To his credit, Pax Romani, which lasted almost 500 years, was probably the most successful attempted unification of Europe to date. With an eye to economic growth, Caesar set about a programme of unification through the crude mechanism of the Gallic Wars. In his Commentarii de Bello Gallico, Caesar explains that the component territories of Europe “differ from each other substantially, in language, customs and laws". When Julius Caesar stepped out onto the steps of Rome in 58BC and uttered the immortal words “Omnia gallia in tres partes divisa est”, he identified the kernel of the problem. Yet, battle-hardened, they stood their ground and fought to the bitter end of total annihilation. Staunch allies have slit each other’s throats, treaties of peace have been treacherously broken, and the soil has been soiled by the entrails of successive generations - cities levelled and rebuilt, walls constructed and knocked down again, and borders drawn and redrawn across the map in blood-red ink.įor millennia, the most powerful armies of the world have faced each other across some farmer’s field in a wet and boggy lowland to do battle for ground of such low yield it would keep neither snipe nor grouse.
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