THE INVASIONS OF ENGLAND

THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE
THE REARGUARD OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION
By EDWARD FOORD

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AGENTS

A. Rischgitz.

ADMIRAL MICHIEL ADRIAANSZOON DE RUIJTER.
The guns of whose fleet were heard at Whitehall in 1667. The greatest of Dutch naval commanders.

THE INVASIONS
OF ENGLAND
BY EDWARD FOORD
AND GORDON HOME

A. AND C. BLACK, LIMITED
SOHO SQUARE, LONDON, W. : 1915

Published, 1913, as ‘England Invaded’
Reissued, 1915, as ‘The Invasions of England’

PREFACE TO REISSUE

It has quite recently been stated in an American journal that Herr Dernburg—the German official apologist to the United States—speaking of the shelling of Hartlepool and Yorkshire watering-places, was convinced that it would ‘bring home to the English people a keen realization of the fact that every serious attempt to invade England in the past has been successful.’ Had Herr Dernburg read any connected narrative of the invasions of England we are of opinion that he would never have made this statement, for it is obvious that since the Norman conquest no successful invasion has taken place without the active sympathy and assistance of a great section of the population.

Both before and during the present war the Germans have shown themselves so incapable of reading correctly the habits of thought of the British, of Americans, of Indians, of South Africans, that one is scarcely surprised to find them ignorant of the history of the British peoples also.

Let Herr Dernburg study the history of the Cinque Ports, or of any of the seafaring towns of South Devon and Cornwall, and he will find that sporadic raids and bombardments were frequent enough in mediæval, Tudor, and even later times; but for any invasion that did not meet in some degree with the approval of the country he will search in vain after he has passed the landmark of 1066. Even the Norman conquest was achieved through the lack of that real national cohesion which could not come to pass within such a brief period as the interval between the last Danish invasion and the death of Edward the Confessor.

Great Britain and Ireland in 1915 show a united front to the invader, and the inevitable fate of any force that has the temerity to set hostile feet on British soil will be the same as that of General Tate and his 1,400 men in the year 1797.

There is such a widespread lack of exact knowledge on the subject of the invasions of England that this new edition, at a popular price, of a volume concerned with the whole of them, from Cæsar to Napoleon, may help to clear a good many minds of misconceptions.

E. F.
G. H.

PREFACE

Since the year 1794, when England seethed with excitement through fear of a French Republican invasion, no book has been produced dealing with the invasions of England. The historical and archæological work of the century that has passed has shed so much light on dark and shadowy periods of English history that the materials available for a new work on the subject have become increasingly extensive, and the authors have endeavoured to take full advantage of all this new material. They have, either together or separately, visited all the important, and many of the minor, battle sites and campaign areas mentioned in the text, and, as a result of close study, they have in certain instances arrived at conclusions at variance with those generally accepted.

By careful topographical work, aided by every shred of historical evidence available, the authors venture to hope that they may have thrown a little new light upon the great campaign in which the Roman general Paulinus crushed the British struggle for independence under Boudicca. They have also devoted much time and thought to the elucidation of the problem of the identity of the heroes of the Romano-British contests with the oncoming Teutons, and to the areas of their chief military operations. After much consideration and study of the available authorities, they have arrived at the conclusion, which they have not hesitated to express, that Arthur, or Artorius, is a well-established historical figure. One of the authors has, through his family’s territorial connection with the Eastern Border, had exceptional opportunities for becoming familiar with the topography of the wild and intricate region in which both are inclined to place the fields of at least four, and perhaps six, of Arthur’s twelve famous victories.

The field of Senlac has been examined by the authors in the company of Sir Augustus Webster, Bart., the present owner of Battle Abbey, himself a practical soldier. The result of their investigations has been to convince them that the line of the Norman advance lay considerably to the east of where it is generally placed, and that the great bulk of Harold’s army was massed about the site of the abbey itself. His right wing, being almost unassailable owing to the protection given to it by the marshy ground in its front, was probably very weakly held. Relying on the contemporary evidence of the Bayeux tapestry, and considering the circumstances of Harold’s march, the authors are inclined to discount any effective entrenchments or palisading.

In regard to the strategy and tactics of Flodden, a close study of contemporary documents and authorities tends to emphasize certain features which are often overlooked or ignored. First, the Scottish army evidently changed its position twice to counteract Surrey’s puzzling flanking movement. Second, it can have had no proper service of scouts, and was too cumbrous to manœuvre readily, circumstances which left it at the mercy of its numerically inferior antagonist. Third, it was never able to form a complete line of battle owing to the slowness of the right wing in coming into action. Fourth, so far as appears from the letters of the English leaders, there was no slackness on the part of the Scottish Lord Chamberlain who commanded the left wing.

