The Trap at Alesia: Caesar's Conquest of Gaul

The Roman army marched into a trap. At Alesia, 80,000 Gauls held the hilltop fortress while a massive relief force of 250,000 surrounded the legions from outside. Caesar's men were squeezed between two armies, outnumbered five to one, with no retreat possible.This edition presents the campaign through three original tactical diagrams and maps that show phase by phase how Caesar's double circumvallation walls, siege towers, and cavalry sorties broke both attackers. Order-of-battle tables detail the legions, Gallic tribes, and key commanders. Every anecdote-from the Roman centurion who held a gate alone to the Gallic chieftain who surrendered his sword-is sourced to Caesar's own Commentaries and the historian Plutarch by name.For readers of narrative military history who want the strategy, the stakes, and the sources behind one of antiquity's greatest sieges.