After some preliminary skirmishes in which the heavily armed Roman legionaries suffered severely from the dashing onslaught and rapid retreat of the British chariots and cavalry, Cæsar determined to cross the Thames and beard the lion Cassivellaunus in his den. He was stationed on the north bank of the river which was fordable, but defended by sharp stakes placed in the bed of the stream. It is not quite clear from Cæsar’s account how this obstacle of the stakes was dealt with by his soldiers. Possibly they may have been partly removed by the cavalry whom he says that he sent first into the water. They were followed by the legionaries, who went, he says, so swiftly and with such a dash, though only their heads were out of water, that the enemy, unable to stand before the combined rush of horsemen and foot soldiers, left their stations on the bank and scattered in flight.
As was so often the case with these Celtic tribes, domestic discord in some degree lightened the labours of the invader. We have seen that Cassivellaunus had obtained by violence the sovereignty of the Trinobantes of Essex. Mandubracius, the son of the dead king, had fled to Gaul and cast himself on the protection of Cæsar, in whose train he returned to Britain. There was still probably a party in favour of the dethroned family, and it was not a mere formality when Cæsar ordered the tribe to accept Mandubracius for their chief, to supply his troops with corn, and to deliver forty hostages into his hands. Five other tribes whose unimportant names are given by Cæsar came in and made their submission; and from them the general learned that not far distant was the town (oppidum) of Cassivellaunus, filled with a multitude of men and cattle, and defended by forests and marshes. “Now the Britons,” says Cæsar, perhaps with a sneer, “call any place a town” (oppidum) “when they have chosen a position entangled with forests and strengthened it with rampart and ditch, so that they may gather into it for shelter from hostile incursion.” Thither then marched Cæsar with his legions. He found a place splendidly strong by nature and art, but he determined to attack it from two sides at once. After a brief defence, the natives collapsed before the headlong rush of the Romans, and streamed out of the camp on the opposite side. Many were slain, many taken prisoners, and a great number of cattle fell into the hands of the Romans.
In order probably to divert the forces of his enemy from his own oppidum, the generalissimo Cassivellaunus had sent orders to the four kings of Kent to collect their forces and make a sudden attack on the naval camp of the Romans. The attack was repulsed by a vigorous sortie: many of the Britons were slain and one of their noblest leaders taken prisoner. Hereupon Cassivellaunus, recognising that the fortune of war was turning against him and that his own confederates were falling away, sent messengers to offer his submission and obtain peace through the mediation of his friend, perhaps his fellow-tribesman, Commius. Cæsar, who had his own reasons for desiring a speedy return to Gaul and who doubtless considered that enough had been done for his glory, accepted the proffered submission. He “ordered hostages to be delivered, and fixed the amount of tribute which was to be yearly paid by Britannia to the Roman people. He forbade Cassivellaunus to do any injury to Mandubracius or the Trinobantes,” and with these high-sounding phrases he departed. As he carried back many captives and not a few of his ships had perished in the storm, he had to make two crossings with his fleet, but both were accomplished without disaster. Of Cassivellaunus himself no further information is vouchsafed us, nor do we know what was the fate of the abandoned allies of Rome.
The great general in this instance “had come and had seen” but had not “conquered”. Most valuable, however, to us is the information which he has given us concerning our sequestered island, though in some cases it is evidently inaccurate. We need not linger over Cæsar’s geographical statements, though it is curious to see how certain errors of earlier geographers still lingered on even into the Augustan age of Roman literature. Thus he thinks that, of the three sides of Britain’s triangle one looks towards Gaul and the east, another towards Spain and the west, while the third, which has no land opposite it, faces north. Besides Ireland, which is half the size of Britain, there are other islands, apparently on the west, concerning which certain writers have said that they have continual night during thirty days of winter. As to this Cæsar was not able to obtain any definite information, but his own clepsydræ (water clocks) showed him that the nights in July were shorter in Britain than on the continent.