Much has been written on the relative strengths of the English and Spanish fleets in 1588. The authors’ opinions may be summarized as follows: (1) The Spaniards had an undoubted superiority in tonnage, but in strength of ships actually built for war the English had the advantage. (2) The English ships, being manned by a majority of sailors, were infinitely better handled; and the galleons of the Royal Navy were faster sailers than those of the Spanish. (3) There is no real reason to think that the Spaniards were outmatched in number and power of guns, but the English gunnery, though bad, was better and more rapid than that of their antagonists. (4) The Spanish tactics, as compared with that of the English, was antiquated, being based on the formation of line abreast and a close order, which hampered the manœuvring of individual ships and impeded the use of broadsides.

The exigencies of space have compelled the authors to pass briefly over the later period of attempted invasions, and to concentrate attention upon those attempts which actually succeeded so far as to effect a landing upon English soil. An exception has, however, been made in regard to Napoleon’s project of 1804-5, which has been briefly discussed. It was the last attempt of an ancient enemy, France having been actively organizing invasions of England in 1744 and again in 1759. The latter project was ably planned by Choiseul and Belleisle, and was at least as feasible as Napoleon’s far more celebrated design; but it shared its fate of hopeless failure owing to Britain’s supremacy on the sea.

To Mr. Julian Corbett the authors are indebted for his kindness in reading the proofs of the chapters on the Armada period. The observations on Napoleon’s project of invasion are based entirely upon the works of Mr. Corbett and Colonel Desbrière.

In writing on a subject of such permanently vital interest to the British nation as the question of invasion, it may be thought desirable that the authors should express the conclusions to which they have been led in the course of their researches. They, however, prefer to merely direct the attention of their readers to the fact that no successful invasion of England has taken place since 1066 without the active sympathy and assistance of a considerable section of the population. Prior to that date Britain and England were not in any real sense of the word single united communities.

The salient fact is that so long as England remained strong at sea, and her strength was intelligently and vigorously directed, she was able to beat off every serious attempt against her. It is unnecessary to insist here on the universally accepted axiom that British national and imperial existence rests on the maintenance of a supreme navy.

The maps have all been drawn by the authors for the express purpose of illustrating their deductions, and among the objects illustrated are several which have never before, it is believed, been depicted in any published work.

EDWARD FOORD.
GORDON HOME.

September, 1913.

CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

MAPS AND PLANS

ENGLAND INVADED

CHAPTER I
CÆSAR’S INVASIONS

In the year 57 B.C. Gaius Julius Cæsar, Roman politician, statesman, and legislator, and already, though he had only girt on the sword at forty-three years of age, a famous soldier, was campaigning in northern Gaul. The year before, a mere carpet warrior, as his enemies would have men believe, he had come up the Rhone with six legions of sturdy swarthy Italian yeomen, and summarily put an end to the great Helvetic migration, a migration perhaps little less dangerous than that of the Cimbri and ‘Teutones,’ which his kinsman Marius had annihilated at Aquæ Sextiæ and Vercellæ. Then, grimly resolute, with reluctant officers, with the scented young nobles who had followed him for a little plunder and mild excitement foreboding disaster, with even the stout legionaries—all save the men of the immortal Xth—hanging back and half afraid, he had turned on the Germans who were overrunning Gaul, and hurled them in rout and ruin across the Rhine. And—significant fact!—he wintered not in the sunny Roman Province—that Provence which still proclaims to the world from a hundred sites that Imperial Rome swayed her sceptre there for twenty generations—not in the Italian Gallia along the Po, but there, where he was, in the very homeland of the Celts, which five hundred years before had sent forth the hordes that had wasted Italy and burned Rome. The Gauls, disunited, faction-ridden, fickle, and suspicious of each other, but proud, brave, and patriotic, began to take alarm.

Whether Cæsar had intended from the first to subjugate Gaul, or whether his horizon became enlarged as his successes multiplied, are questions that cannot be discussed here. But he certainly seems to have shown his hand in 58 B.C. ‘Celtic’ and ‘Aquitanian’ Gaul remained passive, but in the north, where the ‘Belgæ’ had had little to do with Roman envoys and traders, much less with Roman generals and legions, a confederacy was quickly formed to oppose Cæsar. It was headed nominally by Galba, King of the Suessiones, whose predecessor, Divitiacus, had ruled an ephemeral dominion extending over a large region of northern Gaul and parts of Britain. So writes Cæsar in the second book, ‘De Bello Gallico’; and thus, in a single terse sentence of his perfect, unadorned Latin, Britannia is swept by a roving searchlight of historical allusion.

Early next year Cæsar came up from Central Gaul, now with a formidable force of eight legions, with cavalry from Gaul and elsewhere, with Numidian light troops, with archers from the East and slingers from the Baleares, with engineers and siege artillery, to deal with the Belgians. The great ill-cemented confederacy was shattered with slight difficulty, but the fighting Nervii and other tribes, which would not be daunted by a single defeat, proved foes worthy of Cæsar’s steel, and were only subdued after a desperate battle. In 57 B.C. all the coast tribes from the Loire to the Rhine united against Cæsar, and this time there is distinct reference to regular intercourse between Gaul and Britain. This confederacy was crushed, after hard and harassing fighting, by a great naval victory off the southern coast of Brittany. It had been supported by British troops, and perhaps by British ships. At any rate, it must have been plain to the great proconsul that Britain was a factor that could not be ignored in dealing with the Gallic problem.

