Battle of Alesia - Identification of The Site

Identification of The Site

For many years, the actual location of the battle was unknown. Competing theories focused first on two towns, Alaise in the Franche-Comté and Alise-Sainte-Reine in the Côte-d'Or. Emperor Napoleon III of France supported the latter candidate and during the 1860s funded archaeological research that uncovered the evidence to support the existence of Roman camps in the area. He then dedicated a statue to Vercingetorix in the recently discovered ruins.

Uncertainty has nevertheless persisted, with questions being raised about the validity of Alise-Sainte-Reine's claim. For example, the site is said to be too small to accommodate even revised estimates of 80,000 men with the Gallic infantry, along with cavalry and additional personnel. It is also alleged that the topography of the area does not fit with Caesar's description. In the 1960s, a French archaeologist, Andre Berthier, argued that the hill top was too low to have required a siege, and that the "rivers" were actually small streams.

Berthier proposed that the location of the battle was at Chaux-des-Crotenay at the gate of the Jura mountains - a place that better suits the descriptions in Caesar's Gallic Wars. Roman fortifications have been found at this site. Danielle Porte, a Sorbonne professor, continues to challenge the identification of Alise-Sainte-Reine as the battle site, but the director of the Alesia museum, Laurent de Froberville, maintains that scientific evidence supports this identification. Classical historian and archaeologist Colin Wells took the view that the excavations at Alise-Sainte-Reine in the 1990s should have removed all possible doubt about the site and regarded some of the advocacy of alternative locations as "...passionate nonsense".