The Invasions of England

by Edward Foord; Gordon Home

Conjecture has been busy with the direction of Paulinus’s march. The old view was that he moved on Camulodunum; the more modern one, followed by most recent writers, is that he retreated on Deva to rally its garrison. Neither, however, commends itself to the authors. Let us study the position.

Paulinus at London had 10,000 combatants in hand but was burdened with a mass of non-combatants at least equal in number. At and about Deva were perhaps half a legion and auxiliaries—say, 5,000 men. At Lindum, practically blockaded, were the remains of the IXth. About Isca Silurum and on the Lower Severn was the IInd Legion with its auxiliaries. At Viroconium and other places in the west, and in some of the Kentish towns (i.e., Rutupiæ), there were certainly garrisons. The British host was somewhere north-east of London.

The question of supplies must be considered. It was probably near harvest-time, as the Welsh campaign and the subsequent operations would have consumed most of the summer. The richest districts of Britain were Essex, Kent, and the Lower Severn Valley; but Essex was in the hands of the Britons, and Paulinus could draw no supplies from it.

Wherever Paulinus went he had to feed his army and its hapless incubus of refugees. The London-Deva road traversed the thinly-peopled and thickly-wooded Midlands; the way to Colchester was barred by the Britons.

THE CAMPAIGN OF A.D. 60 AGAINST BOUDICCA. THE POSITION AT THE TIME OF PAULINUS’S ARRIVAL IN LONDON.

The chief roads (mainly British trackways) are shown with broken lines. Each infantry block roughly indicates 5,000 men. The whole country north of the Thames was hostile to the Romans, perhaps much of that to the south also. The Roman troops at Lindum (Lincoln) were only the defeated remnant of the IXth Legion. It should be noted that of the settled and corn-growing districts, one was occupied by the Britons, and there remained open for Paulinus’s army, and the crowd of refugees which accompanied it, the choice between Kent or the Lower Severn Valley. The IInd Legion at Isca Silurum (Caerleon) had orders to march on Londinium, and Paulinus would expect it to be well on its way. The heavy black line stretching south-west from London indicates the probable direction of the Roman retreat.

The object of Paulinus was to complete his frustrated combination. At Deva, two hundred miles away, were perhaps 5,000 men; at Lindum, a hundred and thirty miles to the north-east, perhaps an equal force, dispirited by defeat. If he took the road to Deva, or that to Lindum, he would have the Britons upon him. Is it conceivable that this able general, with supply difficulties aggravated by his mass of non-combatants, would deliberately plunge into the midst of the enemy, in order to join one of his two smaller detachments, when in the Lower Severn Valley lay a whole legion and its auxiliaries. If his orders were being obeyed, it should be already on the march; but if it had not yet concentrated, its nearest detachments were only a hundred miles away. A study of the map will show that, if London were abandoned, Corinium (Cirencester) would be the natural point of concentration for Paulinus’s army, the IInd Legion, and the garrisons of Deva and Viroconium. The troops round Lindum and the garrisons in Kent must, for the moment, be left to themselves. We are justified in thinking that Paulinus would move in the direction of his largest outlying corps—the IInd Legion. Considerations of supply would also take him westward. Food might be found in Kent, but not reinforcements. The conclusion is that, for every reason, the direction of the retreat would be westward. Paulinus no doubt crossed the Thames, presumably by the bridge at London, which would, of course, afterwards be destroyed, and retreated towards Calleva (Silchester).

It is probable that Verulam was taken and sacked by the Britons after Paulinus had passed through it. Tacitus only says that it fell at about the same time as London. The British host then moved on to London, which shared the fate of Camulodunum and Verulam. The massacre here was probably the worst, for it would, naturally, apart from its commercial importance, be full of fugitives.

From the ruins of London the Britons moved on after Paulinus, who was marching slowly, troubled, so Dion says, with want of supplies, and encumbered with the refugees from London. Another massacre would have taken place but for the fact that before the pursuers could get at the victims they must reckon with the ten thousand desperate veterans who formed the rearguard. But the danger grew greater. The Roman army was too small to adequately guard the unhappy throng of fugitives that impeded its march; the IInd Legion did not come, and Paulinus turned to bay. He chose a strong position in a defile, with woods behind and on both flanks. His legionaries were deployed across the entrance; the light troops apparently along the front and in the woods; the cavalry behind. This narrow valley may reasonably be looked for among the hills between the south-west of London and Silchester, and as the most open, and therefore safest, route would have probably been by Banstead, Epsom Downs, Headley, Ranmore, and Guildford, the scene of Boudicca’s defeat may be somewhere along that line. The retreating Romans would, in this case, have quite likely debouched into the gorge of the Mole by the valley that runs into it from Headley. Continuing their westward march, the way up to the top of the downs would be almost facing them as they crossed the shallow river where Burford Bridge now stands. It is conceivable that the idea of turning to bay at this point would occur to Paulinus as his force marched up the dry and rapidly narrowing valley, whose sides are sufficiently steep to concentrate the attack on one front.