His camp became a rallying point for
disaffection. Envoys came privately to him from distant tribes. He, too,
held his rival council, and a fresh attack on the camp of Labienus was to
be the first step in a general war. Labienus, well informed of what was
going on, watched him quietly from his entrenchments. When the Gauls
approached, he affected fear, as Caesar had done, and he secretly formed a
body of cavalry, of whose existence they had no suspicion. Induciomarus
became careless. Day after day he rode round the entrenchments, insulting
the Romans as cowards, and his men flinging their javelins over the walls.
Labienus remained passive, till one evening, when, after one of these
displays, the loose bands of the Gauls had scattered, he sent his horse
out suddenly with orders to fight neither with small nor great, save with
Induciomarus only, and promising a reward for his head. Fortune favored
him. Induciomarus was overtaken and killed in a ford of the Ourthe, and
for the moment the agitation was cooled down. But the impression which had
been excited by the destruction of Sabinus was still telling through the
country. Caesar expected fresh trouble in the coming summer, and spent the
rest of the winter and spring in preparing for a new struggle. Future
peace depended on convincing the Gauls of the inexhaustible resources of
Italy; on showing them that any loss which might be inflicted could be
immediately repaired, and that the army could and would be maintained in
whatever strength might be necessary to coerce them.
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