I
It was a great day to die. And before the sun had set, thirty-four thousand men would lose their lives in this valley. The men of the 10th Legion would have had no illusions. They knew that some of them would probably perish in the battle that lay ahead. Yet, to Romans, nothing was more glorious than a noble death. And if the men of this legion had to die, there was probably not a better place nor a finer day for it, on home soil, beneath a perfect blue sky.
There was not a breath of wind as the legionaries of the 10th stood in their ranks, looking across the river valley toward the Pompeian army. It was lined up five miles away on the slope below Munda, a Spanish hill town near modern Osuna in Andalusia, southeast of Córdoba. The sun was rising in a clear sky on the mild morning of March 17, 45 B.C. After sixteen years of battles in Spain, France, Belgium, Holland, Germany, Albania, Greece, and North Africa, and having invaded Britain twice, Julius Caesar’s 10th Legion had come full circle, back to its home territory, to fight the battle that would terminate either Rome’s bloodiest civil war or Caesar’s career, and possibly his life.
There were fewer than two thousand soldiers in the 10th now, a far cry from the six thousand men Caesar had personally recruited into the legion back in 61 B.C. Two-thirds of the legion’s strength had fallen over the years. Aged between thirty-three and thirty-six, these surviving legionaries of the famous 10th were due for their discharge this very month. One more battle, Caesar had promised the tough Spaniards of the 10th, and then he would gladly send them home, weighed down by bonus pay and heading for land he would give them as a gift.
The 10th, recognized by friend and foe alike as Caesar’s best legion, occupied the key right wing of his silent, stationary army, as it had in many a past battle. The 5th Legion, another Spanish unit, had formed up in its allocated position on the left. In between stood the men of the 3rd, 6th, 7th, 21st, and 30th Legions. Like the 10th, they were all under strength—the 6th Legion could field only several hundred men. About thirty thousand legionaries and auxiliaries in total, in eighty cohorts, or battalions. Split between the two flanks were eight thousand cavalry, the largest mounted force Caesar had ever put into the field, the horses restless as they sensed fear and apprehension on the early morning air.
In the midst of the 10th Legion’s formation, on horseback and surrounded by his staff, helmeted, and clad in armor, fifty-four-year-old Julius Caesar wore his paludamentum, the eye-catching scarlet cloak of a Roman general. While his troops waited, he spoke briefly with his cavalry commander, General Nonius Asprenas, finalizing tactics. Then Asprenas galloped away to take up his position—almost certainly joining his cavalry on the right wing, while his deputy, Colonel Arguetius, commanded the mounted troops on the left.
Caesar gave an order. An orderly mounted close by and who held his red ensign inclined the general’s flag toward the front. An unarmed trumpeter sounded “Advance at the March.” Throughout the army, the trumpets of individual units repeated the call. The eagles of the legions and the standards of the smaller units all inclined forward. As one, the men of Caesar’s army moved off, in perfect step, advancing to the attack at the march, in three lines of ten thousand men each.
Caesar had hoped to lure his opponents down onto the flat. But ahead, the men of the opposing army didn’t budge, didn’t advance to meet his troops. Instead, they stood stonily in their lines on the hillside, and waited for Caesar’s army to come to them.
The general commanding the opposition army was Gnaeus Pompey. Eldest son of a famous general, Pompey the Great, and grandson of another, he was only in his late twenties and had no military reputation to speak of. He had captained a successful naval strike for his father on the Adriatic a few years back, followed by an unsuccessful land operation in Libya shortly after. More recently he’d led his forces in a gradual, fighting withdrawal through southwestern Spain ahead of Caesar’s advance. That was the sum total of his experience of command. But he was Pompey’s heir, and here in Spain, where his late father was revered, that counted for a lot. Besides, as his deputy commanders he had two of Pompey’s best generals. What was more, one of them had been Caesar’s second-in-command for nine years and knew how Caesar thought and fought.
While his younger brother Sextus held the regional capital of Córdoba, Gnaeus had assembled and equipped a large field army of between fifty thousand and eighty thousand men. But few of his units were of quality. Nine of his thirteen legions were brand-new, made up of raw, inexperienced teenagers drafted from throughout western Spain and Portugal. The weight of responsibility for success in this battle would lay with his four veteran legions.
There was his father’s elite 1st Legion, the Pompeian equivalent of Caesar’s 10th. The loyal, tough 1st had taken part in all the major battles of the civil war, but unlike the undefeated 10th Legion, it had been forced to fight its way out of one disaster after another. There were the 2nd and Indigena Legions, both originally Pompeian units that had gone over to Caesar, only to defect back to the Pompeys when Gnaeus and Sextus arrived in Spain the previous year. Then there was the 8th Legion, a brother unit of the 10th and one of three Caesarian legions to recently desert to the Pompeys. Young Gnaeus’s suspicions had been raised by these mass defections and he’d only retained the 8th, sending the other two turncoat legions, the 9th and the 13th, to his brother at Córdoba.
