Early Britain-Roman Britain Part 4

E. 7.--Neither can we say what he meant by the "stupendous ramparts"

against Caesar's access to our island. The Dover cliffs have been suggested, and the Goodwin Sands; but it seems much more probable that the Britons were believed to have artificially fortified the most accessible landing-places. Perhaps they may have actually done so, but if they did it was to no purpose; for this time Caesar disembarked his army quite unopposed. On his return from Rome he had bidden his newly-built fleet, along with what was left of the old one, rendezvous at Boulogne; whence, after long delay through a continuous north-westerly breeze [_Corus_], he was at length enabled to set sail with no fewer than eight hundred vessels. Never throughout history has so large a navy threatened our sh.o.r.es. The most numerous of the Danish expeditions contained less than four hundred ships, William the Conqueror's less than seven hundred;[101] the Spanish Armada not two hundred.

E. 8.--Caesar was resolved this time to be in sufficient strength, and no longer despised his enemies. He brought with him five out of his eight legions, some thirty thousand infantry, that is, and two thousand horse. The rest remained under his most trusted lieutenant, Labienus, to police Gaul and keep open his communications with Rome.

According to Polyaenus[102] (A.D. 180), he even brought over with him a fighting elephant, to terrify the natives and their horses. There is nothing impossible about the story; though it is not likely Caesar would have forgotten to mention so striking a feature of his campaign.

One particular animal we may be sure he had with him, his own famous charger with the cloven hoof, which had been bred in his own stud, and would suffer on its back none but himself. On it, as the rumour went, it had been prophesied by the family seer that he should ever ride to victory.

E. 9.--It was, as the Emperor Napoleon has calculated, on July 21 that, at sun-set this mighty armament put out before a gentle south-west air, which died away at midnight, leaving them becalmed on a waveless sea. When morning dawned Britain lay on their left, and they were drifting up the straits with the tide. By and by it turned, oars were got out, and every vessel made for the spot which the events of the previous year had shown to be the best landing-place.[103]

Thanks to Caesar's foresight the transports as well as the galleys could now be thus propelled, and such was the ardour of the soldiers that both cla.s.ses of ships kept pace with one another, in spite of their different build. The transports, of course, contained men enough to take turns at the sweeps, while the galley oarsmen could not be relieved. By noon they reached Britain, and found not a soul to resist their landing. There had been, as Caesar learnt from "prisoners," a large force gathered for that purpose, but the terrific mult.i.tude of his ships had proved quite too demoralizing, and the patriot army had retired to "higher ground," to which the prisoners were able to direct the invader.

E. 10.--There is obviously something strange about this tale. There was no fighting, the sh.o.r.e was deserted, yet somehow prisoners were taken, and prisoners singularly well informed as to the defenders'

strategy. The story reads very much as if these useful individuals were really deserters, or, as the Britons would call it, traitors. We know that in one British tribe, at least, there was a pro-Roman party.

Not long before this there had fled to Caesar in Gaul, Mandubratius, the fugitive prince of the Trin.o.bantes, who dwelt in Ess.e.x. His father Immanuentius had been slain in battle by Ca.s.sivellaunus, or Caswallon[104] (the king of their westward neighbours the Cateuchlani), now the most powerful chieftain in Britain, and he himself driven into exile.

E. 11.--This episode seems to have formed part of a general native rising against the over-sea suzerainty of Divitiacus, which had brought Caswallon to the front as the national champion. It was Caswallon who was now in command against Caesar, and if, as is very probable, there was any Trin.o.bantian contingent in his army, they may well have furnished these "prisoners." For Caesar had brought Mandubratius with him for the express purpose of influencing the Trin.o.bantes, who were in fact thus induced in a few weeks to set an example of submission to Rome, as soon as their fear of Caswallon was removed. And meanwhile nothing is more likely than that a certain number of ardent loyalists should leave the usurper's ranks and hasten to greet their hereditary sovereign, so soon as ever he landed.

The later British accounts develop the transaction into an act of wholesale treachery; Mandubratius (whose name they discover to mean _The Black Traitor_) deserting, in the thick of a fight, to Caesar, at the head of twenty thousand clansmen,--an absurd exaggeration which may yet have the above-mentioned kernel of truth.

