IX. BOULOGNE
The reasons which point to the identification of the Portus Itius with Boulogne are, speaking generally, that Boulogne, and Boulogne only, satisfies all the requirements of Caesar’s narrative.
To begin with, the passage for sailing-vessels from Boulogne to the south-eastern part of Britain is, and always has been, in circumstances such as Caesar described, not only very convenient but by far the most convenient. This is the testimony of seafaring men, both English and French, who have practical experience of the winds and the currents in the Channel: it was admitted, or rather strenuously maintained, by Henry,[2868] who advocated the claims of Wissant; and any man who studies the Admiralty Chart—Dungeness to the Thames—the Channel Pilot, and the Atlas, published by the Admiralty, which is entitled Tidal Streams in the English and Irish Channels, may convince himself of its truth. Captain Pollet, the harbour-master of Calais and Boulogne, furnished information to Ernest de Saulcy, who was determined, by hook or by crook, to make out a plausible case in support of Wissant; but he avowed his own opinion that Caesar must have sailed from Boulogne.[2869] Captain Iron, the harbour-master of Dover, in conversation with me, has done the same.
Secondly, the whole of Caesar’s fleet could easily have assembled in the port of Boulogne; and they certainly could not have assembled in any other port, properly so-called, on the coast of the Morini,[2870] except the mouth of the Canche, which was several miles further from Britain than Boulogne, and was in no respect more convenient. Desjardins[2871] has shown that the estuary of the Liane was much broader and deeper in Caesar’s time than it was in the nineteenth century before the harbour was modernized, and that, as the headland which sheltered it has suffered greatly from erosion, it extended further seaward; and not only was it ample in extent, but it was the only port protected from every wind.[2872] No one has described its merits more eloquently than Henry, the advocate of Wissant; and no one was more competent to form an opinion. He describes Gesoriacum as ‘le havre le plus commode et le mieux situé de toute la Gaule-Belgique, pour le commerce, la construction et l’équipement des vaisseaux’.[2873] But, although it is certain that there would have been ample room in the Liane for Caesar’s 800 small vessels,[2874] Airy insists that it would have been impossible for them to clear the harbour in a single tide.[2875] Now Caesar does not say that they did clear the harbour in a single tide; nor is it necessary to assume that they did. Captain Iron has, however, assured me that Caesar’s fleet of shallow vessels could have cleared the harbour in a single tide even if the depth of the water then had been no greater than in 1877. In that year the depth at low tide was 1 metre 60, or more than 5 feet[2876]; and it may be regarded as certain that the draught of Caesar’s vessels in the second expedition was much less than five feet.[2877] The estuary of the Liane has been silted up so much since Caesar’s time that it would hardly be an exaggeration to say that its depth then was three times as much as in 1877;[2878] and it has been ascertained from the sinking of artesian wells at the cement works of M. Demarle at Capécure[2879] that at that place the ancient bed of the river is 19 metres below the level of spring tides.[2880]
Thirdly, the distance of Ambleteuse from Boulogne corresponds closely enough with Caesar’s estimate of the distance of the ulterior portus from the Portus Itius. This does not prove the identity of the Portus Itius with Boulogne: but, if it is not a fact, the Portus Itius was not Boulogne; and it is therefore necessary to examine the arguments of those who have denied it. ‘On measuring,’ says Airy,[2881] ‘upon the beautiful Admiralty Chart the distance between the centre of the entrance to Boulogne and the centre of the entrance to Ambleteuse, I find it to be not quite 4½ nautical miles, or 5½ Roman miles; instead of the 8 miles given by Caesar.’ This estimate is accurate; but it is also irrelevant; for Airy measures the distance by sea; and Caesar must have meant the distance by land. ‘It was quite immaterial,’ says Lewin,[2882] ‘what was the distance by sea, for the eighteen transports were windbound, and could not reach him; but, as he could not dispense with the vessels, he had to consider what portion of his force could be most conveniently despatched thither, and as the transports lay eight miles off, he thought it best, in order to save time, to send thither his cavalry ... by the nearest road from the port of Boulogne, through Wimille and Slacq to the church at Ambleteuse, the distance is twelve kilometres.’[2883] It is amusing to find that Airy, who lays so much stress upon the accuracy of Caesar’s (assumed) estimate of the distance by sea from the Portus Itius to the ulterior portus, maintains on the preceding page (Essays on the Invasion of Britain, &c., p. 27) that Caesar’s estimates of distances by sea were valueless.
