

Also, I do not think that Marius pursued the Teutons the whole way along the road. According to Plutarch's account, the second time he came on them so as to cause them surprise. Again, if he had pursued a certain plan up to the first engagement, and it had succeeded, it is likely that he would follow the same plan up to the second and final engagement. Now hitherto he had kept to high ground always to the south of the advancing horde. From Les Milles he very probably, as I think, only followed the traces of the flying Ambrons along the road till he struck the Are in the open plain of Pourrières, and then at once crossed to the south bank of the river, and marched along on ground that slopes up to the south, so that he had the river between him and the enemy. If, as is probable, this hill-slope, along which the rail now runs, was then, more than now, dense with broom and pine, his march would not be seen by the enemy. And so I conclude Marius by a forced march reached Trets. Then, as I have said in my text, he had the enemy in a trap. Behind them was the fortified camp of Pain de Munition into which he had thrown Marcellus, and behind him he had the chain of Mont Aurélien and Mont Olympe, with another fortified camp. Between him and the enemy was a slope, and this was cut by streams that had torn their way through a friable marly soil. Moreover, he had a natural screen of rock between him and the enemy, with the low face towards him, and an easy slope towards the barbarians.

The actual site of the camp of the Teutons is fixed without very much doubt. They would certainly camp in the first available situation near water. Now they had been marching for five miles without water, and on reaching the Are at the station Tegulata, they found an admirable site, three tofts of dry level sandstone apparently made for their purpose. Moreover, opposite them is the ruin of the monument of Marius. About the ruin there might have been doubts whether it was Roman, and whether it referred to the victory, but for the discovery there of the statue of Venus Victrix, which sets that question at rest for ever.

M. Gilles supposes that the battle was fought along the road, when the Teutons saw Marius overtake them in pursuit, and that it began at a point about a mile due west, at Le Logis Neuf. If it had been so, then surely the monument would have been on the west side of Tegulata, and north of the Are. The tradition that it raged from north to south between the bridge and Trets is only of value from its being based on the masses of weapons, bronze and flint, found on the south side of the river, and not on the north.

There is something too to be said for what common sense would point out. Standing on the red sandstone hill above Les Milles, and looking at Aix, and away east, one tries to imagine the barbarian hordes marching along the Aurelian way; and then one asks, "Now had I to fight them, what would I do?" The answer I gave to myself was, "Common sense bids me make with forced marches away to Trets, keeping my flank protected by the river, and surprise them again." I am not a general&mdash;but it appeared to me that it would be hard for any one on the spot in the position of Marius, if he had his wits about him, not to see that the barbarians had given him a splendid chance, and that he must catch it, and take them unawares when they had stepped into his net.