E. 12.--But whoever these "prisoners" were, their information was so important, and in Caesar's view so trustworthy, that he proceeded to act upon it that very night. Before even entrenching his camp, leaving only ten cohorts and three hundred horse to guard the vessels, most of which were at anchor on the smooth sea, he set off at the head of his army "in the third watch," and after a forced march of twelve miles, probably along the British trackway afterwards called Watling Street, found himself at daybreak in touch with the enemy. The British forces were stationed on a ridge of rising ground, at the foot of which flowed a small stream. Napoleon considers this stream to have been the Lesser Stour (now a paltry rivulet, dry in summer, but anciently much larger), and the hill to have been Barham Down, the camping-ground of so many armies throughout British history.

E. 13.--The battle began with a down-hill charge of the British cavalry and chariots against the Roman horse who were sent forward to seize the pa.s.sage of the stream. Beaten back they retreated to its banks, which were now, doubtless, lined by their infantry. And here the real struggle took place. The unhappy Britons, however, were hopelessly outcla.s.sed, and very probably outnumbered, by Caesar's twenty-four thousand legionaries and seventeen hundred hors.e.m.e.n. They gave way, some dispersing in confusion, but the best of their troops retiring in good order to a stronghold in the neighbouring woods, "well fortified both by nature and art," which was a legacy from some local quarrel. Now they had strengthened it with an abattis of felled trees, which was resolutely defended, while skirmishers in open order hara.s.sed the a.s.sailants from the neighbouring forest [_rari propugnabant e silvis_]. It was necessary for the Seventh legion to throw up trenches, and finally to form a "tortoise" with their shields, as in the a.s.sault on a regularly fortified town, before the position could be carried. Then, at last, the Britons were driven from the wood, and cut up in their flight over the open down beyond.

The spot where they made this last stand is still, in local legend, a.s.sociated with the vague memory of some patriot defeat, and known by the name of "Old England's Hole." Traces of the rampart, and of the a.s.sailants' trenches, are yet visible.[105]

SECTION F.

Fleet again wrecked--Britons rally under Caswallon--Battle of Barham Down--Britons fly to London--Origin of London--Patriot army dispersed.

F. 1.--It was Caesar's intention to give the broken enemy no chance of rallying. In spite of the dire fatigue of his men (who had now been without sleep for two nights, and spent the two succeeding days in hard rowing and hard fighting), he sent forward the least exhausted to press the pursuit. But before the columns thus detailed had got out of sight a message from the camp at Richborough changed his purpose. The mishap of the previous year had been repeated. Once more the gentle breeze had changed to a gale, and the fleet which he had left so smoothly riding at anchor was lying battered and broken on the beach.

His own presence was urgently needed on the scene of the misfortune, and it would have been madness to let the campaign go on without him. So the pursuers, horse and foot, were hastily recalled, and, doubtless, were glad enough to encamp, like their comrades, on the ground so lately won, where they took their well-earned repose.

F. 2.--But for Caesar there could be no rest. Without the loss of a moment he rode back to the landing-place, where he found the state of things fully as bad as had been reported to him. Forty ships were hopelessly shattered; but by dint of strenuous efforts he succeeded in saving the rest. All were now drawn on sh.o.r.e, and tinkered up by artificers from the legions, while instructions were sent over to Labienus for the building of a fresh fleet in Gaul. The naval station, too, was this time thoroughly fortified.

F. 3.--Ten days sufficed for the work; but meanwhile much of the fruit of the previous victory had been lost. The Britons, finding the pursuit checked, and learning the reason, had rallied their scattered force; and when Caesar returned to his camp at Barham Down he found before it a larger patriot army than ever, with Caswallon (who is now named for the first time) at its head. This hero, who, as we have said, may have been brought to the front through the series of inter-tribal wars which had ruined the foreign supremacy of Divitiacus in Britain, was by this time acclaimed his successor in a dignity corresponding in some degree to the mythical Pendragonship of Welsh legend.[106] His own immediate dominions included at least the future districts of South Anglia and Ess.e.x, and his banner was followed by something very like a national levy from the whole of Britain south of the Forth. When we read of the extraordinary solidarity which animated, over a much larger area, the equally separate clans of Gaul in their rising against the Roman yoke a year later, there is nothing incredible, or even improbable, in the Britons having developed something of a like solidarity in their resistance to its being laid upon their necks. Burmann's 'Anthology' contains an epigram which bears witness to the existence amongst us even at that date of the sentiment, "Britons never shall be slaves." Our island is described as "_Libera non hostem non pa.s.sa Britannia regem_."[107]

