WHERE DID CAESAR ENCOUNTER THE BRITONS ON THE MORNING AFTER HIS SECOND LANDING IN BRITAIN?
‘Caesar disembarked the army, and chose a suitable spot for a camp. Having ascertained from prisoners where the enemy’s forces were posted, he marched against them about the third watch.... After a night march of about twelve miles he descried the enemy’s force. Advancing with their cavalry and chariots from higher ground towards a river,[3412] they attempted to check our men, and forced on an action. Beaten off by the cavalry, they fell back into the woods and occupied a well-fortified post of great natural strength, which they had apparently prepared for defence some time before with a view to war with their neighbours; for all the entrances were blocked by felled trees laid close together’ (Caesar exposito exercitu et loco castris idoneo capto, ubi ex captivis cognovit quo in loco hostium copiae consedissent ... de tertia vigilia ad hostes contendit ... ipse noctu progressus milia passuum circiter XII hostium copias conspicatus est. Illi equitatu atque essedis ad flumen progressi ex loco superiore nostros prohibere et proelium committere coeperunt. Repulsi ab equitatu se in silvas abdiderunt locum nacti egregie et natura et opere munitum, quem domestici belli, ut videbatur, causa iam ante praeparaverant: nam crebris arboribus succisis omnes introitus erant praeclusi[3413]).
Such is the description which Caesar gives of his first encounter with the Britons in 54 B.C. The question of the site is closely connected with the question of the place where he landed. I have proved that this place was between Walmer and Sandwich.[3414] It is clear, therefore, that Caesar could not have encountered the Britons either at Robertsbridge on the Rother, where Airy believed that he had discovered the battle-field,[3415] or at Wye on the Great Stour, the site adopted by Lewin.[3416] It is certain, however, that the battle was fought either on the Great Stour or on the Little Stour.
1. Napoleon the Third[3417] asserts that the river mentioned by Caesar was ‘unquestionably the Little Stour’; and he maintains that the left bank in the neighbourhood of Barham and Kingston corresponds with the description of the combat. The rising ground on this bank is not, he remarks, too uneven to have prevented war-chariots and cavalry from acting, and, as the text of the Commentaries requires, the Britons would have occupied a commanding position (locus superior) on the gentle slopes which terminate at the water’s edge. We may safely conclude, he adds, from Caesar’s narrative that the combat was unimportant, and that his cavalry crossed the river without difficulty.
Lewin[3418] dismisses this view with the remark that the Little Stour is ‘too insignificant to have been designated by Caesar as a river’; but the Emperor, who had anticipated this objection, replied that Caesar used the same word (flumen) to denote the Oze and the Ozerain,—the two rivulets which encompass Mont Auxois in the Côte-d’Or, where Vercingetorix made his final stand.[3419] No one, however, who has seen the Little Stour at Kingston, the Oze, and the Ozerain, will admit that the Kentish ‘nailbourne’ deserves to be treated as respectfully as the two Burgundian streams.
On the 1st of May, 1902, I walked along the Little Stour from Barham to Bekesbourne. There was not so much as a teaspoonful of water in the channel; and a policeman whom I met near Kingston told me that it had been dry for the last five years. On the other hand, an old labourer, who had lived in the valley for sixty-four years, remarked that he could remember a time when the rivulet often overflowed its banks: on the 18th of April of this year (1904) I myself saw it running past Barham with a strong stream; and a porter at Barham station said, ‘Yes, and it isn’t half as strong as it was a month ago.’ Moreover, Bryan Faussett,[3420] writing between 1767 and 1773, said that the Little Stour about a mile below Kingston was ‘seldom or never dry’; and Philippott,[3421] speaking of Bekesbourne, affirms that in the reign of Edward the Third ‘there was a small navigation out of the river of Stoure up to this place’.
