I trained a strong army loyal to myself. In 49 BC, Caesar defeated Pompeii and seized power (crassus had died in a foreign war). In the next few years, he gained the power of dictatorship indefinitely, combining the power of consul and dictator, and became a veritable military dictator. The Republic exists in name only, and the power of the Senate is declining. Some measures carried out by Caesar, such as distributing the land of various provinces to 80,000 veterans, reducing the debts of debtors, and punishing corrupt and extortionate officials, touched the interests of the elders and aroused their dissatisfaction. On March 15, 44 BC, he was stabbed to death by the opposition led by Brutu and Cassio in the Senate Chamber. Caesar left behind two works of historical value, namely the Battle of Gaul and Notes on the Civil War.
Julius Caesar was born in BC 102, which was an era of serious political crisis in the Roman Republic. At this time, Rome's economic base has undergone tremendous changes, becoming the most developed country in the western classical era. The original small farmers have been completely replaced by large estates that use slave labor on a large scale. The direct military plunder and the oppression of conquered areas by tribute made the wealth from all over the Mediterranean coast flood into Italy, which accelerated the social differentiation of Rome.
Great changes in the economy will naturally affect the political life of Rome. The conquered land is expanding day by day, the standing army composed of mercenaries is expanding, the slave population is increasing sharply, and the homeless class composed of unemployed small farmers and freed slaves is also flocking to the capital, which requires greatly strengthening the state machine to deal with it, but at this time the state system in Rome is basically the same as that in the small commune on the Tiber River. Its civilian government, which is reelected every year, its bloated citizens' assembly, and its Senate, which is monopolized by several generations of powerful people, can't adapt to this situation at all. Since the 1930s BC, people have been proposing various democratic reform schemes from different angles, but they were all opposed by a handful of so-called aristocratic Republicans in the Senate, and they failed because they violated the interests of the rich and nobles. Since then, people who advocate democratic reform have struggled endlessly, and the democratic movement has gradually developed from a legitimate demand for improvement to a conspiracy, rebellion and even civil war. In 82 BC, Sura, the protector of the rich and noble family, suppressed the opposition with bloody slaughter, and the democratic movement was temporarily silent. However, the massacre cannot eliminate the root cause of the demand for reform. Shortly after Sura's death, the democratic movement made a comeback. At this time, the incompetence of the Roman aristocratic Republican government, the turmoil of social order and the arrogance of soldiers greatly weakened the power of the country. In the 1970s BC, the situation finally developed to a very worrying level. The attacks of the strong neighbors in the east and the separatist regimes in the western provinces are second, and the pirates in the Mediterranean and the slave uprising led by Spartacus are serious. Pirates not only make people in coastal areas miserable, but even Rome is in danger of being cut off because of the lack of overseas food. The slave uprising made Italy suffer the heaviest military disaster since Hannibal War, which impacted the slavery in Rome and hit the slave economy. The slave uprising forced the slave owners to make some changes in the way of exploiting slaves and managing land, and also forced the slave owners to change the methods of controlling slaves. More importantly, it forced them to change the Republican regime that could not guarantee the economic development of slavery. As Engels, the revolutionary mentor, pointed out: "... when the state power within a country is in opposition to its economic development-so far, almost all regimes are in a certain stage of development-the struggle always ends with the overthrow of the regime." It was in this situation that Caesar entered politics.
Caesar was born into an ancient but declining aristocratic family in Rome. Because of his close friendship with Marius and Chennai, the leaders of the older generation of Democrats, he was rejected by aristocratic Republicans when he was young, forcing him to stand on the side of Democrats from the beginning and gradually become the leader of the opposition. At the same time, he gradually rose from a financial official and a public works official to a judicial official. But at this time, he had no other political capital except for his great appeal among the tramps on the street. Therefore, he managed to form a "three-person alliance" with cornelius Pompeii, who was very influential in the army at that time, and Marcus Krasus, the richest man in Rome, who represented the rich, the so-called knight class. Of course, these three people represent three groups with different interests, and they managed to get together only because they were also excluded from the aristocratic Republicans who controlled the Senate. With the joint support of these two men, Caesar was elected consul in 59 BC, but due to the restriction of the Senate, he did not achieve much.
