Ancient Britain and the Invasions of Julius Caesar

by T. Rice Holmes

X. THE THEORY THAT CAESAR LANDED BETWEEN HURST AND KENNARDINGTON

The late Francis Hobson Appach published in 1868 a book called Caius Julius Caesar’s British Expeditions, the principal object of which was to prove that Caesar’s troops disembarked in 55 B.C. between ‘the foot of the spur from Aldington Knoll’ (which is about four miles west of Lympne) on the right, and a point ‘about half way between Bonnington and Bilsington’ on the left;[3193] and that in the following year the left of the line extended as far westward as Kennardington. This theory differs but slightly in locality from Mr. Malden’s, but is defended by different arguments; and, moreover, from Bonnington westward the slope of the hills which bound Romney Marsh on the north becomes much gentler. Appach maintains that at least the northern portion, if not the whole, of the marsh was, in Caesar’s time, submerged, and that its northern fringe was accessible to ships sailing from the east. His arguments have already been refuted in an earlier section of this book;[3194] but for the purpose of the present inquiry I will assume that he made out his case, and that, in Caesar’s time, ‘the Bay of Apuldore,’ to which he constantly alludes, was, as he assures us, deep enough to float ‘the heaviest of Caesar’s ships at the lowest spring tides’.[3195]

Appach, of course, like Lewin and Airy, bases his theory upon the hypothesis that the tidal stream which Caesar had in his favour when he sailed from his anchorage to his landing-place must have set towards the west. Although I have proved that this hypothesis is untenable, I will assume, in order to do justice to Appach’s arguments, that Caesar may have sailed with the westward stream.

1. Appach begins by arguing that Volusenus, when he was reconnoitring the British coast, found on the west of Aldington Knoll ‘the very ground of which he was in search’, namely, ‘a low level coast’, which ‘extended as far as Apuldore ... forming the head of a bay protected from the waves in the Channel by the cliff at Fairlight ... and the cliff at Folkestone’.[3196]

It may be freely admitted that this coast, if it was accessible by sea, would have been a convenient landing-place, if Caesar had only desired to land, and then to sail away again. But his object was to invade Britain; and the landing-place which Appach believes Volusenus to have selected would have led Caesar into the inhospitable forest of Anderida,[3197] where no corn was to be procured. This objection, indeed, is equally fatal to Mr. Malden’s theory; and neither he nor Appach attempts to explain how there could have been ‘buildings far and wide’ (omnibus longe lateque aedificiis incensis) on those lonely slopes, on which, even now, woods are abundant, and buildings very few and very far between.[3198]

2. Appach tells us that Caesar’s original intention was to disembark between Sandgate and Hythe; and it must be borne in mind that, according to him, Hythe harbour, as described by Lewin, did not then exist. ‘This landing place,’ he says, ‘though open to the south and east, was sheltered on the north and west. It was also sheltered from the force of the sea and stream in the Channel, and must therefore have been the principal British port on this part of the coast in the time of Caesar.’[3199]

Perhaps (if it had existed),—‘on this part of the coast’. But then Caesar[3200] says that ‘almost all ships from Gaul’ used to make for what he calls the eastern ‘corner’ of Britain, ‘by Kent.’ He may have been thinking of Dover, or of Richborough, perhaps of both; but I doubt whether it is possible to force into his words the meaning that the harbour where ‘almost all ships from Gaul’ discharged their freight was between Sandgate and Hythe.

3. But let us assume that Caesar intended, for some inscrutable reason, to land between Sandgate and Hythe. What, then, were the ‘precipitous heights’ off which he anchored,—the heights from which it was possible to throw a missile right on to the shore? Can Appach find them? Yes! He tells us that they are there, and that if we look for them anywhere else, we shall look in vain.[3201] He bids us note carefully the passage in which Caesar describes them:—‘there, standing in full view on all the heights, he saw an armed force of the enemy. The formation of the ground was peculiar, the sea being so closely walled in by abrupt heights that it was possible to throw a missile from the ground above on to the shore’ (in omnibus collibus expositas hostium copias armatas conspexit. Cuius loci haec erat natura, atque ita montibus angustis mare continebatur, uti ex locis superioribus in litus telum adigi posset[3202]). You are to observe, says Appach, that ‘Caesar uses the word “all” ... thus pointedly implying, if not ... asserting that there were more than two hills’. We are then told that, ‘it being about half an hour after high water, the sea reached quite up to the mouths of the three valleys between Hythe and Sandgate, so that the bay of Hythe appeared to Caesar to be shut in by the hills exactly as he describes it.’

