by R. W. Peake
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In addition to the ditch, Caesar had us add sharpened stakes, along with his favorite lilies, which we no longer thought of as useless after seeing the damage they did at Alesia. We worked hard, making the men wonder if Caesar knew that an attack was imminent, but I assured them that he was simply being prudent. What I did not share with them was the information gathered by a combination of deserters and prisoners, who informed Caesar of the real numbers facing us. Scouts were sent out to confirm what he had been told, and they came galloping back with grim news. Scipio was approaching at the head of an army consisting of eight Legions and about 3,000 cavalry. Adding these numbers to those already in the field under Labienus and Petreius, we were once again significantly outnumbered. Compounding our problems was a continuing lack of supply, since we had been stopped from actually harvesting the grain we marched out to gather. Unfortunately, the enemy had not, so the bounty from those fields was now in their granaries and not ours. Caesar was sending ships to every point he could think of with requisitions, yet to that point, only small amounts had made it to us. To augment our forces, Caesar pulled the rowers and crew of the ships of the fleet, training them as missile troops. Most of the Centurions were doubtful of what use they would be with only a few days of training, though I suppose it was better than nothing. He also pressed some of the locals into the role of skirmisher to work in conjunction with our cavalry in the same manner as the enemy had used against us.
We were also running out of timber, so some of the ships were sent back to Sicily to get wood of sufficient length and quantity to make the number of towers that Caesar had decided we needed. The men worked from dawn until dusk, digging and chopping, so exhausted by the end of the day that they would trudge back to their tents, chew their food listlessly, make only the most desultory of conversation, then fall back into their bunks. The best result for the officers was that the punishment list was non-existent, as the men were too tired to make their normal mischief of sneaking out of camp to go into Ruspina, not that Ruspina was much of an attraction. As we strengthened our position, we passed the next few days in this manner..Scipio arrived, making camp next to the one already occupied by Labienus and Petreius, so of course it was not long before the one thing that Caesar wanted most to keep quiet became known, causing a near panic.
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“Scipio has elephants!”
I heard the words yelled down the Cohort street and leapt from my cot, cursing whoever it was that had uttered them, both the man who had just yelled out and whoever had told him. I only grabbed my vitus, leaving my tent ready to thrash someone. As is normal in these situations, the bringer of the bad news had chosen the evening meal, when all the men were gathered about their fires, so there was the maximum audience. There have always been, and I suspect always will be, men who thrive on being the bearer of bad tidings. The only blessing with a group as veteran as the 10th was that the list of suspects was relatively short and well known to all of the officers by this time. The men were on their feet, a sure sign that they were agitated, given their exhaustion, talking excitedly to their neighbors at the next fire or across their street.
“What the fuck are we supposed to do about elephants?”
“I’ve never seen one. Are they as big as people say they are?”
“Bigger than anything you can imagine. They step on you and you’re dead, no doubt about it.”
“It’s not their feet you have to worry about. It’s those damn tusks. They can spear three men just like chickens on a skewer.”
“Quiet!” I roared. I was happy to see the men immediately stop talking and while not coming to attention, at least shut up. “You sound like a bunch of old women! So what? The enemy has elephants. You’re the 10th Legion! How many times do we have to go through this, where you act like a bunch of scared tiros whenever something new pops up? Have you forgotten all the things we’ve faced over the years? And we have been and will always be victorious! So shut your mouths and eat your meal and let Caesar decide how to deal with the elephants!”
The men looked suitably ashamed, shuffling and looking at the ground, mumbling that they had gotten the message. With that, I turned to make my way to the next street over to repeat the same speech, knowing that I was going to have a long night before I was done. Being truthful, I was just as worried as the men were. I had never seen an elephant in anything but chains, and that had been relatively recently in Alexandria, the beast being part of the large menagerie of animals belonging to the Ptolemies. It was huge, dwarfing even as large a man as myself, which was a distinctly uncomfortable feeling. I had been told by Apollonius that when used for war, the animals were covered in armor plating, while a miniature fort was strapped atop their backs where several men, usually archers or javelineers were perched. They had a driver as well, but from everything I had been told before, the animals are notoriously hard to control, prone to fits of temper that make them almost as dangerous to their own side as to the enemy, which was why Caesar disdained using them. The biggest effect of elephants is psychological, and that effect was clear to see on the men before they even laid eyes on one, but as bad as it was with the 10th, it was much worse with the youngsters in the other Legions. They were positively beside themselves, as for a day or two it was the only topic of conversation, with the men getting closer and closer to the point of hysteria. Finally, the Primus Pilus of the 5th Legion came to Caesar with a request that they be given the responsibility for combating the elephants, a gesture that the rest of the army simultaneously thanked them for and thought them quite out of their collective minds for doing. Nonetheless, it had the effect of quelling the fears of the army, and while it was never confirmed, I smelled the hand of Caesar in this.
