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    with their shields overlapping, javelins were going though several at a time, pinning them together. With some members of the phalanx downed and others struggling with tangled shields, their formation was broken by these initial volleys.
    Caesar gave another order. His flag dropped, and the trumpets of the first line sounded the “Charge.” With a roar, the front-line legionaries charged down the hill with drawn swords. After repeated attempts to free their shields, many Helvetii threw them away, leaving themselves virtually defenseless. Getting in past the massive but unwieldy spears, the legionaries cut the Celts to pieces, inflicting terrible wounds to necks, shoulders, arms, and torsos.
    The bloodied Helvetii bravely stood their ground, despite their losses and despite their wounds, but after a while they were forced to begin to yield ground, and steadily withdrew to a hill a mile away, fighting all the way. Leaving the 11th and 12th Legions on the hill to guard his baggage, Caesar ordered all three lines in advance of them to pursue the Helvetii, at marching pace and maintaining formation. But as the Roman troops came up, a force of fifteen thousand members of the Boii and Tulungi clans, who had been acting as the Helvetii rear guard, unexpectedly swung around from the rear and attacked the Romans’ right flank. Encouraged by this, the Helvetii on the hill regrouped and advanced to attack once more.
    Caesar acted swiftly and decisively to this threat. He ordered his first and second lines to take on the Helvetii main force, while the third line wheeled to the right and engaged the Boii and Tulungi. With a blare of trumpets, the legions charged on two fronts. Time and again the Romans charged, re-formed, then charged again. The fighting lasted all afternoon.
    Not a single warrior of the Helvetii turned to run. But gradually their shattered formations were divided and pushed back. The men from the hill were forced to retreat up the slope, with Centurion Crastinus and his 10th Legion troops in the thick of the fighting. The enemy on the right were pushed all the way back to the parked wagons by men of other legions.
    On the hill, the fighting for the 10th Legion and its companion units ended at sunset. But at the wagons, the battle continued well into the night, with defiant tribesmen raining spears from the vehicles and poking pikes out beneath them and through the wheels. Finally, the wagon laager was overrun by the legions. All the Helvetian worldly goods and all the tribe’s supplies were captured, along with numerous noncombatants, including the children of nobility. The booty would be shared among the c03.qxd 12/5/01 4:53 PM Page 20
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    legions. It was later said that 130,000 Helvetii fled from the scene of the battle that night. How many were killed in the fighting no one could calculate; there were too many to count.
    Caesar spent three days burying the dead of both sides and patching up his wounded before marching after the surviving Helvetii. Centurion Crastinus was leading his men of the 10th Legion down the road when envoys from the Helvetii approached the Roman column. When they were conveyed to Caesar, the Helvetians prostrated themselves in front of him, and, in tears, begged him to grant peace to their people. Caesar commanded them to cease their flight and wait for him.
    The Helvetii obeyed, and the Roman army found them waiting apprehensively several miles ahead, their people on foot now—the fighting men and the women, children and old people, looking tired, hungry, bedraggled, and defeated. The legions formed up and watched in silence as the tribesmen lay down their arms, handed over escaped Roman slaves, and provided hostages. Apart from six thousand fighting men who slipped away at night and were rounded up by friendly tribes and put to death,