Black Mischief was Evelyn Waugh’s third novel, published in 1932. It very obviously recycles material from his six-month-long trip to Ethiopia and then along the East Coast of Africa which he had chronicled in the previous year’s travelogue, Remote People (1931).
The novel describes the efforts of Seth, the young English-educated Emperor of ‘Azania’, a fictional island off the East coast of Africa, based loosely on Zanzibar, to modernise his Empire, aided by the 28-year-old scapegrace and ne’er-do-well, Basil Seal.
Jaded author of jaded characters
Having just finished reading Vile Bodies and still reeling from its shockingly nihilistic ending, I think I can understand why Waugh leapt at the opportunity of fleeing rancid England. He had gone, as a temporary foreign correspondent for a London newspaper, to go and cover the coronation of the Emperor Haile Selassie in November 1930. The disgust and misanthropy which becomes slowly more obvious in Vile Bodies goes a long way to explaining why he felt the need to get clean away from the shallow party culture he describes in that book.
This hunch was confirmed a third of the way into the novel by the book’s leading character, Basil Seal, who is depicted as sick and tired of the posh, jaded, endlessly partying circles he moves in. Here he is talking to a crusty old colonel at his club:
‘Don’t you hate London?’
‘Eh?’
‘Don’t you hate London?’
‘No, I do not. Lived here all my life. Never get tired of it. Fellow who’s tired of London is tired of life.’
‘Don’t you believe it,’ said Basil. ‘I’m going away for some time,’ he told the hall-porter as he left the club.
And a bit later, talking to Lady Metroland:
‘I want to go abroad. I’ve been in England too long.’
And, a little later, to his mother:
‘You see I’m fed up with London and English politics. I want to get away.’
So it’s repeated three times. Sick to death of London life and desperate to escape. No ambiguity about Basil’s motives, then.
Waugh’s recurring characters
Basil starts out in a London full of the same cast of characters we encountered in Waugh’s first novel, Decline and Fall, and who were expanded in the sequel, Vile Bodies – people like Lady Metroland (who played such a central role in Decline and Fall), her son Peter Pastmaster, Lord Monomark the owner of the Daily Excess, whose gossip columnists played a central role in Vile Bodies, Sonia Trumpington who keeps a genuinely bohemian menage with husband Alisdair and who Basil visits before his departure. In an atmosphere of loucheness significantly further down the line than anything in Bodies we find the couple in bed and their bedroom littered with drunk or passed-out young men whose names they don’t even know. It’s that kind of behaviour, which Basil himself is expert at, which he has grown sick of.
Thousands of Europeans for well over a century had fled to the colonies to leave behind unsatisfactory lives and reinvent themselves. Obviously Waugh didn’t become a settler or anything like, but the complete change of scene offered by this sudden opportunity to become an (albeit temporarily) freelance journalist, allowed him to apply his forensic gaze and lucid style in a new way. It gave him radically new subject matter and a drastic new variety of characters to depict. To mercilessly describe what he saw in the wildly different setting of a rundown, backward and sometimes barbarous African nation. And then, being a professional, to recycle the everything he’d seen into the humorous and satirical exaggerations of this novel.
Black Mischief’s prose more solid and descriptive
What is immediately and strikingly different is the abandonment of some of the modish techniques in Vile Bodies. That novel gives the impression of being mostly made up of dialogue, the brittle, mannered dialogue of febrile London society, sometimes page after page of only dialogue and, in particular, the telephone conversations of the shallow young couple, Adam and Nina which Waugh was, rightly, proud of.
On the first few pages you realise Black Mischief is a different thing entirely. Describing London, even with satirical intent, had been done to death. It had been done by Dickens and Conan Doyle and E.M. Forster and Virginia Woolf and Aldous Huxley and a thousand lesser known writers. Waugh does it very well when he wants to, he can knock off beautifully lyrical paragraphs when they need to be deployed. But not often, and short.
Whereas a fictional African country gave Waugh the opportunity to write huge chunks of descriptive prose, much of it recycled or reworked from the travel book, which is genuinely fresh and unusual and flavoursome.
For two centuries the Arabs remained masters of the coast. Behind them in the hills the native Sakuyu, black, naked, anthropophagous, had lived their own tribal life among their herds — emaciated, puny cattle with rickety shanks and elaborately branded hide. Farther away still lay the territory of the Wanda — Galla immigrants from the mainland who, long before the coming of the Arabs, had settled in the north of the island and cultivated it in irregular communal holdings. The Arabs held aloof from the affairs of both these people; war drums could often be heard inland and sometimes the whole hillside would be aflame with burning villages. On the coast a prosperous town arose: great houses of Arab merchants with intricate latticed windows and brass-studded doors, courtyards planted with dense mango trees, streets heavy with the reek of cloves and pineapple, so narrow that two mules could not pass without altercation between their drivers; a bazaar where the money changers, squatting over their scales, weighed out the coinage of a world-wide trade, Austrian thalers, rough stamped Mahratta gold, Spanish and Portuguese guineas. From Matodi the dhows sailed to the mainland, to Tanga, Dar-es-Salaam, Malindi and Kismayu, to meet the caravans coming down from the great lakes with ivory and slaves. Splendidly dressed Arab gentlemen paraded the water-front hand in hand and gossiped in the coffee houses. In early spring when the monsoon was blowing from the north-east, fleets came down from the Persian Gulf bringing to market a people of fairer skin who spoke a pure Arabic barely intelligible to the islanders, for with the passage of years their language had become full of alien words — Bantu from the mainland, Sakuyu and Galla from the interior — and the slave markets had infused a richer and darker strain into their Semitic blood; instincts of swamp and forest mingled with the austere tradition of the desert.
The prose itself is like a tropical fruit, sumptuous and full of flavour.
Civil war in Azania
In actual fact the opening chapter is a little confusing. It hardly reads like Waugh at all. He clearly decided to make the most complete break possible with the world of Decline and Bodies.
Instead the opening chapter of Black Mischief plunges the reader straight into the confusion and anarchy which prevails in, Matodi, the port town of its fictional island nation Azania, amid the civil war prompted by the death of the old empress. Young prince of the realm Seth should have inherited the throne but instead has faced a rebellion led by prince Seyid.
The enemy army has appeared camping on a hill outside the town. During a long night of fear and paranoia everyone, including the emperor, expects them to enter Matodi the next day and trigger a bloodbath.
There are some very unpleasant episodes in which a noted Armenian merchant is threatened with hanging by troops who want to discover where he’s hidden one of the last boats on the island so they can escape. The emperor’s canny Indian scribe, Ali, is first interrogated and then strangled to death, making an awful shrieking sound in the courtyard outside Seth’s chambers. The entire chapter, its setting, the mood and its details are utterly unlike Waugh. They feel much more modern. They reminded me of the John Updike novel, The Coup or the hard, violent atmosphere of Chinua Achebe’s Anthills of the Savannah.
But the next morning it turns out that the army camping in the hills outside town was not the enemy army, but forces loyal to the emperor led by the Irish mercenary, General Connolly. Early the next morning he rides into town on a donkey followed by his victorious army to tell the emperor he has won, the emperor’s crown is secure, Seyid is defeated.
Is Seyid alive, can he be brought before Seth? Er, no. Connolly regrets to inform the emperor that Seyid surrendered to a party of the hard core native tribe, the Wanda, and that they, er, killed and ate him. So far so gruesome. It is very Waugh that it is only at this rather startling moment, that we receive the further startling news that Seyid was Seth’s father (!)
‘They should not have eaten him — after all, he was my father . . . It is so . . . so barbarous.’
‘I knew you’d feel that way about it, Seth, and I’m sorry. I gave the headmen twelve hours in the tank for it.’
The reference is to the one and only tank which Seth had purchased in Europe, wishing to make his army more up to date. Seth wants everything in his country to be modern and European. However, Connolly informs him that the tank turned out to be completely useless in jungle warfare until he found an alternative use for it. Since it heated up so quickly in the tropical sunlight, it turned out to be a good punishment cell. Hence locking the offending headman up in it for 12 hours for eating Seth’s father, a fierce punishment.
