The Britons at length applied to Stilicho, the minister of the young Emperor Honorius, and a legion was sent to Britain, which, for the time, drove back the invading tribes, and garrisoned the wall between the Forth and the Clyde. The recovery of the territory at the northern frontier was on this occasion, as well as when Theodosius repelled the invaders from it, followed by a part of the nation of the Attacotts being enrolled in the Roman army, where they bore the name of Honoriani in honour of the Emperor Honorius. The Roman historians affording us but little information regarding these renewed incursions of the Picts and Scots, their place is now supplied by the British historians Gildas and Nennius; while the allusions to these events in the poems of Claudian enable us to assign the somewhat vague and undated accounts of the British historians to their true period. They tell us of this irruption of the Picts and Scots, and of the arrival of the legion to the assistance of the Britons. The poet Claudian connects this with the name of Stilicho. He alludes to the legion which bridled the Scot, or the Saxon. He describes it as guarding the frontier of Britain, as bridling the Scot, and examining, on the body of the dying Pict, the figures punctured with iron. He depicts Britain as saying that Stilicho had fortified her by a wall against the neighbouring nations, and that she neither feared the Scots crossing from Ierne, nor the Pict nor the Saxon ravaging her coasts.[[97]] This fixes the date of the expulsion of the Barbarians and arrival of the legion at the year 400, and Stilicho appears on this occasion to have also enrolled bodies of Attacotts in the Roman army.[[98]]
A.D. 402.
Roman legion withdrawn; second devastation of province.
Four years later the legion was recalled from Britain in consequence of the Gothic war and the attacks of Alaric, and left the island, having, as we are informed by Nennius, appointed a leader to command the Britons. They had no sooner gone, however, than the old enemies of the provincial Britons—the Picts and Scots—again broke into the province and renewed their ravages.
A.D. 406.
Again repelled by Stilicho, and army restored.
After three years, Stilicho sent assistance to them. He appears to have feared the total loss of Britain to the Romans, and, apparently desirous to make a great effort for its permanent recovery on this occasion, he restored the army of Britain to its usual strength, consisting of three legions—the second, the sixth, and the twentieth—by whom the province was effectually freed from the invaders and garrisoned by Roman troops.[[99]] As long as this army remained in Britain, the province was protected in its full extent to its frontier at the Firths of Forth and Clyde; but the position of the army, as indicated in the Notitia Imperii, sufficiently shows the imminence of the danger which now threatened the province in Britain, and the quarter from whence it was dreaded. The three legions which now protected the frontiers of this distant portion of the Empire, in the last notice which we have regarding the Roman troops in Britain, are found stationed in greatest force along the wall which extended from the Tyne to the Solway, and in the garrisons between that barrier and the Humber, and likewise in those that protected what was now termed the Saxon shore, extending from the Wash to Portsmouth. The ‘Comes Britanniarum’ guarded the western frontier of the two Britains, where the new province of Valentia had probably been formed, with troops which may have been stationed at Caerleon and Chester, the old headquarters of the second and twentieth legions, and the interior of the country is comparatively ungarrisoned.
The doom of this great Empire was now, however, rapidly approaching, and the withdrawal of the troops from the remote frontiers to protect the seat of power precipitated the fate of the frontier provinces. The great invasion of the Vandals with the Alani and Suevi, which took place in the year 406, and was the first of those fatal inroads of the Barbarians into the very heart of the Empire which led to its final ruin, alarmed the troops which remained of the army in Britain, who, on the irruption of the Barbarians into Gaul, found that they would be cut off from the other forces of the Empire and exposed alone in their insular position to the attacks of the enemy, and led them to resort to the step which had now become the habitual tendency of a Roman army so placed—to proclaim an Emperor. Accordingly they terminated their four years’ residence in Britain by revolting, and selected Marcus as Emperor. He was soon slain by Gratianus, who assumed the imperial authority, and after a four months’ enjoyment of it, was in his turn slain by the soldiers.
A.D. 407.
Constantine proclaimed Emperor; withdraws the army from Britain; third devastation by Picts and Scots.