F. 4.--Even on his march from the new naval camp to Barham Down Caesar was hara.s.sed by incessant attacks from flying parties of Caswallon's chariots and hors.e.m.e.n, who would sweep up, deliver their blow, and retire, only to take grim advantage of the slightest imprudence on the part of the Roman cavalry in pursuit. And when, with a perceptible number of casualties, the Down was reached, a stronger attack was delivered on the outposts set to guard the working parties who were entrenching the position, and the fighting became very sharp indeed. The outposts were driven in, even though reinforced by two cohorts--each the First of its Legion, and thus consisting of picked men, like the old Grenadier companies of our own regiments. Though these twelve hundred regulars, the very flower of the Roman army, awaited the attack in such a formation that the front cohort was closely supported by the rear, the Britons pushed their a.s.sault home, and had "the extreme audacity" to charge clean through the ranks of both, re-form behind, and charge back again, with great loss to the Romans (whose leader, Quintus Labienus Durus, the Tribune, or Divisional General in command of one of the legions, was slain), and but little to themselves. Not till several more cohorts were dispatched to the rescue did they at length retire.

F. 5.--This brilliant little affair speaks well both for the discipline and the spirit of the patriot army; and Caesar ungrudgingly recognizes both. He points out how far superior the British warriors were to his own men, both in individual and tactical mobility. The legionaries dare not break their ranks to pursue, under pain of being cut off by their nimble enemies before they could re-form; and even the cavalry found it no safe matter to press British chariots too far or too closely. At any moment the crews might spring to earth, and the pursuing hors.e.m.e.n find themselves confronted, or even surrounded, by infantry in position. Moreover, the morale of the British army was so good that it could fight in quite small units, each of which, by the skilful dispositions of Caswallon, was within easy reach of one of his series of "stations" (_i.e._ block-houses) disposed along the line of march, where it could rest while the garrison turned out to take its turn in the combat.

F. 6.--Against such an enemy it was obviously Caesar's interest to bring on, as speedily as possible, a general action, in which he might deliver a crushing blow. And, happily for him, their success had rendered the Britons over-confident, so that they were even deluded enough to imagine that they could face the full Roman force in open field. Both sides, therefore, were eager to bring about the same result. Next morning the small British squads which were hovering around showed ostentatious reluctance to come to close quarters, so as to draw the Romans out of their lines. Caesar gladly met their views, and sent forward all his cavalry and three legions, who, on their part, ostentatiously broke rank and began to forage. This was the opportunity the Britons wanted--and Caesar wanted also. From every side, in front, flank, and rear, the former "flew upon" their enemies, so suddenly and so vigorously that ere the legions, prepared as they were for the onset, could form, the very standards were all but taken.

F. 7.--But this time it was with legions and not with cohorts that the enemy had to do. Their first desperate charge spent itself before doing any serious damage to the ma.s.ses of disciplined valour confronting them, and the Romans, once in formation, were able to deliver a counter-charge which proved quite irresistible. On every side the Britons broke and fled; the main stream of fugitives unwisely keeping together, so that the pursuers, cavalry and infantry alike, were able to press the pursuit vigorously. No chance was given for a rally; amid the confusion the chariot-crews could not even spring to earth as usual; and the slaughter was such as to daunt the stoutest patriot. The spell of Caswallon's luck was broken, and his auxiliaries from other clans with one accord deserted him and dispersed homewards.

Never again throughout all history did the Britons gather a national levy against Rome.

F. 8.--This break-up of the patriot confederacy seems, however, to have been not merely the spontaneous disintegration of a routed army, but a deliberately adopted resolution of the chiefs. Caesar speaks of "their counsel." And this brings us to an interesting consideration.

