Download The Roman proconsul and general Julius Caesar pushed his army

Vercingétorix et la Période Romaine (200 av. J.-C. – 450 apr. J.-C.)
By the second century BC, France was called Gaul (Gallia Transalpina) by the Romans.
In his Gallic Wars, Julius Caesar distinguishes among three ethnic groups in Gaul: the
Belgae in the north (roughly between Rhine and Seine), the Celts in the centre and in
Armorica, and the Aquitani in the southwest, the southeast being already colonized by the
Romans
In the second century BC, Mediterranean Gaul had an extensive urban fabric and was
prosperous, while the heavily forested northern Gaul had almost no cities outside of
fortified compounds (or oppida) used in times of war. The prosperity of Mediterranean
Gaul encouraged Rome to respond to pleas for assistance from the inhabitants of Massilia
(Marseille), who were under attack by a coalition of Ligures and Gauls. The Romans
intervened in Gaul in 125 BC, and by 121 BC they had conquered the Mediterranean
region called Provincia (Provence). This conquest upset the ascendancy of Gaul’s
Arverni tribe.
The Roman proconsul and general Julius Caesar pushed his army into Gaul in 58BC, on
the pretext of assisting Rome's Gaullist allies against the migrating Helvetii. With the
help of various Gallic tribes (for example, the Aedui) he managed to conquer nearly all of
Gaul. But the Arverni tribe, under Chieftain Vercingetorix, still defied Roman rule. Julius
Caesar was checked by Vercingetorix at a siege of Gergorvia (Gergovie), a fortified town
in the center of Gaul (Auvergne). Caesar's alliances with many Gallic tribes broke. Even
the Aedui, their most faithful supporters, threw in their lot with the Arverni. Caesar
captured Vercingetorix in the Battle of Alesia, which ended Gallic resistance to Rome.
As many as a million people (probably 1 in 4 of the Gauls) died, another million were
enslaved, 300 tribes were subjugated and 800 cities were destroyed during the Gallic
Wars. The entire population of the city of Avaricum (Bourges) (40,000 in all) were
slaughtered.[8] During Julius Caesar's campaign against the Helvetii (present-day
Switzerland) approximately 60% of the tribe was destroyed, and another 20% was taken
into slavery.