But neither the destruction of the druids, the death of Boadicea, nor the destruction of her immense army, enabled the Romans to extend their possessions with safety in the island. They were ever, as in the days of Cæsar, upon the defensive; no colony, unless a legion of soldiers were encamped in the immediate neighbourhood, was safe; and even after defeating the queen of the Iceni, and receiving a great force of both infantry and cavalry, Suetonius left the island unconquered, and the war unfinished, and returned to Rome.
It is a pleasure to turn from these scenes of slaughter, to find that the next Roman general of note who came over to govern Britain, subdued more tribes by the arts of peace, and by kindness, than all his predecessors had done by the force of arms. Such is the power of genius, that we seem again to be in the company of one we have long known; for Agricola was the father-in-law of Tacitus, the eloquent historian, and there is but little doubt that the record of the few facts we are in possession of connected with this period were dictated by the general himself to his highly gifted son-in-law; we can almost in fancy see the grey-headed veteran and the author seated together in some Roman villa discoursing about these "deeds of other days." He had served under Suetonius, was present at that dreadful massacre in the island of Anglesey, where men, women, and children were so mercilessly butchered—had with his own eyes looked upon Boadicea. What would we not now give to know all that he had seen? To write this portion of our history with his eyes—to go on from page to page recording what he witnessed from day to day—to have him seated by our hearth now as he no doubt many a time sat beside Tacitus. What word-pictures would we then paint—what wild scenes would we portray!
It was Agricola who first taught the ancient Britons to erect better houses, to build walled cities instead of huts; who bestowed praise upon their improvements, instructed them in the Roman language, and persuaded them to adopt a more civilized costume; to erect baths and temples; to improve their agriculture; and thus by degrees he so led them on from step to step, that instead of a race of rude barbarians, they began to assume the aspect of a more civilized nation. Still he had to contend with old and stubborn tribes, who held it a disgrace to adopt any other manners than those of their rude forefathers—the same difficulties beset the path of the Norman on a later day—the same obstacles are met with in Ireland at the present hour—pride, indolence, ignorance, and a host of other evils have first to be uprooted before the better seed can be sown. It would but be wearisome to follow the footsteps of the Roman general through all his campaigns; before him the imperial eagles were borne to the very foot of the Grampian hills; he erected forts for the better protection of the country he had conquered, and the huge rampart which ran from the Frith of Clyde to the Forth was begun under Agricola. He appears to have been the first of the Roman commanders who brought his legions in contact with the Caledonians, or men of the woods, and even there he met with a formidable opponent in the Caledonian chief named Galgacus; the same struggle for liberty was made there as in England—battles, bloodshed, death, and desolation are about all that history records of these campaigns, if we except what may be called a voyage of discovery; for it appears that the Roman general sailed round the coast of Scotland to the Land's End in Cornwall, and thence to the point from which he had first started—supposed to be Sandwich—being the first of the Roman generals who, from personal observation, discovered that Britain was an island. Shortly after completing this voyage Agricola was recalled to Rome. The next period of our history carries us to other conflicts, which took place before those mighty bulwarks that the Roman conquerors built up to keep back the northern invaders, who in their turn overran England with more success than the Romans had done before them. It was then a war between the Romans and the Picts and Scots, instead of, as before, between the Romans and the Britons. Although they doubtless originally descended from the same Celtic race, yet through the lapse of years, and their having lingered for some time in Ireland and in Gaul, we are entangled in so many doubts, that all we can clearly comprehend is, that three different languages were spoken in the island of Britain at this period, namely, Welsh, Irish, and another; but whether the latter was Gothic or Pictish, learned men who have dedicated long years of study to the subject have not yet determined by what name it is to be distinguished.
[CHAPTER VI.]
DEPARTURE OF THE ROMANS.
"He looked and saw wide territory spread
Before him; towns and rural works between,
Cities of men, with lofty gates and towers,
Concourse in arms, fierce forces threatening war—
Assaulting: others, from the wall defend
With dart and javelin, stones and sulphurous fire:
On each hand slaughter and gigantic deeds."
Milton's Paradise Lost, Book XI.
The fortified line erected by Agricola was soon broken through by the northern tribes, and the Emperor Adrian erected a much stronger barrier, though considerably within the former; and this extended from the Tyne to the Solway, crossing the whole breadth of that portion of the island. Urbicus, as if determined that the Romans should not lose an inch of territory which they had once possessed, restored the more northern boundary which Adrian had abandoned, and once more stretched the Roman frontier between the Friths of Clyde and Forth; they thus possessed two walls, the more northern one, first begun by Agricola, and the southern one, erected by Adrian. Forts were built at little more than a mile distant from each other along this line, and a broad rampart ran within the wall, by which troops could readily march from one part to another. This outer barrier was the scene where many a hard contest took place, and in the reign of Commodus it was again broken down, and the country ravaged up to the very foundations of the wall of Adrian. This skirmishing and besieging, building up and breaking down of barriers, lasted for nearly a century, during which period scarcely a single event transpired in Britain of sufficient importance to be recorded, though there is every proof that the Britons were, in the meantime, making rapid strides in civilization; for England rested securely under the guardianship of the Roman arms. The battles fought at the northern barriers disturbed not the tranquillity of the southern parts of the island. It was not until the commencement of the third century, when old and gouty, and compelled to be borne at the head of his army in a litter, that the Emperor Severus determined to conquer the Caledonians, and boldly sallied out for that purpose beyond the northern frontier. His loss was enormous, and between war with the natives, and the wearisome labour in making roads, felling forests, and draining marshes, which had hitherto been impassable to the Roman troops, fifty thousand soldiers were sacrificed. Nothing daunted, however, the gouty old emperor still pressed onward, until he reached the Frith of Moray, and was struck with the difference in the length of the days, and shortness of the nights, compared with those in southern latitudes. Saving making a few new roads, and receiving the submission of the few tribes who chanced to lie in his way, he appears to have done nothing towards conquering this hardy race; so he returned to Newcastle, and began to build a stronger barrier than any of his predecessors had hitherto erected. On the northern side of this immense wall, he caused a deep ditch to be dug, about thirty-six feet wide, while the wall itself was twelve feet in height; thus, from the bottom of the ditch on the northern side there rose a barrier about twenty-five feet high, which was also further strengthened by a large number of fortifications, and above three hundred turrets. But before Severus had well completed his gigantic labours, the Caledonians had again over-leaped the more northern barrier, and fought their way up to the new trenches. The grey-headed old hero vowed vengeance, and swore by "Mars the Red," that he would spare neither age nor sex. Death, who is sometimes merciful, kindly stepped in, and instead of allowing him to swing in his litter towards new scenes of slaughter, cut short his contemplated campaign at York, about the year two hundred and eleven; and after his death, the northern barrier was again given up to the Caledonians.