Speaking of Caesar, he was in an increasingly foul temper, spending a good part of the day down at the docks simply standing there looking out to sea for the rest of the army to arrive. We were still waiting for the rest of the 10th to arrive, as well as the other Spanish Legions, while I was waiting in particular for Diocles to show up. I was getting tired of all the paperwork I was being forced to do, though I pushed as much on Silanus as I could. As Caesar kept vigil over the sea, we kept working. The enemy’s vast superiority in numbers of cavalry meant that we could not venture outside of the camp, instead having to rely on our supply by sea. This in turn meant that we had to deal with constant and chronic shortages of food and materials, as we were still waiting for the shipments from Cercina, Sardinia and other points. Somewhere in that time came further bad news, when word reached Caesar that King Juba of Numidia himself was coming with the rest of the Numidian army that was not already with Scipio and his bunch. He was supposed to be less than a week’s march away when we learned, sending the morale of the army even lower than it had been with news of the elephants. We were even forced to dry out seaweed in a manner similar to what we had done in Alexandria as fodder for the horses, yet unlike the forage from the lake, this had to be rinsed thoroughly of all salt water before it was edible for the animals. The wagering in camp was running very strongly that as soon as Juba joined the Pompeians, they would not waste any time in attacking. I was reminded more and more with each passing day of the conversation I had with Scribonius, and I was beginning to think that perhaps this time the gods had turned away from Caesar for good. Just as suddenly, the gods turned back and, if not smiling at Caesar, at least they were favoring him with their gaze. Finally, Caesar’s forays down to the docks finally paid off, a fleet of ships finally sighted, making their way for Ruspina. The ships carried the 13th and 14th Legions, along with another 800 Gallic cavalry and 1,000 archers. A second convoy arrived at roughly the same time, this one carrying the grain from Cecerna, relieving our supply situation temporarily, as Caesar began making plans to start offensive actions again. While the Legions were occupied in strengthening our defenses, the cavalry had been running regular patrols. There were clashes between our horsemen and the Pompeians on a daily basis, with both sides taki
ng and inflicting casualties. Hopefully our turn would come to get stuck into the enemy, as the men were heartily sick of digging, but as usual, Caesar was not sharing what he had in mind with anyone, because if he had we would have realized that the digging had just begun.
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Now that we had more veterans salting our ranks, Caesar ordered us to prepare to move out and leave this camp behind. All we were told was that we were going to march to the town of Uzita, which was one of Scipio’s main supply bases, with the twin goal of denying Scipio while relieving some of the pressure on our own situation. Scipio was marching his army out of his camp to array for battle every morning, but Caesar was not having any part of it, completely ignoring the challenge. I suspect that Scipio was making this move knowing that Caesar was not likely to give battle, but needed a way to instill in his raw troops a sense of superiority, for that was what the Pompeian force was almost exclusively composed of in the Legions, raw tirones. If the rumors were true, many of them were pressed into service against their will. In fact, the Pompeians had been exceedingly heavy-handed with the local populace, so much so that once the natives finally accepted that it was indeed Caesar who had landed, and not one of his generals, they were coming in increasing numbers to ask for Caesar’s protection from their supposed guardians. Like so many of the upper classes, Scipio, Labienus, and the rest of that lot had assumed that the natives would offer not just obedience but support, thinking that it was nothing more than their due. When it had not been as enthusiastically forthcoming as they thought it should be, these noblemen exacted reprisals against the populace. Now the leading citizens of many of the towns were coming to Caesar in response to the Pompeians’ actions, with one of those delegations coming from the town of Uzita, telling Caesar that if he appeared before their walls, they would throw open the gates to the city. The problem was that we had to get there, despite still being significantly outnumbered, particularly with cavalry. The ground between our camp and Uzita, which lay slightly to the southeast, was an entirely open plain, with no undulations in the terrain if we were to take the most direct route.
With a force of infantry to block our way, Scipio could use his cavalry in the manner that we had encountered during the previous battle that had given us so many problems, thereby whittling us down. We would reach Uzita, but a trail of bodies would be a clear marker of our passage, losses that we could ill afford. Directly south of our camp was a line of low ridges, running roughly from the northeast to the southwest, with Uzita directly west of these hills. We left the camp at Ruspina under the guard of a few Cohorts, then began marching parallel to the coast, using the line of hills to screen our intentions from Scipio, whose own camp was perhaps a mile to the north of Uzita, directly blocking the natural line of approach from Ruspina. Moving south, we marched within sight of the sea. Once the bulk of the army passed the northern-most hill of the ridge, obscuring Scipio’s view of our march, we turned inland. The hills were not much, yet given that the surrounding terrain was as flat as a table, it meant these heights commanded the valley that lay between the ridge and Uzita, so Caesar immediately ordered that we fortify the ridgeline. There was also a series of hilltops running the length of the ridge, which we were ordered to fortify as well. It turned out that there was an enemy outpost on the next to last of the hilltops to the south, a small force of Numidian infantry and cavalry that was scattered quickly. However, now our presence was no longer a secret.