(Connolly, we learn, was previously an Irish game-warden. He has taken a local wife, who he lovingly refers to as ‘Black Bitch’, which scandalises everyone in the novel, and will scandalise any young modern reader, but the point is they are genuinely in love, he defends her, is faithful to her and she sticks by him right to the end of the story.)
The British diplomats in Azania
Having thoroughly undermined our expectations and landed us in a strange and terrible foreign setting, the narrative then switches to an extensive description of the British diplomatic community in Azania, who have been hunkering down during this regrettable war.
They are a collection of ripe caricatures, posh, nonchalant, stiff-upper-lip types, showily obsessed with trivia and utterly indifferent to the progress of the war or the two opposing sides, the names of whose leaders they affect to forget, in that blithe, dismissive, posh English way (same as Lottie Crump introducing frightfully important people as ‘Lord thingummy-jig’).
‘His Britannic Majesty’s minister, Sir Samson Courteney’ is more concerned about the frequency with which the cook serves up tinned asparagus every day than the perishing war, and likes to relax by having a long bath in the morning and a spot of knitting in the evening.
Lady Courtenay is full of empty tittle tattle about the doings of the small British community, especially their children, which schools they’re going to, how they’re managing with their various ponies. Her main concern is securing cuttings from London to continue embellishing the splendid little English garden she’s been cultivating at the Legation.
The Courtenays have a frivolous daughter, Prudence, who is in love with more or less the only eligible young man available, William Bland, the honorary attaché and assistant to Sir Samson. Sometimes the rather earnest bishop pops round for luncheon but the legation buildings are an inconvenient seven miles out of town along a bad road so he always ends up staying the night, which turns into a trial for all concerned. With the handful of other posh Brits who work at the Legation, they play endless games of bridge or poker dice or bagatelle, or Happy Families or consequences.
Prudence is writing a deep and meaningful book titled The Panorama of Life and Waugh shares with us some of her witless, factually incorrect vapourings. It is a cast of jolly English innocents abroad.
It is a running joke that the little French diplomatic community, led by Monsieur Ballon, are fierce rivals with the British and live in paranoid fear that the Brits are getting one over on them, are scheming and plotting and up to something, a seething paranoia which is satirically contrasted with the actual activities of the Brits, which are sleeping late, having long baths, supping cocktails before a long lunch, fussing about their roses or gymkhana ponies, having a nap in the afternoon, before dressing for an elaborate dinner and then spending all evening playing bridge – completely oblivious of French paranoia.
The rivalry is exemplified in the way William translates a top secret cable from London and breathlessly presents it to Sir Samuel (‘Kt to QR3 CH’) only to be told it contains the latest chess move young Percy is playing with a chap at the Foreign Office. Whereas the French – who are, inevitably, spying on the British and hacking into their cables –suspect this very same chess move of being an extra-secret code conveying some kind of diabolical Anglo-Saxon plot.
Enter Basil Seal
It is only at this point, maybe a third of the way into the text of the novel, that we are first introduced to its protagonist, Basil Seal, who we first encounter in characteristically jaded, post-party mode:
For the last four days Basil had been on a racket. He had woken up an hour ago on the sofa of a totally strange flat. There was a gramophone playing. A lady in a dressing jacket sat in an armchair by the gas-fire, eating sardines from the tin with a shoe-horn. An unknown man in shirt-sleeves was shaving, the glass propped on the chimneypiece.
The man had said: ‘Now you’re awake you’d better go.’
The woman: ‘Quite thought you were dead.’
Basil: ‘I can’t think why I’m here.’
‘I can’t think why you don’t go.’
‘Isn’t London hell?’
‘On a racket’. 1930s slang. Basil traipses round various friends, pops into Lady Metroland’s party, then goes to see his mother, basically to cadge money off anyone who’ll lend him five hundred quid to go to Africa. Why? Because, as he puts it, history only happens in a few places at any one time, and it’s happening right now in Azania. And he needs a break from London. Badly.
In the event the older, married women he’s having an affair with, Angela Lyne, coughs up the money which allows Basil to pack and leave London, flying from Croydon airport to Le Bourget, catch the train south to Marseilles, and so by steamer across the Med, down the Red Sea to Djibouti (exactly the itinerary Waugh himself took on his three journeys out to Ethiopia – except for the flying, Waugh caught a train across France) to arrive at the fictional island of ‘Azania’.
As well as throwing away all the advantages he has been given in life (for example, he was handed a safe Conservative seat which would have allowed him to become a Tory MP with almost no effort, but managed to throw away the opportunity) Basil is a thief. At the interview with his mother in her boudoir he nicks her expensive emerald broach and flogs it for a fraction of its price at Port Said. He shares a cabin on the ship to Djibouti, and his cabin mate only realises a few days after Basil’s departure that he’s nicked his shaving soap, bedroom slippers and ‘fine topee’. Like all Waugh’s characters, Basil is a cartoon but a complex cartoon.
Basil in Azania
Basil’s first impressions of Azania are described in luxurious detail. See the long paragraph I quoted at the start. He travels from the coastal port of Motadi to the nation’s capital, Debra Dowa, in the centre of the island. Basil’s impressions and journey overlap with scenes showing Seth impatiently telling his advisers what he needs is a modern man, a European, to help him bring Progress and the New Age to Azania.
We never see the scene where the two men meet or converse or Seth realising Basil is the man for the job. Instead the narrative jumps to a new chapter in which we find Basil already in charge of the ‘Ministry of Modernisation’. His official title if High Commissioner and Comptroller General. While still in the coastal town of Modati (where the narrative opened) Basil had come across the services of the excellent Armenian, Mr Krikor Youkoumian, owner of the Amurath Café and Universal Stores in Motadi. It is a pleasant joke that Basil makes Mr Youkoumian his number two, and very able he proves to be.
(It is worth remembering that in Remote People Waugh says that of the hundreds of people he met, it was two Armenians who stood out as the most steadfast and dependable, and he gives a little dithyramb praising their nation.)
Anyway, Basil has been commissioned by the Emperor Seth to modernise his country. What does this mean in practice? Oh, lots of things. First they must undertake a complete ‘reform of manners’. The capital, Debra Dowa, must be torn down and rebuilt in the modern style. Instead of wiggly lanes lined by low shanties, there must be a grand square, named Seth Square, with broad avenues radiating outwards (one to be called Boulevard Basil Seal, another the Avenue Connolly). Seth asks if they can build an underground tube network. Er, no.
He becomes obsessed with the topic of birth control. (It’s fascinating that the idea that women in developing countries must be given free birth control and education so they can stop being baby machines and become modern women in control of their bodies, educated into working in offices at modern jobs – that all this was familiar enough to be included in a comic novel 90 years ago. Thus Seth demands that the Anglican cathedral must be torn down and the square it’s set on be renamed Place Marie Stopes.)
Seth generates an ever-growing list of demands for reforms he has read about in all the European books and magazines which pile up on his tables, all for the cause of Progress and the New Age. This comic thread climaxes in a note he sends Basil:
For your information and necessary action, I have decided to abolish the following: Death penalty. Marriage. The Sakuyu language and all native dialects. Infant mortality. Totemism. Inhuman butchery. Mortgages. Emigration. Please see to this. Also organize system of reservoirs for city’s water supply and draft syllabus for competitive examination for public services. Suggest compulsory Esperanto.
His next fad is money and he decides to produce a home-made currency (with his own portrait on them) which he enthusiastically prints by the thousand in contravention to all economic orthodoxy. Basil is, by now, too tired and harassed by the emperor’s endless fads, to even try to talk him out of it. The worthlessness of the new currency provides a recurring thread of comedy from then on.
