Caesar decamped to Gaul to fulfill his high military ambition, but he was far from immune from senatorial interference. A swift series of successes protected his precarious position down to the renewal of his command in 55; thereafter down to his decisive victory at Alesia in 52 he strove despite some memorable disasters to realize his repeated exaggerated claims to have "pacified the whole of Gaul." Final victory at Alesia brought the sustained applause not only of the People but also of the Senate. Caesar had a vital interest in making sure that Roman senators and the Roman People received a flow of positive news about his campaigns in Gaul, but his control over this multifocal network of communication is often greatly overstated. The chief media for this communication were not the Gallic War Commentaries but a dense network of "letters, rumor, reports" bringing a steady flow of news from various sources in the war zone to numerous recipients in Rome. Just as Caesar could not control the flow of information between the Army of Gaul and Italy, he also could not control political events in Rome, as the development of the crisis over his return shows.

Caesar is usually supposed to have sought to exploithis legal immunity as proconsul to escape judgment for his "crimes," and when he was prevented from doing so, to have plunged Rome into the first of the civil wars that would destroy the Republic. This is based on the ill-founded hypothesis that he was bound to face prosecution on his return to Rome with a predetermined verdict engineered by his enemies. In fact, what Caesar demanded was an honorific return from his victory in Gaul that was consistent with republican norms and traditions, while his inveterate enemies, now joined in increasing anxiety by Pompey, rejected his demands, fearing that if they did not do so he would escape the reckoning that they hoped for. To quash Caesar’s plans his enemies were "forced" to jettison various core principles of the Roman republican tradition, but most Roman citizens likely saw Caesar not as a rebel against "the Republic" but as its defender against a faction bent on vengeance. Neither Caesar nor Pompey appears to have sought this war; ultimately Cato and his faction forced this confrontation.