On Cæsar’s staff at this time was a Gallic noble named Commius, whom he had made king of the Atrebates in Belgium. The most important fact about him for our present purpose is that he had connections with Britain. The Belgæ had indeed far overflowed the limits of their Gallic territory; it is possible that the entire south-east of Britain from the Wash to the Somersetshire Avon, and thence to Southampton Water, was occupied by Belgic or Belgicized tribes. In a region roughly corresponding to Wiltshire, Hampshire, and Somerset, there was a confederacy which preserved the racial appellation of Belgæ. In Berks and Surrey dwelt the Atrebates, evidently cognate with the Atrebates of Belgica; while the name of the great and warlike Catuvellauni of the south-east Midlands clearly points to a connection with the Catalauni of the Marne. It is at least possible that the other tribes of the south-east—the Cantii of Kent, the Regni of Sussex, the wealthy Trinobantes of Essex and Suffolk, and even the Iceni of Norfolk—were of Belgic origin.

So much Cæsar may easily have learned from Commius, or from hostages and prisoners. That there was a close ethnic affinity between the tribes on either side of the Channel a man of his intellectual powers would not be slow to infer. Whether he was fully acquainted with the economic condition of the island is another matter. Pytheas he may have, Polybius he must have, read, but possibly the scepticism of the Achæan may have prejudiced him against the Massiliot.

But be this as it may, when Cæsar began to collect intelligence concerning Britain from Gallic merchants, he was presented with information largely untrustworthy, and some of which its furnishers must have known to be false. The statement that some of the British tribes practised polyandry may or may not be true—the traders had no obvious motive for deceiving Cæsar on such a point; but they may themselves have depended upon hearsay evidence. But otherwise they appear to have done their best to misinform the proconsul, with the obvious intention of inducing him to abandon any idea of an invasion. Their motive was clearly trade-jealousy. The whole British trade, which appears to have been considerable, was in their hands; they feared—naturally enough—Italian competition. Then, too, they may have been influenced by political motives. Britain was, as things went, an admirable place of refuge for Gallic organizers of revolt and for defeated leaders.

So, as far as one can see, Cæsar’s Gallic informants told him as little as possible. On the one hand, they seem to have done their best to overrate the savage ferocity of the people; on the other, they depreciated the wealth of the island. As they could hardly assert that systematic cultivation of cereals was unknown in the island, they explained that this was the case only in the south-east; elsewhere the people lived on milk and flesh, and, having no knowledge of weaving, dressed in skins. It is difficult to know how far Cæsar was deceived. To some extent he certainly was, for he repeats the false statements which were made to him. It may perhaps seem curious that he did not verify them while in Britain, but, of course, he had military business in plenty to occupy him. His statement about the iron bar currency is the strangest of all, since it is certain that gold coins, struck in imitation of Philip of Macedonia’s gold staters, had been in circulation for not less than a century. It is just possible that he means that iron bars took the place of a copper coinage. It seems incredible that he can have marched for more than a hundred miles into Britain without meeting with some of the gold pieces of which so many survive, even if he had not seen them in Gaul. In that part of Britain with which he was personally acquainted he notes that the population was dense, and dwellings, or groups of dwellings, thickly dotted over the country-side. But it is clear that in many respects his information was very imperfect.

Upon Cæsar’s credibility as an historian volumes have been written. To the impartial observer the absolute frankness with which he admits the commission of deeds which shock, or are supposed to shock, the not over-sensitive consciences of twentieth-century Europeans, is evidence in his favour. In curt unadorned phrases, without a trace of emotion, he tells of the enslaving of human beings by scores of thousands, or of the pursuit by cavalry of crowds of women and children. The fact, of course, is that such occurrences were common in war as it was waged in those days. Cæsar herein was neither better nor worse than hundreds of Roman or Greek generals. He was better than many, for he never massacred his own captive countrymen. It cannot be said that he was worse than Skobelev, who at the taking of Geok-Tepe in 1880 sent his cavalry in pursuit of a flying horde that was largely composed of women and children, just as Cæsar did at the destruction of the Usipetes and Teucteri in 55 B.C. All this is simply to lead up to the point that, while Cæsar may, as is suggested by a good many critics, have had unworthy motives for his expedition—such as greed of slaves and plunder, or a desire to dazzle the Roman populace—he gives a perfectly sound, statesmanlike reason for his action. He says that he had found that there were usually British contingents in the ranks of the hostile Gauls, and that he thought it advisable to cow the islanders. That some of his officers expected, like professional soldiers of every age, to enrich themselves is certain; it is at least probable that Cæsar hoped that the expedition might prove a paying investment. But that he regarded it only as a plundering raid there is no reason to think. Neither is there any solid evidence to show that his position as a Roman party-leader ever affected his military operations. That when he left Rome to take up his command he had a general idea of using his army to attain supreme power is possible, even probable. But once in Gaul the natural genius of the man as soldier and statesman was devoted to consolidating his country’s position there. His action as regards Ariovistus shows that self-interest was already subordinated to statesmanship which must benefit Rome, and could only serve his own ends incidentally.

