126 HORSE-SHOES AND HORSE-SHOEING. 



Celtic city, amid which have grown the secular pines, 

 displays on its surface, on the banks of the Lison, and on 

 the neighbouring plateau of Amanqay, so large a collec- 

 tion of tombs (more than twenty thousand have been 

 counted), that only an awful slaughter, like that which de- 

 cided the fate of Gaul, can explain their presence in such 

 numbers. All the graves which the Archaeological Society 

 of Besan^on has carefully explored since 1 858, contain the 

 skeletons of Gaulish warriors (the Romans burned their 

 dead) in variable numbers, who had been buried with 

 their horses, and sometimes even with their chariots, of 

 which no more remain than the iron-work. 



M. Castan, who has examined many of them, gives the 

 following account of the contents of one of these resting- 

 places. Above two skeletons (surrounding them were 



sides abrupt, between the rivers Ope and Operain, rendered an attack 

 impossible. Vercingetorix, after making several furious but unsuccess- 

 ful sallies, called all the Gauls to arms, and in a short time 250,000 

 men appeared before the place. Caesar had, in the mean time, com- 

 pleted his line of circumvallation, protecting himself against any attack 

 from without by a breast-work, a ditch with palisadoes, and several 

 rows of pit-falls, to keep otf the dauntless cavalry. These defences 

 enabled him to repel the desperate attack of 330,000 Gauls against the 

 60,000 Romans attacked in front and rear. The Gauls were unable to 

 force his lines at any point, and Vercingetorix, reduced to extremity by 

 hunger, was compelled to surrender, without having carried into exe- 

 cution his design of murdering all the people in the town who were 

 unfit for battle. But the whole tribe of the Mandubii, which had been 

 expelled from the city by the Gauls, and were not allowed by the 

 Romans to pass into the open country, died of famine between the two 

 camps. 



It must not be forgotten that some time afterwards it attained a 

 flourishing condition, but was finally destroyed in 864, by the Nor- 

 mans. 