Now these words alone are evidence that Appach did not know enough Latin to qualify him for the task which he had undertaken. That he should have misconstrued the words montibus angustis mare continebatur is not so surprising; but to a man who is familiar with Caesar’s usus loquendi, the conclusion which Appach draws from the words omnibus collibus—that Caesar must have seen at least three separate hills—will appear somewhat forced.[3203] If he had engaged a boat at Dover, and looked at the cliffs stretching away eastward towards the South Foreland, he would have seen that they answered exactly to Caesar’s description. The upper edge of the chalk is not a straight line: it rises and falls in a succession of deep curves, corresponding with the rolling downs above, which are, so to speak, divided into a series of heights by well-defined depressions. Here are the omnes colles, as plain as can be, not three of them but six,[3204] between the Priory Valley and the South Foreland. And Appach wants us to believe that the hills between Sandgate and Hythe are ‘precipitous heights’ (angusti montes), from the summits of which it would have been possible to throw a missile right on to the shore. Precipitous heights! Go, reader, and look at them.[3205]

4. Appach candidly admits that Caesar, on his imaginary voyage from Hythe to Bonnington, lost off Lympne the benefit of the westward current, and ‘met the eddy in the bay of Apuldore running from west to east along its northern shore’:[3206] but by this candour he gives away his whole case; for who will believe that Caesar would have told us that he ‘got the stream in his favour’ if the stream had turned against him before he had completed half his journey?

5. Again, Appach observes that Caesar’s account of his first landing implies that the Britons who opposed him used their chariots as well as their cavalry; and he scoffs at the notion that the chariot-horses or even the cavalry could have acted on shingle. Therefore, he concludes, ‘there could have been no shingle at the place where Caesar landed. Bonnington fulfils this condition.’[3207]

Quite so; and the coast north of Sandown Castle also practically fulfils, or once fulfilled, this condition.[3208] If Appach’s argument shows that Caesar did not land on shingle, it does not show that he landed at Bonnington. Moreover, granting that Caesar’s narrative implies that chariots were used by the Britons in opposing the landing, Appach fails to realize the situation. The horses were not required to gallop into the sea; nor could they have galloped through the waves at Bonnington any more than at Lympne, or Hythe, or Deal: but at any of those places they could have seriously obstructed men who could hardly keep their footing, and who were encumbered by their armour in the way which Caesar[3209] so graphically describes. All that the horses had to do was to convey their masters ‘a little way into the water’ (paulum in aquam [progressi]), so as to enable them to throw their missiles with effect; and this they could easily have done if they had drawn their light cars no faster than the ancient steeds which drag, or used to drag, bathing-machines over the shingle at Eastbourne.

6. Finally, Appach cites the well-known passage in which Caesar tells us that at daybreak on his second voyage he ‘descried Britain lying behind on the port quarter’ (sub sinistra Britanniam relictam conspexit). He argues that Caesar’s words would be meaningless ‘if the configuration of the coast had been the same in his day as it is at the present time, for Britain could not ... have been in any other position. The expression, however, is peculiarly appropriate if the sea then filled the Bay of Apuldore; for Caesar, sailing, as he thought, from Boulogne to Kennardington, of course expected to see Britain on his right.’[3210]

Yes, we of course see that, as Caesar was drifting up channel, ‘Britain could not have been in any other position’ than on his left. But Caesar was not writing for us: he was writing for his countrymen, who did not know anything about the configuration of Britain until they had read as far as the thirteenth chapter of his Fifth Book.[3211] Moreover, if Appach had known his Polybius, he would have remembered the passage in which readers who had passed their lives in the Mediterranean basin were informed of the self-evident fact that Hannibal, marching eastward through Southern Gaul, had the Mediterranean on his right.[3212] Furthermore, if Caesar had steered for Kennardington, he would have had to drift more than fifteen nautical miles in order to reach a point opposite the South Foreland: it would have been impossible to drift nearly so far between ‘about midnight’ and daybreak;[3213] and unless he had drifted further, he could not have seen Britain ‘lying behind’ on his left.[3214]

I need hardly add that Appach does not explain how those cavalry transports got back, in spite of the north-easterly or east-north-easterly gale, from off Bonnington to Ambleteuse.

Enough has been said to show that, even if ‘the Bay of Apuldore’, as Appach describes it, existed in Caesar’s time, he never sailed its waters. We now know where to look for his landing-place: he must have first set foot in Britain on the eastern coast of Kent.