In 55 B.C. Cæsar was very active in Belgic Gaul. He had swept the Teutonic hordes which had invaded Gaul in the winter back into Germania with frightful slaughter, not without treachery on his part; he had bridged the Rhine, and displayed the Eagles in a long raid on its eastern bank. This had occupied him until late in the summer. Then, as he says, it occurred to him that the short remainder of the campaigning season might be utilized for an expedition to Britain for the purpose of collecting useful information—in short, for what in modern military parlance would be termed a reconnaissance in force. It does not appear that he had anything further in mind. Later on he tells us that he had no intention of making a long stay, and he took only a few days’ provisions. Moreover, the time was too short for collecting anything like the number of ships required for the transportation of several legions.

Nevertheless, the concentration of the Roman Army of Gallia on the coast opposite Dover was an event which could not but alarm the Britons, and, while Cæsar was completing his arrangements, some of their tribes sent over envoys. Presumably, the idea was that by making a nominal submission the invasion might be averted. Cæsar, however, quietly observed that he would visit them at home in a few days, and sent them back with, as his personal emissary, Commius the Atrebatian. Commius had instructions to use his influence to bring about a general submission, but his British companions made him prisoner immediately upon landing. Cæsar meanwhile was collecting Gallic merchant-ships for the transit, and had sent a trusted officer, Gaius Volusenus, with a galley, to reconnoitre for landing-places. The haste and incompleteness of his preparations were so far of slight account, since, though the Britons were determined on resistance, there was no time to form a confederacy. Caswallon (Cassivellaunus), king of the Catuvellauni, the most powerful chieftain of Britain, was endeavouring to coerce the Trinobantes; the attack would be met by the local tribal levies only.

Having gone so far, it may be advisable to say a few words on the subject of the invading army and the forces which were likely to oppose it. The Roman Army of Gaul, though it had perhaps hardly reached the pitch of excellence which it attained at the outbreak of the Civil War, was, nevertheless, in 55 B.C., one of the finest that the world has ever seen. There were eight legions of Italian troops, and of these the two newest had seen three years’ hard service. Two had served four campaigns, and the remaining four were the pith of the army. Their numbers were VII., VIII., IX., and X. All of them had served four years under Cæsar, had learnt to idolize him and to follow him with perfect confidence, and all were composed of war-hardened veterans of many years’ experience—men to whom the hardships of war were but matter for jests, and a battle a mere incident of everyday life. Knowing them as we do, thanks to the man whom they served so well, we may fairly doubt whether any soldiers of any age ever surpassed them. The Xth has come down through the ages associated with, perhaps, the noblest eulogy ever paid by any leader to his soldiers. A great Roman army, not yet knowing itself or its leader, was trembling at the thought of meeting the dreaded warriors of Germany. Its fears came to Cæsar, and Cæsar made his immortal reply: ‘So be it! Since none else will follow, I will go forward with the Xth Legion alone. It will not forsake me!’ And the legion sent to thank its leader for the honour of being allowed to die with him. Never again did Cæsar’s soldiers hang back, but the Xth always remained ‘Cæsars Own.’ But Cæsar was not Napoleon; he never nursed or favoured it as Napoleon did the Old Guard. When it forgot its discipline, Cæsar punished it like any other corps; it shared equally in all the trials of the Army of Gallia. At its head Cæsar took his stand on the field of Pharsalus, and to this day, when an exalted standard of devotion is sought, it is enough to cite that of Cæsar’s Xth Legion.

TYPES OF ROMAN SOLDIERS.

On the left an officer, in the centre a standard bearer, and on the right a legionary soldier carrying his two pila.

The Xth was undoubtedly the finest of the legions, but the three other old corps were not greatly inferior; and the younger divisions were steadily improving, proud of themselves and of their leader.

The legion of Cæsar’s day was a division of six thousand infantry at full strength, exclusive of officers. It was divided into ten battalions (cohortes), and each cohort into six companies (centuriæ), each of one hundred men, under a centurion (centurio) generally, so far as is known, promoted from the ranks. Into the complicated question of the ranking and promotion of these officers, there is no need to enter here; it is sufficient to say that the senior centurions were entitled to sit in councils of war, and that the senior of all (primi pili centurio or primipilus) often appears as playing a very distinguished part. Attached to each legion were six officers called tribunes, frequently young gentlemen learning the art of war. Often, as might be expected, they were rather a nuisance than otherwise; but there were exceptions, notably C. Volusenus, who has just been mentioned. Probably the trouble was to induce them to take their military position seriously. Cæsar’s higher executive officers were his ten lieutenant-generals (legati), of whom we frequently meet several in command of one, two, or more legions. The best was Titus Labienus, strangely enough the only one who sided against his general in the Civil War. He was a greedy, cruel, and unprincipled man, but beyond doubt a great general; Cæsar repeatedly gives him unstinted praise. Of the others, probably the most promising was the young P. Licinius Crassus, who was to perish on his father’s ill-starred expedition against the Parthians; but several were men of real distinction. Among them may be mentioned M. Antonius, afterwards the rival of Augustus; Decimus Junius Brutus, the hero of the naval victory over the Veneti; C. Fabius Maximus; Q. Tullius Cicero, brother of the more famous Marcus, but himself a soldier of great merit; and C. Trebonius. Cæsar’s chief administrative officer was his quæstor (quartermaster-general), M. Licinius Crassus.