Where did they take this counsel, and why did the fleeing hosts follow one line of flight? And how was the line of the Roman advance so accurately calculated upon by Caswallon that he was able to place his "stations" along it beforehand? The answer is that there was an obvious objective for which the Romans would be sure to make; indeed there was almost certainly an obvious track along which they would be sure to march. There is every reason to believe that most of the later Roman roads were originally British trackways, broad green ribands of turf winding through the land (such as the Icknield Way is still in many parts of its course), and following the lines most convenient for trade.

F. 9.--But, if this is so, then that convergence of these lines on London, which is as marked a feature of the map of Roman Britain as it is of our railway maps now, must have already been noticeable. And the only possible reason for this must be found in the fact that already London was a noted pa.s.sage over the Thames. That an island in mid-stream was the original _raison d'etre_ of London Bridge is apparent from the ma.s.s of buildings which is shown in every ancient picture of that structure cl.u.s.tering between the two central spans.

This island must have been a very striking feature in primaeval days, coming, as it did, miles below any other eyot on the river, and must always have suggested and furnished a comparatively easy crossing-place. Possibly even a bridge of some sort may have existed in 54 B.C.; anyhow this crossing would have been alike the objective of the invading, and the _point d'appui_ of the defending army. And the line both of the Roman advance and of the British retreat would be along the track afterwards known as the Kentish Watling Street. For here again the late British legends which tell us of councils of war held in London against Caesar, and fatal resolutions adopted there, with every detail of proposer and discussion, are probably founded, with gross exaggeration, upon a real kernel of historic truth. It was actually on London that the Britons retired, and from London that the gathering of the clans broke up, each to its own.

SECTION G.

Pa.s.sage of Thames--Submission of clans--Storm of Verulam--Last patriot effort in Kent--Submission of Caswallon--Romans leave Britain--"Caesar Divus."

G. 1.--Caswallon, however, and his immediate realm still remained to be dealt with. His first act, on resolving upon continued resistance, would of course be to make the pa.s.sage of the London tide-way impossible for the Roman army; and Caesar, like William the Conqueror after him, had to search up-stream for a crossing-place. He did not, however, like William, have to make his way so far as Wallingford before finding one. Deserters told him of a ford, though a difficult one, practicable for infantry, not many miles distant. The traditional spot, near Walton-on-Thames, anciently called Coway Stakes, may very probably be the real place. Both name and stakes, however, have probably, in spite of the guesses of antiquaries, no connection with Caesar and his pa.s.sage, but more prosaically indicate that here was a pa.s.sage for cattle (Coway = Cow Way) marked out by crossing stakes.

G. 2.--The forces of Caswallon were accompanying the Roman march on the northern bank of the stream, and when Caesar came to the ford he found them already in position [_instructas_] to dispute his pa.s.sage behind a _chevaux de frise_ of sharpened stakes, more of which, he was told, were concealed by the water. If the Britons had shown their wonted resolution this position must have been impregnable. But Caswallon's men were disheartened and shaken by the slaughter on the Kentish Downs and the desertion of their allies. Caesar rightly calculated that a bold demonstration would complete their demoralization. So it proved. The sight of the Roman cavalry plunging into the steam, and the legionaries eagerly pressing on neck-deep in water, proved altogether too much for their nerves. With one accord, and without a blow, they broke and fled.[108]

G. 3.--Nor did Caswallon think it wise again to gather them. He had no further hope of facing Caesar in pitched battle, and contented himself with keeping in touch with the enemy with a flying column of chariot-men some two thousand strong. His practice was to keep his men a little off the road--there was still, be it noted, a _road_ along which the Romans were marching--and drive off the flocks and herds into the woods before the Roman advance. He made no attempt to attack the legions, but if any foragers were bold enough to follow up the booty thus reft from them, he was upon them in a moment. Such serious loss was thus inflicted that Caesar had to forbid any such excursions, and to content himself with laying waste the fields and farms in immediate proximity to his route.

