Julius Caesar’s Gallic Wars saw the Roman general and statesman fight many Celtic tribes across Gaul, but he perhaps didn’t expect them to rebel.
When Vercingetorix led an uprising against the hostile Roman troops around 52 BCE, Caesar dug through snow drifts six feet deep to reach his troops and put the insurrection down. The Gallic tribes refused to accept that they had been conquered. Caesar had begun putting Roman law into practice and was pushing Roman culture on the Celts. When others, like the Eburones, tried to rise up, they were massacred. Vercingetorix wasn’t okay with that. He took it upon himself to get the Romans to leave.
In 52 BCE, he avenged the Eburones by decimating a Roman settlement and then handed out the food and weapons stored there to his own people. Messengers were sent all over Gaul inviting other tribes to join the cause. A guerrilla war was underway.
The Celts attacked Roman supply lines and then vanished into the hills – the Romans, now under Labienus, didn’t stand a chance. Until Caesar came back. When Caesar learned that Vercingetorix and his men were bunkered up in a fort in Alesia after a failed attack, he began a siege on it. With 60,000 men, he forced the Celts to surrender and Vercingetorix was captured and taken to Rome. He would be executed six years later.