Ancient Britain and the Invasions of Julius Caesar

by T. Rice Holmes

After quitting Cisalpine Gaul, Caesar returned to his army, which had wintered in the country of the Belgae. He made a tour of inspection, visiting the various camps, which were of course in the immediate neighbourhood of the yards where the legionaries had been building the ships for his intended expedition, that is to say, at the Portus Itius (Boulogne), and probably on the estuaries of the Canche, the Authie, the Somme, and the Seine.[3637] After ordering all the ships to assemble at the Portus Itius, he started with four legions in light marching order and 800 cavalry for the country of the Treveri, which, roughly speaking, comprised the greater part of the province of Luxembourg, the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, and the southern part of Rhenish Prussia.[3638] Two chiefs of this people, named Cingetorix and Indutiomarus, were struggling for supremacy. Cingetorix at once presented himself before Caesar, and promised fidelity. Indutiomarus collected levies, and prepared to fight. Many of the leading men, however, came into Caesar’s camp and made terms for themselves. Indutiomarus found that he had miscalculated his strength, and hastened to excuse himself. Caesar, who had no time to spare, contented himself with taking hostages for his good behaviour and returned to the Portus Itius. About 25 days after his arrival, having meantime been detained by contrary winds, he sailed for Britain.[3639]

The exact date of Caesar’s departure from Cisalpine Gaul is uncertain. On the 2nd of June, that is to say, the 9th of May of the Julian calendar, Cicero received at Rome a letter from his brother, written at Placentia;[3640] and on the following day he received another letter from his brother, written at Blandeno, a town near Placentia, the exact site of which is not known,[3641] and also a letter from Caesar, written apparently at the same place.[3642] Napoleon, erroneously maintaining that the second and the third of these letters were received by Cicero on the 5th, instead of the 3rd, of June, and assuming (‘pour trouver le temps voulu’, as he naïvely remarks) that, in consequence of accidental delays, they took 13 days to reach Rome, concludes that Caesar quitted Blandeno on the 23rd of May, which he identifies with the 22nd[3643] of the same month, but which really corresponded with the 29th of April of the Julian calendar. T. Bergk, on the contrary, maintains that if there had been any delay in the transmission of the letters, Cicero would have mentioned it in his reply; and he supposes that Caesar and Quintus Cicero started on their journey for Transalpine Gaul on the 2nd of June, that is to say, on the 9th of May of the Julian calendar.[3644] All that can be safely said is that, if the letter-carrier travelled at the usual rate, namely between 40 and 50 Roman miles a day,[3645] the two letters were written about the 30th of April or the 1st of May of the Julian calendar; and therefore we have no right to assume that Caesar quitted Blandeno before the former day.

It is possible, as we shall presently see, to fix the date of Caesar’s arrival at the Portus Itius and of his voyage to Britain within a day or two; but it is plainly impossible to make any satisfactory calculation of the dates of his movements from the time when he left Blandeno to the time when he left the country of the Treveri and marched for the Portus Itius; and the minute computations of Napoleon and others are simply elaborate trifling.[3646] For, although Caesar’s average rate of travelling may be estimated approximately, we do not know how far he penetrated into the extensive country of the Treveri; and it is waste of time to guess how long he stayed there. This much only can be said with certainty:—he did not let the grass grow under his feet.[3647] For he left Blandeno about the 30th of April: he arrived, as we shall presently see,[3648] finally at the Portus Itius about the 11th of June; and in those 43 days he travelled from Blandeno across the Alps and across Gaul to the English Channel; moved along the coast to various points between Boulogne and the mouth of the Seine; and marched from Boulogne to the neighbourhood of Sedan, or further—at least 180 miles—and back again.

