The Conquest of Gaul is going to be a bit of topic for the rest of this month - for reasons to be revealed tomorrow. What has to be taken from this war is that at any moment it could have changed world history. Imagine the twenty-first century without our current calendar. Imagine a present without the Latin Alphabet. Imagine a world where Christianity and Islam had no empire to spread them. This all could have happened - the death of just one man would have caused it. But then, consider what happened because he survived. In 58BC there were six million Gauls living in dozens of disparate tribes across modern France, Belgium and the Netherlands. By the end of 52BC Gaul had become a single nation under one King - however one million were dead and another million Gauls were enslaved. Modern, heavily armed armies of up to 250,000 men had waged total war against each other - bringing a scale of destruction to western Europe that was never really equalled until Napoleon or even World War One. And this was all because of one man. Love his legacy or hate it...we are living in a world he gave us, which for those victims of Gaul, is quite the bitter pill to swallow. Tomorrow we'll find out who this man was.
Find out what Calvus thought of Gaul
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