yielded, though much against his own judgment.

Caesar laid siege to the place, but his army suffered severely from cold
and hunger; they had no bread at all, and lived only on the cattle
driven in from distant villages, while Vercingetorix hovered round,
cutting off their supplies. They however labored diligently to raise a
mount against a wall of the town; but as fast as they worked, the higher
did the Gauls within raise the stages of their rampart, and for twenty-
five days there was a most brave defense; but at last the Romans made
their entrance, and slaughtered all they found there, except 800, who
escaped to the camp of Vercingetorix. He was not disconcerted by this
loss, which he had always expected, but sheltered and clothed the
fugitives, and raised a great body of archers and of horsemen, with whom
he returned to his own territory in Auvergne. There was much fighting
around the city of Gergovia; but at length, owing to the revolt of the
Aedui, another Gallic tribe, Caesar was forced to retreat over the
Loire; and the wild peaks of volcanic Auvergne were free again.

But no gallant resolution could long prevail against the ever-advancing
power of Rome, and at length the Gauls were driven into their fortified
camp at Alesia, now called Alise [footnote: In Burgundy, between Semur
and Dijon.], a city standing on a high hill, with two rivers flowing
round its base, and a plain in front about three miles wide. Everywhere
else it was circled in by high hills, and here Caesar resolved to shut
these brave men in and bring them to bay. He caused his men to begin
that mighty system of earthworks by which the Romans carried on their
attacks, compassing their victim round on every side with a deadly
slowness and sureness, by those broad ditches and terraced ramparts that
everywhere mark where their foot of iron was trod. Eleven miles round
did this huge rampart extend, strengthened by three-and-twenty redoubts,