Growing opposition
All these changes generate opposition across a wide range of society. First to go into opposition is General Connolly. He strongly resents Seth interfering with the army which preserved him in power. There’s an extended comic theme whereby Seth decides the army must have boots, modern boots, European boots, like a European army. General Connolly is furious, explaining that the natives’ feet are tough enough to tramp through jungle whereas Western-style boots will give them blisters, infections and trench foot. Nonetheless, there is an extended comic thread as Mr Youkoumia hunts around for an importer of European boots, finds one, has them delivered in a big pile at Connolly’s barracks.
Connolly storms into Basil’s office and we wonder if he’s going to announce a mutiny but instead tells Basil that… his men ate all the boots (and then claimed they tasted more nutritious than their standard rations).
Then the birth control campaign arouses the ire of the churches. They are led by the leading Christian in the country, the Nestorian Patriarch who rallies the Chief Rabbi, the Mormon Elder and the chief representatives of all the creeds of the Empire against contraception and in favour of the decencies of married life etc. (Nestorianism is a Christian ‘heresy’ i.e. a branch of Christianity which early on diverged from what later became recognised as orthodox belief, was stifled in Catholic Western Europe but continued to flourish in the Middle East, hence then Patriarch’s authority here in remote Azania.)
Finally the French. M. Ballon and the French contingent hate and fear whatever the English are doing so they are infuriated by the influence the scapegrace Englishman has over the emperor. Only French scapegraces should have influence over African emperors.
Basil and Prudence
Basil has affair with Prudence Courtenay. She is a fresh young English rose, he is a dashing, handsome scapegrace, who never shaves or looks presentable but is tall and strong and manly and powerful. Of course, in the real world women are never attracted to tall, dark, handsome and rather dangerous men.
The RSPCA
Into the mix are thrown two prim, proper and high-minded ladies who arrive from England, Dame Mildred Porch and Miss Sarah Tin, on a mission to support animal welfare.
Their arrival is signalled at the start of a new chapter which opens with a refreshing change of modality or medium, namely from authorial narrative, to the texts of Dame Mildred’s letters back to her hubby in England complaining about pretty much every aspect of Azanian life.
This starts with the slapdash and almost insolent behaviour of the young attaché (William Bland) who is sent to collect them from the train station but makes it pretty plain his first priority is the monthly mail bag (complete with brand new records and magazines) rather than the two misses.
There isn’t space in his little car for the mail bag, the ladies and Miss Tin’s large trunk, which he leaves at the station assuring them he’ll send for it later and it becomes a running joke that this trunk never is retrieved and Miss Tin spends the rest of her stay bitterly complaining about it and having to borrow clothes.
The contraception campaign
The emperor’s contraception and family planning campaign becomes more feverish. He cares not that it will overthrow all native culture, both black African and Arab, by insisting on enforced birth control and smaller families. There’s a comic passage about a modern poster he gets made up and put everywhere showing two families.
It portrayed two contrasted scenes. On one side a native hut of hideous squalor, overrun with children of every age, suffering from every physical incapacity — crippled, deformed, blind, spotted and insane; the father prematurely aged with paternity squatted by an empty cook-pot; through the door could be seen his wife, withered and bowed with child-bearing, desperately hoeing at their inadequate crop. On the other side a bright parlour furnished with chairs and table; the mother, young and beautiful, sat at her ease eating a huge slice of raw meat; her husband smoked a long Arab hubble-bubble (still a caste mark of leisure throughout the land), while a single healthy child sat between them reading a newspaper. Inset between the two pictures was a detailed drawing of some up-to-date contraceptive apparatus and the words in Sakuyu: which home do you choose?
The comedy comes in the way the entire native population fails to get the message and picks the wrong home:
See: on right hand: there is rich man: smoke pipe like big chief: but his wife she no good; sit eating meat: and rich man no good: he only one son.
See: on left hand: poor man: not much to eat: but his wife she very good, work hard in field: man he good too: eleven children: one very mad, very holy. And in the middle: Emperor’s juju. Make you like that good man with eleven children.
It all leads up to the great Pageant of Contraception complete with floats depicting the Modern Woman, empowered by birth control to lead modern economically productive lives.
Achon the pretender
Meanwhile the emperor’s enemies have joined forces. The central trio of Connolly, Patriarch and Ballon realise they’ll need someone to replace Seth when they overthrow him. They have heard rumours that a long-lost cousin of Seth’s, Achon, a son of the Great Emperor Amurath, was seized by Amurath’s daughter (the Empress whose recent death signalled Seth’s ascension) and sent away to be incarcerated for life in the remote monastery of St Mark the Evangelist.
He must be pushing 90 now, but the trio command the Earl of Ngumo, a comically traditionalist black chieftain, to journey through the jungle to the remote monastery and retrieve him. (The monastery itself, down to its layout and description of its ceremonies, is clearly based on the monastery of Debra Lebanos which Waugh visited on his 1930 trip and described in great (comic) detail in Remote People.)
There then follow long and canny negotiations between the Earl and the ancient Abbot about whether Achon was ever taken there, if so whether he’s still alive, if he’s still alive, how much it will cost to take Ngumo to him. This takes days, the stylised and formal discussions ringing very true and testifying to Waugh’s first hand experience of this kind of culture.
When finally revealed, it turns out Achon is pushing ninety and has been kept for decades in a cave chained to the wall. He can’t walk and can’t talk and has no idea what’s happening to him. So this is the walking skeleton the Earl of Ngumo brings back to the capital, where he is kept a secret by the trio of conspirators.
The pageant of contraception
And so the day dawns for the dramatic climax of the book, the great Birth Control Gala commences, a great festival day for the population of Debra Dowa. In a nice narrative decision Waugh doesn’t describe the thing as an omniscient narrator, but makes us see the entire thing from the point of view of Dame Mildred Porch and Miss Tin, whose hotel room overlooks the town’s main street but is quickly so overrun by uninvited guests that they decamp up to the corrugated metal roof of the hotel, with its short concrete parapet, to enjoy the scene.
Unfortunately, what they witness is the chaotic coup staged by Connolly, the Patriarch and Ballon. The procession of floats of the Modern Woman and Girl Guides carrying inspiring banners (“WOMEN OF TOMORROW DEMAND AN EMPTY CRADLE”, “THROUGH STERILITY TO CULTURE”) is suddenly interrupted by gunfire, the screaming of crowds, and then machine gunfire as troops move in.
After a long, confused and terrified afternoon trapped on the hotel roof in the blazing sun, as night finally falls the two women hear pukka English voices coming from down in the street. It is none other than young William from the Legation who has come to check they are OK. He is about to drive off when they chuck a whiskey bottle then a pillow down at his car which delays him long enough for them to run down the stairs and into the street and insist that he take them to the British Legation, despite his protestations and the knowledge that he’ll get it in the ear from his boss, Sir Sampson, who hates the even peacefulness of Legation life being disturbed in any way. Even by a coup.
The coronation of Achon
Again the omniscient narrator is ditched in favour of retailing the confused events of the next few days as they trickle through to the British Legation, isolated and fearful, 6 or 7 miles from the capital. Word comes through that Seth survived the coup but has fled.
Then we cut to the great ceremony, a week or so later, of the state coronation of Achon, who Connolly, the Patriarch and Ballon’s various propaganda channels have been telling the populace is the true heir to the throne. Unfortunately, when the Patriarch places the elaborate crown of Azania on Achon’s head it snaps his feeble neck and he dies on the spot. Chaos ensues.
At the British Legation
Fear in the Legation. Basil turns up in native disguise with camels and African servants. He helped Seth escape from the capital in the chaos after the coup, accompanied by bodyguards etc and has arranged a rendezvous in a week’s times.
Then he’s come to the Legation to see if they need his help. He takes over security and sets a watch of armed guards in case the locals or Connolly’s troops try to attack, but there is no attack. Instead, after a few days, a plane flies overhead and drops a stone with a message tied round it telling them to pack their stuff, more planes will be along soon. A few hours later some planes land in open fields by the Legation and tell the gathered Brits they are being evacuated. All the characters gather up whatever can be stashed in a small suitcase, and scamper into the planes which taxi and take off.