The previous day, young Pompey had set up camp on the plain near Munda. Caesar had arrived with his legions after nightfall and set up his own camp five miles away. Then, in the early hours of the morning, Pompey had formed up his army in battle order on the slope below the town, determined to bring Caesar to battle. Pompey had decided to venture all and capitalize on his numerical superiority before his supporters tired of retreating and deserted the cause. As Pompey’s advisers had no doubt suggested, Caesar had been quick to accept the invitation to fight. “To Arms” had sounded throughout his camp shortly after scouts woke him with news of young Pompey’s preparations for action outside Munda.
Standards held high, Caesar’s legions marched in step across the plain with a rhythmical tramp of sixty thousand feet and the rattle of equipment. Discipline was rigid. Not a word was spoken. On the flanks, the cavalry moved forward at the walk. Caesar and his staff officers rode immediately behind the 10th Legion’s front line.
As they advanced, the men of the 10th would have warily scanned the landscape ahead. All around them were rolling hills, but here on the valley floor the terrain was flat, good for both infantry and cavalry maneuvers. But first they had a five-mile hike to reach the enemy. In their path lay a shallow stream that dissected the plain. They would have to cross that then traverse another stretch of dry plain to reach the hill where the other side waited. Because he’d chosen the battlefield, young Pompey had taken the high ground. For added support, the town of Munda was on the hill behind him, surrounded by high walls dotted with defensive towers manned by local troops.
As they narrowed the distance between the two armies, the legionaries of the 10th could see that Pompey’s wings were covered by waiting cavalry supported by light infantry and auxiliaries—six thousand of each. The men of the 10th would have been anxious to make out the identity of the legion on the flank directly facing them, hoping it wouldn’t be their brother Spaniards of the 8th. The 10th and the 8th had been through thick and thin together over the past sixteen years. It would not be easy to fight and kill old friends. But they would do it. For Caesar. The men of the 10th understood why their hard-done-by comrades of the 8th had defected, and as they had in the past, they sympathized with them. But when it came down to it, the legion’s loyalty to Caesar would prevail.
As Caesar’s men broke step and splashed across the stream, then re-formed on the far side and continued to advance at marching pace, their commander realized that Pompey expected him to come up the hill to come to grips with his troops. There was nothing else to do. It was either that or back off. When his front line reached the base of the hill, Caesar unexpectedly called for a halt. As Caesar’s men stood, waiting impatiently to go forward to the attack, Caesar ordered his formations to tighten up, to concentrate his forces, and limit the area of operation. The order was relayed and obeyed.
Just as his troops were beginning to grumble that they were being prevented from taking the fight to the opposition, Caesar gave the order for “Charge” to be sounded. The call was still being trumpeted when the standards of his eighty cohorts inclined forward. With a deafening roar, Caesar’s lines charged up the hillside.
With an equally deafening roar, Pompey’s men let fly with their javelins. The shields of the attackers came up to protect their owners. The missiles, flung from above, scythed through the air in unavoidable masses and cut swathes through Caesar’s front-line ranks, often passing through shields. The charge wavered momentarily, then regained momentum. Another volley of javelins blackened the blue sky. And another, and another. The attackers in Caesar’s leading ranks, out of breath, with their dead comrades lying in heaps around them, and still not within striking distance of the enemy, came to a stop. Behind them, the men of the next lines pulled up, too. The entire attack ground to a halt.
Caesar could see defeat staring him in the face for the first time in his career. Real defeat, not a bloody nose like Gergovia, Dyrrhachium, or the Ruspina Plain, or the skirmishes among the Spanish hills over the past few weeks. He’d broken all the rules—only an amateur would make his men march five miles, make them ford a river, then send them charging up a hill like this. An amateur, or a man who had become accustomed to victory, who had underestimated his opponents, who was impatient to bring the war to an end. If the Pompeians charged down the hill now, there was every possibility that Caesar’s men would break—even the vaunted legionaries of the mighty 10th. And, veterans or not, they would run for their lives.
Swiftly dismounting, Caesar grabbed a shield from a startled legionary of the 10th in a rear rank, then barged through his troops, up the slope, all the way to the shattered front rank, with his staff officers, hearts in mouths, jumping to the ground and hurrying after him. Dragging off his helmet with his right hand and casting it aside so that no one could mistake who he was, he stepped out in advance of the front line.
According to the classical historian Plutarch, Caesar called to his troops, nodding toward the tens of thousands of teenage recruits on the Pompeian side: “Aren’t you ashamed to let your general be beaten by mere boys?”
Greeted by silence, he cajoled his men, he berated them, he encouraged them, while his opponents smiled down from above. But none of his panting, sweating, bleeding legionaries took a forward step. Then he turned to the staff officers who’d followed him.
“If we fail here, this will be the end of my life, and of your careers,” Caesar said, according to Appian, another classical reporter of the battle. Caesar then drew his sword and strode up the slope, proceeding many yards ahead of his men toward the Pompeian line.
A junior officer on Pompey’s side yelled an order, and his men, those within range of Caesar, loosed off a volley of missiles in his direction. According to Appian, two hundred javelins flew toward the lone, exposed figure of Caesar. The watching men of the 10th held their breath. No one could live through a volley like that. Not even the famously lucky Julius Caesar. . . .