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During the time that Caesar was busy extending the contravallation and cutting off Pompey’s water, he was approached by a delegation from the city of Dyrrhachium. Claiming that it was clear that Caesar was going to win the war, they wanted to show that they recognized this fact, making an offer to show Caesar in a tangible way that they supported him. What they offered was nothing less than the surrender of the city. In one stroke, Caesar’s supply problems would be solved, and Pompey would be gutted, effectively ending the civil war. It was too good an offer to pass up for Caesar, so he agreed to meet the townspeople, who told him that they would open one of the gates to the city near the temple of Artemis that very night. Like almost every city of any size in the Republic, it had long since outgrown the original town walls, meaning that Caesar would have to approach the gate down a street lined with buildings. Accompanied by Antonius, Caesar took with him only his German bodyguard, along with a single Cohort of auxiliaries to enter the gate, at midnight that night, as arranged. However, it was a trap; Pompey had men waiting for Caesar, hiding in the buildings along the road approaching the gate and Caesar was forced to fight his way out of the extremely difficult situation. At the same time, Pompey launched three separate assaults at various points along our lines, the most dangerous being against a Cohort of the 8th commanded by a Tribune named Minucius, with Pompey throwing an entire Legion against them. In order to prevent us from sending reinforcements to Minucius, Pompey also launched an assault on another of the redoubts, this one in Legion strength but composed of auxiliaries, along with a cavalry assault led by none other than the traitor Labienus on yet another point in our lines. The bucinae were sounding at every one of the 24 forts that had so far been constructed, each one further down the line picking up the alarm. The Second responded immediately, manning the ramparts and straining our eyes in the night, trying to determine what was happening. While we searched in vain for an attack on our position, Caesar was fighting for his life in the streets of Dyrrhachium, conducting a fighting withdrawal now that he realized he had been betrayed. Since Antonius was with Caesar, the next in command was Publius Sulla, the nephew of none other than the bloody dictator, but fortunately he acted with alacrity and prudence, leading a force to relieve the men of the 8th, hard pressed by a force many times its size. Rallying the rest of the 8th, along with one of the new Legions, Sulla marched to relieve the Cohort. Meanwhile, Caesar was still conducting his fighting withdrawal through the streets, and it was only through the bravery of his German bodyguards, buying Caesar and Antonius enough time to escape with the sacrifice of their lives, that they escaped the trap. By dawn, the fighting was almost over, although there was some mopping up being done by the relieving Legions. Nothing was officially said about what happened, yet there are no secrets in the army, and long before the sun was high in the sky, the word of what happened had whipped from one fort to the next. Men went running to the makeshift temples that each Legion has as part of their headquarters to give thanks that our general had not fallen, or worse, been captured, and I admit that I was one of those men. Losing Caesar would have been a catastrophe, and none of the officers had any illusions about what our fate would be if the unthinkable had happened. We were in a life and death struggle, and the only way to see it through alive was by winning.
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Despite these setbacks to our cause, Pompey was feeling the pressure at least as much as we were, if not more so. Their supply of fresh water was substantially reduced, while we had all the water we could drink. We had finally begun the turn towards the sea to finish the enclosure of Pompey’s forces, but there was still treachery afoot, this time coming from within our own forces. There were two traitors, commanders of the Gallic cavalry, faithless bastards named Roucillus and Egus. Their father was the chief of the Allobroges, and they had been with the army since early in the Gallic campaign, making their treachery all the more infuriating. The word was that they were caught shaking their men down, similar to what Longus was doing, but on a much larger scale since they commanded several thousand men. Learning that they were discovered, the pair deserted one night, going over to Pompey. In exchange for safe entry into enemy lines, they offered Pompey information about a weakness in our defenses. Despite having almost completed the contravallation, we had not yet linked the inner and outer trenches. There was a distance of about 300 paces between the two trenches and while the trenches themselves were complete, a transverse ditch linking the two had yet to be built, and it was this fact that the two traitors relayed to Pompey. To his credit, Pompey understood that this was his chance to break the blockade by launching a simultaneous attack. Pompey knew that the men in the nearer trench could not be relieved by reinforcements from the outer trench. He was further armed not only with the knowledge supplied by the traitors, but how we operated, and he launched an assault at the precise moment that the 9th was in the process of relieving the guard at the farthermost point in our lines, closest to the sea. The nearest reinforcements were almost two miles further up the line and inland, where the rest of the 9th was placed after they were forced to abandon the hill. Pompey sent more than 6 °Cohorts, composed of equal parts Legionaries and auxiliaries across the flat plain from within his own lines. At roughly the same time, he landed a force in between the two trenches, consisting of a large number of archers and slingers, along with a force of auxiliary and Legionaries, and finally a force of equal size to the south of the outer trench. Consequently, the men of the 9th were caught completely by surprise, while Pompey did everything he could to give his men an edge, including equipping his men with special wicker faceguards to protect them from any slingshot. As it happened, the precaution was unnecessary, since the relief had not brought their slings with them, and as a substitute were forced to resort to picking up rocks and throwing them at the Pompeians, with the effect you might imagine. The two Cohorts of the 9th were quickly overwhelmed, but not before the alarm was raised, the other eight Cohorts of the Legion immediately running to the aid of their comrades. This was exactly what Pompey was counting on.
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It is easy to say, looking back, that Caesar made a mistake when he placed the men of the 9th in the most vulnerable point in our defenses. They were, after all, still unhappy about their overdue discharges, a fact that the two traitors clearly communicated to Pompey, making it a question of whether they would fight hard. Coupled with the nature of the attack, coming at dawn when one Cohort was relieving the other guarding the westernmost redoubt, the two Cohorts were quickly surrounded. However, they were only acting as the bait for the rest of the Legion. Their Legate, a patrician named Marcellinus, was a sick man and confined to bed at the time of the attack, but he roused himself to assemble the rest of the Legion, save for two Centuries left behind to guard the camp. This was precisely what Pompey wanted, since even with these reinforcements he outnumbered our men by ten to one at the point of the assault.