Fourthly, Caesar’s narrative of the adventures of his cavalry transports is easily comprehensible on the hypothesis that the port from which he himself sailed was Boulogne, but on no other.[2884] As we have seen, the storm of the 30th of August, 55 B.C., which prevented them from making the Kentish coast near Caesar’s camp, drove some of them westward to a point on the south coast, and carried the rest back to the point whence they had started, namely, the ulterior portus. That port, if Caesar sailed from Boulogne, was Ambleteuse; and there is no difficulty in believing, nor has it ever been denied, that the wind, before which some of the ships ran from the neighbourhood of the South Foreland[2885] in the direction of Dungeness, would have carried the others, which were laid to, back to Ambleteuse.
Fifthly, Caesar, as we have seen, sailed from the Portus Itius with a south-westerly wind;[2886] and it is needless to tell any one who will consult the map that to sail with a south-westerly wind, especially with flat-bottomed vessels which made a great deal of lee-way, and on the easterly going stream, from Boulogne either to Sandwich, Deal, Walmer, Hythe, or Lympne, would have been easier than to sail from Wissant.
Sixthly, it is universally admitted that Boulogne, which Pliny[2887] calls the portus Morinorum Britannicus, was the permanent naval station of the Romans in the imperial epoch, and that it was the harbour from which they habitually sailed for the coast of Kent.[2888] An inscription preserved in the Boulogne museum[2889] proves that this station was established at least as early as the reign of Claudius, while Suetonius[2890] tells us that Claudius embarked at Gesoriacum for Britain. Indeed there is indirect evidence that the station existed in the time of Augustus; for the road which ran from Mediolanum (Milan) past Lugdunum (Lyons), Durocortorum (Reims), and Ambiani (Amiens), to Gesoriacum[2891] was constructed by Agrippa. It has been argued that, although Gesoriacum was the recognized harbour from the time of Augustus, the fact does not prove that it was the harbour from which Caesar sailed. But to those who admit that it has been proved that no other port existed which would have served Caesar’s purpose the fact will appear conclusive.[2892]
Seventhly, Desjardins[2893] has pointed out that Gallic ports were always either in the mouths of rivers or otherwise sheltered from storms. Such a port was Gesoriacum; and if Wissant was a Gallic harbour at all, it was a solitary exception to the rule.
Lastly, Rudolf Schneider[2894] lays great stress upon the fact that, according to Pomponius Mela,[2895] no harbour on the northern coast of Gaul was better known than Gesoriacum; and he reminds us that Pliny[2896] mentioned no other harbour in the country of the Morini. Unless, he argues, the Portus Itius was identical with Gesoriacum, Mela, Pliny, and the later writers must have forgotten its existence. Now nothing would be easier than to make a dialectical reply to this argument,—Is it not equally remarkable that none of these writers even hints that Gesoriacum was the Portus Itius? This was the reply which I made myself on another occasion. But the reply was sophistical. Schneider’s argument depends upon the assumption that the Portus Itius was one of the great harbours of Gaul; and considering that it could accommodate 800 vessels, this assumption is certainly reasonable. At all events it is impossible to suggest any other explanation of the fact that after Strabo no writer mentioned the Portus Itius for more than a thousand years, except this,—that the Portus Itius and Gesoriacum were one.
It would be waste of time to repeat the arguments, which have already been stated by implication in the section on Wissant, based upon the unique advantages that Boulogne possessed in being connected with the interior by river and road.[2897]
It remains only to consider the objections which have been made to the identification of the Portus Itius with Boulogne.
1. The very fact that Boulogne was called Gesoriacum is regarded by Long[2898] as presumptive evidence that it was not called Portus Itius.
Desjardins,[2899] who evidently regards this as a serious objection, has taken great pains to remove it. He argues that the Portus Itius was not exactly the same as the imperial harbour of Gesoriacum, but that it comprised that part of the estuary of the Liane which lies between Bréquerecque and Isques; and, he triumphantly remarks, the name ‘Isques’ is derived from Itius. But ‘Isques’ cannot have been derived from Itius: the names ‘Ausques’,‘Quesques’, ‘Clerques’, ‘Setques’, and ‘Wisques’ are derived from Alciacum, Kessiacum, Quertliacum, Sethiacum, and Wiciacum; and the inference is that not Itius but Isiacum would have been transformed into ‘Isques’.[2900] Rudolf Schneider,[2901] who is too honest and too hard-headed to be deluded by Desjardins’s attempt to draw a distinction between Gesoriacum and Portus Itius, frankly admits that the unrecorded change of name has not been explained. But is there anything to explain? ‘Portus Itius’ is not, properly speaking, a name at all: it does not designate a town; it means simply ‘the Itian harbour’. Long saw nothing inexplicable in the fact that Gesoriacum was called by Pliny portus [Morinorum] Britannicus: why, then, should he have found it impossible to believe that its harbour was called by Caesar portus Itius?[2902] Was not the port of Athens called the Piraeus?
