Page:The Commentaries of Caesar.djvu/66

 years ago, and it certainly was very long;—nearly a hundred miles for Cæsar to every single one of those that were so terrible to us in the Crimea. Cæsar, however, carried but little with him beyond his arms and implements of war, and of those the heaviest he no doubt made as he went. The men had an allowance of corn per day, besides so much pay. We are told that the pay before Cæsar's time was 100 asses a-month for the legionaries,—the as being less than a penny,—and that this was doubled by Cæsar. We can conceive that the money troubled him comparatively slightly, but that the finding of the daily corn and forage for so large a host of men and horses must have been very difficult. He speaks of the difficulty often, but never with that despair which was felt as to the roasting of our coffee in the Crimea. We hear of his waiting till forage should have grown, and sometimes there are necessary considerations "de re frumentariâ,"—about that great general question of provisions; but of crushing difficulties very little is said, and of bad roads not a word. One great advantage Cæsar certainly had over Lord Raglan;—he was his own special correspondent. Coffee his men certainly did not get; but if their corn were not properly roasted for them, and if, as would be natural, the men grumbled, he had with him no licensed collector of grumbles to make public the sufferings of his men.

And now, when this affair of Galba's had been finished,—when Cæsar, as he tells us, really did think that all Gaul was "pacatam," tranquillised, or at least subdued,—the Belgians conquered, the Germans driven