Prudence just has time for a last scene with Basil, begging him to catch a plane with them. But he is determined to make a rendezvous in the jungle with Seth. Prudence is wearing a rather fetching red beret. Sadly she scampers back to the planes which were waiting for her before they all take off together.
The view from up in the air is frightfully ripping till her plane suddenly seems to be flying lower than the others, the pilot yells something back to his passengers, then he has to make an emergency landing in a clearing. ‘Should have it fixed in a jiffy,’ he quips. I expected maybe Basil, trekking through the jungle with his camels, might find and rescue her. Little did I know…
Basil’s trek
There’s then quite a long description of Basil’s trek through the jungle to the rendezvous point with Seth. One by one the natives abandon him. On the second day his servants intercept a messenger who’s carrying a piece of paper stuck in the traditional cleft stick. The message is from Viscount Boaz to the Earl of Ngumo and says a) he is loyal to the new emperor Achon b) he has with him the former emperor Seth c) should he take steps to relieve the new emperor of this embarrassment? I.e. murder Seth?
Immediately grasping that Seth’s life is at stake, Basil orders the reluctant messenger to turn round and run back to Boaz and tell him Achon is dead, the coup has failed, so Seth has been restored as the rightful emperor, and not to kill him.
A day later Basil arrives at the rendezvous but, to cut a long story short, discovers Seth is dead. If only the messenger had returned a day sooner he would be alive. Boaz, who had captured Seth and is responsible for his murder, makes up various excuses and tells a stream of fictions about how Seth met his end, accident, illness, suicide and so on. Whatever the cause, he is dead. They take Basil to see Seth’s body, which native women are sewing up in a shroud with herbs and spices.
Basil decides on the spot to do the decent thing and take the body back to Seth’s ancestral birthplace, in the heart of the Wanda people. There follows more trekking through the jungle with camels bearing the dead emperor’s body.
Eventually Basil arrives and is sadly welcomed and there is a long, detailed and genuinely moving description of the funeral rites the Wanda people give their dead leader. Basil makes a long and noble exequy, such as would befit the funeral rites of a dead hero in the Iliad or Beowulf. There is not a shred of condescension as Waugh describes with forensic accuracy the ritual feast in which Basil joins, as the assembled tribal notables eat from a large pot of stew, scooping up the chunks of meat with flatbread, along with the ritual drinking and other traditional funeral rites. Waugh endows it all with great beauty as it builds to its climax of an impressive funeral pyre.
Soon the pyre was enveloped in towering flames. The people took up the song and swayed on their haunches, chanting. The bundle on the crest bubbled and spluttered like fresh pine until the skin cerements burst open and revealed briefly in the heart of the furnace the incandescent corpse of the Emperor. Then there was a subsidence among the timbers and it disappeared from view.
I actually found this scene genuinely moving because it is described so precisely and without a shred of patronage or condescension, Waugh and his character taking it completely at face value as rites becoming a dead emperor.
All the more shocking, horrifying and bitterly nihilistic is the sequel. Walking away from the ongoing celebrations around the burning pyre Basil comes across a drunk old man in the shadows, nodding and drooling. Suddenly a flare of light from the pyre reveals the old man is wearing a red beret. Basil realises it’s Prudence’s. Is she here? Basil shakes the old man and asks where the owner of the hat is. The old man pats his tummy and says ‘Here. We’ve all just eaten her.’
Waugh achieves his best psychological or emotional effects by distancing them, like the casual deaths in Decline and Fall or Vile Bodies. He doesn’t give Basil’s response or reaction or feelings. The chapter, and the entire Africa section ends on this genuinely shocking revelation.
Back in London
Next thing we know we are back in silly frivolous superficial London and Basil is ringing up his dissolute chums, owners of the bedroom where we first met him coming round from a drunken stupor, Sonia and Alisdair.
They inform him that while he’s been away there’s been some kind of ‘crash’ and everyone’s now beastly poor. It’s just too too dull. He pops round, they drink and play silly parlour games and every time he threatens to tell them anything about his African adventure they all tell him to shush. Nothing serious here, thank you very much. Later in the evening he goes round to see his mistress, the married woman Angela Lyne. The sense is of him picking up the shallow, cynical merry-go-round of London life exactly where he left off. Nothing has changed in the tone of eternal frivolity, the worship of superficiality, the casual, depthless amorality. Except for Basil. He has changed, changed utterly.
Bleak endings
You often read people referring to the bleak ending of A Handful of Dust as an epitome of futility. I’d forgotten that the endings of Vile Bodies and Black Mischief are every bit as devastatingly nihilistic. Some people might find the killing and eating of Prudence funny, maybe I did when I was a callow youth, but now I am appalled by it and, like the death of vivacious Agatha Runcible, it casts a gloomy pall over everything which preceded it.
Epilogue
The League of Nations steps in and makes Azania a ‘protectorate’ to be jointly administered by France and Britain. We are swiftly introduced to the new generation of civil servants who are going to run the place, are building roads and hospitals and pretty little bungalows on the hill and gossip gaily about all the characters who have featured in the novel and have now departed. Sir Samson, his wife, the other Legation officials are old news now. Waugh shows with devastating accuracy how the gossip and common opinion about them has been twisted and distorted out of all recognition. It’s what happens to everyone all the time. Everything any of us does is quickly twisted and distorted out of all recognition by people who have never met us and don’t care.
The narrative focuses in on two young Brits who’ve joined the recently appointed Protectorate staff as they discuss the fate of old Colonel Connolly. They pride themselves on having gotten him expelled from the country and speculate that he might end up in Abyssinia, funny how he’s so attached to that native woman of his (Connolly’s ‘Black Bitch’ loyal to the last).
And then they agree how they all rely on the services of the estimable Armenian, Mr Youkoumian. Rulers may come and rulers may go but quick-thinking, flexible and adaptable merchants go on for ever.
Related links
Evelyn Waugh reviews
- Decline and Fall (1928)
- Vile Bodies (1930)
- Remote People (1931)
- Black Mischief (1932)
- Ninety-Two Days (1934)
- A Handful of Dust (1934)
- Waugh in Abyssinia (1936)
- Scoop (1938)
- Work Suspended (1942)
- Put Out More Flags (1942)
- Brideshead Revisited (1945)
- Scott-King’s Modern Europe (1947)
- The Loved One (1948)
- Men at Arms (1952)
- Love Among the Ruins (1953)
- What is Waugh satirising in ‘Love Among The Ruins’?
- Officers and Gentlemen (1955)
- The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold (1957)
- Unconditional Surrender (1961)
- The Complete Short Stories of Evelyn Waugh
- Evelyn Waugh: A Biography by Selina Hastings (1994)
Books & Boots 
The Gallic War by Julius Caesar – 3
It is nearly always invisible dangers which are most terrifying. (VII.84)
This second half of the Gallic Wars is much more exciting than the first. In the previous four books the Romans steamrollered over everyone they encountered in a rather monotonous way. Here they experience the catastrophic loss of an entire legion and then the fierce siege of Quintus Cicero’s camp, i.e. for the first time you feel the contingency and risk involved in the entire project. And both events are carefully crafted to feature dramatic episodes of a kind not found in the first four.
Book 5: The second rebellion
The book title was supplied by the editors of the Penguin edition and refers to the revolt of the Belgic tribes.
1 to 8: Illyricum and Gaulish rebels
At the end of each campaigning season in Gaul, Caesar spends the winter in Cisalpine Gaul attending to administration. He also visits the third province he’s in charge of, Illyricum. Here he stamped on the Pirustrae tribe who had allegedly been raiding over the border into Roman territory. Representatives of the tribe met him to tell him it wasn’t them, and delivered hostages as he demanded.
By this point we’re getting used to certain things.