The legionary soldier’s equipment was perhaps unsurpassed in those ages for lightness and completeness. His clothes consisted of a sleeveless woollen shirt, drawers reaching to just below the knee, and over them a tunic. On his feet he wore half-boots with light uppers, and heavy soles studded with nails. His defensive arms consisted of a corselet of long overlapping strips of steel, a helmet with a low crest, and a semi-cylindrical shield some 4 feet long, made of wood covered with ox-hide, with a rim and central boss of iron, combining the minimum of weight with the maximum of protection. For purposes of offence the soldier bore two of the famous pila, and a short, sharp-pointed, double-edged sword. The pilum was a long, heavy javelin, which could also be used as a pike. It consisted of a thick wooden shaft some 4 feet long, with a slender iron rod, terminating in a small lancehead, projecting for about 3 feet more. It appears to have had a range, when in practised hands, of some 50 yards. Rank after rank delivered volleys of these heavy missiles, and when the well-drilled swordsmen charged, they usually found the enemy severely shaken. Against mounted troops bearing the bow the legion, intended for close fighting, was, of course, at a great disadvantage, but for many centuries it was the lord of Mediterranean battlefields.

The defects of the legion had not escaped the notice of Roman military organizers, and it was already accompanied by auxiliary cohorts of light troops. In Cæsar’s army they were not very numerous as compared with the legionaries—perhaps about as one to six. Northern Africa supplied excellent skirmishers—its light cavalry was world-renowned, but Cæsar does not appear to have had any of it in Gaul. Crete supplied him with archers, and Balearic slingers served with him as with Hannibal. Later the proportion of auxiliaries is found steadily on the increase. Under the Empire there were at least as many auxiliaries as legionaries. Cæsar, however, depended mainly on his legions. For cavalry he relied chiefly on friendly Gallic tribes, though it is probable that he had a small body of Italian or Italian-Gallic horse. From 52 B.C. onward he had a brigade of German cavalry in his pay.

The engineering department of the Roman army has never been equalled. There was a corps of engineers, but entrenching was part of the private soldier’s training. No body of troops ever halted for the night without surrounding themselves with a rampart and ditch. The result of constant experience of spade-work was that Roman troops frequently accomplished feats of engineering that seem almost miraculous. The work that in modern armies falls upon the engineers was in that of Rome chiefly done by the infantry privates. Cæsar in his campaigns made good use of the siege artillery of the period, and his march was generally accompanied by a train of balistæ (gigantic crossbows), catapultæ, and scorpiones.

Every legion had a baggage train, of course, and probably every privates’ mess had at least one slave for menial service; but the legionary bore a great part of his baggage himself, and it is a marvel how he contrived to march—as we know he did—anything from fifteen to twenty-five miles a day under his burdens. Besides arms, armour, and cloak, he carried grain or flour to last for a fortnight, a spade, a saw, a basket, several pales wherewith to crown the camp rampart, as well as his share of the mess service and other matters.

The standard of the legion was now always the famous Eagle, which had been introduced or generally established by Marius. The Eagle-bearer (Aquilifer) was always a soldier chosen for good conduct and gallantry. He wore the skin of a wild beast over his helmet as the sign of his honourable position. With one of these gallant men we shall soon make acquaintance.

A BRITON.

His weapons and shield drawn from originals in the British Museum.

Against this magnificent military machine the Britons had little but a mass of disorderly and ill-armed levies, formidable in numbers, individual courage and physical strength, but without cohesion. Most of them fought on foot, and few can have possessed body-armour; they were protected only by helmet and shield, perhaps not always the former. They were armed with badly-tempered iron swords and spears, and in battle made free use of missiles of all kinds—chiefly, it would seem, darts and stones. Of cavalry there were few; the British horses were too small for riding. The bulk of the wealthier warriors fought from timber cars. This chariotry was evidently a formidable force, and gave the Romans serious trouble. The small active horses took the cars along at a great rate, and the picked warriors who manned them—strong, active, and brave, as well as skilled with their weapons—were capable of being extremely dangerous. The cars certainly were not armed with scythes on their axles; their effectiveness lay chiefly in their mobility and the skill with which they were manœuvred, to which Cæsar bears emphatic testimony. In the nobles who went into battle on them the pomp and circumstance of British war was seen at its best. With their brightly-dyed garments, their tall helmets surmounted by bronze ornaments or waving plumes, their body-armour and shields bright with enamel and gilding, and displaying all the wonderful intricacies of Celtic spiral metal-work, their beautifully wrought scabbards and sword-hilts, their golden bracelets and collars, the British chiefs must have been splendid figures.

