On the other hand, there is good reason for believing that the Britons of the south and south-eastern parts of England were by no means the barbarians some writers have asserted. It is certain that they were of the same race, and nearly connected with the Belgæ of the opposite continents, for Cæsar tells us that many names of cities in the two countries were the same; that their manners greatly resembled those of the Gauls;[409] that Divitiacus, a king of one of the Belgian tribes, was also the ruler of a wide district in England,[410] much as in later times our Edwards and Henries held large provinces of France; that Cingetorix, though ruler of the Treviri on the Moselle, was also a king in Kent;[411] and that the buildings of South Britain and Gaul bore a great similarity one to the other.[412] More than this, we know that the languages of the two countries, divided as they were from one another only by the narrowest part of the English Channel, must have been, as Tacitus[413] states, very similar—a fact partially supported by Cæsar’s mission to England of Comius, the chief of the Atrebates (Artois), that he might advocate the cause of the Romans in the British language.[414]
We know further that the southern portions of England were then thickly peopled, and that the Britons were in some respects so far in advance of their neighbours that the Gauls used to send their sons to England for the purpose of learning the sacred rites of the Druids, an order of priests, be it remembered, who made use of Greek letters for both their public and private transactions.[415] It is further clear, from Cæsar’s narrative, that there must have been no inconsiderable extent of land under cultivation, and therefore cleared, at least partially, of forests, probably for the most part among the Cantii, or men of Kent, whom he calls the “most polished;”[416] moreover, if Cassivelaunus had only one-tenth of the “four thousand war chariots” mentioned by Cæsar,[417] he must have required roads, and well-made roads, too, along which to manœuvre them; not forgetting also the fact, that the construction of such chariots implies considerable mechanical skill. Cæsar adds, that the Britons made use of iron which they obtained from their maritime districts, a statement confirmed by the existence, till within a recent period, of numerous furnaces in the Weald of Sussex, for the extraction of iron from the iron sand of that district.[418] The extremely barbarous Britons, to whom the popular stories refer, were no doubt those of the more northern and central districts—Celts, who had been driven back by the advancing tide of the Belgæ of Northern France.
Cæsar’s reasons for invading Britain.
The invasion by Cæsar was the result of various and mixed circumstances, among which we may well believe one inducement to have been the desire on his part of making his rule in Gaul pre-eminently famous by the subjugation, under Roman rule, of an island about which so many stories were current among his countrymen. Britain, described in Virgil[419] as “beyond the limits of the known world,” was supposed to be rich in gold and silver, with an ocean fertile in pearls;[420] indeed, Suetonius speaks of it as a popular belief, that it was in quest of pearls that Cæsar crossed the Channel. But a more probable reason for his proposed attempt is that alleged by Napoleon III., viz., his having found the natives of Britain invariably aiding his enemies in his Gallic wars, and especially in his conflict with the Veneti, during the summer of the year of his first invasion, B.C. 55.[421] Moreover, intestine divisions[422] had about that time broken out in England, and hence there was then a better chance of Roman success than there would have been had the islanders stood firmly together to resist the invader.
Having resolved then to make the attempt, Cæsar looked about him to procure information about the unknown island: but here he was completely foiled; for the Gauls stood too well by their friends and relations in Britain to volunteer the information they might easily have given the Roman commander. The Veneti, as might have been expected, did what they could to thwart him, while the Morini, dwelling around and to the east of Boulogne, are specially mentioned as friendly to the Britons.[423] Moreover, Cæsar himself remarks that no one but merchants ever visited Britain,[424] unless, indeed, they fled thither for their lives; Britain having been then, as now, the refuge for continental exiles of all classes. In spite, however, of these adverse circumstances, increased in some degree by the lateness of the season, Cæsar judged it best to make the attempt, hoping, probably, to strike an effective blow before the petty states in Britain had had time to weld themselves into a compact body, although, too, he had an almost certain prospect of an uprising in his rear of the only half-subdued Gauls as soon as his legions were fully employed in Britain. He therefore, as a last chance of procuring news about the island, despatched one of his lieutenants, C. Volusenus, in a “long ship” (i.e., light war-galley),[425] giving him orders, as soon as he had made the necessary inquiries, to return to him with all possible speed; a step which showed clearly what his intentions were, and led to an embassy from the Britons, offering terms of submission he, perhaps, disbelieved, at all events declined accepting.
First invasion, B.C. 55.
Cæsar soon after collected about eighty vessels of burden, placed in them two legions, and, having made his final arrangements, started for England from Boulogne at midnight on August 26, B.C. 55, having on board a force of about eight thousand men. Eighteen other transports conveyed about eight hundred horses for the cavalry.[426] Beyond the number of the vessels, Cæsar has left us no information in regard to them, and no indication of their capacity beyond the incidental statement that two of the galleys, which on his return got adrift, carried altogether three hundred men.
The number of men constituting a legion varied very much during the different periods of Roman history, and, in Cæsar’s time, amounted to about five thousand two hundred and eighty men, all told; but as Cæsar obviously took with him as few troops as possible, intending his first descent upon England to be rather a visit of observation than a conquest, it is likely that the whole number of his force did not exceed what we have stated, making for each of the eighty galleys a complement of somewhere about one hundred men.
Size of his transports.
At present about three hundred passengers can be accommodated in a sailing vessel of one thousand tons register on a distant voyage; but, in coasting vessels, the number is very much greater.[427] It may therefore be assumed that the average size of the vessels in which Cæsar embarked his legions on this occasion was not more than one hundred tons register. The horse transports[428] may have been somewhat larger, as more than thirty-three horses, with their provender, water, and attendants, could not well be conveyed in a vessel of less register than one hundred tons, even on so short a voyage as from Boulogne to Romney[429] or Lymne, performed, as this voyage was, with a fair wind, in fifteen hours, or at the rate of about two miles an hour. The ships of burden or transports were all flat-bottomed, that they might float in shallow water, and be more expeditiously freighted.