G. 4.--He was now in Caswallon's own country, and his presence there encouraged the Trin.o.bantian loyalists openly to throw off allegiance to their conqueror and raise Mandubratius to his father's throne under the protection of Rome; sending to Caesar at the same time provisions for his men, and forty hostages whom he demanded of them. Caesar in return gave strict orders to his soldiers against plundering or raiding in their territory. This mingled firmness and clemency made so favourable an impression that the submission of the Trin.o.bantes was followed by that of various adjoining clans, small and great, from the Iceni of East Anglia to the little riverside septs of the Bibroci and Ancalites, whose names may or may not be echoed in the modern Bray and Henley. The Ca.s.si (of Ca.s.siobury) not only submitted, but guided the Romans to Caswallon's own neighbouring stronghold in the forests near St. Alban's. It was found to be a position of considerable natural strength (probably on the site of the later Verulam), and well fortified; but all the heart was out of the Cateuchlanians. When the a.s.sailing columns approached to storm the place on two sides at once, they hesitated, broke, and flung themselves over the ramparts on the other sides in headlong flight. Caesar, however, was able to head them, and his troops killed and captured large numbers, besides getting possession of all the flocks and herds, which, as usual, had been gathered for refuge within the stockade.

G. 5.--Caswallon himself, however, escaped, and now made one last bid for victory. So great was still the influence of his prestige that, broken as he was, he was able to prevail upon the clans of Kent to make a sudden and desperate onset upon the Naval Station at Richborough. All four of the chieftains beneath whose sway the county was divided (Cingetorix, Canilius, Taximagulus, and Segonax) rose with one accord at his summons. The attack, however, proved a mere flash in the pan. Even before it was delivered, the garrison sallied out vigorously, captured one of the British leaders, Lugotorix, slaughtered the a.s.sailants wholesale, and crushed the whole movement without the loss of a man. This final defeat of his last hopes broke even Caswallon's st.u.r.dy heart. His followers slain, his lands wasted, his allies in revolt, he bowed to the inevitable. Even now, however, he did not surrender unconditionally, but besought Caesar's _protege_, the Atrebatian chieftain Commius, to negotiate terms with the conqueror.

G. 6.--To Caesar this was no small relief. The autumn was coming on, and Caswallon's guerrilla warfare might easily eat up all the remainder of the summer, when he must needs be left alone, conquered or unconquered, that the Roman army might get back to its winter quarters on the Continent; more especially as ominous signs in Gaul already predicted the fearful tempest of revolt which, that winter, was to burst. Easy conditions were therefore imposed. Caswallon pledged himself, as Lord Paramount, that Britain should pay an annual tribute to the Roman treasury, and, as Chief of the Cateuchlani, that he would leave Mandubratius on the Trin.o.bantian throne. Hostages were given, and the Roman forces returned with all convenient speed to the coast; this time, presumably, crossing the Thames in the regular way at London.

G. 7.--After a short wait, in vain expectation of the sixty ships which Labienus had built in Gaul and which could not beat across the Channel, Caesar crowded his troops and the hordes of British captives on board as best he could, and being favoured by the weather, found himself and them safe across, having worked out his great purpose, and leaving a nominally conquered and tributary Britain behind him. This, as we have seen from Cicero's letter, was on September 26, B.C. 54.

G. 8.--We have seen, too, that Cicero's cue was to belittle the business. But this was far from being the view taken by the Roman "in the street." To him Caesar's exploit was like those of the G.o.ds and heroes of old; Hercules and Bacchus had done less, for neither had pa.s.sed the Ocean. The popular feeling of exultation in this new glory added to Roman fame may be summed up in the words of the Anthologist already quoted:

Libera non hostem, non pa.s.sa Britannia regem, Aeternum nostro quae procul orbe jacet; Felix adversis, et sorte oppressa secunda, Communis n.o.bis et tibi Caesar erit. ["Free Britain, neither foe nor king that bears, That from our world lies far and far away, Lucky to lose, crushed by a happy doom, Henceforth, O Caesar, ours--and yours--will be."]

G. 9.--Caesar never set foot in Britain again, though he once saved himself from imminent destruction by utilizing his British experiences and pa.s.sing his troops over a river in coracles of British build.[109]

He went his way to the desperate fighting, first of the great Gallic revolt, then of the Civil War (with his own Labienus for the most ferocious of his opponents), till he found himself the undisputed master of the Roman world. But when he fell, upon the Ides of March B.C. 44, it was mainly through the superhuman reputation won by his invasion of Britain that he received the hitherto unheard of distinction of a popular apotheosis, and handed down to his successors for many a generation the t.i.tle not only of Caesar, but of "Divus."