GAIUS JULIUS CÆSAR.

First Roman Emperor. Born, 102 B.C.; assassinated 44 B.C. The first Roman General to invade Britain.

Volusenus returned after a cruise of five days. He had not ventured to land, but brought information of value as to landing-places. Some ninety-eight vessels were now collected in the country of the Morini, most of them probably at the modern Boulogne, and on eighty of them Cæsar embarked his two best legions, the VIIth and the Xth, with no doubt, some light troops—perhaps ten thousand men in all. On board the other eighteen, which lay in a neighbouring harbour, were to go about five hundred cavalry. The order reached them late, and there was further delay in carrying it out.

Meanwhile, probably on the evening of August 25, the main body of the transports, escorted by some warships, set sail, and early next morning was off Dover. The war-galleys were in front, the heavy transports slowly coming up from the rear. Volusenus had, no doubt, pointed out Dover Harbour as the most usual place for landing, but the Britons were in force to oppose the disembarkation. The beach was lined with chariots, the slopes of Castle Hill and the Western Heights were swarming with foot-levies; and in a place where, as Cæsar says, darts could be rained upon the beach from the cliffs a landing would be extremely dangerous. From Volusenus he knew that only six or seven miles northward there was the open shelving beach of Deal. At noon the whole fleet had assembled, and Cæsar gave the order to weigh and move northward.

The Britons at once followed suit. Horse, foot, and chariots faced to their left, climbed over Castle Hill, and streamed down its farther slope. The infantry were soon left behind; the charioteers and horsemen, however, outpaced the heavily-laden Roman ships, and galloped down to the shore in time to oppose the landing. The ships, heavy-draft Gallic merchantmen, grounded some way out, and the troops, smitten by showers of missiles, and seeing the gallant show on the beach, hesitated to jump with arms and armour into several feet of water. Cæsar ordered the war-galleys, manned by the archers and slingers, to row forward and engage the Britons. This was done, but the only effect was to make them withdraw a little way; they still stood threatening to charge. A lead was necessary, and it was given by the standard-bearer of the Xth, who sprang into the surges and led the way, bearing the Eagle of Rome against the enemy. ‘Forward, comrades!’ he shouted, ‘unless you would betray the Eagle! I will do my duty to Rome and Cæsar!’ With a cheer every man on his ship followed. All down the line men sprang recklessly overboard, and singly and in groups began to wade up the shingly beach; and all along the shore, in gallant response, the Britons drove their chariots forward to the attack. There was a furious struggle among the breakers, and for some time the men of Kent held the strand; but when the steady Roman veterans began to close up into regular bodies, with boats full of archers covering their flanks, the Britons gave way. The Romans completed their landing, and laid out and fortified a camp.

Next day the Britons sent envoys to Cæsar. They brought with them Commius, whom they now released, and offered submission. Cæsar was, no doubt, highly pleased. He exacted hostages. Some were brought during the next two days; others were to follow.

A ROMAN TRIREME OFF DOVER.

Reconstructed from Roman wall-paintings and sculptures of the first and second centuries of the Christian era.

On the morning of the 30th, however, a north-easter came roaring down Dover Strait. Cæsar’s cavalry transports, on their way at last, were swept back and scattered into various harbours; the main fleet was seriously damaged. Twelve vessels were destroyed; many others so shattered as to need extensive repairs. The troops, knowing that they had only a few days’ food in hand, were depressed, as Cæsar himself admits. If we needed any proof that nothing but a reconnaissance had been intended we have it here; it is evident that the force had not even the usual fortnight’s grain.

Cæsar set the men to work on the necessary repairs, but the Britons were encouraged by the disaster to renew hostilities. Their chariotry and horsemen caught the VIIth Legion while it was foraging, and would have undoubtedly defeated it had not Cæsar come up just in time with two cohorts of the Xth. Several days of heavy rain followed, but the spirits of the Kentishmen were high. On the first fine day they moved up against the camp, and when Cæsar’s legions formed line outside they attacked them furiously. They were of course driven back, and fled in disorder, and Commius, with thirty mounted retainers and officers, was able to pursue and cut up some of the stragglers.

The weather was now fine; Cæsar had no intention of being again stormbound. He could now be sure of a quiet embarkation; but while he was making his preparations, Kentish envoys again appeared. He ordered them to send twice as many hostages as before, but this time to Gaul, as he was returning that night. The passage was effected without trouble; but once they saw their enemies clear of their coast, the men of Kent troubled no more about hostages. Two clans alone sent their quota. Probably the Britons argued that Cæsar’s departure was a confession of defeat, and as a number of modern writers have endeavoured to maintain the same, we cannot blame them. Victories have been claimed in modern times on no better grounds than that a reconnaissance has been driven in. In sober military terms the situation was simply this: Cæsar had made a reconnaissance in force in Britain. Owing to various accidents and mistakes, he had been obliged to make a longer stay than he had intended. He had obtained some knowledge of the kind of resistance that he was likely to experience, and his troops had held their own in such fighting as had taken place.