“Of all the natives far the most civilised are those who inhabit the district of Kent, which is all situated on the coast: nor do these differ greatly in their manners from the inhabitants of Gaul. Those who live farther inland sow no corn, but live on milk and flesh, and are clothed in skins. All the Britons however dye themselves with woad, which gives them a blue colour and makes them look more terrible in battle. They wear long hair and shave every part of the body except the head and the upper lip. Ten or a dozen men have their wives in common, especially brothers with brothers, fathers with their sons, the woman’s offspring being reckoned to him who first cohabited with her.” This ghastly statement is probably a mere traveller’s tale, utterly untrue of the Celts of Britain or of any other Aryan tribe. It has been thought that it may possibly have been derived from an institution something like the Sclavonic mir, which caused all the descendants of one married couple for two or three generations to herd together in a single household. “The interior of Britain is inhabited by tribes which are, according to their own tradition, aboriginal: the sea-coast by those which for the sake of plunder have crossed over from Belgic Gaul, and after carrying on war have settled there and begun to cultivate the land. It is in consequence of this that nearly all of them have the same tribal names as those of the states from which they came. There is an infinite number of inhabitants, and one constantly meets with buildings almost like those of Gaul, as well as a great number of cattle.”
“They use either golden money or thin bars of iron of a certain weight which pass for money.” Thus (according to the best reading of a much-disputed passage) does Cæsar speak as to the numismatic attainments of the Britons. We shall probably never know more than this as to the iron currency or quasi-currency of our predecessors; but the statement as to their gold currency has been entirely confirmed by modern discoveries. The most curious fact, however, in connexion with the pre-Roman gold coinage of Britain is that it is evidently an imitation, though a most barbarous imitation, of the coinage of Philip II. of Macedon, the father of Alexander the Great. In the British imitations the fine classical features of the Macedonian monarch are twisted into the ignoble profile of a savage, while the curls of the hair and the leaves of the laurel crown, mechanically repeated and magnified, fill up the greater part of the coin. The effigy of a charioteer on the reverse of the coin is attempted to be copied in the same grotesque fashion with rather less success than the drawing of a child upon its slate. The charioteer himself is gradually resolved into a cluster of atoms, and though the likeness of the horse is for some time preserved, he is furnished with eight legs and gradually dwindles away into the spectre of a rocking-horse. Yet these queer pieces of money which occasionally turn up in English soil are intensely interesting, as showing how the influence of Greek art penetrated even into our world-forgotten island three centuries before the birth of Christ, travelling possibly by the same commercial route between the Euxine and the Baltic by which the Runes passed up from Thrace to Scandinavia, and the highly prized amber descended from Stralsund to Odessa.
Cæsar proceeds to inform us that “tin (plumbum album) is found in the midland parts of the country [as to this he was of course misinformed]; iron in the maritime regions, but in small quantities; all the bronze used is imported. There is timber of all kinds, as in Gaul, save the fir and the beech. They do not think it right to eat hares, geese or poultry, but keep these animals as pets. The climate is more temperate than that of Gaul, the cold less intense.” One regrets to learn from Strabo, who wrote half a century after Cæsar, that though “the climate is rainy rather than snowy, even in clear weather mists prevail so long that through the whole day the sun is visible only for three or four hours about noon”.
In reviewing the history of Cæsar’s invasions of Britain we naturally inquire what was his object in fitting out those expeditions, why did they fail and why did he acquiesce in their failure. Whatever may have been the motive of the first (which, according to him, was chiefly the assistance given by the Britons to the cause of his Gaulish enemies), the second expedition at any rate, on which from 20,000 to 30,000 men were employed, cannot have been a mere reconnaissance, undertaken in the interests of scientific discovery. It was no doubt politic to stimulate the zeal of his partisans in Rome by voyages and marches which appeared to be
Beyond the utmost bounds of human thought,
but the general would hardly have spent so much treasure and risked the lives of so many of his legionaries without some hope of substantial advantage to himself, his soldiers, or the republic. Evidently the Britons fought better than he expected. Probably also, the forests and the marshes of the country made the movements of his troops exceptionally difficult. We can perceive also that the country was not so rich as he had hoped to find it—an important consideration for a general who had to reward his soldiers by frequent opportunities of “loot”. “We already know,” wrote Cicero to his brother Quintus, “that there is not an ounce of silver in that island nor any hope of booty except slaves, among whom I do not think you will expect to find any skilled in literature or music.” The only spoil that we hear of Cæsar’s carrying back from Britain was a breastplate adorned with precious pearls, which he dedicated in the Temple of Victory at Rome.