A soldier named Constantine was then chosen, owing his elevation mainly to his name being that of the celebrated Emperor; and this new Constantine no sooner assumed the purple, than, with the fatal policy of his predecessors, he resolved to strike a blow for the possession of Gaul, and Spain likewise. Before withdrawing the troops from Britain, however, he counselled the provincial Britons to abandon the districts between the walls, a territory now barely and with difficulty maintained by them, and to protect the remainder of the province by maintaining garrisons on the southern wall. At the same time the valleys on the north side of the Solway Firth appear to have been protected by an earthen rampart and fosse, which extends from the shore of the firth opposite the western termination of the wall across the upper part of the valleys till it terminates at Loch Ryan. On the south coast, where the province had been exposed to the piratical descents of the Saxons, and had hitherto been protected by the Roman vessels, he erected towers at stated intervals. Having thus taken the best measures in his power to enable the provincial Britons to protect the province, Constantine crossed over to Gaul with the army, and the Roman legions left Britain, never again to return. They had no sooner been withdrawn, than the old enemies of the province occupied the district as far as the southern wall to which Constantine had withdrawn the frontier; but although the Roman troops had left the island, the civil government of the Romans still remained in force, and the provinces of Britain continued to form an integral part of the Empire. The events, however, connected with the usurpation of Constantine speedily led to the termination of the Roman government in Britain, and its final separation from the Empire. Constantine had no sooner landed in Gaul than an engagement took place between the British army and the Barbarians who had entered Gaul by the passes of the Alps, in which the former were successful, and a great slaughter of the enemy took place. The Roman troops in Gaul submitted to Constantine, and he thus obtained possession of the whole of that country. In the meantime, intelligence having reached Rome of Constantine’s successful usurpation, and that the provinces of Gaul had become subject to him, Stilicho returned to Rome from Ravenna, and sent Sarus in command of an army against him. Justinian, one of Constantine’s generals, was encountered and slain. Neviogastes, another, was put to death by treachery; and Sarus proceeded to besiege Valentia, where Constantine then was. The usurper now appointed Edovinchus, and Gerontius a native of Britain, his generals; and Sarus, dreading their military reputation, retreated from Valentia, which he had invested for seven days. The new generals followed and attacked him, and it was with difficulty he reached the Alps and escaped into Italy, having had to bribe the ‘Bagaudæ,’ or armed peasantry, who were in possession of the passes, by giving up to them the whole of his booty to permit his army to pass through.
Constantine now placed garrisons in the passes of the Alps, and likewise secured the Rhine, in order to protect the territory he had acquired from invasion. Being now in undisturbed possession of Gaul, he created his eldest son Constans, who had been a monk, Cæsar, and sent him into Spain to wrest that country likewise from the government of Honorius. Constans proceeded accordingly to Spain, having Terentius as his general, and Apollinarius as prefect of the Prætorium, and was encountered by the relatives of Honorius who commanded there, and who surrendered to him after a battle in which Constans had the advantage, and an unsuccessful attempt to destroy him by arming the peasantry. Having thus become possessed of two of the relations of the Emperor—Verinianus and Didymus—Constantine sent messengers to Honorius entreating forgiveness for having allowed himself to accept the Empire, and stating that it had been forced upon him by the soldiery. The Emperor was in no position to contend with Constantine, and being afraid of the fate of his relations, acceded to his request and admitted him to a share in the imperial authority.
Constans in the meantime returned from Spain, bringing with him Verinianus and Didymus, having left there Gerontius, the Briton, as general, with the troops from Gaul, part of which consisted of the British nation of the Attacotts, who had been enlisted in the Roman army by Stilicho,[[100]] to guard the passes through the Pyrenees. The unfortunate relatives of Honorius were no sooner brought before Constantine than they were put to death, and an embassy was sent to Honorius in the person of Jovius, a distinguished orator, to excuse the death of his relatives, and to request that the peace might be confirmed. The plea was, that they had been put to death without his consent. Jovius prevailed with Honorius by pointing out to him that he was in no condition to act otherwise, and by promising him assistance from Constantine’s army in quelling commotions in Italy and Rome.