Cæsar, on returning to the Continent, went on as usual to the ‘Province’ and Cisalpina, but left his legions on the coast, with orders to build as many ships as possible specially designed for disembarkation work, and also fitted with oars. He quietly tells us that during the winter the troops built no less than six hundred, as well as twenty-eight war-galleys! The magnitude of the task and the speed with which it was accomplished are alike amazing, but the history of the Army of Gaul is full of such feats.

The place of concentration for the fleet was ‘Portus Itius,’ about thirty (Roman) miles from Britain. The latest and best authority on Cæsar appears to think that this must be the modern Wissant, four miles east of Cape Gris Nez. In all some 800 warships and transports were assembled there by the beginning of July, 54 B.C. The expeditionary force consisted of five legions, 2,000 cavalry, chiefly Gauls, and some thousands of light troops—perhaps 30,000 men in all. Cæsar took with him to Britain several Gallic chiefs as a measure of precaution. Labienus was left in charge of Portus Itius with three legions, some auxiliaries, and 2,000 cavalry.

Meanwhile, in Britain, Caswallon of the Catuvellauni was striving hard to form a defensive confederacy. But the Trinobantes hung back, and moribus majorum Caswallon tried to coerce them. He slew their king, but the only result was that the dead chief’s son, Mandubracius, fled to Cæsar for protection, thus furnishing him with a very pretty casus belli. Caswallon was left to face the Romans with the Trinobantes still hostile—almost at his door.

Cæsar landed near Sandwich, this time unmolested. The vast size of his fleet precluded all idea on the part of the Kentishmen of opposing the landing. Caswallon was collecting his levies, and was still far behind. Cæsar landed his force, fortified a strong camp, in which he stored his reserve supplies, and told off ten cohorts (i.e., probably two from each legion), and 300 cavalry as its garrison, under an officer named Quintus Atrius.

During the day information was brought in that the Kentish levies were entrenched in a defensive position about twelve (Roman) miles inland. Cæsar, anxious to strike a heavy blow at the local resistance, marched off to attack them before dawn next day. The British position was probably on the Stour, near Thanington, where there are traces of ancient entrenchments.

In any case, whether the men of Kent were at the Little Stour, as has been thought, or the Great Stour by Canterbury, their position was stormed without difficulty. From Cæsar’s description it appears that their chariotry and cavalry were thrown forward, and harassed the Roman columns as they moved towards the main position. They were, however, pushed back or aside, and the VIIth Legion, forming the dense shield-covered column of attack, which the Romans aptly termed the tortoise (testudo), carried the entrenchments with slight loss. The defenders fell back into the woods. There was no pursuit.

Next day, just as Cæsar was feeling his way forward with cavalry, a message of disaster came from Atrius. In the night there had been a heavy gale, and great damage had been inflicted on the fleet. Cæsar’s fighting eagerness, and consequent neglect to profit by last years lesson, nearly led to a grave disaster. As it was, he was obliged to move back to the coast and keep the whole army hard at work for ten days hauling the fleet up the beach beyond high-water mark, and protecting it with embankments. Forty vessels were so shattered as to be incapable of repair. Many of the rest were seriously damaged. Labienus was ordered to send across a detachment of artificers chosen from his legions to assist in repairing them. Cæsar’s trust in his good fortune had carried him too far.

The result was that Caswallon was able to reach the front with his Midland levies, and rally the Kentishmen. Cæsar, on his part, sent the exile Mandubracius to the Trinobantes to raise trouble in his adversary’s rear; and, having as far as possible put his ships in safety and seen repairs well under way, again took the road inland. His objective, as he clearly indicates, was the nearest point of passage on the Lower Thames. Once across the river, he would be in the territory of the Catuvellauni, and able to communicate with the Trinobantes.

He was to have no easy task. Caswallon was a foeman worthy of Cæsar’s steel. He seems to have fully realized that the British foot-levies were useless against the legions except at a great advantage. He declined to defend the line of the Stour, but as soon as it was across the stream, the Roman column found itself engaged in a running fight, in which the heavily armed and burdened legionaries were at a disadvantage. The next day Caswallon set upon the Romans as they were laying out their camp, drove in the outposts, killing the tribune in command, burst through the intervals of the supporting cohorts, and drew off with little loss, after causing great confusion. This half success, however, led to a severe defeat. Probably the king could not restrain his eager and undisciplined foot-levies. On the morrow Cæsar sent out all his cavalry and three legions under Trebonius to forage. The force was attacked by the British mounted arms, but the foot-levies got out of hand and charged the legions while they were still in close order. They were repulsed with much bloodshed, of course, and the Roman cavalry, closely supported by infantry, was able to cut them up badly before they could regain the woods.

