Gaul () was a region of Western Europe first clearly described by the Romans, encompassing present-day Belgium, France, Luxembourg, and parts of Germany, Netherlands, Northern Italy and Switzerland. It covered an area of . Archaeologically, the Gauls were bearers of the La Tène culture during the 5th to 1st centuries BC. This material culture was found throughout Gaul and as far east as modern-day southern Poland, Slovakia, and Hungary.
Roman control of Gaul lasted for five centuries, until the collapse of the Western Roman empire. Already in 387 BC warbands led by the Gaul Brennos sacked Rome, becoming the only time Rome was conquered by a foreign enemy in 800 years. However, Gallia Cisalpina was conquered by the Romans in 204 BC and Gallia Narbonensis in 123 BC. Gaul was invaded after 120 BC by the Cimbri and the Teutons, who were in turn defeated by the Romans by 103 BC. Julius Caesar finally subdued the largest part of Gaul in his campaigns from 58 to 51 BC. According to his account, non-Roman Gaul at that time was divided into three parts: Gallia Celtica, Gallia Belgica, and Gallia Aquitania.
While the Gauls shifted from a primarily Celtic culture during Late Antiquity, becoming amalgamated into a Gallo-Roman culture, Gallia remained the conventional name of the territory throughout the Early Middle Ages, until it acquired a new identity as the Capetian Kingdom of France in the high medieval period. Gallia remains a name of France in modern Greek (Γαλλία) and modern Latin (alongside the alternatives Francia and Francogallia). The Catholic Archbishop of Lyon still holds the title of "Primate of the Gauls" today. The term "Gallicanism"—referring to a politico-religious movement—also derives its etymology from Gaul.
Etymology
The Greek and Latin names Galatia (first attested by Timaeus of Tauromenium in the 4th century BC) and Gallia are ultimately derived from a Celtic ethnic term or tribe Gal(a)-to-. The Galli of Gallia Celtica were reported to refer to themselves as Celtae by Caesar. Hellenistic etymology connected the name of the Galatians (Γαλάται, Galátai) to the supposedly "milk-white" skin (γάλα, gála "milk") of the Gauls."The Etymologies of Isidore of Seville" p. 198 Cambridge University Press 2006 Stephen A. Barney, W. J. Lewis, J. A. Beach and Oliver Berghof. There was longstanding historical debate over the origin of the name; François de Mézeray documents seven theories regarding its origins in his 17th-century Abrégé chronologique de l'histoire de France: along with the derivation from the Greek for "milk," these etymologies include one from a Hebrew word meaning "yellow," in reference to the Gauls' yellow hair, an etymology which Mézeray attributes to Samuel Bochart. Modern researchers say the name is related to Welsh gallu, , "capability, power",Pierre-Yves Lambert, La langue gauloise, éditions Errance, 1994, . thus meaning "powerful people".
Despite its superficial similarity, the normal English translation of Gallia since the Middle Ages, Gaul, has a different origin from the Latin term. It stems from the French Gaule, deriving from the Old Frankish *Walholant (via a Latinized form *Walula),Ekblom, R., "Die Herkunft des Namens La Gaule" in: Studia Neophilologica, Uppsala, XV, 1942–43, nos. 1-2, pp. 291–301. literally the "Land of the Foreigners/Romans". *Walho- is a reflex of the Proto-Germanic *walhaz, "foreigner, Romanized person", an exonym applied by Germanic speakers to Celts and Latin-speaking people indiscriminately. It is cognate with the names Wales, Cornwall, Wallonia, and Wallachia.Sjögren, Albert, Le nom de "Gaule", in Studia Neophilologica, Vol. 11 (1938/39) pp. 210–214. The Germanic w- is regularly rendered as gu- / g- in French (cf. guerre "war", garder "ward", Guillaume "William"), and the historic diphthong au is the regular outcome of al before a following consonant (cf. cheval ~ chevaux). French Gaule or Gaulle cannot be derived from Latin Gallia, since g would become j before a (cf. gamba > jambe), and the diphthong au would be unexplained; the regular outcome of Latin Gallia is Jaille in French, which is found in several western place names, such as, La Jaille-Yvon and Saint-Mars-la-Jaille.Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology (OUP 1966), p. 391.Nouveau dictionnaire étymologique et historique (Larousse 1990), p. 336. Proto-Germanic *walha is derived ultimately from the name of the Volcae.
Also unrelated, in spite of superficial similarity, is the name Gael. The Irish word gall did originally mean "a Gaul", i.e. an inhabitant of Gaul, but its meaning was later widened to "foreigner", to describe the Vikings, and later still the Normans. The dichotomic words gael and gall are sometimes used together for contrast, for instance in the 12th-century book Cogad Gáedel re Gallaib.
As adjectives, English has the two variants: Gaulish and Gallic. The two adjectives are used synonymously, as "pertaining to Gaul or the Gauls", although the Celtic language group once spoken in Gaul is predominantly known as Gaulish.
History
Pre-Roman
There is little written information concerning the peoples that inhabited the regions of Gaul, save what can be gleaned from coins. Therefore, the early history of the Gauls is predominantly a matter of archaeology, and the relationships between their material culture, genetic relationships (the study of which has been aided, in recent years, through the field of archaeogenetics) and linguistic divisions rarely coincide.