CHAPTER III

THE ROMAN CONQUEST, B.C. 54--A.D. 85

SECTION A.

Britain after Julius Caesar--House of Commius--Inscribed coins--House of Cymbeline--Tasciovan--Commians overthrown--Vain appeal to Augustus--Ancyran Tablet--Romano-British trade--Lead-mining--British fashions in Rome--Adminius banished by Cymbeline--Appeal to Caligula--Futile demonstration--Icenian civil war--Vericus banished--Appeal to Claudius--Invasion prepared.

A. 1.--With the departure of Caesar from its sh.o.r.es our knowledge of the affairs of Britain becomes only less fragmentary than before he reached them. We do not even learn how far the tribute he had imposed continued to be paid. Most probably during the confusion of the Gallic revolt and the Civil Wars it ceased altogether. In that confusion Commius finally lost his continental princ.i.p.ality of Arras, and had to fly for his life into his British dominions. He only saved himself, indeed, by an ingenious stratagem. When he reached the sh.o.r.e of Gaul he found his ship aground in the tide-way. Nevertheless, by hoisting all sail, he deceived the pursuing Romans into thinking themselves too late till the rising tide permitted him really to put to sea.[110] The effect of the extinction of Atrebatian power in Gaul was doubtless to consolidate it in Britain, as when our English sovereigns lost their hold on Normandy and Anjou, for we find that Commius reigned at least over the eastern counties of Wess.e.x, and transmitted his power to his sons, Verica, Eppillus, and Tincommius, who seem to have shared the kingdom between them. Tincommius, however, may possibly be, as Professor Rhys suggests, merely a t.i.tle, signifying the _Tanist_ (or Heir) of Commius. In this case it would be that of Verica, who was king after his father.[111]

A. 2.--The evidence for this is that in the district mentioned British coins are found bearing these names. For now appears the first inscribed British coinage; the inscriptions being all in Latin, a sign of the abiding influence of the work of Caesar. And it is by that light mainly that we know the little we do know of British history for the next century. The coins are very numerous, and preserve for us the names of no fewer than thirty several rulers (or states). They are mostly of gold (though both silver and bronze also occur), and are found over the greater part of the island, the southern and the eastern counties being the richest. The inscriptions indicate, as has already been mentioned,[112] a state of great political confusion throughout the country. But they also bear testimony not only to the dynasty of Commius, but to the rise of a much stronger power north of the Thames.

A. 3.--That power was the House of Cun.o.belin, or Cin.o.bellinus[113]

(Shakespeare's Cymbeline), who figures in the pages of Suetonius as King of all Britain, insomuch that his fugitive son, Adminius, posed before Caligula as the rightful sovereign of the whole island. His coins were undoubtedly current everywhere south of Trent and east of Severn, if not beyond those rivers. They are found in large numbers, and of most varied devices, all showing the influence of cla.s.sical art. A head (probably his own portrait) is often on the obverse, and on the reverse Apollo playing the lyre, or a Centaur, or a Victory, or Medusa, or Pegasus, or Hercules. Other types show a warrior on horse or foot, or a lion,[114] or a bull, or a wolf, or a wild boar; others again a vine-leaf, or an ear of bearded wheat. On a very few is found the horse, surviving from the old Macedonian mintage.[115] And all bear his own name, sometimes in full, CVn.o.bELINVS REX, oftener abbreviated in various ways.

A. 4.--But the coins do more than testify to the widespread power of Cymbeline himself. They show us that he inherited much of it from his father. This prince, whose name was Tasciovan, is often a.s.sociated with his son in the inscriptions, and the son is often described as TASCIIOVANI F. (_Filius_) or TASCIOVANTIS. There are besides a large number of coins belonging to Tasciovan alone. And these tell us where he reigned. They are struck (where the mint is recorded) either at Segontium[116] or at Verulam. The latter is pretty certainly the town which had sprung up on the site of Caswallon's stronghold, so that we may reasonably conclude that Tasciovan was the successor of the patriot hero on the Cateuchlanian throne--very probably his son.

But Cymbeline's coins are struck at the _Trin.o.bantian_ capital, Camelodune,[117] which we know to have been the royal city of his son Caratac (or Caradoc) at the Claudian conquest.