There need be no difficulty, then, in believing that the Little Stour, in Caesar’s day, was a running stream, which he might perhaps have called a flumen, though it must not be forgotten that both in 55 B.C. and in the following year, the summer, at all events in Gaul, was exceptionally dry.[3422] Nevertheless, it is certain that the Britons did not encounter Caesar on the Little Stour. Consider the meaning of his words:—illi equitatu atque essedis ad flumen progressi ex loco superiore nostros prohibere et proelium committere coeperunt.[3423] At one time I thought that this passage meant, ‘Advancing towards a river with their cavalry and chariots, they attempted from their commanding position (ex loco superiore) to check our men,’ &c.: but a passage in the twenty-third chapter of the Second Book of the Gallic War—alia in parte diversae duae legiones, XI et VIII, profligatis Viromanduis, quibuscum erant congressae, ex loco superiore in ipsis fluminis ripis proeliabantur—in which the words ex loco superiore unquestionably belong to profligatis, leads me to believe that the former of the alternative translations which I have given—‘Advancing with their cavalry and chariots from higher ground towards a river, they attempted to check our men,’ &c.—is to be preferred. At all events the locus superior was not without tactical significance, and was either the left bank of the stream or high ground in close proximity to the left bank. Now between Barham and the northern end of Charlton Park, which is below Kingston, the depth of the channel of the Little Stour does not exceed 18 inches; and even at Bekesbourne it is only about two feet. Therefore, unless the depth of the channel was considerably greater in 54 B.C. than it is now, and unless the water flowed considerably below the level of the banks, the words locus superior could not have been applied to the bank itself anywhere between Barham and Bekesbourne.[3424] Moreover, although there are well-defined heights on the left bank between Barham and Bridge, the lowest slopes, except opposite Kingston and for a very short space on either side of it, are at a considerable distance from the channel. Assuming that Caesar crossed the Little Stour at or near Kingston, the Britons could have opposed him more effectually when he was ascending Barham Downs than by attempting to defend the passage of the rivulet. And, since he would in any case be obliged to cross the Stour itself, is it not obvious that they would have waited for him behind the river which might fairly be called an obstacle rather than on the banks of the streamlet which an active lad could have jumped over?
2. If Napoleon’s view is inadmissible, it is difficult to characterize that adopted by the Reverend Francis Vine.[3425] He assures us that Caesar ‘descried the British forces ... lining the crest of the hill (described in the ‘Commentaries’ as “superior locus”) from Garrington (near Littlebourne) on his right hand, to probably the part of Barham Downs opposite Bridge and Bishopsbourne on his left. This was the best position which the Britons could possibly have chosen for the purpose of arresting the progress of an army marching upon Caer Caint (Canterbury)’. In other words, Mr. Vine holds that the Britons awaited Caesar’s approach not on the further but on the nearer side of the river! ‘That the Britons were traditionally reported to have opposed Caesar’s progress before he reached the river, rather than after passing it, may,’ he says, ‘be inferred from the following passage from Pomponius Sabinus, out of Seneca: “And in the night marching twelve miles up into the country, Caesar finds out the Britons, who retreated as far as the river, but gave him battle there.”’ So we are to prefer the authority of Seneca to that of the general who fought the battle! Besides, Mr. Vine fails to see that the passage which he quotes (and which is not to be found in Seneca) need only mean that the Britons, when Caesar descried them, had retreated from the seashore to the banks of the river. Why Pomponius Sabinus, an Italian scholar who was born 1,470 years after Caesar died, should be summoned as a witness it is not easy to understand. The only inference which can be deduced from Caesar’s narrative—the only inference which has ever been deduced from it by any scholar—is that the Britons, when Caesar descried them, were on the further side of the river, and that they advanced to its left bank in order to dispute his passage.
Mr. Vine’s view[3426] of the route which Caesar followed appears to be partly based upon ‘traces of encampments which still remain’. But who made them? Certainly not these Britons, who, only a few hours before Caesar began his night march, had retreated from the coast into the interior in order to oppose his progress, and whose stronghold was not on the right but on the left bank of the river. Certainly not Caesar, who, in marching from the coast to encounter the Britons, made no camp at all. The tumuli which have been opened on Kingston Down were, as Roach Smith says, ‘neither more nor less than those of Saxons.’[3427] Mr. Vine[3428] asserts that ‘there were probably two large oblong castra [constructed by Caesar], the one extending along Barham Downs opposite Charlton, the other at the western extremity of the Downs extending over part of Bridge Hill, Bourne Park, and perhaps the grounds of Higham’. But without excavation it would be impossible to prove that any ‘castra’ had been erected on Barham Downs by Caesar; and without going to this trouble any man who can understand the Commentaries may conclude that he certainly did not construct two.