At this time, after more than half a century of political turmoil, the leaders of the Roman ruling group, no matter which faction, realized from practical experience that to master political power, we must first have an armed force, and only by using force can we make a difference in politics. Therefore, after the expiration of the consul's term, Caesar tried his best to win the province of Gaul as governor, with the aim of cultivating his own army as political backing while Gaul was in existence. At the same time, opening up territory and plundering slaves in Gaul can also gain a reputation among Roman slave owners, and can also take the opportunity to accumulate a lot of wealth as the capital for future political activities.
Caesar went to Gaul in 58 BC and returned to Italy in early 49 BC. According to Plutarch, in nine years in Gaul, he slaughtered one million people and captured one million people. He and his officials made a fortune, which enabled him to pay bribes in Rome, even the minions of important people. He also held various performances among civilians, distributed a lot of money, and built a large number of projects in many towns in Italy, which not only pleased the contractor, but also pleased the civilians who got job opportunities. In this way, his popularity among Italian citizens gradually surpassed the other two in the "three-person alliance". In particular, he took Gaul as the training ground and trained an army that was the most accustomed to war in the Republic at that time, and it was an army that only knew Caesar but did not know the country.
Caesar's success stimulated Krasus. In 63 BC, he rushed to the East and launched a war against rest, hoping to achieve the same success there as Caesar, but he was destroyed and died there. This makes the original "three-person alliance" only Caesar and Pompeii stand side by side and distrust each other more and more. In addition, some people in the Senate provoked and wooed them. Pompeii finally broke up with Caesar and formally stood on the side of the Senate, becoming the leader of the aristocratic Republicans against Caesar. In 49 BC, Caesar led an army into Italy, and Pompeii was caught off guard. He fled Rome with all government personnel and the Senate, crossed the sea and entered Greece, where Italy fell into Caesar's hands. The following winter, Caesar also rushed to Greece and defeated Pompeii's main force in the Sahel. Pompeii fled to Egypt and was killed on the spot by the Egyptians. Caesar reunited the whole country after destroying the ruins of Pompeii in other places.
Caesar eliminated the remnants of Pompeii province by province, that is, the process of eliminating the residual influence of Roman aristocratic Republican system and establishing a new ruling machine. Therefore, the Roman country reunified by Caesar is no longer the weak and procrastinating old Roman Republic. It is a brand-new centralized military dictatorship, which has been able to command the whole country in a unified way, which is certainly beneficial to the economic development and cultural exchanges in various regions along the Mediterranean coast.
Less than four years have passed since Caesar unified the Roman country, but in such a short time. During this period, he was able to accomplish a lot of commendable work, the most noteworthy of which were two aspects: first, he destroyed the old aristocratic Republican system like a bomb, concentrated military and political power, basically completed the transition to the monarchy, and made a neat work of the old system that was riddled with problems and repaired at any time in the past few hundred years. He held such important positions as consul, attorney general, tribune and high priest, reduced the Senate to an advisory body, and regarded the assembly as a dispensable ornament, all of which paved the way for his later successors to turn Rome into an empire clothed with republicanism. Secondly, he tried to gradually abolish the privileges left by the old Rome as a city-state, raise the status of Italian towns to the same level as Rome, raise the status of provinces to the same level as Italy, and give citizenship to Roman provinces one by one-only to slave owners, of course-to further expand and consolidate the foundation of the ruling group of this great empire. But this work is only partially completed. In the past, when he was in Gaul, he gave citizenship to Gauls in the mountains, and later let some of their leaders enter the Senate, which aroused the dissatisfaction of the old citizens who regarded citizenship as a taboo and did not want others to share it. They laughed at him:
"Caesar led the Gauls to victory,
But to lead them into the Senate;
Gauls took off their trousers,
Instead, he put on a wide-brimmed robe.
