CAESAR’S PASSAGE OF THE THAMES
The excessively laconic chapter in which Caesar describes how he crossed the Thames in the face of a British force seems at first sight hard to explain. He tells us that ‘the river can only be forded at one spot, and there with difficulty’. ‘On reaching this place,’ he continues, ‘he observed that the enemy were drawn up in great force near the opposite bank of the river. The bank was fenced by sharp stakes planted along its edge; and similar stakes were fixed under water and concealed by the river. Having learned these facts from prisoners and deserters, Caesar sent his cavalry on in front, and ordered the legions to follow them speedily; but the men advanced with such swiftness and dash, though they only had their heads above water, that the enemy, unable to withstand the combined onset of infantry and cavalry, quitted the bank and fled’ (quod flumen uno omnino loco pedibus, atque hoc aegre, transiri potest. Eo cum venisset, animadvertit ad alteram fluminis ripam magnas esse copias hostium instructas. Ripa autem erat acutis sudibus praefixisque munita, eiusdemque generis sub aqua defixae sudes flumine tegebantur. His rebus cognitis a captivis perfugisque Caesar praemisso equitatu confestim legiones subsequi iussit. Sed ea celeritate atque eo impetu milites ierunt, cum capite solo ex aqua extarent, ut hostes impetum legionum atque equitum sustinere non possent ripasque dimitterent ac se fugae mandarent).[3509]
Von Göler[3510] explains the passage as follows:—‘he first sent his cavalry against the enemy, making them swim across the adjacent part of the river, which, though deeper, was not barricaded, and by their attack so effectually protected the passage of the infantry, which was begun immediately afterwards, that they gained time to remove the stakes’; and in a note[3511] he says, ‘Only in this way can the expression praemisso equitatu confestim legiones subsequi iussit be understood, for the cavalry could by no possibility swim across or disregard the stakes or the palisade.’ This explanation, as far as it goes, is substantially identical with that of Turpin de Crissé,[3512] who supposes, further, that while part of the Roman infantry cut down the stakes in the river, they were supported by their comrades in the rear, who discharged missiles against the enemy, and, he might have added, by the auxiliary troops,—slingers and archers. Napoleon the Third[3513] hardly differs from his predecessors in suggesting that the cavalry were sent ‘à une certaine distance en amont ou en aval’. Mr. A. G. Peskett[3514] objects to Napoleon’s explanation on the ground that it involves a mistranslation of the word praemittit, which, he insists, ‘must mean that Caesar sent the cavalry across the river, ordering the infantry to follow them.’ Mr. Peskett evidently means that the infantry crossed directly in the rear of the cavalry. But, as any soldier would tell Mr. Peskett, the operation which he supposes would have been absolutely impossible; and, moreover, his rigidly literal interpretation of the word praemisso, which is not shared by that competent Caesarian scholar, C. Schneider, is irreconcilable with the word sed, which opens the next sentence. This word, as Schneider[3515] remarks, is intended to show that the infantry, in their ardour, outvied the cavalry, and crossed the river before them. The use of the word praemisso may surely be defended if the cavalry were sent into the water before the infantry. Similarly it will be evident to any one who carefully reads the last two sentences in the twenty-fifth chapter of Caesar’s Fourth Book[3516] that the word subsecuti cannot there mean ‘following directly in rear’. For in that case ‘the nearest ships’ (proximis navibus), the troops in which jumped into the sea and followed (subsecuti) their comrades, would have been drawn up in a second line behind the other ships. If so, being in deeper water, they evidently could not have been run aground; and the soldiers who descended from them would have been drowned.