Before the rapid spread of the La Tène culture in the 5th to 4th centuries BC, the territory of eastern and southern France already participated in the Late Bronze Age Urnfield culture ( to 8th centuries BC) out of which the early iron-working Hallstatt culture (7th to 6th centuries BC) would develop. By 500 BC, there is strong Hallstatt influence throughout most of France (except for the Alps and the extreme north-west).
Out of this Hallstatt background, the La Tène culture arose during the 7th and 6th century BC, presumably representing an early form of Continental Celtic culture and likely under Mediterranean influence from the Greek, Phoenician, and Etruscan civilizations. This culture spread out along the Seine, the Middle Rhine and the upper Elbe. By the late 5th century BC, La Tène influence spread rapidly across the entire territory of Gaul. The La Tène culture developed and flourished during the late Iron Age (from 450 BC to the Roman conquest in the 1st century BC) not only in France but also what is now Switzerland, northern Italy, Austria, southern Germany, Bohemia, Moravia, Slovakia and Hungary. A major archaeogenetics study uncovered a migration into southern Britain in the Bronze Age, during the 500-year period from 1300 to 800 BC. The newcomers were genetically most closely related to ancient individuals from Gaul. The authors describe this as a "plausible vector for the spread of early Celtic languages into Britain".
The major source of early information on the Celts of Gaul is Poseidonios of Apamea, whose writings were quoted by Timagenes, Julius Caesar, the Sicilian Greek Diodorus Siculus, and the Greek geographer Strabo. In the 4th and early 3rd century BC, Gallic tribal confederations expanded far beyond the territory of what would become Roman Gaul (which defines usage of the term "Gaul" today), into Pannonia, Illyria, northern Italy, Transylvania and even Asia Minor. By the 2nd century BC, the Romans described Gallia Transalpina as distinct from Gallia Cisalpina. In his Gallic Wars, Julius Caesar distinguishes among three ethnic groups in Gaul: the Belgae in the north (roughly between the Rhine and the Seine), the Celtae in the center and in Armorica, and the Aquitani in the southwest, the southeast being already colonized by the Romans. While some scholars believe the Belgae north of the Somme were a mixture of Celtic and Germanic elements, their ethnic affiliations have not been definitively resolved.
In addition to the Gauls, there were other peoples living in Gaul, such as the Greeks and Phoenicians who had established outposts such as Massilia (present-day Marseille) along the Mediterranean coast. Also, along the southeastern French Mediterranean coast, the Ligures had merged with the Celts to form a Celto-Ligurian culture.
Roman conquest
In the 2nd century BC Mediterranean Gaul had an extensive urban fabric and was prosperous. Archeologists know of cities in northern Gaul including the Biturigian capital of Avaricum (Bourges), Cenabum (Orléans), Autricum (Chartres) and the excavated site of Bibracte near Autun in Saône-et-Loire, along with a number of hill forts (or oppida) used in times of war. The prosperity of Mediterranean Gaul encouraged Rome to respond to pleas for assistance from the inhabitants of Massilia, who found themselves under attack by a coalition of Ligures and Gauls. The Romans intervened in Gaul in 154 BC and again in 125 BC. Whereas on the first occasion they came and went, on the second they stayed. In 122 BC Domitius Ahenobarbus managed to defeat the Allobroges (allies of the Salluvii), while in the ensuing year Quintus Fabius Maximus "destroyed" an army of the Arverni led by their king Bituitus, who had come to the aid of the Allobroges. Rome allowed Massilia to keep its lands, but added to its own territories the lands of the conquered tribes. As a direct result of these conquests, Rome now controlled an area extending from the Pyrenees to the lower Rhône river, and in the east up the Rhône valley to Lake Geneva.. "[...] the most important outcome of this series of campaigns was the direct annexation by Rome of a huge area extending from the Pyrenees to the lower Rhône, and up the Rhône valley to Lake Geneva." By 121 BC Romans had conquered the Mediterranean region called Provincia (later named Gallia Narbonensis). This conquest upset the ascendancy of the Gaulish Arverni peoples.
The Roman proconsul and general Julius Caesar led his army into Gaul in 58 BC, ostensibly to assist Rome's Gaullish allies against the migrating Helvetii. With the help of various Gallic tribes (e.g., the Aedui) he managed to conquer nearly all of Gaul. While their military was just as strong as the Romans', the internal division between the Gallic tribes guaranteed an easy victory for Caesar, and Vercingetorix's attempt to unite the Gauls against Roman invasion came too late. Caesar was checked by Vercingetorix at a siege of Gergovia, a fortified town in the center of Gaul. Caesar's alliances with many Gallic tribes broke. Even the Aedui, their most faithful supporters, threw in their lot with the Arverni but the ever-loyal Remi (best known for its cavalry) and Lingones sent troops to support Caesar. The Germani of the Ubii also sent cavalry, which Caesar equipped with Remi horses. Caesar captured Vercingetorix in September 52 BC in the Battle of Alesia, which ended the majority of Gallic resistance to Rome.
As many as one million people (probably 1 in 12 of the Gauls) died, another one million were enslaved,Plutarch, Caesar 22. 300 clans were subjugated and 800 cities were destroyed during the Gallic Wars. The entire population of the city of Avaricum (Bourges) (40,000 in all) were slaughtered. Before Caesar's campaign against the Helvetii (Switzerland), the Helvetians had numbered 263,000, but afterwards only 100,000 remained, most of whom Caesar took as slaves.
Roman Gaul