Strictly speaking, the term genocide was not formulated until 1939, being legally defined as a crime in 1948. However, as a concept (deliberate and systematic extermination of a human group), it is possible to recognize it in some historical episodes, some on a large scale and others on a smaller scale. One of those often cited from Antiquity is the conquest of Gaul by Julius Caesar, who, among other actions, in 53 B.C. carried out an intentional almost total annihilation of the Eburones people to avenge the catastrophic massacre of seven thousand Roman legionaries the previous year in Aduatuca during the Ambiorix’s Revolt.
Aduatuca was what was then called Atuatuca Tungrorum, an undetermined location in the Belgian valley of Geer, between the present-day Tongeren and Liege. We say undetermined because, despite the name being identified in documentary sources, there are certain contradictions.
Thus, in Caesar’s time, it was only a castellum or military fort, as the city itself was not founded until forty years later. Caesar himself refers to the site as “an oppidum (a settlement on top of a hill) of the Eburones located almost in the center of their country.”

The problem is that he later adds that the Eburones lived between the Meuse and the Rhine, east of the Menapii, shifting their geographical location to the east, to the mentioned Liege area. The truth is that there is no shortage of candidates to locate that battle, from Fort de Chaudfontaine, near the Ardennes, to Embourg – where remains of an Iron Age hill fort were discovered – passing through locations such as the Dutch Honthem – there is a valley there, although without a river – Plateau de Caestert – where a plateau preserves ruins of an oppidum whose chronological dating could coincide – or Dolhain-Limburg – also with its valley.
Today it is not possible to know with certainty the location of Atuatuca Tungrorum; in fact, not even the battle, as with many others from antiquity. But we can talk about its people, the Eburones, of whom, apart from Caesar, Strabo, Dion Cassius, and Orosius would also speak.
They were a tribe in the northeast, tributary to the southern Treveri, and, like many neighbors (Cerosi, Pemani, Condrusi), were of Gallo-Germanic origin – a part lived in the Rhineland – as indicated by the etymology of their demonym, alluding to the eburos (yew), although there are alternative interpretations that refer to eburaz (wild boar).

The relative tranquility of their life was shattered in 58 B.C. with the start of the Roman conquest of Gaul, which Julius Caesar presented as a strategic defensive necessity to prevent attacks on Rome from that territory. While it is true that the Gauls continued to make sporadic incursions, the motives were much more mundane: on the one hand, Caesar was heavily in debt since taking office as curule aedile and needed to recover his economy; on the other hand, as a member of the First Triumvirate, he was entitled to the governance of Cisalpine Gaul (apart from Illyria), and fate offered him the opportunity to expand that dominion.
It was the death of Quintus Caecilius Metellus Celer, governor of Transalpine Gaul, whose replacement the Senate entrusted to Caesar for five years, and he saw the opportunity – probably already planned for application in Dacia – both to relieve his finances and to expand his military prestige at the expense of a prosperous Gallic people – politically quite Romanized – but divided.
So, he first faced the Helvetii – who were migrating, incorporating many other peoples into their march, threatening the lands of the Allobroges, allies of Rome – and then the Suebi, hired as mercenaries by the Arverni to fight against their enemies, the Aedui.

Caesar defeated both in 58 B.C., which sowed fear among the Gauls, who imagined that he aspired to dominate the entire Gaul. And indeed, the six legions under his command began to occupy the country the following year, starting with Belgium, where he achieved his goal favored by internal enmities of the adversary, even though he faced difficulties against the Nervii near the Sambre.
His final success unleashed enthusiasm in Rome, and in 56 B.C., he expanded it by defeating the Veneti, again facing problems due to the powerful enemy fleet; he avenged himself by executing the elders and selling the rest as slaves.
Meanwhile, the Romans continued to advance in Gaul, preparing the crossing of the Rhine for their general, who needed to renew his celebrity as Pompey and Crassus, his fellow triumvirs, had just been elevated to the consulship. Caesar crossed the river and crushed the Germans so brutally that the Senate itself demanded explanations and even wanted to prosecute him. He continued with his personal campaign by landing in Britain, although the supply difficulties on the islands forced him to return to the mainland. He crossed the English Channel again in 54 B.C., this time more successfully; meanwhile, Gaul began to boil.

The poor harvests ruined the Gauls, a serious situation because, on top of that, they had to provide supplies to the Roman army. Caesar tried to alleviate it by dispersing his troops so that the burden did not fall too heavily on some tribes, but that left his cohorts isolated from each other, making them weaker. And the Gauls seized the opportunity to rebel.
The spark was ignited by Ambiorix, leader of the Eburones, who deceived the Romans with a cunning ruse. First, he killed some legionaries who were gathering provisions; then, when everyone took refuge behind the palisades of their camp, he played his masterstroke.
It consisted of convincing them that all of Gaul had rebelled, so he offered to guarantee their retreat to Italy. The legates, Quintus Titurius Sabinus and Lucius Aurunculeius Cotta, held a tense war council in which Sabinus favored acceptance, considering that reinforcements would never arrive in time because Caesar was on his way to Italy, and there was the adverse possibility that the Germans would reinforce the Eburones and outnumber them too much. So, he insisted that it was better to leave and, instead of leaving Gaul, join the nearest legion to form a strong army.