This handful of options are repeated endlessly. In the spring Caesar returns to Gaul where he has to sort out the Treveri, a tribe living close to the Rhine whose leaders have failed to come to the annual conference of Gallic tribes. Turns out two rivals are vying for leadership, Caesar supports Cingetorix.
He rides on to Portus Itius, from where the invasion is to be launched. Tellingly, he takes leaders of most of the Gaulish tribes with him. The most dangerous of these is Dumnorix, ambitious leader of the Aedui. When Caesar insists he accompany him to Britain, Dumnorix begins spreading rumours to the other chiefs that they’ll all be killed in Britain. The sailing is delayed 4 weeks by a contrary wind, towards the end of which Dumnorix left the damp with some Aeduin cavalry. Caesar immediately delayed the sailing and sent troops to recapture Dumnorix, buy force if necessary. Dumnorix did indeed put up a fight, drew his sword and told his followers to protect him. So the Roman cavalry killed him. End of disruptive influence.
9 to 25: Second expedition to Britain
Caesar had ordered his troops over the winter to build a massive fleet eventually consisting of 600 troopships and 28 warships. He sets sail with five legions (about 25,000 soldiers) and 2,000 cavalry. Including private ships they hired, the Romans appeared over the horizon with 800 ships, an enormous force. No wonder the defending Britons decided to retire to higher ground.
They disembarked without event, set up a camp, then Caesar marched the majority 12 miles or so inland till they came to a Briton camp. The Seventh Legion stormed it and forced the Britons to flee but Caesar brought them back to work on the camp.
They set out again to confront the Britons but were informed of a large storms and when he returned Caesar saw it had damaged lots of boats. he drew them further up on the beach, ordered repairs made, sent orders to Titus Labienus back in Gaul to start building more.
He gives an overview of the British which is a bit random. He includes the plausible notion that the coastal areas have been settled by incomers from the continent with trivia such as, the natives think it wrong to eat of hare, fowl, and goose although it’s alright to keep for pastime or pleasure. He also makes the wildly inaccurate claim that the climate is more temperate than in Gaul, the cold seasons more moderate. I don’t think so.
He gives a wildly inaccurate description of the geography of Britain, making it out to be a huge triangular island off the west coast of France extending down to opposite Spain. It’s a great mystery how the Romans managed to conquer anywhere without decent maps.
He mentions that the British paint themselves with woad so have blue bodies. But then goes on to say they share wives between groups of ten or 12 men. This is the kind of wildly improbable legend that disfigures to much of the ostensibly ‘factual’ writing of the ancient world.
Back to the present, he describes a lightning British attack on the camp which takes them by surprise and causes casualties. The British fight well, making use of chariots and loose formations which replace each other ad lib.
Next day he sends legions foraging but once again the Britons attack in numbers. It’s hard fought but this time the legions turn them and chase. The Britons scatter and never again attack in such a unified way.
The Britons had united under the leadership of one chieftain, Cassivellaunus. He withdraws his forces north of the Thames which the Romans traverse and continue fighting, with Cassivellaunus hiding his chariots in the woods, till opportunities present for raids.
Envoys arrive from the Trinovantes. Their young leader Mandubracius had already crossed the Channel to seek Caesar’s protection after his father was killed by Cassivellaunus. Caesar demands from Mandubracius hostages and corn, but when these are brought, lets him go.
When other tribes see how fairly Mandubracius was treated, they send envoys seeking Caesar’s protection, being the Cenimagni, the Segontiaci, the Ancalites, the Bibroci and the Cassi. He learns that Cassivellaunus has retreated to famous stronghold built in a good defensive position. Caesar lays siege to it and storms it from its weakest side. Meanwhile Cassivellaunus had sent orders to four allied tribes to attack the Roman camp in Kent, but the Romans repel the attack, kill many attackers and capture a tribal leader.
Summer is nearly over and Caesar decides to return to Gaul. So while he was in the ascendent and the Britons demoralised, he demanded hostages and set an annual tribute for Cassivellaunus to pay Rome. And not to attack the British tribes which had allied with Rome. Then he marches the legions to the coast and into the ships and so back to Gaul.
Given the size of the invasion fleet (800 ships!) which indicated that it was a serious attempt to permanently conquer at least the southern part of Briton, you can’t help concluding the invasion – both the invasions – were a failure.
26 to 37: Revolt of Belgic tribes and massacre of the 7th Legion
Caesar distributes his legions and generals with various tribes. The Eburonians rebel and attack a Roman camp. Ambiorix tells the Romans that a Gaul-wide agreement has been made to launch a concerted attack on all the Roman forces and moreover a group of German mercenaries has crossed the Rhine. So he warns them to leave their camp and promises them safe passage through his territory.
The Romans are surprised but it makes sense that the Eburonians wouldn’t rebel on their own. So, what to do? Caesar gives a dramatic set piece debate among the two commanders, Lucius Aurunculeius Cotta who says stay put, and Quintus Titurius Sabinus who trusts Ambiorix and recommends that they leave (28 to 29).
Sabinus wins the argument and the legionaries are told to pack their most important belongings and set off. Catastrophe ensues. The Gauls wait till the legion has entered a deep narrow defile then bottles them up at either end and starts to massacre them. At one point Ambiorix asks the two Roman generals to a meeting. Cotta refuses to go but Sabinus leaves the fight to climb a hill and approach Ambiorix. He and his centurions are ordered to lay down their weapons, which they do. But as they approach Ambiorix they are surrounded and then killed. The Gauls raise a shout and fall on the remaining Romans with renewed fury. Cotta and most of the force are killed. The remnant make it back to the camp where, that night, seeing they are surrounded, they all commit suicide. A handful of survivors make it to Titus Atius Labienus’s camp to tell the story.
It is thought that some 6,000 legionaries died in this colossal blunder. The massacre happened at Atuatuca in modern Belgium.
38 to 58: Siege of Quintus Cicero
Emboldened, Ambiorix rallies allied Gaulish tribes, and led a ‘huge mass’ of the Eburones, the Nervii, the Aduatuci and their allies and dependents against the camp of Quintus Tullius Cicero. This was somewhere on the river Sambre and about 80 miles from the camp Caesar had made at Amiens. The Gauls made a surprise attack as the legionaries (as so often) were out gathering firewood etc, but they fought a fighting retreat back to the camp. This the Gauls surrounded and invested. They had with them defectors and Roman prisoners who showed them how to build the kind of siege towers and earthworks the Romans used, so these were built and turned against their inventors.
The Gauls called a parley and offered Cicero the same deal they’d offered Sabinus i.e. to lay down their arms and walk away in peace. But Cicero is not as foolish as Sabinus and makes a defiant reply, telling the Gauls that if they lay down their arms he will send to Caesar who will judge them for their rebellion. And so the siege continues. On the seventh day a fierce gale blows up and the Gauls shoot flaming arrows into the camp which burn down a lot of the huts.
Cicero sends a series of messengers to try and get through to Caesar, but all of them are caught and some of them tortured in view of the camp. Eventually a native Gaul makes it through the blockade and to Caesar’s camp, to whom the news of Cicero’s siege comes as a shock. He immediately sends a message to Marcus Licinius Crassus at his camp 24 miles away telling him to march to meet him. Same to Gaius Fabius and Labienus. Labienus writes back that the entire force of the Treveri were upon him and so, on balance, it was too risky for him to leave his camp. Caesar approves this decision and sets off with just two legions to raise the siege on Cicero’s camp.
By a series of forced marches Caesar quickly reaches Cicero’s camp and sends word through a native messenger that he is near. The Gauls lift the siege and turn their forces to face Caesar, some 60,000 warriors (49). Caesar has 7,000 men (49). With the enemy only 3 or so miles away Caesar orders the building of a camp, only smaller than usual, and instructs the soldiers to run around and given an air of panic and fear. This lures the Gauls out into the open and then up to this camp which they start besieging. But they had barely begun engaging when Caesar ordered his infantry to flood out by side gates and the cavalry to sally out and attack the flanks. Taken by surprise the Gauls fled and the Romans were able to cut them down.
