Chapter X #3
Our scouts soon reported that his column had halted and he was building a fortified camp in the open country beside the road.
As I had calculated, he dared not continue his advance and risk an attack on his rear.
At the same time, I received news that Salvidienus’s legions were streaming down the Via Cassia and were now only about two days’ march to the north.
I sent a message to him giving our position and suggesting we join forces.
I was confident that even if Old Big Nose did go over to Lucius, we could hold out in our fortress for weeks or months.
The next day, the fighting started.
It was a bloody hand-to-hand business conducted in the narrow defiles amid the trees and rocks and streams. But we had the advantage of the higher ground.
I went down myself to join in and encourage the men.
We poured out of the woods, screaming our war cries, and surprised one of Lucius’s probing assaults, hacking it to pieces and leaving the bodies in the fast-flowing water.
These isolated engagements went on for several days.
Each time they tried to attack us, the enemy was repulsed with heavy losses.
If Lucius did send emissaries to Salvidienus offering a pact, they must have returned empty-handed, for as Salvidienus drew nearer, Lucius abruptly broke off these probing assaults, dismantled his camp and resumed his march up the Via Flaminia.
I left a token garrison and set off after him with my four legions.
Lucius’s position had become extremely perilous. Furnius was still bottled up in Sentinum. My legions, together with those of Salvidienus, now close behind me, greatly outnumbered his. And winter was approaching.
As I had anticipated, he drew the inevitable conclusion and headed west to the fortified hilltop town of Perusia. The citizens of that ancient Etruscan stronghold foolishly agreed to open their gates to admit him, and by the time we arrived, he was inside with his army.
The grey stone walls of travertine blocks were massive and impregnable. But if there was no way in, there was also no way out.
He was temporarily safe – and trapped.
Caesar arrived with Lepidus and Maecenas, and soon afterwards Salvidienus appeared.
There was no hint of any tension between him and Caesar, who greeted one another as old friends.
Both congratulated me on my handling of the campaign.
Naturally I had the good sense to give all the credit to Caesar, insisting I had only implemented his strategy.
He modestly accepted this was true but conceded it might not have worked without me.
Although we brought up siege engines and ballistae, even the heaviest missiles merely bounced off Perusia’s walls.
It was clear the garrison would have to be starved into submission.
Accordingly we set the legions to work digging a great ditch thirty feet deep and thirty wide, using the spoil to erect a wall that completely surrounded the town.
The labour kept them fit and occupied them for weeks as the weather turned cold.
Eventually these siege works extended for some nineteen miles, with fifteen hundred watchtowers spaced sixty feet apart.
Observing all this from the ramparts of the town, Lucius’s men made repeated and desperate attempts to interrupt our work.
The hand-to-hand combat was savage. But they were becoming weak and ragged with hunger, and every sortie was driven off.
At the end of January, Lucius himself led a determined attempt to breach our wall at several points using iron tools and scaling ladders.
When that also failed, he was finally forced to sue for peace.
As a condition of surrender, he demanded a pardon for himself and his men. Caesar would dearly have loved to put him to death, but he was mindful of his status as Antony’s brother, and to my surprise, he agreed.
On a dismal cold day in February, the gates of the town were opened and Lucius led out his defeated army, each man handing over his weapons as they emerged.
Many were veterans, and soon they were mingling with our legionaries like the old comrades they were.
I confess I wept to see it, and hoped this would be the last time Roman fought Roman.
The great combined force cheered Caesar as he rode through their ranks and hailed him imperator in the field.
He was less disposed to be merciful to the rest of the besieged survivors.
All the Roman senators and knights who had followed Lucius, along with the town’s magistrates, had their arms pinioned behind them and were pushed and dragged out to the field to be executed.
To their pitiful pleas for mercy, Caesar gave only one answer: ‘You must die.’ The beheadings went on for hours.
I could hardly bear to watch. When one old fellow begged at least to be given a proper burial, Caesar replied that the birds would soon settle that question.
When the killings were over, our men were given permission to enter the town to take away whatever they could carry. Then, on Caesar’s orders, Perusia was burned to the ground, and from its ashes my star began to rise.