Julius Caesar’s The Conquest of Gaul records the campaigns he fought between 58 and 50 BC across territories corresponding broadly to modern France, Belgium, Switzerland and parts of Germany. Written in the third person, the account follows Roman operations against Gallic and Germanic peoples, Caesar’s expeditions across the Rhine and his two invasions of Britain.
The work is both a military narrative and a political document. Caesar explains marches, sieges, engineering works, diplomacy and battlefield decisions while presenting his own conduct to a Roman audience at a time when his extraordinary command was becoming politically controversial. His descriptions of Vercingetorix, the siege of Alesia and the peoples encountered by Roman armies remain major sources for the period, but the narrative also requires reading as Caesar’s carefully constructed version of his own conquest.
Plutarch
Appian
Sallust
Cicero
Cassius Dio