2. Long, after making the amazing remark that ‘such a port as Boulogne would have been quite useless in Caesar’s second expedition’, says that ‘the Romans estimated the distance from Boulogne to the British coast at fifty Roman miles; but this is too much.... However, they were right in making the distance more than the distance from Itius to the nearest point of the British coast; and the conclusion is that Gesoriacum and Itius were different places.’[2903]
The conclusion is simply that, assuming the identity of Gesoriacum with the Portus Itius, Caesar’s estimate of the distance from Gesoriacum to Britain was different from that of later writers. Besides, the only one of ‘the Romans’, as far as we know, who ‘estimated the distance from Boulogne to the British coast at fifty Roman miles’ was Pliny;[2904] and it may be presumed that by ‘the British coast’ he meant Rutupiae, or Richborough, which was a port, if not the chief port, of arrival in his day. For he estimated the shortest passage at fifty Roman miles: according to Dion Cassius,[2905] the shortest passage was 450 stades; and this, according to the Itinerary of Antonine,[2906] was precisely the length of the passage from Boulogne to Richborough.
Long goes on to say that in the Itinerary of Antonine the distance from Boulogne to Richborough ‘was estimated at 450 stadia; and, if we follow d’Anville in estimating this maritime stadium at ten to the Roman mile, the distance is fairly given. So if we take the 320 stadia which Strabo gives as the length of Caesar’s voyages, we have thirty-two Roman miles; or, if we take the reading which Eustathius, copying Strabo, has in his commentary on Dionysius, 300 stadia, we have exactly thirty Roman miles, as in Caesar’s text. The conclusion is that, in addition to the fact of Boulogne (Gesoriacum) and Ouissant (Itius) having different names, the ancient authorities place them at different distances from the British coast.’[2907]
Again Long’s conclusion is at fault. To begin with, Strabo did not estimate the maritime stadium at ten, but at eight to the Roman mile.[2908] Assuming, however, that he did estimate it at one-tenth of a Roman mile, there is no reason to suppose that when Caesar estimated the distance from the Portus Itius to Britain, he meant the distance to Richborough; and the only conclusion that can be drawn from Long’s data is that ‘the ancient authorities’ reckoned the length of Caesar’s voyage less than the distance between Richborough and Boulogne. And when Long says that the estimated distance, 450 stadia, from Boulogne to Richborough ‘is fairly given’, it is amusing to find him admitting that Caesar’s estimate of 30 miles ‘exceeds the distance from Wissant to the nearest part of the English coast, and it is about the true distance from Boulogne to the same part of the English coast’. Thus, on Long’s own showing, Caesar’s estimate of the distance from the Portus Itius to the British coast corresponds with the actual distance from Boulogne to the same, and the estimate of the Itinerary is equally true. The reader who has followed him so far will hardly be surprised by his remark, that ‘even a real good harbour would have been useless to Caesar’.[2909]
3. Heller,[2910] after quoting the statement of Pliny as to the length of the shortest passage from Boulogne to Britain, and the statement of the Itinerary of Antonine as to the distance from Boulogne to Richborough, argues (a) that, as they overestimated the distance from Gaul to Britain, Caesar probably did the same; (b) that if Pliny had identified Boulogne with the Portus Itius, he would not have estimated the distance of Boulogne from the nearest point of Britain at 50 miles, but would have followed Caesar and written ‘about 30’; (c) that if Caesar had started from Boulogne, he would, according to the usual tendency of the ancients, have overestimated the distance from Boulogne to Britain, and would therefore have reckoned it at considerably more than ‘about 30 miles’, seeing that the actual distance from Boulogne to Dover is 33.
The first of these arguments, if it had come from a tiro, might have been passed over with a smile; but one would hardly have expected it from Heller. The third is based upon a misleading statement;[2911] and even if we could be sure that Caesar overestimated the length of his voyage, it would be inconclusive, for, as we have seen,[2912] it is not improbable that he estimated it at 40 Roman miles. And as for Pliny, ‘the shortest passage,’ which he estimated at 50 miles, was probably, I repeat, the passage from Boulogne to Richborough.