On the 27th of July, that is to say, on the 2nd of July of the Julian calendar, Cicero wrote to Atticus, ‘Judging from my brother Quintus’s letters, I imagine that by this time he is in Britain’ (ex Q. fratris litteris suspicor iam eum esse in Britannia[3649]). It would be very rash, however, to infer from this that Caesar landed in Britain before, or even as early as, the 2nd of July; for, as we have seen, his embarkation was delayed by the long continuance of adverse winds. The first letter which announced the arrival of the expeditionary force in Britain was referred to by Cicero in a letter to Quintus, in which he says, ‘How I rejoiced at your letter from Britain! I was nervous about the sea and the coast of that island’ (O iucundas mihi tuas de Britannia literas! Timebam Oceanum, timebam litus insulae[3650]). This letter is undated; but it must have been written some time after the one which Cicero wrote to Atticus on the 27th of July; for in the letter to Atticus we find the words, ‘I have undertaken to defend Messius.... After that I have to prepare myself for Drusus, and then for Scaurus’ (Messius defendebatur a nobis ... Deinde me expedio ad Drusum, inde ad Scaurum[3651]); while in the letter to Quintus Cicero wrote, ‘The day I write this Drusus has been acquitted.... The comitia have been put off to September. Scaurus’s trial will take place immediately’ (Quo die haec scripsi, Drusus erat ... absolutus ... Comitia in mensem Septembrem reiecta sunt. Scauri indicium statim exercebitur[3652]). Asconius[3653] tells us that the last day of Scaurus’s trial was the 2nd of September; and Cicero’s remark that ‘the comitia have been put off to September’ makes it evident that he wrote in August; while from his saying that ‘Scaurus’s trial will take place immediately’ we should naturally infer that when he wrote the 2nd of September was not far off. Letters from Britain generally reached Rome in about 27 days;[3654] and accordingly we may conclude that the letter in which Quintus Cicero announced his arrival in Britain was written about the end of July; that is to say, about the 6th of July of the Julian calendar.[3655] Now Caesar says that the tide [in the Straits of Dover] turned westward soon after daybreak on the morning of his arrival in Britain;[3656] and this statement proves that he landed either about the time of full moon or about the time of new moon. There was a full moon on the 21st of July, 54 B.C.; and the previous new moon occurred on the 7th of July. Napoleon[3657] insists that the landing must have taken place on the day of full moon, arguing that without moonlight Caesar could not have undertaken the march which he made on the night following his arrival. But, as we have already seen, Napoleon argues on the erroneous assumption that Caesar intercalated only 67 days in the year 708, and accordingly he fixes all the dates of the unreformed calendar which occur in Cicero’s letters of 700 twenty-three days too late. His argument that Caesar could not have made a night march except by the light of the moon is worthless. It must be remembered that, in the first half of July, there is no real night over any part of the British Isles; and no one familiar with the records of night marches would deny that Caesar could have marched on a clear night at that time of the year. Long[3658] says that ‘of course he had also the moon on the night on which he sailed from the Gallic coast’. There is no ‘of course’ in the matter. Caesar sailed from Gaul to Britain in 55 B.C. after midnight, on the 26th or 27th of August, that is to say either five or four days before the full moon;[3659] and the moon set soon after midnight both of August 25-26 and of August 26-27. Moreover, according to Napoleon himself, Caesar sailed from Britain to Gaul in 55 B.C. on the 12th of September,[3660] that is to say, on a moonless night: as new moon occurred on the 14th, and he did not sail until after midnight, he could not have had the benefit of moonlight unless he had deferred his voyage until the date of the equinox; and I am assured by Captain Iron, the harbour-master of Dover, that on a fine night, especially in July, there would not have been the least difficulty in sailing without a moon. As a matter of fact, William the Conqueror sailed to England on a dark night. ‘The moon,’ says Mr Freeman,[3661] ‘was hidden and the heavens were clouded over. The Duke therefore ordered every ship to bear a light.... The ships were to keep as near together as might be, and to follow closely after the beacon-light of his own ship.’ If, then, we decide that Caesar landed in Britain on the day of new moon, the 7th of July, 54 B.C., we shall not be more than one day wrong; but to fix the date with absolute precision is impossible.[3662]

As Caesar landed about the 7th of July, it follows that he had reached the Portus Itius, where he was delayed about 25 days, about the 11th of June.

On the day after he landed Caesar encountered a British force 12 miles from his camp on the coast. On the following day, while his troops were pursuing the fugitives, he was recalled to the coast by the news that a large number of his ships had been damaged by a storm. He then proceeded to construct a naval camp, and, as soon as it was finished, returned to the point from which he had started.[3663] As the construction of the camp occupied ‘about ten days’ (circiter dies X), we shall not be far wrong if we say that it was finished 12 days after the landing, that is to say, about the 19th of July of the Julian calendar.