Then he marches to relieve Cicero. He is astonished to see the size and number of siege engines the Gauls had built and then to discover that almost all the defenders had been wounded and fought bravely. He publicly congratulates Cicero and all his men, carefully speaking to individual centurions and tribunes to thank them. He addresses the disaster of the massacred legion and assures them it was down to Sabinus’s error, unlike the resolute leadership of their own Cicero.
Caesar’s victory goes some way to rallying the Romans and, more importantly, their Gaulish allies. But nonetheless the tribes are in a ferment, all sending each other messages discussing alliances and attacks. Caesar realises he must winter in Gaul to keep an eye on the situation. Caesar calls meetings with the heads of various tribes, partly by threats, partly by promises, keeps them peaceful. The Aedui and the Remi remain the staunchest allies.
But the Senones try to murder their king, Cavarinus, who had been friendly to the Romans. Indutiomarus leader of the Treveri is particularly rebellious. He sends messages to the German tribes across the Rhine enticing them to war with the Romans, but none sign up, replying that they’ve learned their lesson.
In Gaul Indutiomarus is more successful in recruiting a large force from miscellaneous tribes, attracting to his standard exiles and criminals, training them, procuring horses and so on. Once he feels strong enough he calls an armed convention of the Gaulish tribes at which he a) outlaws Cingetorix, his son-in‑law and rival for leadership of the Treveri; and b) declares his intention to rally the Senones, the Carnutes and several other tribes, to march through the lands of the Remi and laying them waste, before going on to attack the camp of Labienus.
Indutiomarus with his massed forces approaches and invests Labienus’ camp. The latter feigns timidity and reluctance, all the while awaiting his opportunity. He recruits cavalry from nearby friendly tribes and keeps them all hidden in the camp, while Indutiomarus and his men ride up to the walls, yell and jeer and throw spears and abuse the Romans. At the end of a day like this, the Gauls are turning to ride away, with a false sense of security, when suddenly from two gates Labienus launched forth all his cavalry. Anticipating the enemy would scatter in confusion, Labienus carefully instructed his men to resist attacking anyone else but all of them to find and kill Indutiomarus. He put a big price on his head and sure enough some of his soldiers intercepted Indutiomarus at the ford of a river, killed him, cut off his head and brought it back to Labienus.
When they learned this, all his allies among the Eburones and Nervii flee, talk of rebellion is dowsed down and that winter found Gaul quiet.
Book 6: (53 BC)
1 to 8: Further revolt in Gaul
Caesar tasks three generals with raising new recruits and asks Pompey to send him the legion he recently raised in north Italy. He hears news of northern tribes conspiring to rebel and so makes a lightning attack on the Nervii, capturing cattle, prisoners and ravaging the countryside. When he convokes the annual conference of Gaulish leaders, the Senones, Carnuti and Senones refuse to attend, indicating their hostility. Caesar marches quickly on the Senones forcing their leader, Accio, to back down and hand over hostages.
Then he marches into the country of the Menapii in the far north, burning farms and villages and taking cattle and prisoners till their leaders were forced to sue for peace and hand over hostages in the usual way.
Meanwhile the Treveri, led by relatives of Indutiomarus, had gathered a large force of infantry and cavalry to attack Labienus. Labienus feigned fear and then pretended to leave the camp, luring the Treveri across the river onto flat ground this side. Once they were over he inspired his soldiers to turn and fight them, trapped by the river. Much killing. The Treveri submitted and the Germans they’d invited to come join them decided to stay on the other side of the Rhine.
9 to 10: Caesar crosses the Rhine, retreat of the Suebi
Another Rhine crossing:
The Ubii swear it wasn’t them and he spares them. Investigation suggests it was the Suebi. The Suebi gather their men at a stronghold and await. Caesar’s men quickly build another bridge and he crosses it.
11 to 20: Description of the Gauls
Digression on the nature of Gaulish society. How the advent of the Romans reordered things to bring the Aedui and Remi into prominence. The Gauls fought every year among themselves. The Druids practised human sacrifice, sometimes in wickerwork giants which they set on fire (16).
When the father of a house, who is of distinguished birth, has died, his relatives assemble, and if there be anything suspicious about his death they make inquisition of his wives as they would of slaves, and if discovery is made they put them to death with fire and all manner of excruciating tortures.
Their funerals, considering the civilisation of Gaul, are magnificent and expensive. They cast into the fire everything, even living creatures, which they believe to have been dear to the departed during life, and but a short time before the present age, only a generation since, slaves and dependents known to have been beloved by their lords used to be burnt with them at the conclusion of the funeral formalities. (VI.19)
21 to 28: Description of the Germans
More primitive. Fewer gods, they only worship things they can see like sun, moon and fire. Sex in young men is frowned upon for stunting their growth. Land is redistributed each year to stop them becoming to land-bound and also to enforce a sort of equality. Obsession with war. When a chief proclaims a war anyone who resiles is shunned. They lay waste the land around each tribe.
The Gauls used to be more warlike than the Germans and at points crossed the Rhine and conquered. But being closer to Roman territory they’ve got used to trading and fine products unlike the Germans who remain more isolated and warlike.
He gives one of those characteristically ludicrous descriptions of the natural world, imputing to the great forest of Hyrcania a massive extent (true enough) and a number of fantastical animals.
The Penguin editor suggests that this long digression about Gauls and Germans was placed her to distract from the fact that Caesar’s second incursion across the Rhine, like the first one, achieved little tangible result. When the Germans retreat into the forest, Caesar doesn’t have the provisions to follow them and so, er, retreats back over the bridge, destroying the German end and placing a watchtower and guards on the Gaulish side.
29 to 44: Caesar returns to Gaul
Right up in the north, against the Rhine, is the territory of the Eburones led by Ambiorix. Caesar marches against them, sending ahead Gaius Volcacius Tullus with the cavalry. These go very fast and surprise Ambiorix off his guard with only a few men. However these hold off the Romans while Ambiorix saddles up and flees into the forest. He sends out messages telling every man for himself and many flee and hide.
The Segni and Condrusi come to Caesar and plead that not all Germans in Gaul are conspiring. They aren’t and give hostages and make peace.
Caesar makes his base at Atuatuca, then divides his forces in three and takes his force to ravage the land of the Eburones. Germans across the Rhine hear that there’s a free-for-all and cross the river 30 miles downstream of Caesar’s base, to join in. But prisoners tell them the Romans base is at Atuatuca, full of loot and poorly defended.
Cicero had been left in Atuatuca and initially kept the men penned up in case of attack. But after a week the frustrated men need to get out and the troops need corn so Cicero lets a detachment go collect some, and another detachment take out the animals for exercise. Inevitably it’s at this moment that the Germans appear, mounting a fierce attack, causing chaos. While a fierce fight goes on at the gates of the camp, the detachments sent to fetch food – raw recruits and servants – fell into a panic. Experienced centurions helped them form and wedge shape and make it back to the camp, but another detachment initially took to a nearby hill, then changed its mind and came back down into the flatlands where it was destroyed.
Failing to break in the Germans break off the engagement and ride back to the Rhine. Hysteria grips the Roman camp and rumours spread that Caesar and the other legions have been wiped out, until Caesar himself returns and restores order.
The Penguin edition notes that Cicero clearly deserved a bollocking but Caesar treats him very gently, listing all the extenuating circumstances he can think of. This is because his brother, the orator Marcus Tullius Cicero, back in Rome, is still a political force who Caesar needs to keep onside.
This is reminiscent of the panic at Vesontio back in I.39. Caesar supervises widespread burning and ravaging of the country, with the deliberate intention of starving the inhabitants. An enquiry into the rebellion of the Senones and Carnutes concludes that it was instigated by Accio, who is executed in the traditional Roman manner i.e. scourged and hanged.
