The knowledge possessed by the general public of the conquest, of Gaul by Julius Cæsar rests mainly on the famous Commentaries, the eternal monument to the genius and literary ability of their author. That the writer of the campaigns which had for their object the subjugation of a great country, inhabited by tribes warlike and loving freedom, should have been likewise the planner and executor of those campaigns, and that his story should be practically the only story, are circumstances which, whilst allowing posterity to see the hero as he wished posterity to see him, have tended to obscure the merits, sometimes even to darken unjustly the characters, of the patriots who struggled, often with temporary success, against him. Not only has the greater glory of the conqueror effaced the achievements, in some cases almost equally illustrious, of the conquered, but the heroism of their aims, their noble patriotic rage, have either been passed over in silence or cruelly travestied. They have been made to speak as the conqueror wished them to speak, to think as the conqueror desired them to think, even sometimes to act as he would have had them act. The glory of Caius Julius, the gratification of his ambition, were the aims of the joint conqueror and historian. Before those aims every other consideration had to give way, even consideration of the character and virtues of those patriotic chiefs who were most nearly thwarting him.