aesar's conquest in Roman history will first be outlined, followed by a brief sketch of the relationship of Caesar's political strategy in Gaul to that previously employed by the Roman Republic. More extensive treatment will then be given to the Roman method of warfare and the employment of those methods by Caesar, with special attention to the difference between the military problems solved by Caesar to those for which the legions had originally been designed.
The most remarkable fact about Caesar's conquest of Gaul is that it was in a sense accidental. Julius Caesar did not set out to conquer Gaul. He was there in the first place due to the vagaries of Roman domestic politics, and throughout his campaigns he had one eye on Rome--his account of the Gallic War was indeed largely an exercise in propaganda, designed to keep him in the public eye and lay the groundwork for continued involvement in Roman politics. His extension of his military command in Gaul in 55 BC, which allowed him to complete his conquest, was likewise the product of politics in Rome, not of conditions "on the ground" in Gaul.
Moreover it is by no means evident that if Caesar had not conquered Gaul, some other Roman would have done so. In spite of their great military genius and their eventual acquisition of an empire, the Romans were not a nation of conquerors. Alexander the Great conquered an empire in 12 years; it took the Romans 250 years to gain theirs. Caesar's conquest of Gaul was very much the exception in Roman history, and had it not taken place, it is entirely plausible, even probable, that later Romans would have been content to establish only a defensive limes in southern Gaul to protect their existing province along the Mediterranean coast. Indeed, as will be pointed out below, the Roman military system was by no means optimized for sweeping campaigns of conquest, particularly of semi-tribal societies such as Caesar encountered in ...