Now Lewin, as I have already shown,[3185] gives three successive and different descriptions of Romney Marsh as it existed in the time of Caesar; and Mr. Malden does not say to which of the three he refers. It is evident, however, that he is thinking of the first; and I am afraid that he did not take the trouble to read the second edition of Lewin’s book. In a previous article[3186] I have examined all Lewin’s theories. I will here assume that Mr. Malden is right; that the coast-line ‘ran nearly east and west from Sandgate towards Appledore’; and that the northern fringe of Romney Marsh was accessible ‘by ships sailing over what is now embanked land’. On this hypothesis and on any other it is absolutely certain that Caesar could not have landed at the point which Mr. Malden indicates. He does not know what ‘good camping-ground’, in the circumstances of ancient warfare, was. If he knew the Commentaries as intimately as a man who professes to explain them should do, he would see that neither at Hurst, nor ‘on the slope where Stutfall castle now stands’, nor at any intermediate point did good camping-ground exist; for everywhere along this line a camp would have been dominated by higher ground above. Does Mr. Malden not remember the words in which Caesar describes the camping-ground which Reginus and Rebilus were compelled by adverse circumstances to occupy at Alesia? They ‘were obliged’, he says, ‘to make the camp on a gentle slope, which gave an assailant a slight advantage’ (necessario paene iniquo loco et leniter declivi castra fecerunt[3187]). The slope between Hurst and Stutfall Castle would have given an assailant not a slight but a considerable advantage. Where, then, could Caesar have found the ‘advantageous position’ (loco idoneo[3188]) which he selected for his camp in 54 B.C.? ‘Hastings the pirate,’ as I have already proved,[3189] did not ‘come here with his fleet’; and what good Caesar’s cavalry, the absence of which he deplored, could have done by pounding up the hill, which was overgrown by woods,[3190] Mr. Malden does not explain. The hill, as he says, is ‘everywhere accessible’,—to a pedestrian: but, as I have already shown,[3191] ‘the passage into the inner country,’ in the face of armed resistance, could only have been effected with heavy loss; and it would be interesting to hear Mr. Malden account for the fact that the Britons retired in 54 B.C. to ‘higher ground’ twelve miles from the landing-place, when, just above the landing-place which he calls ‘second to none’, there was ground 312 feet above the level of the sea, and 300 feet above the present elevated level of the marsh.[3192] I should also like to hear him explain why Volusenus, a trained soldier who thoroughly understood his business, should have advised Caesar to land at Hurst rather than between Walmer and Deal; what motive could have induced Caesar to attempt to sail from Wissant (which he identifies with the Portus Itius) to Hurst with a south-west wind, that is to say, to attempt to sail west-north-west, on an easterly-going stream, within six points of the wind; how his cavalry transports contrived to sail back from a point near Hurst to Sangatte, or even to Ambleteuse, against a gale which drove their sister ships towards the west; or by what miracle this gale dashed his ships ashore in a northerly direction!
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]