ENGLAND INVADED
CHAPTER I
CÆSAR’S INVASIONS
In the year 57 B.C. Gaius Julius Cæsar, Roman politician, statesman, and legislator, and already, though he had only girt on the sword at forty-three years of age, a famous soldier, was campaigning in northern Gaul. The year before, a mere carpet warrior, as his enemies would have men believe, he had come up the Rhone with six legions of sturdy swarthy Italian yeomen, and summarily put an end to the great Helvetic migration, a migration perhaps little less dangerous than that of the Cimbri and ‘Teutones,’ which his kinsman Marius had annihilated at Aquæ Sextiæ and Vercellæ. Then, grimly resolute, with reluctant officers, with the scented young nobles who had followed him for a little plunder and mild excitement foreboding disaster, with even the stout legionaries—all save the men of the immortal Xth—hanging back and half afraid, he had turned on the Germans who were overrunning Gaul, and hurled them in rout and ruin across the Rhine. And—significant fact!—he wintered not in the sunny Roman Province—that Provence which still proclaims to the world from a hundred sites that Imperial Rome swayed her sceptre there for twenty generations—not in the Italian Gallia along the Po, but there, where he was, in the very homeland of the Celts, which five hundred years before had sent forth the hordes that had wasted Italy and burned Rome. The Gauls, disunited, faction-ridden, fickle, and suspicious of each other, but proud, brave, and patriotic, began to take alarm.
Whether Cæsar had intended from the first to subjugate Gaul, or whether his horizon became enlarged as his successes multiplied, are questions that cannot be discussed here. But he certainly seems to have shown his hand in 58 B.C. ‘Celtic’ and ‘Aquitanian’ Gaul remained passive, but in the north, where the ‘Belgæ’ had had little to do with Roman envoys and traders, much less with Roman generals and legions, a confederacy was quickly formed to oppose Cæsar. It was headed nominally by Galba, King of the Suessiones, whose predecessor, Divitiacus, had ruled an ephemeral dominion extending over a large region of northern Gaul and parts of Britain. So writes Cæsar in the second book, ‘De Bello Gallico’; and thus, in a single terse sentence of his perfect, unadorned Latin, Britannia is swept by a roving searchlight of historical allusion.
Early next year Cæsar came up from Central Gaul, now with a formidable force of eight legions, with cavalry from Gaul and elsewhere, with Numidian light troops, with archers from the East and slingers from the Baleares, with engineers and siege artillery, to deal with the Belgians. The great ill-cemented confederacy was shattered with slight difficulty, but the fighting Nervii and other tribes, which would not be daunted by a single defeat, proved foes worthy of Cæsar’s steel, and were only subdued after a desperate battle. In 57 B.C. all the coast tribes from the Loire to the Rhine united against Cæsar, and this time there is distinct reference to regular intercourse between Gaul and Britain. This confederacy was crushed, after hard and harassing fighting, by a great naval victory off the southern coast of Brittany. It had been supported by British troops, and perhaps by British ships. At any rate, it must have been plain to the great proconsul that Britain was a factor that could not be ignored in dealing with the Gallic problem.
On Cæsar’s staff at this time was a Gallic noble named Commius, whom he had made king of the Atrebates in Belgium. The most important fact about him for our present purpose is that he had connections with Britain. The Belgæ had indeed far overflowed the limits of their Gallic territory; it is possible that the entire south-east of Britain from the Wash to the Somersetshire Avon, and thence to Southampton Water, was occupied by Belgic or Belgicized tribes. In a region roughly corresponding to Wiltshire, Hampshire, and Somerset, there was a confederacy which preserved the racial appellation of Belgæ. In Berks and Surrey dwelt the Atrebates, evidently cognate with the Atrebates of Belgica; while the name of the great and warlike Catuvellauni of the south-east Midlands clearly points to a connection with the Catalauni of the Marne. It is at least possible that the other tribes of the south-east—the Cantii of Kent, the Regni of Sussex, the wealthy Trinobantes of Essex and Suffolk, and even the Iceni of Norfolk—were of Belgic origin.
So much Cæsar may easily have learned from Commius, or from hostages and prisoners. That there was a close ethnic affinity between the tribes on either side of the Channel a man of his intellectual powers would not be slow to infer. Whether he was fully acquainted with the economic condition of the island is another matter. Pytheas he may have, Polybius he must have, read, but possibly the scepticism of the Achæan may have prejudiced him against the Massiliot.
But be this as it may, when Cæsar began to collect intelligence concerning Britain from Gallic merchants, he was presented with information largely untrustworthy, and some of which its furnishers must have known to be false. The statement that some of the British tribes practised polyandry may or may not be true—the traders had no obvious motive for deceiving Cæsar on such a point; but they may themselves have depended upon hearsay evidence. But otherwise they appear to have done their best to misinform the proconsul, with the obvious intention of inducing him to abandon any idea of an invasion. Their motive was clearly trade-jealousy. The whole British trade, which appears to have been considerable, was in their hands; they feared—naturally enough—Italian competition. Then, too, they may have been influenced by political motives. Britain was, as things went, an admirable place of refuge for Gallic organizers of revolt and for defeated leaders.
So, as far as one can see, Cæsar’s Gallic informants told him as little as possible. On the one hand, they seem to have done their best to overrate the savage ferocity of the people; on the other, they depreciated the wealth of the island. As they could hardly assert that systematic cultivation of cereals was unknown in the island, they explained that this was the case only in the south-east; elsewhere the people lived on milk and flesh, and, having no knowledge of weaving, dressed in skins. It is difficult to know how far Cæsar was deceived. To some extent he certainly was, for he repeats the false statements which were made to him. It may perhaps seem curious that he did not verify them while in Britain, but, of course, he had military business in plenty to occupy him. His statement about the iron bar currency is the strangest of all, since it is certain that gold coins, struck in imitation of Philip of Macedonia’s gold staters, had been in circulation for not less than a century. It is just possible that he means that iron bars took the place of a copper coinage. It seems incredible that he can have marched for more than a hundred miles into Britain without meeting with some of the gold pieces of which so many survive, even if he had not seen them in Gaul. In that part of Britain with which he was personally acquainted he notes that the population was dense, and dwellings, or groups of dwellings, thickly dotted over the country-side. But it is clear that in many respects his information was very imperfect.