On the other hand, Cotta preferred to resist because, in his opinion, they had sufficient forces and provisions until help arrived, apart from the fact that their rivals had shown not to fight well against well-entrenched forces. The tribunes intervened, indicating that whatever decision was made had to be unanimous, and ultimately Sabinus’s point of view prevailed, which would soon prove to be as unusually naive as fatal.
The legionaries spent the night making preparations and dismantling the camp, which did not go unnoticed by the Eburones, who prepared to ambush them in the most suitable place for it.
At dawn, the retreat began, in a very long column that made it difficult to give orders efficiently between the head and the tail. Shortly afterward, they were ambushed in unfavorable terrain to defend themselves adequately, perhaps the Ourthe gorge, with Gallic warriors launching themselves from both sides with their war cries; they had closed the path to the vanguard, while focusing their attack on the rear, trapping the Romans in a trap that seemed like a hornet’s nest.

Sabinus had to ride along the column to try to reorganize the chaos, while Cotta, calmer, ordered to form a square and managed to repel the hand-to-hand combat. The Eburones then opted for long-range combat, throwing javelins and stones and retreating when the legionaries tried to approach.
In the midst of the battle’s turmoil, Sabinus accepted the surrender offer made by Ambiorix, but it was only another trap to fix him in his position while surrounding him and massacring his troops; he fell alongside them.
Then the bulk of the Gauls turned against Cotta’s cohorts, who continued to withstand the onslaught. Unfortunately for him, a stone thrown with a sling hit him in the face, killing him; his men were gradually decimated, and only two groups were saved: the larger one returned to the camp, where its members, aware that their end was imminent, took their own lives; the other, just a handful of soldiers out of a total of seven thousand five hundred (the Legio XIV Gemina plus five extra cohorts), survived the massacre, informing Titus Labienus, Caesar’s lieutenant.

Ambiorix did not stop there. Next, he tried to repeat the trick in the camp of Namur, commanded by Quintus Tullius Cicero, brother of the famous orator, but he was not so credulous and entrenched himself to resist the siege initiated by the Eburones allied with the Aduatuci and Nervii. Cicero was in a desperate situation, without nearby reinforcements or supplies; nevertheless, he managed to send a request for help to Caesar, who two weeks later took two legions and set out on a forced march – about thirty kilometers a day – arriving in time to rescue a Cicero who held out in extremis, as he had only about ten percent of his forces left.
The rescue of the brother of the politician whom the general wanted to attract to his side was a double coup. Now it was time to avenge the catastrophe of Sabinus and Cotta; it is said that he swore not to bathe or cut his hair until he fulfilled it, in a legendary tradition that repeats itself throughout the various warlike adventures of history. It was already the year 53 B.C. when, leading a dozen legions (about fifty thousand men), he sent Titus Labienus with half to face the Treveri while he personally dealt with the Eburones.
Labienus entered enemy territory, but he realized that the revolt had spread like wildfire, and the leader Indutiomarus, who had just gained absolute power after ousting the pro-Roman Cingetorix, was negotiating a coalition with the Germanic tribes of the Senones, Carnutes, and Nervii, so he feared being at a disadvantage if they reached an agreement; so he decided to preempt and provoke Indutiomarus to give him battle where and when it suited him.

He had twenty-five cohorts for this, which deceived the enemy by feigning a retreat to lure them to a hill on whose summit Labienus had built a fortified bastion. Not knowing how to assault those defenses, the Treveri surrounded it to try to starve it, but they fell into routine, and a surprise exit by the Roman auxiliary cavalry surprised them, achieving a brilliant and quick victory for Labienus, who also received the news that Indutiomarus had died during his escape across a nearby river.
Meanwhile, Caesar prepared to face Ambiorix. For this, he first attacked and defeated his Nervii allies, with the next to suffer Roman wrath being the Menapii, who had never sent ambassadors. As expected, the Gauls could not resist the Roman war machine; Ambiorix had to escape to Germania, and his comrade in command, the elderly Catuvolcus, reluctant to start the insurrection, poisoned himself with yew. Although for a short time, given the logistical difficulty that keeping troops so far away posed to the Romans, the Germans also suffered Caesar’s brutal vengeance.
The campaign in northern Gaul was extraordinarily harsh, enslaving prisoners, destroying villages, killing cattle, and ravaging fields to cause famine among the population and subdue it. That ruthless struggle, which would still last three more years and give rise to the general uprising under the leadership of Vercingetorix, with famous episodes such as the siege of Alesia, did not exclude civilians; on the contrary, it sought to terrorize them and is one of the factors cited today when talking about genocide.
According to Plutarch, the results of the war were eight hundred conquered cities, three hundred subdued tribes, gains of over forty million sesterces for Caesar, one million prisoners sold as slaves, and another three million dead in battle; it is estimated that the Gallic population numbered from three to fifteen million before the conflict.
This article was first published on our Spanish Edition on December 7, 2023. Puedes leer la versión en español en La batalla de Aduátuca, cuando los galos aniquilaron quince cohortes romanas con un astuto ardid
Sources
Julio César, La guerra de las Galias | Plutarco, Vidas paralelas | Dión Casio, Historia romana | Patricia Southern, Julio César | Adrian Goldsworthy, César. La biografía definitiva | Kurt A. Raaflaub, Caesar and genocide: confrontig the dark side of Caesar’s Gallic Wars | Gerard Walter, Julio César | Wikipedia
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