London

by Walter Besant

BRONZE BUST OF THE EMPEROR HADRIAN: FOUND IN THE THAMES (British Museum)

These supplies were very large indeed. As said above, we may set aside as extravagant the talk of a vast and multitudinous throng of people, as if the place was already a kind of Liverpool. Augusta never, certainly, approached the importance of Massilia, of Bordeaux, of Antioch, of Ephesus. Nor was Augusta greater than other English towns. The walls of York enclose as large an area as those of Roman London. The wall of Uriconium encloses an area nearly equal to that of Roman London. The area of Calleva (Silchester), a country town of no great importance, is nearly half as great as that of Roman London. But it was a large and populous city. How populous we cannot even approximately guess. Considering the extent of the wall, if that affords any help, we find, counting the river front, that the wall was two miles and three-quarters in length. This is a great length to defend. It is, however, certain that the town when walled must have contained a population strong enough to defend their wall. The Romans knew how to build in accordance with their wants and their resources. If the wall was built three miles long, there were certainly defenders in proportion. Now, could so great a length be intrusted to a force less than 20,000? The defenders of the walls of Jerusalem, which, after the taking of the third wall, were very much less than two miles in extent, demanded at least 25,000 men, as Titus very well knew. Now, if every able-bodied man in London under the age of five-and-fifty were called out to fight, the population, on the assumption of 20,000 suitable men, would be about 70,000. If, on the other hand, the London citizens after the departure of the Romans could man their walls with only 10,000 men, they would have a population of about 35,000. Now, the daily needs of a population of only 35,000 are very considerable. We have, it is true, to supply food for 5,000,000, but the brain is incapable of comprehending figures and estimates of such vastness. One can better understand those which have to do with a population of 30,000 or 40,000. So much bread, so much meat, so much wine, beer, and fruit. Where did all these things come from? Nothing, as I have said, from the immediate neighborhood; chiefly from Surrey and from Kent; a great deal from Essex; and the rest from the west country by means of the river.

London, therefore, with a population of not less than 35,000, and perhaps upwards of 70,000, stood in the midst of marshes—marshes everywhere—marshes all around except in the north; and there impenetrable forest. It depended wholly for its supplies, for its daily bread, for its existence, upon the country around.

In order to buy these supplies it depended upon its trade of import and export. It was the only port in the kingdom; it received the hides, the iron, and the slaves from inland and embarked them in the foreign keels; it received from abroad the silks, the spices, the wines, the ecclesiastical vestments, and all the articles of foreign luxury, and sent them about the country.

But this important place changed hands, somehow, without so much as a mention from the contemporary records; and while places like Bath, Gloucester, Cirencester, are recorded as being besieged and taken, no word is said of London, a place of far greater importance.

It has been suggested that the siege of London was not followed by a massacre as at Anderida, and that there was no great battle as at Chester; but that the place was quietly surrendered and the lives of the people spared. This is a thing absolutely impossible during these two centuries. The English invader did not make war in such a manner. If he attacked a town and took it by assault he killed everybody who did not run away. That was his method: that was how he understood war. If he pushed out his invading arms he killed the occupants of the land, unless, which sometimes happened, they killed him, or, as more often happened, they ran away. But of making terms, sparing lives, suffering people to remain in peaceful occupation of their houses we hear nothing, because such a thing never happened until the close of the war, when victory was certain to one side and resistance was impossible to the other. Mercy was not as yet in the nature of Angle, Jute, or Saxon.

Suppose, however, that it did happen. Suppose that after that great rout of Craysford the victorious army had pushed forward and taken the city, or had accepted surrender in this peaceful nineteenth-century fashion, so entirely opposite to their received and customary method, what would have happened next?

Well, there would have been continuity of occupation. Most certainly and without doubt this continuity of occupation would have been proved by many signs, tokens, and survivals. For instance, the streets. The old streets would have remained in their former positions. Had they been burned down they would have been rebuilt as before. Nothing is more conservative and more slow to change than an old street. Where it is first laid out there it remains. The old lanes which formerly ran between gardens and at the back of houses, are still the narrow streets of the City. In their names the history of their origin remains. In Garlickhithe, Fyfoot Lane, Suffolk Lane, Tower Royal, Size Lane, Old Jewry, the Minories, and in a hundred other names, we have the identical mediæval streets, with the identical names given to them from their position and their association. And this though fire after fire has burned them down, and since one fire at least destroyed most of them at a single effort. A Roman town was divided, like a modern American town, into square blocks—insulæ (islands) they were called. Where are the insulæ of London? There is not in the whole of London a single trace of the Roman street, if we except that little bit still called after the name given by the Saxons to a Roman road.