4. H. L. Long,[2913] if I do not misunderstand him, argues that there could have been no port at Ambleteuse in the days of Caesar. Speaking of ‘the immense irruption of blown sand’, he maintains that ‘this dune ... acts as a dam to the drainage of the valley; an interruption which must have produced swamps in former days, and is now but imperfectly corrected by an artificial channel, the embouchure of which forms the little harbour of Ambleteuse’.
This argument obviously depends upon the untenable assumption that the sand-dune existed in Caesar’s time; and it is shaken by the fact that Roman antiquities have been discovered at Ambleteuse.[2914] Moreover, according to the writer of the article Ambleteuse in M. Vivien de Saint-Martin’s Nouveau Dictionnaire de Géographie Universelle (i, 1879, p. 115), Ambleteuse, under the rule of the English, had an excellent harbour,[2915] and was not choked up by the accumulation of sand until after 1549.[2916]
5. General Creuly,[2917] referring to the attack made by 6,000 of the Morini upon the Roman soldiers who disembarked from the two ships which failed to make the harbours in 55 B.C. and were carried ‘a little further down’, insists that Caesar’s account of this episode[2918] is incompatible with the view that the Portus Itius was Boulogne. For, he argues, the 6,000 Morini could not have belonged to the pagus Gesoriacus, that is to say, the district of Boulogne, since the inhabitants of this region had submitted to Caesar, and, moreover, it was so sparsely populated that 6,000 men could not have assembled on the spur of the moment. He also reminds us that on the day following the attack Labienus marched against the rebellious Morini, and soon subdued them, as, owing to a drought, they were unable to take refuge in the marshes which had served them as an asylum in the preceding year;[2919] and he denies that there were any marshes in the pagus Gesoriacus large enough to serve such a purpose.
Creuly can only make a show of sustaining these objections by resorting to Airy’s fantastic theory,[2920]—that Caesar, when he said that two of his ships were carried ‘a little further down’, meant not ‘down the coast’ but ‘in the direction of the wind’. If the inhabitants of the district of Boulogne had submitted, why should they not have rebelled? The Aduatuci submitted and afterwards rebelled:[2921] the Nervii submitted and afterwards rebelled;[2922] the Britons submitted and afterwards rebelled:[2923]—but it is needless to multiply examples. For Caesar expressly states that the Morini who attacked his soldiers had submitted to him before he sailed for Britain.[2924] I am not concerned to defend the accuracy of his statement, that their number was 6,000: but Creuly admits that 6,000 Morini did assemble somewhere in their own country; and how can he prove that the district of Boulogne was more sparsely populated than any other? As to the marshes, there is no evidence that they were in the immediate neighbourhood of the spot where the soldiers were attacked; but if they were, what is there to prevent us from identifying them with the marshes south of Boulogne, between Camiers and Dannes?[2925]
6. Heller’s objection,[2926] that if Caesar had sailed from Boulogne in 54 B.C. it would have been impossible for his ship to drift so far by daybreak on the following morning as to justify him in saying that he ‘saw Britain lying behind on the port quarter’ (sub sinistra Britanniam relictam conspexit[2927]), has been already answered.
7. Caesar, describing his return to Gaul in 54 B.C., says that ‘at daybreak he reached land’ (prima luce terram attigit), and that his ‘ships were hauled up on the shore’ (subductis navibus[2928]). It has been argued that ‘both of these expressions point to the conclusion that he did not enter the mouth of a river’, and that ‘if the Portus Itius was in the estuary of the Liane, to haul up the ships over the banks on to the meadows would surely have been a difficult operation’.[2929] The author of this argument forgot that the ships need not have been hauled up on to the meadows at all unless they had gone far up the river, and that they may have been docked. But an expert whom he has since consulted assures him that, even if it had been necessary to haul up the ships over the banks on to the meadows, the operation would have involved no serious difficulty.
If this inquiry had merely established the probability of the identification of the Portus Itius with the harbour of Boulogne, it would not be possible to justify the labour which has been expended upon it except on the ground that it will save those who may wish to inform themselves a vast amount of research, and provide them with complete equipment for arriving at an independent conclusion. But that conclusion, if it is reached conscientiously by an unbiassed mind, can only be one.