105 BC the Teutones & Cimbri crushed two Roman armies near Arausio, in Provence.
Quintus Servilius Caepio (c. 145-post 95 BC) was the scion of a great Roman family, his father and two uncles all having served as consul, as had his grandfather, great-grandfather, and great-great-grandfather. Naturally, with such an aristocratic background, he too did well in politics, serving as praetor about 110 BC, and then governor of Further Spain for two years, winning a triumph in 108 BC for the defeat of the Lusitanians.
Elected consul for 106 BC, at a time when massive hordes of barbaric Cimbri and Teutones were threatening to descend upon Italy from both sides of the Alps, Caepio was given an army and sent to command in Narbonnensis, what is now Provence. Now just north of Narbonnensis, in Aquitania, lived the Gallic Tectosagae, who had allied themselves with the invading Cimbri. Caepio conducted a successful campaign against them, in the process capturing their capital, Tolosa (modern Toulouse). The plunder from Tolosa was impressive, given –probably exaggeratedly – as over 50,000 ingots of gold and 10,000 of silver, each of 15 pounds. Naturally, the loot belonged to the Roman people, and Caepio duly had it shipped to the capital in two convoys. Oddly, only the convoy carrying the silver made it to Rome, that moving the gold having been set upon by bandits; at the time the bandits were generally regarded as having been in the employ of none other than Caepio himself, a belief that persists.
Meanwhile, of course, the danger from the Cimbri remained. Although his consulship expired at the end of 106 BC, Caepio's command was prorogued as proconsul, while the Senate dispatched one of the newly elected consuls, Gnaeus Mallius Maximus, with a second army. Unfortunately, Mallius's very existence irked Caepio's aristocratic blood, for the consul was a so-called "New Man," that is one who had no consuls in his ancestry, a jumped-up commoner as it were. So Caepio refused to cooperate with Mallius against the invaders, despite being urged to do so by his subordinates and even his troops. The outcome was predictable; at Arausio (Orange) on October 5, 105 BC, the Cimbri defeated both Roman armies, one at a time. The blow to the Republic was horrific, with reports that as many as 80,000 troops perished, among them two sons of Mallius, and 40,000 camp-followers, with just ten men escaping. Although the numbers are certainly greatly inflated, it was a critical blow to Roman power.
Caepio survived the battle. But he was deprived of his command by the people's assembly and forcibly retired to private life, while the great Gaius Marius cleaned up the mess. Ten years later, in 95 BC, Caepio was finally brought to trial for his misconduct by one of the people's Tribunes. Although the aristocratic faction rallied to his side, he was convicted, and a ruinous fine was imposed, apparently in the hope of unearthing all that missing gold. On top of that, Caepio was imprisoned for a time. Later escaping, he fled to Smyrna, in Asia, where he lived out his life in great luxury, as befitted the man who had swiped all that gold.
1973. Yom Kippur War. Egypt prepared with great diligence. The principal geographic feature of their front was, of course, the Suez Canal, essentially a broad river, one of the most formidable obstacles in military geography. Strengthening the Israeli hold on the east bank of the canal was the Bar-Lev Line, actually a series of concrete observation posts, positioned every 10-12 kilometers along the canal, though there were additional fortifications at the more likely crossing points. Each post held only about fifteen men and their primary task was to give warning of an Egyptian attempt to cross the canal, and direct artillery fire on them from batteries well in the rear. Behind the canal the Israelis held small armored and artillery units, and further back there were bases at which were stockpiled the weapons and equipment for reserve brigades, which could be mobilized within 24 hours of any attempt to cross the canal. The Israelis expected their artillery and air force to keep any canal crossing force busy until the reserve brigades could get moving towards the canal.
To get across the canal the Egyptians, under Anwar Sadat, realized that they needed a better army. They did this by allowing the Soviet Union considerable control over their training, a logical step since they were largely using Soviet equipment and had adopted Soviet tables of organization, not to mention the fact that the Russians knew how to turn masses of often illiterate peasants into decent soldiers. So the Egyptians trained hard, and often. But they also took some special measures to provide the divisions that would actually assault the canal line with special equipment.
There were to be five divisions in the assault wave, each assigned a front of approximately 8 kilometers. Each was given a lot of extra equipment, so that each of the five assault divisions could deploy on its front a formidable array of weapons.
Assault Division Weapons Allotments
Item Number
RPG-7 A/T Rockets 314
106mm Recoilless Rifles 108
Sagger ATGM Launchers 24
Tanks 218
Artillery Pieces 260
Ground Support Aircraft 85
This table shows the resources available to each of the five Egyptian assault divisions between its original organic allocation and the additional allotment of equipment. In comparison, the Israeli forces this host totaled about 460 infantrymen in the Bar Lev line, supported by 28 pieces of artillery, with about 300 tanks in reserve.
The Egyptian assault on October 6, 1973, was enormously successful, the result of surprise and overwhelming material superiority..