3. Lyon, the author of the History of the Town and Port of Dover,[3429] maintains that the combat took place near Littlebourne, about two miles lower down than Bekesbourne; but this place is on the road from Sandwich to Canterbury, and barely nine miles from the former. If Caesar marched along the line of this road, he must have encountered the Britons on the Great Stour near Canterbury. Assuming that he marched from the neighbourhood of Deal, Lyon’s view might perhaps be defended if there were any reason to believe that on the left bank of the Little Stour near Littlebourne there was a stronghold;[3430] but in a former article[3431] I have given cogent reasons for believing that in 54 B.C. Caesar encamped some miles north of Deal.
It may, then, be regarded as morally certain that the river on which the Britons encountered Caesar was the Great Stour. It has, indeed, been objected that the least distance of the Great Stour from Deal is not twelve, but fifteen miles; but while this argument may be valid against the theory that Caesar landed in 54 B.C. at Deal, the position that he defeated the Britons on the Great Stour remains unshaken.
4. The Reverend R. C. Jenkins[3432] holds that the scene of the encounter was Chilham, about six miles above Canterbury, on the Ashford road. ‘The only obstacle,’ he pleads, ‘is the increased distance, which is sixteen, instead of twelve miles ... a difference which the loss of a single stroke might account for [the scribe being supposed to have written XII instead of XVI], if, indeed, it is not sufficiently explained by the possible miscalculation of the time of the march ... everything else falls into perfect harmony with the narrative—the high wooded ground at the back, the steep banks, the wide and rapid stream,’ &c. And again, ‘Let us remember that the journey was during the night, when the ground would be rapidly passed over, and the actual distance would be less apparent ... the space traversed is only described as “milia passuum circiter duodecim”, and even then the position of the enemy was merely discerned afar off ... here we have ancient mounds and earthworks, which give silent testimony to the fact that Chilham was a military position of the highest importance even during the British period.’[3433]
These arguments have no weight. When numbers attested by the consensus of the MSS. are not manifestly wrong, we have no right to distort them into agreement with our own preferences. The distance, in a straight line, from the nearest point on which Caesar could have encamped, if he had landed near Sandwich,[3434] to Chilham, is about 20 Roman miles; from the place where he would have encamped if he had landed near Deal,[3435] approximately 16; and the actual distance which he would have had to march is of course considerably longer. Why he should have marched more rapidly by night than by day it would be difficult to explain;[3436] and the remark that ‘the position of the enemy was merely discerned afar off’ is a pure invention. If ‘we have ancient mounds and earthworks’ at Chilham, they prove nothing about Caesar;[3437] and we have them also at other places near the course of the river. Besides, why should Caesar have made a forced march in order to cross the Stour at Chilham when, by making an ordinary march of 12 miles, he could have crossed it near Canterbury?[3438]
Our search for the site is now confined within narrow limits. Below Fordwich, the Stour, in Caesar’s time, would certainly have been impassable in the face of an enemy; for it flowed through a broad morass.[3439] Between Canterbury and the bridge above Sturry the river is virtually flush with its banks. It appears to me, then, that Caesar must have crossed it either between Fordwich and Sturry, or in the neighbourhood of Thanington, just above Canterbury, or possibly at Canterbury itself. Above Canterbury it flows through nearly level meadows: its width is about 15 or 16 yards: the banks are about 2 feet high; and the depth of the water at present is apparently about 2 feet. The bottom at the bridge above Thanington is sandy and gravelly. Opposite this point and at a distance of, say, 600 yards, the ground begins to rise into wooded heights. Opposite Thanington, and east of it, the heights are considerably nearer the river; but they gradually sink as they approach Canterbury.
At Sturry the lower slopes of the low hills which extend along the northern side of the valley approach very close to the river, say to within 100 yards; but opposite Fordwich they are much further away. Just below the mill at Sturry the Stour is from 15 to 20 yards wide: the banks are 3 or 4 feet above the water: the average depth is apparently from about 18 inches to 2 feet; and the bottom is sand mixed with stones. At Fordwich the depth of the water, as seen from the bridge, is about 5 feet: the banks are 4 or 5 feet above the water; and the bottom from this point downwards is mud.
5. The eminent geographer, Major Rennell,[3440] believed that Caesar crossed at the place where ‘the western road intersects the course of the Stour’; but he gave no reasons for preferring this site to Fordwich, Sturry, or Thanington.