We now come to a date the significance of which has hardly been appreciated. At the close of one of his letters to Quintus, Cicero writes, ‘Caesar wrote me a letter from Britain on the 1st of September... in which, to prevent my wondering at not getting one from you, he tells me that you were not with him when he reached the coast’ (Ex Britannia Caesar ad me K. Septembr. dedit litteras ... quibus, ne admirer, quod a te nullas acceperim, scribit se sine te fuisse, cum ad mare accesserit[3664]). This passage proves that Caesar had returned from the interior of Britain to the coast on or before the 1st of September, that is to say, the 5th of August of the Julian calendar. But we have already seen that he did not quit the coast after the construction of his naval camp until about the 19th of July, and that on the 29th of August he was still in Britain, ‘on the point of bringing back the army,’ and did not sail for Gaul till several days later.[3665] We have to decide, then, between two alternatives. Either Caesar had finished the campaign against Cassivellaunus by the 5th of August of the Julian calendar, and thereafter remained on the coast until the 29th of August, when he was able to announce that he was ‘on the point of bringing back the army’; or he made a hurried temporary visit to the coast, the object of which remains unexplained. The latter view is not supported by the Commentaries. Caesar’s narrative certainly leaves the impression that, immediately after the completion of his naval camp, he resumed the military operations which had been interrupted by the shipwreck, and did not again return to the coast until the time came for him to prepare for his voyage to Gaul. He tells us that Cassivellaunus, after the failure of the attack which had been made by his orders upon the naval camp, and in consequence of the reverses which he had suffered, sued for peace; that he ordered Cassivellaunus to furnish hostages;[3666] and that, ‘on receiving the hostages, he led back the army to the sea, where he found the ships repaired’ (Obsidibus acceptis exercitum reducit ad mare, naves invenit refectas[3667]). ‘When they were launched,’ he continues, ‘he determined to take the army back in two trips’ (his deductis ... duobus commeatibus exercitum reportare instituit[3668]). Certainly there is not a word in this to support the view, which is advocated by Vogel, that the visit to the coast which Caesar made on the 1st of September (the 5th of August of the Julian calendar) was purely temporary, and took place before he began to march towards the country of Cassivellaunus; and the motive which Vogel[3669] suggests for the visit—that Caesar wished to inspect the camp once more and to give the necessary instructions before marching against Cassivellaunus—is hardly adequate, unless we grant Vogel’s assumption, that when Caesar returned to the sea the campaign had advanced no further than the stage which he describes in the 17th chapter of his Fifth Book, where three legions under Trebonius inflicted a decisive defeat on the enemy; in other words, that Caesar returned from a point within a day’s march of the sea. But this affair, according to the Commentaries, took place on the very day after Caesar quitted his naval camp in order to resume the campaign; whereas he returned to the sea, on Vogel’s own showing, about 17 days after he quitted the camp. If, on the other hand, we adopt Napoleon’s view[3670]—that Caesar, after he returned to the sea on the 1st of September, remained there until he sailed for Gaul—how are we to account for the 24 days which elapsed before he wrote to tell Cicero that he was on the point of bringing back the army? What was he doing all that time? Napoleon,[3671] indeed, maintains that, on the day on which he wrote this last letter, he actually sailed for Gaul, and Bergk that he had already arrived in Gaul; but it has already been shown that both these assumptions are untenable. Moreover, in order to account for Caesar’s having arrived at the sea so early, Napoleon and Bergk are forced to strain the words of the Commentaries (exercitum reducit ad mare),—to assume that Caesar hurried on in advance of his army, and that it did not reach the coast until several days later.[3672]

Although the problem cannot be definitively solved, I have no doubt but that Vogel’s solution is wrong. Not only does it give the lie to Caesar’s narrative, but it requires us to believe that Caesar had failed for about 17 days to make any headway against the Britons, and had been held in check by them within a dozen miles of the sea. Yet Caesar states that, in consequence of the defeat which Cassivellaunus suffered at the hands of Trebonius on the day after he left the newly-constructed naval camp, the British infantry levies dispersed; and in the same breath he goes on to say that he forthwith marched for the country of Cassivellaunus.[3673] If, as Vogel implies, this statement had been false, surely Quintus Cicero would have informed his brother, in one of the five letters which he wrote before the 1st of September, of the real state of affairs! On the other hand, I find it difficult to believe that Caesar used the words exercitum reducit ad mare loosely, and that he remained on the coast from the 1st to the 25th of September, without once writing to Cicero between those two dates,[3674] and then remained several days longer before embarking. This view, indeed, would compel us to assume that he left Trebonius or one of his other generals to carry on the negotiations with Cassivellaunus which are described in the 22nd chapter of his Fifth Book.

Napoleon, it is true, believes that Caesar did not leave his army and hurry on in advance of it to his naval camp until the negotiations were completed and he had received his hostages from Cassivellaunus.[3675] But on this assumption what motive could he have had, first, for hurrying on in advance of his army, and, secondly, for delaying its re-embarkation until after the lapse of several weeks? I am inclined, therefore, to believe that he made a hurried temporary visit to his naval camp, escorted probably by a small column, and then, having accomplished his purpose, returned to the main army in order to conduct or to complete the negotiations with Cassivellaunus. The motive of his visit may have been connected with the attack which the Kentish chieftains made upon the naval camp.[3676]

The date of Caesar’s return to Gaul can only be given approximately. We have seen that on the 25th of September (the 29th of August of the Julian calendar) he wrote to Cicero, saying that he was on the point of bringing back the army.[3677] Vogel[3678], remarking that, after he reached the coast, his ships had to be launched and loaded, and that he did not sail with the second detachment of troops until he had waited a long time in vain for the return of the ships which had carried the first, concludes that he did not return to Gaul until about 20 days after he wrote to Cicero, that is to say, not until the 15th of October. This date corresponds with the 17th of September of the Julian calendar; and Vogel maintains that it agrees with Caesar’s statement of the reason which led him to hurry on his return, namely, that the equinox was at hand. But it is impossible to estimate, from Caesar’s statement, how many days he waited for the return of his ships. Let us examine the attempts which have been made to gain a clue from Cicero’s correspondence.