Ancient Britain and the Invasions of Julius Caesar

by T. Rice Holmes

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.