Julius Caesar, after a severe struggle with - the Nervii and their confederates, was successful in bringing the Belgic tribes into Their subjection to Rome.
At first success attended Civilis and the Romans were driven out of the greater part of the Belgic province.
Holmes (Caesar's Conquest of Gaul, 1899), who comes to the conclusion that "when the Reman delegates told Caesar that the Belgae were descended from the Germans, they probably only meant that the ancestors of the Belgic conquerors had formerly dwelt in Germany, and this is equally true of the ancestors of the Gauls who gave their name to the Celtae; but, on the other hand, it is quite possible that in the veins of some of the Belgae flowed the blood of genuine German forefathers."
Ridgeway (Early Age of Greece, 1901) considers that the Belgic tribes were Cimbri, "who had moved directly across the Rhine into north-eastern Gaul."
The situation became more complex after the 19th of April, when France declared war against Austria and prepared to invade the Austrian or Belgic Netherlends.