15.
The Germans when, upon hearing a noise behind them,
[they looked and] saw that their families were being slain, throwing away their
arms and abandoning their standards, fled out of the camp, and when they had
arrived at the confluence of the Meuse and the Rhine
, the survivors despairing of further escape, as a great number of their
countrymen had been killed, threw themselves into the river and there perished,
overcome by fear, fatigue, and the violence of the stream. Our soldiers, after
the alarm of so great a war, for the number of the enemy amounted to 430,000,
returned to their camp, all safe to a man, very few being even wounded. Caesar granted those whom he had detained in the camp
liberty of departing. They however, dreading revenge and torture from the Gauls, whose lands they had harassed, said that they
desired to remain with him. Caesar granted them
permission.
C. Julius Caesar. Caesar's Gallic War. Translator. W. A. McDevitte. Translator. W. S. Bohn. 1st Edition. New York. Harper & Brothers. 1869. Harper's New Classical Library.
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