Penguin point out that by holding courts, judging and executing leaders like this Caesar was behaving like the governor of an accredited Roman province which Gaul very much was not. It was arrogant (and illegal) behaviour like this which raised so much opposition back in Rome.
Book 7: The rebellion of Vercingetorix (52 BC)
By far the longest book.
1 to 7: General conspiracy of the Gauls — Vercingetorix chosen as leader
The murder of Publius Clodius in January 52 BC led to increased political turbulence in Rome. The Gauls, hearing of this, took advantage to conspire to overthrow the invader and regain their liberty. The Carnutes lead the rebellion and sack the town of Cenabum, killing the knight Gaius Fufius Cita, in charge of managing trade.
This inspires the leader of the Arverni, far away in the south of free Gaul, abutting on the Roman Province, one Vercingetorix. Background to Vercingetorix, namely his father was at one point premier chieftain of all Gaul but was executed for seeking to be king. When Vercingetorix proclaims his ambition to kick out the Romans, his uncle and other chiefs expel him from their capital, Gergovia, but Vercingetorix takes to the road recruiting followers and building up a following. Eventually he returns to Gergovia, takes over his tribe and sends out messages for a major, allied rebellion. He enforces ferocious discipline on his recruits:
compelling waverers by severity of punishment. Indeed for the commission of a greater offence he put to death with fire and all manner of tortures; for a lesser case he sent a man home with his ears cut off or one eye gouged out, to point the moral to the rest and terrify others by the severity of the penalty.
In Italy Caesar hears of numerous tribes forming alliances constellated around Vercingetorix’s leadership. Vercingetorix moves his forces into the territory of the Bituriges.
8 to 14: Caesar moves suddenly against the Arverni
But Caesar surprises Vercingetorix by clearing the snow from a pass through the Cevennes and approaching him from an unexpected direction. He leaves Brutus in charge of his camp and makes a forced march to Vienne. He picks up two legions and marches in through the territory of the Aedui into that of the Lingones, where two legions were wintering. Hearing all this Vercingetorix returns to the country of the Bituriges, and from there heads to assault Gorgobina, a stronghold of the Boii.
This is the longest book of the 8 and is all like this, two leaders criss-crossing ancient Gaul, doing deals with, or being double crossed by, numerous tribes, sending out legions or detachments or squads of cavalry under lieutenants. The names of tribes and locations Caesar passes through, allies with or fights gets very confusing. In brief: Caesar takes three Gaulish towns, Vellaunodunum, Cenabum and Noviodunum.
15 to 31: Siege, defence, and capture of Avaricum
Vercingetorix had suffered 3 defeats in a row so holds a conference of his allies and persuades them to adopt a scorched earth strategy, withdrawing before the Romans and destroying all towns, villages, fields and crops in their paths, with a view to starving them. But the Bituriges went down on their knees and begged him not to burn Avaricum, their fairest town.
So Vercingetorix relents, but Caesar besieges it, for 25 days building an elaborate rampart wall and two huge siege towers. When the population of the town tries to sneak out one night, Caesar takes it, puts it to flame and massacres the 40,000 inhabitants.
Caesar adjudicates leadership contest between rival leaders of the Aedui. But the one he chooses betrays him, a week later telling his people that the Romans have massacred their army, so they have no choice but to go join Vercingetorix and fight for freedom.
34 to 53: Siege of Gergovia
The chief oppidum (fortified town) of the Arverni.— abandoned, after severe repulse. Impulsiveness of the troops who do not hear the recall, continue up the hill to storm the stronghold but are repulsed when the enemy muster with overwhelming numbers. — 46 centurions 700 men
This was the one and only military defeat Caesar suffered at the hands of the Gauls in 8 years. Caesar gives speech reprimanding men and insisting on discipline and then withdraws from Gergovia, marching back along then crossing the river Allier.
54 to 57: Caesar moves against the Aedui.
58 to 62: Labienus, successful against the Parisii, joins him.
63 to 74: General revolt of the Gauls under Vercingetorix.
They attack Caesar, but are defeated, not least because of Caesar’s German cavalry, and retire to Alesia, a town of the Mandubii. Caesar leaves two legions to guard his baggage and swiftly pursues Vercingetorix, killing 3,000 of his rearguard. Three Aeduin traitors are brought to Caesar.
68 to 89: The siege of Alesia
The Gauls retreat inside this stronghold. Caesar orders his troops to construct massive siege-works eleven miles in length, featuring 11 camps and 23 forts. After a confused fight between the opposing cavalries, Vercingetorix adopts the following strategy: he orders his cavalry to leave in the dead of night from a gate which isn’t yet covered by the Roman siegeworks, and to ride to their respective tribes and to raise all men of military age and bring them back, all in the name of a Final Battle which will achieve National Liberation. Meanwhile, all grain is confiscated and Vercingetorix adopts a daily ration for his 80,000 men, which should last a month or so of siege, until the reinforcements from the tribes arrive.
Details of Caesar’s astonishingly complex and thorough siegeworks which face both in and out.
Schematic side view of the Roman siege works at Alesia, 52 BC
The Gauls hold a national convention at which the tribes allot armed forces to send to Alesia, with various factions resiling and bickering. Eventually an astonishing force of 260,000 sets off, but by this stage Alesia’s food supplies have run out.
Caesar describes a meeting of the leaders inside Alesia and gives a speech – presumably entirely fictional – to Critognatus, a noble Avernian who, after a long prologue, recommends cannibalism (77)! It is also notable as belonging to that genre of speeches which Roman authors attributed to their enemies, in which the enemy eloquently describes the crushing servitude and slavery imposed by the Romans.
The weak and old and wives and children are expelled from Alesia and trek over to the Romans to beg them for food. But the Romans barely have enough to feed themselves and refuse the refugees food or permission to pass. So they are caught in no man’s land to starve.
The Gaulish hoard arrives, much to the joy of the besieged who throng the barricades to watch the battle. Caesar places all his infantry around the 11 mile siegeworks then sends his cavalry against the Gaulish cavalry. The Romans suffer casualties before an attack by German cavalry breaks the Gauls and chases them back to their main camp.
A day later a co-ordinated attack from the relieving force triggers a sortie by the besieged and the Romans find themselves hard pressed. But they are defeated by the Romans firing from their strong defences, and fall into the complex web of trenches, booby traps filled with spiked poles and so on. They are forced to withdraw while the besieged are still trying to fill in the first trench of the inner siegeworks, so the latter retreat back into the town, too.
The Gauls then mount an attack on the one Roman camp which isn’t integrated into their defensive circuit, while the besieged again sally forth. (The complexity of the siegeworks and the peril and anxiety of the repeated attacks remind me of the atmosphere at another famous French siege, Dien Bien Phu in French Indo-China, March to May 1954.)
Caesar sends Labienus with reinforcements to the hilltop camp, sends Brutus with reinforcements to the strongest point of the sallying army, then leads reinforcements in person. The forces attacking the hilltop hesitate, then Labienus sallies forth with the cohorts he had picked up. Caught between these cohorts and Caesar’s cavalry, the Gauls panic, break ranks and are slaughtered.
Sedulius, commander and chief of the Lemovices, was killed; Vercassivellaunus the Arvernian was captured alive in the rout; seventy-four war‑standards were brought in to Caesar; of the vast host few returned safe to camp.
Vercingetorix conceded defeat to the tribal leaders inside Alesia. Kill him or surrender him alive, as they wish. The leaders go under flag of truce to Caesar, who sits in front of his fortifications. Vercingetorix is handed over, all the chiefs lay down their arms. Caesar puts the Aeduin and Arvernian prisoners to one side to use as bargaining chips with their tribes, then distributes all the captures Gauls to his army as loot, one Gaul to one Roman.
(I think what this means is each Roman soldier then gets his prisoner to contact his family and demands a ransom for their safe return. So equivalent to cash.)