As we worked, we saw the Pompeian force streaming from their camp to array themselves for battle. A large contingent of enemy cavalry detached itself from the main body, then came galloping across the plain towards us, meeting the fleeing Pompeian sentries a few hundred yards out on the plain from the base of the western slope of the ridge. The cavalry stopped briefly as the leader talked to the sentries, obviously asking about the size and composition of our force, then pressed on, heading towards us at a gallop. Caesar immediately saw an opportunity, because the enemy cavalry now at the base of the slope had far outpaced the rest of their army and isolated themselves. He sent our own cavalry, still on the opposite side of the ridge and out of view, circling around the southern end to get in the rear of the enemy cavalry. Helping our cause was a large farm building located at the base of the slope at the southern edge that further shielded our men, allowing them to circle all the way around to fall on the Pompeian rear, just as their horses were ascending the slope, forcing them to slow down. Our force slammed into the rear ranks of the enemy horse, catching them completely by surprise and it was only a matter of moments before a panic ensued as the men further toward the front became aware of the threat to their rear.
As they drew closer, we could see that the enemy force was composed of Numidians, Germans, and Gauls in almost equal proportions. True to their nature and as we had seen before, the Numidians broke contact to go galloping across the face of the slope to escape. The Germans and Gauls chose to stay and fight, where they were quickly surrounded, then cut down to the last man. The sight of this slaughter so infected the advancing infantry with fear that they turned en masse, fleeing back to their camp, running for their lives though nobody pursued. We stopped working to watch the spectacle of an entire army running for their lives without shedding a drop of blood, giving us a lift of spirits to see it.
While we were constructing the redoubts, Caesar, seeing that the slope of the hill was not much of an impediment to a determined assault, ordered a ditch dug about halfway down the slope, running the entire length of the ridgeline, which extended for more than a mile. This sounds like a great distance, and it is, but when you have several thousand men, all of them with as much experience at digging as we had, it is not as much work as it may seem. Of course, that is said as a Centurion who had not shoveled a spadeful of dirt in some time, so perhaps I am not speaking truthfully. Regardless, we dug the ditch, piling the spoil on the uphill side of the ridge to act as a further barrier should the Pompeians want to dislodge us from our position. One of the Legions was sent to build our marching camp on the eastern side of the ridgeline at the base of the hills. It was there that we retired at the end of the day, the men filthy and tired, complaining every step of the march back about all the work they had done. Century-sized guards were posted on each of the redoubts on the top to keep watch of Scipio’s camp, but we were all certain that after seeing the display they had put on earlier, we would be sleeping soundly that night, and we did.
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The performance of Scipio’s tirones convinced Caesar that it would be wise to put more pressure on the Pompeians, so at the evening briefing we were informed that we would be arraying to offer battle the next morning.
“I seriously doubt that he'll accept the challenge, but we must be prepared for that eventuality,” Caesar told us. “To that end, we're going to treat this as if we are going to fight. You all know by now what I expect from the men and I know that you won't let me down.”
I, for one, knew that the men were not going to be happy, not about the idea of going into battle, but that Caesar always expected the men to look as if they were on parade, with all decorations and plumes in place and in perfect order. That meant that after a hard day’s work of digging, they would have a hard night’s work of polishing and cleaning. Such is the lot of the Legions.
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We marched out the next day, climbing over the hill, then descending down to the valley floor, where we deployed into the aciestriplex, aligning so that the center of the army was directly across from the town of Uzita. This meant that we were at the point closest to Scipio’s camp, but he would have to align himself more or less in the same way to protect the town. As we approached, we could hear the sound of their bucina floating through the air, calling the Pompeians to formation. I must admit, however grudgingly, that it did not take as long as I thought it would for them to begin streaming out of the camp from all four gates, hurrying to form up across from us, while we had halted to dress our lines. Once that was done, we
watched as Scipio’s army arrayed itself. Unlike our own three-line formation, Scipio employed four lines, with his cavalry in the front line acting as a screen. With Scipio’s army moving into position, the order was given to advance, but we only went another couple hundred paces before halting again, which is where we stayed. The Pompeians did not move either, as we began a now-familiar staring contest. Fortunately, we were too far away from each other for the men to hurl insults, so it was quiet for the most part, with only a low buzz as the men talked quietly while we waited.
Perhaps a third of a watch after we moved into position, the rain started, a ripple of curses reaching my ears as the men saw all the hard work with their plumes and leathers literally melt away. The blacking we used for our plumes started running, streaking the men’s armor where the horsehair touched it, while the varnish on the leather dissolved after a few moments exposure. There would be a huge mess to clean up whenever we were done, which did not help the spirits of the army knowing what immediately awaited them. Still we stood, neither side moving, as it became apparent that Scipio did not have enough confidence in his army to go on the offensive. He did have the advantage of better ground, there being a gentle slope up to where the town sat, and Caesar was never one to fight on unfavorable ground if he could avoid it. The rain continued the rest of the day, through to about sunset, when we were turned about to march back to camp, sodden and miserable, our cavalry staying as a screen in the event the Pompeians suddenly took advantage of our retreat. We spent the evening cleaning our gear, the downpour continuing, turning the streets to a thick, sticky mud that clung to everything it touched, compounding our misery. At the evening briefing, Caesar informed us that he had decided that we would not repeat the tactic of the day. Instead, he wanted to extend the trenchline further south, basically lengthening the rest of the line all the way to the southernmost point where the slope started, wrapping it around to protect our left flank.