In 44 BC, he promulgated the autonomy law applicable to Italian towns, giving them the same status as Rome; He restored the tariffs that Italy had been exempted from; He also plans to abolish the method of collecting provincial taxes by contractors, and instead send people from the state to collect them directly, canceling an embarrassing policy that people in all provinces hate most. No wonder it is rumored that he will move the capital to Alexandria and transform Rome into an oriental monarchy, mainly because he has lowered Rome's status in China.
Caesar was assassinated by the remnants of aristocratic republicanism in 44 BC, ending his busy life. His successor Julius Caesar Octavian and his sister's grandson Augustus, on the basis of Caesar, completely completed the task of transforming the slave Roman Republic into an empire.
Many people have been evaluating Caesar, and most people tout him as an unparalleled hero, great politician, talented commander-in-chief, writer, speaker and so on. It seems that he is the man who built this great empire. In fact, Caesar's life-long struggle is nothing more than a struggle between one ruling group and another ruling group in the slave owner class to change the ruling mode. Although it improved the situation of this slave country for a period of time and further developed the slave economy, it still only benefited the slave owner class and did not affect its fate at that time. Secondly, the success of his life should be mainly attributed to the fact that he happened to be in a country like the Roman Republic. In such a historical era, there was a makeshift opportunity for him to unconsciously complete the career that history wanted him to complete. Here, his personal qualities, such as perseverance, wit, boldness, smoothness and so on. , only played a very limited role in it, so it is not appropriate to flatter Caesar too much. As the revolutionary mentor Engels said: "It happened that Napoleon, a Corsican, became the military dictator needed by the French Republic exhausted by the war-this is an accidental phenomenon. However, if Napoleon never existed, his role would be played by someone else. This can be proved by the fact that whenever such a person is needed, he will appear: Caesar, Augustus, Cromwell and so on. "
On the contrary, some people strongly criticized Caesar, saying that he suppressed the democratic movement, organized him to cancel the guild and restore Italian tariffs. Reduce the rations distributed to the poor, etc. , is said to be a betrayal of civilians. These criticisms are often the result of an ultra-modern interpretation of the so-called "civilians" and "democratic movements" in Rome at that time. It is a complicated task to analyze the so-called civilians living in Rome in the last years of the Republic, their composition, their political role and economic status. This is not the work to be done here, but at least it can be said with certainty that they are by no means1the industrial proletariat in the 8th and 9th centuries. In the preface to the second edition of louis bonaparte, Marx quoted sismondi's famous saying that "the proletariat in Rome depends on social life, while the proletariat in modern society depends on social life"-this is the most pertinent conclusion about them. In the first or second century BC, they never produced their own representatives in politics, and never put forward a set of their own political programs. They have always been the tools of various political activists. Just as we can't regard them as modern proletariat, we can't regard Caesar as a first-class figure of Louis Napoleon or even thiers. Caesar was here, but he did no less than other activists at that time. At best, I can only blame him for using it at first and then leaving. Leave them and even hurt them. At that time, it was inevitable to ask pro-democracy activists as soon as they came to power. Caesar, in particular, can know that this is the inevitable result of his work by simply citing the work he devoted himself to. For a long time, the vagrant class in the capital has become a heavy burden for the country. In order to reduce the search for provinces and reduce the privileges of Rome, we have to take some measures that are unfavorable to these vagrants. For example, the free rations distributed to citizens were suddenly reduced from 320,000 to150,000 by Caesar. This privilege, once considered as a civil right, was strictly restricted and turned into real social relief. This is an example. Moreover, after the establishment of strong personal rule, the citizens' assembly even lost its role as a rubber stamp, and the political status of the homeless class came to an end. There is no need for the treasury to please them in everything. This is a logical development and the inevitable result of the transition from the Republic to the empire. Caesar did a lot of things in his life, but none of them were in this respect.