Caesar then receives the submission of all the tribes, and carefully allots legions and commanders in the territories of the main tribes for the winter. When news of this comprehensive victory reaches Rome, a public thanksgiving of twenty days was granted.
Book 8
This final book was not written by Caesar but by his lieutenant Aulus Hirtius. He was a legate of Caesar’s army of Gaul from 58, and crossed the Rubicon with him in January 49. He fought for Caesar during the civil war, and was appointed governor of Transalpine Gaul in 45. In other words a senior figure.
Preface
Hirtius addresses his friend Lucius Cornelius Balbus, another friend of Caesar’s, serving under him as chief engineer (praefectus fabrum) in Gaul. Balbus was said to have attended the very select dinner Caesar hosted, along with Sallust, Hirtius, Oppius and Sulpicus Rufus on the evening of the day when he crossed the Rubicon.
He explains to Balbus that he is continuing the Commentaries because they don’t link up with Caesar’s own account of the Civil; War. He says he has finished the third of the latter books, set in Alexandria, and has now set to filling the blank between book 7 and the outbreak of civil war by supplying a book 8. But it has been hard work to match Caesar’s clear elegant style and also the speed and alacrity with which he wrote.
1 to 48: (51 BC) End of the revolt in Gaul
Winter of 52 to 51 Caesar hears that the Gauls are plotting again. Alesia proves they cannot defeat the Romans when the latter’s forces are united, but might be able to pick off the legions scattered around the country in different tribal regions.
At the end of December Caesar set out on a lightning march and caught the Bituriges in the fields (it’s not actually likely they would be tilling their fields in the depths of winter, is it? Is this a stock literary convention of this genre?) Anyway, Caesar captures thousands but then lets them go and, when they see him being similarly merciful to nearby allied tribes, the Bitiruges decide to submit and give hostages.
Carnutes dispersed, Bellovaci defeated. Dumnacus besieges Lemonum, but without success. The Armoric states subdued. Drappes captured. Uxellodunum besieged and taken by Caesar. Exemplary punishment, the captured have their right hands chopped off. Labienus’ successful operations against the Treveri. Commius subdued.
49 to 55: (50 BC) Caesar and the Senate
Caesar’s triumphal reception by cities and colonies. He returns to the army in Gaul. A description of his opponents in the Senate. Caesar returns to Italy.
Thoughts
Political consequences
1. Caesar’s Gallic Wars were fought to a) clear his debts b) bring him glory and political power.
2. But in doing so he went far beyond his brief as proconsul – dealing with the leaders of free Gaul as if he was governor of a conquered province, invading Britain (twice) and crossing the Rhine, far exceeding his authority. This prompted growing criticism in Rome throughout his eight-year command. And it was this which created the mounting political crisis about whether he would ever be prepared to lay down his command and return to Rome as a normal citizen – the ultimate result being that he was too scared to do so and, instead, crossed the Rubicon into Italy with his army thus triggering five years or ruinous civil war
The war itself
1. Interesting to learn how universal the exchange of hostages was – the standard procedure to ensure peace, not only with the Romans but among the Gaulish tribes themselves.
2. The relentless Roman victories of the first four books get a bit boring. Book 5 is far more dramatic and exciting, when the massacre of Sabinus’ legion and the siege of Quintus Cicero for the first time introduce a real sense of risk and uncertainty and pave the way for the epic account of the struggle against Vercingetorix in book 7.
3. The invasion of England cost a huge amount of time and money and resources and, in the end, seems completely futile. He took away hostages from southern tribes but, presumably that lapsed when Caesar returned to Rome a few years later. Nowhere was settled, no bases or camps, no trading. Seems like an expensive folly.
Anti-imperialism
One of the interesting things about the text is the way it contains its own anti-argument. Caesar’s entire account takes it for granted that rule by Rome is best for the Gauls. And yet fairly regularly he puts into the mouths of Gaulish leaders as direct speech, or attributes to them in indirect description, the wish to be free men in their own land, living under their own laws.
It’s not an unreasonable wish. And every time you read it, you think, ‘Just what right did Caesar think he had to ravage, burn, pillage, and endlessly fight all these peoples?’ Maybe he thought he was bringing ‘peace’ to a territory plagued by endless internecine violence but it’s hard to see how the endless campaigning and fighting and burning and selling into slavery which the Romans brought was an improvement. It consistently feels worse.
Slavery
Interesting when one of the chiefs, Ambiorix, complains that hostages given by his family were being treated ‘like slaves’ and put in chains (V.27). And, of Gaul in general:
Throughout Gaul there are two classes of persons of definite account and dignity. As for the common folk, they are treated almost as slaves, venturing naught of themselves, never taken into counsel. The more part of them, oppressed as they are either by debt, or by the heavy weight of tribute, or by the wrongdoing of the more powerful men, commit themselves in slavery to the nobles, who have, in fact, the same rights over them as masters over slaves. (VI.13)
At numerous other towns the inhabitants were captured and sold into slavery. But then so were some the captured Romans. Caesar says Britain is famous for half a dozen exports to the continent, among which are slaves.
In other words, slavery was current throughout Gaul, Britain and the land of the Germans, so well beyond ancient Greece or Rome. Was there any part of the known world where slavery wasn’t practised two thousand years ago? Was slavery universal?
Eternal war
The Gauls fought among themselves every year. The Britons fought among themselves until Caesar’s incursion temporarily united them. The Germans lived for war. The Italians went on aggressive campaigns every year and spent half their time fighting each other. In Africa Jugurtha, in Asia Mithridates and the Parthians, in Egypt civil war. War everywhere, every year, all the time, forever.
The stupidity of war
Men fighting, I get. It’s what we do, what we’ve always done. But some incidents highlight the sheer brainless stupidity of war and the terrible, futile, stupid cost to civilian victims, women and children. The height of lunacy is reached in book 7 when Vercingetorix persuades the Averni, to burn down their own towns and destroy their own crops all in the name of freedom and victory. Reminiscent of General Westmoreland’s famous quote during the Vietnam War, that the Americans had to destroy the village in order to ‘save’ it. Or Vladimir Putin’s determination to ‘save’ eastern Ukraine by utterly devastating it.
War crimes
In descriptions of other Roman campaigns I’ve wondered whether what the Romans did amounted to war crimes. Yes, is the short answer. Massacring the populations of entire towns, including women and children, is a war crime.
Caesar’s sustained eight year campaign of destroying towns, massacring their inhabitants or sending them off into slavery, have caused many moderns to compare his actions as a genocide. If a genocide is defined as the systematic attempt to wipe out a particular ethnic group, then no, he just wanted every tribe in Gaul to submit, not to exterminate them.
On the other hand, when tribes or towns did hold out, it appears, from his often very casual references, that he did consciously raze towns to the ground and either massacre or enslave entire populations, most notably at the town of Avaricum, and then at Uxellodunum (VIII.44). Or:
Caesar thought that the next best way of obtaining the satisfaction that his honour demanded was to strip the country of inhabitants, cattle and buildings so thoroughly that any of the Eburones who had the good fortune to escape would loathe Ambiorix for bringing such calamities upon them and never allow him to return. Detachments of legionary or auxiliary troops went all over the country killing or capturing large numbers of the natives, burning the homesteads, and carrying off plunder, until it was completely devastated. (VIII.25)
There’s a revealing moment early in book 8 when Hirtius mentions that the population of the Carnutes are still living in makeshift tents and shacks, as all the towns in their territory have been razed to the ground (VIII.5).
At moments like this you see a vast landscape where all the towns, villages, fields and crops have been destroyed, leaving the survivors to scrape a living in pathetic shelters beside burned-out fields, and you realise this is what the Romans meant when they said they brought ‘peace’.
The scarlet cloak
Caesar always wore the scarlet cloak (paludamentum) of a commander-in‑chief (VII.88).
Video
A useful video summary.
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Posted by Simon on June 8, 2022
https://astrofella.wordpress.com/2022/06/08/the-gallic-war-julius-caesar-3/