6. Von Göler[3441] and Guest[3442] maintain that the battle was fought at or near Sturry; and Heller[3443] appears to agree with them. So does Roach Smith,[3444] who, at Guest’s request, made ‘a survey of the vicinity of Grove Ferry’, which survey, I presume, extended as far up the river as Sturry. ‘There,’ he says, ‘I found the river with the high bank ... the woods and oppidum,’[3445] &c. Napoleon[3446] argues that the banks at Sturry are so steep that the Roman cavalry could not have forced a passage without great difficulty, whereas it would appear from Caesar’s account that they crossed easily; and also that Sturry is 15, not 12 miles from Deal. The latter objection may be disposed of at once. Napoleon himself maintains that Caesar’s anchorage in 54 B.C. was ‘some kilometres’ north of the spot where he had landed in the preceding year;[3447] and this spot he rightly fixes between Walmer and Deal. Therefore the place from which Caesar descried the Britons just before they advanced to the bank of the stream was not 12 miles from Deal, but, as I have shown in a previous article,[3448] from a point in the neighbourhood of Sandwich. Certainly it would have been more difficult to force the passage of the Stour at Sturry than of the Little Stour near Kingston; but, as we have seen, the latter would practically have presented no obstacle at all. Airy,[3449] who holds that if the Britons had been posted on the Stour at all, ‘Caesar would have crossed at the sound ground of Canterbury or above it,’ observes that ‘the place had been selected by the Britons as a defensive post at least two days previously, and may therefore be presumed to have had the qualifications necessary for a defensive post, namely that it could not be turned, and that enemies could attack it in front only at a disadvantage’; and, remarking that ‘there can scarcely be a doubt that Canterbury existed then as an important town’, he adds that ‘of this there is no mention in Caesar’. But why should Caesar have mentioned Canterbury? It was not a strategical point: there was nothing to be gained by attacking it except perhaps a little plunder; and anything worth plundering would certainly have been removed into the stronghold which he did attack. ‘The place [on the banks of the river] had been selected [or, at all events, occupied] as a defensive post’ not two days but one day previously; and, generally speaking, to select a defensive post on a river which cannot be turned is impossible.[3450] The stronghold to which the Britons retreated was probably, as Mr. George Payne holds,[3451] and as I have shown in my narrative,[3452] the British oppidum in Bigberry (or Bigbury) woods, about a mile and a half west of Canterbury, of which traces still exist; and it seems most likely that the passage of the river took place at some point between Canterbury and Thanington.
CAESAR’S EARLIER OPERATIONS IN 54 B. C. (B. G., V, 9-11)
Caesar’s account of the events which occurred on the day after his first encounter with the Britons in 54 B.C. has been interpreted in several different ways; and yet his narrative is so clear that one would have thought it impossible to misunderstand it. After describing the first encounter, he proceeds, ‘Caesar, however, forbade them [the legionaries] to pursue the fugitives far, partly because he had no knowledge of the ground, partly because the day was far spent and he wished to have time for entrenching his camp. On the following morning he sent a light division of infantry and cavalry, in three columns, to pursue the fugitives. They had advanced a considerable distance, the rear-guard being still in sight, when some troopers from Quintus Atrius came to Caesar with the news that there had been a great storm on the preceding night, and that almost all the ships had been damaged and gone ashore.... On receiving this information, Caesar recalled the legions and cavalry, ordering them to defend themselves as they marched, and went back himself to the ships.... Although it involved great trouble and labour, he decided that the best plan would be to have all the ships hauled up and connected with the camp by one entrenchment. About ten days were spent in these operations, the troops not suspending work even in the night.’ (Sed eos fugientes longius Caesar prosequi vetuit, et quod loci naturam ignorabat, et quod magna parte diei consumpta munitioni castrorum tempus relinqui volebat. Postridie eius diei mane tripertito milites equitesque in expeditionem misit, ut eos qui fugerant persequerentur. His aliquantum itineris progressis, cum iam extremi essent in prospectu, equites a Q. Atrio ad Caesarem venerunt, qui nuntiarent superiore nocte maxima coorta tempestate prope omnes naves adflictas atque in litus eiectas esse.... His rebus cognitis Caesar legiones equitatumque revocari atque in itinere resistere iubet, ipse ad naves revertitur ... Ipse, etsi res erat multae operae ac laboris, tamen commodissimum esse statuit omnes naves subduci et cum castris una munitione coniungi. In his rebus circiter dies X consumit ne nocturnis quidem temporibus ad laborem militum intermissis.[3453])
The camp for the construction of which Caesar wished to allow time was of course quite distinct from the one for which, on the previous day, he had selected a site near his landing-place,[3454] and was to be in the neighbourhood of the place where he had beaten the enemy, that is to say, twelve Roman miles or more from the sea.[3455] Next morning he dispatched three flying columns in pursuit of the fugitives; and his rear-guard was just visible when the messengers arrived with the news of the shipwreck. He sent a galloper to recall the pursuing columns; and, as their retreat would naturally encourage the fugitives to rally and return to the attack, they were to offer the best resistance they could as they marched back to the coast.