A wearisome time must it have been to those old Roman legions, who had to keep guard on that long, monotonous wall, which went stretching for nearly seventy miles over hill and valley; nothing but a desolate country to look over, or that wide, yawning, melancholy ditch to peep into from the battlements, or a beacon-fire to light on the top of the turret, as a signal that the barbarians were approaching. An occasional skirmish must have been a relief to that weary round of every-day life, made up in marches from fort to fort, where there was no variety, saving in a change of sentries—no relief excepting now and then sallying out for forage; for between the outer and inner wall, the whole country seems at this period to have been a wilderness—a silent field of death, in which the bones of many a brave man were left to bleach in the bleak wind, and from which only the croak of the raven and the howl of the wolf came upon the long dark midnights that settled down over those ancient battlements. Sometimes the bold barbarians sailed round the end of the wall in their wicker boats, covered with "black bull's hide," and landed within the Roman intrenchments, or spread consternation amongst the British villages; but with the exception of an occasional inroad like this, the whole of the northern part of the island appears to have been quiet for nearly another century, during which the Roman arms seem to have become weakened, and the British tribes to have given themselves up more to the arts of peace than of war. Such privileges as were granted to the Roman citizens, were also now extended to the Britons; and under the dominion of Caracalla, the successor of Severus, there is but little doubt that the southern islanders settled peaceably down in their homesteads (now comfortable abodes), and began to be somewhat more Romanized in their manners, that marriages took place between the Romans and the Britons, and that love and peace had now settled down side by side, in those very spots which the stormy spirits of Cassivellaunus, Caractacus, and Boadicea had formerly passed over. The wheels of the dreaded war-chariots seem to have rested on their axles; we scarcely meet with the record of a single revolt amongst the native tribes, excepting those beyond the wall of Adrian. Through the pages of Gildas we catch glimpses of strange miracles, and see the shadow of the cross falling over the old druidical altars, but nothing appears distinct; and although we may doubt many passages in the writings of this our earliest historian, it would be uncharitable to the memory of the dead even to entertain a thought that he wilfully falsified a single fact. The only marvel is, that, living in an age when so few could write—when only common rumours were floating about him—when he was surrounded with the faint outlines of old traditions, he should have piled together so many facts which are borne out by contemporary history. To place no faith in the narrative of Gildas, is to throw overboard the writings of the venerable Bede, and float over the sea of time for many a long year, without a single record to guide us. Although we have confidence in many of these ancient chronicles of the undefended dead, we shall pass on to undisputed facts, founded upon their faint records; for we have scarcely any other light to guide us through these dark caverns, which the ever-working hand of slow-consuming Time hath hollowed out.
About the commencement of the fourth century, a new enemy made its appearance upon the British coast, and though it only at first flitted about from place to place like a shadow, it at last fixed itself firmly upon the soil, never again to be wholly obliterated. This was the Saxon—not at that period the only enemy which beside the Caledonians invaded Britain, for there were others—Scandinavian pirates, ever ready with their long ships to dart across the British channel upon our coast. These invaders were kept at bay for a time by a bold naval commander called Carausius, supposed himself originally to have been a pirate, and occasionally to have countenanced the inroads of the enemy; and on this account, or from the dreaded strength of his powerful fleet, a command was issued from Rome to put him to death. He, however, continued for some time to keep the mastery of the British Channel, defied Rome and all its powers, assumed the chief command over Britain, and was at last stabbed by the hand of his own confidential minister at York. Allectus, Constantine, Chlorus, and Constantine the Great, follow each other in succession, each doing their allotted work, then fading away into Egyptian darkness, scarcely leaving a record behind beyond their names; for the eyes of the Roman eagle were now beginning to wax dim, and a fading light was fast settling down upon the Eternal city, and gloomy and ominous shadows were ever seen flitting athwart the golden disc whose rounded glory had so long fallen unclouded upon the Imperial city. Even in Britain the wall of Severus had been broken through, a Roman general slain, and London itself pillaged by these hordes of barbarians. The plunderers were, however, attacked by Theodosius, the spoils retaken, and the inhabitants, whom they were driving before them in chains, liberated. These assailants are supposed to have been mingled bodies of the Picts, Scots, and Saxons, and the addition of Saxonicus was added to the name of Theodosius, in honour of this victory.