C. Schneider[3456] misunderstands the passage as far as misunderstanding is possible. He holds that cum iam extremi essent in prospectu means ‘when the rear of the enemy was just in sight’. But Caesar was not with any of the three pursuing columns, for he tells us that he sent them in pursuit: therefore, if Schneider were right, we should be forced to believe that he learned afterwards that the enemy’s rear had been just in sight. But why resort to this fanciful explanation, seeing that Caesar could by no possibility have ascertained that the rear of the fugitives was just visible to his troops at the very moment when he himself, separated from the troops, received the news of the shipwreck; and, further, that extremi must grammatically refer to his, that is to say, the pursuing columns? It has been objected that if extremi meant the Roman rear-guard, iam would not have its proper meaning, ‘already’ (ἤδη). But iam of course often means ‘by this time’, or ‘at length’ (nearly tandem). In the passage in question its sense may, I think, be illustrated by a clause in B. G., vii, 83, § 7,—cum iam meridies adpropinquare videretur (‘at length when it was evidently near noon’). Caesar meant to say that his pursuing columns had advanced so far that by the time when the news of the shipwreck reached him the rear-guard only was in sight. Again, Schneider takes the words in itinere resistere iubet to mean that Caesar ordered his troops ‘to stop in their march and halt where they were’. But, as Long[3457] points out, ‘if this is so, he returned to his ships himself (“ipse”), leaving his men in the country doing nothing for ten days. But he tells us that his soldiers were employed in making his “munitio”, and therefore they must have come back to the camp.’
So far Long is quite right; but he too makes a great mistake. He actually believes[3458] that the words munitioni castrorum tempus relinqui volebat (‘he wished to leave time for entrenching his camp’) refer to the camp near the seashore, for which he had selected a site immediately after the disembarkation. In other words, he believes that Caesar compelled his troops, who had already made a night-march of twelve miles, beaten the enemy on the banks of the Stour, stormed the stronghold to which the beaten enemy had retreated, and then pursued the fugitives for some distance, to march back all the way to the camp by the seashore, entrench it, and next morning march back again twelve miles or more into the interior, and then start in pursuit of the fugitives! The legionaries were hardy fellows; but if they did all this, they must have been as breathless as the reader will be when he has got to the end of the preceding sentence. And what had the fugitives been about? If Long is right, they must have got such a start that to pursue them would have been a wild-goose chase indeed. Needless to say, what Caesar meant was simply this:—when the Britons had been dislodged from their stronghold, he would not allow his troops to pursue them far because he wished to leave time for the construction of the temporary camp in which he intended to pass the night.
Von Göler[3459] needlessly quarrels with the text of the Commentaries, and makes matters worse by an absurd emendation. ‘The reading legiones equitatumque revocari atque in itinere resistere iubet (B. G., v, 11, § 1),’ he says, ‘is obviously corrupt. Atque requires that the following clause should involve a climax’ (Steigerung). But so it does:—Caesar ‘orders the legions and cavalry to be recalled, and [not only to come back but also] to defend themselves upon the march’. In this literal translation a climax is as evident as in the emendation, to be quoted presently, which von Göler offers; and any one who is not familiar with the Commentaries will find in Meusel’s Lexicon Caesarianum abundant evidence that atque in the passage which von Göler brands as corrupt is in accord with Caesar’s usus loquendi.
‘As finally,’ continues von Göler, ‘one may conclude with certainty from the later substance of the narrative that all the legions returned to the shore, but the necessary express mention of the march thither is nowhere to be found in the Commentaries, I believe that the passage originally ran as follows:—legiones equitatumque revocari atque in itinere persistere iubet ad naves, ipse revertitur.’ If we may ‘conclude with certainty’ that ‘the legions returned’, why should the ‘express mention’ of their return be necessary? Heller[3460] has taken the trouble to show that the text is above suspicion.