Caswallon, unshaken, fell back on his guerrilla tactics. His chariotry and cavalry were intact. Cæsar says that they were about four thousand, a moderate estimate which shows it to be near the truth. With them he faced his great antagonist, while the southern levies took refuge in the Weald, and those of the Catuvellauni went back to entrench the fords of the Thames. From the neighbourhood of Canterbury to that of London the Romans advanced slowly, probably along the line of the later Watling Street, while Caswallon moved parallel to them in the woods, hung about the line of march, and harassed it incessantly. The Gallic horsemen never dared to move far from the infantry columns. Caswallon was ever watchful. But it was not guerrilla warfare, however skilful and gallant, that could stay the march of Cæsar’s legions. The advance was slow and difficult, but still it continued steadily until the Thames was reached. Caswallon retreated across it, and the Romans followed.

Where the British leader was stationed it is hard to say. The course of the Thames, meandering among marshes, must have varied much from what it is to-day, and, having no embankments, it was probably much shallower. Cæsar may have crossed near Brentford or Halliford; there are said to be the remains of a stockade in the bed of the river opposite the former place. At any rate, Cæsar gives the impression that the ford was well known. Its northern end was guarded by entrenchments, and the passage itself was obstructed by stakes. The position was a formidable one, yet it was carried with unexpected ease. The Roman cavalry led the way into the Thames, the infantry followed, with the water at their necks, passed the stakes—how we do not know—carried the stockade, and drove the Britons off towards the north.

CÆSAR’S TWO EXPEDITIONS TO BRITAIN IN 55 AND 54 B.C.

The probable line of advance on Verulam is indicated by the broken line.

Cæsar, having passed the Thames, halted for a time to receive hostages and supplies from the neighbouring Trinobantes. Caswallon fell back on his tribal stronghold (almost certainly Verulam), and sent orders to the four sub-kings of Kent to attack Cæsar’s base-camp, and so draw him back from the Thames. It was the last fine stroke of Caswallon’s admirable strategy, but fate was against him. Atrius marched boldly out to attack the men of Kent, defeated and scattered them with great loss, capturing a prominent chief named Lugotorix. Cæsar, having rested his men in the Trinobantian territory near London, advanced upon Verulam. He describes it as a great earthwork among woods and marshes. It was captured by a simultaneous attack on two fronts. The British loss was heavy, and included thousands of captives, besides vast quantities of supplies. Verulam had evidently been the place of refuge of a great part of the tribe.

Caswallon had done his best and had failed. Through Commius, who was with the Romans, he made overtures, and Cæsar was not unready to accept them. Reports were coming in from Labienus of alarming unrest among the Gauls, which was soon to blaze out into a great national uprising. It was clearly time to go. Cæsar was justified in supposing that he had done enough to convince the Britons that interference in Gallic affairs would, for the future, be dangerous. His terms of peace were, therefore, moderate enough. Caswallon was to keep the peace with Mandubracius, pay a yearly tribute to Rome, and, of course, give hostages for the observance of the conditions. They were accepted, and, with his hostages and captives, Cæsar returned to the coast. Two trips were necessary owing to the large number of prisoners to be transported. Apart from them (and being only fit for rough field and house work, they would hardly fetch a high price) there appears to have been little spoil of value, much to the disappointment of many greedy officers. Cicero quaintly voices this discontent in his letters. We hear, however, that Cæsar dedicated to Venus a cuirass ornamented with British pearls, so that possibly some were lucky.

All this probably weighed little with Cæsar beside the fact that he was not likely to have Britain on his rear during the Gallic disturbances. If Caswallon, a man, as far as we can see, of remarkable ability for war, had been able to intervene in the great struggle with Vercingetorix two years later, the consequences might have been very serious. As it was, we hear no more of British aid given to the Gauls, and Cæsar was content. Whether the tribute was paid we do not know; possibly it was so long as Cæsar was in Gaul. When the civil war broke out, it probably lapsed; but the general political results of the expedition appear from Cæsar’s point of view to have been satisfactory.

CHAPTER II
THE CLAUDIAN INVASION AND THE ROMAN CONQUEST

Of the history of Britain during the century succeeding the Cæsarian expeditions we have some fairly satisfactory glimpses. The terror of Cæsar was sufficient, on the one hand, to prevent the British chiefs from interfering in Gallic affairs. It also appears to have deterred Caswallon from again attacking the philo-Roman Trinobantes, for numismatic evidence shows that they were independent at a much later epoch. But it does seem certain that it helped forward British unity, since we find a tendency to form groups or ‘empires’ that certainly included more than one tribe. One of these was founded by Commius the Atrebatian. He had taken sides with his countrymen against Cæsar in the last great Gallic uprising, and, after some remarkable adventures, had escaped to his kinsmen in Britain. By then he appears to have been acknowledged as king; at any rate, coins have been found bearing his name in what is known to have been the territory of the Atrebates. He and his sons extended their rule over the Cantii, the Regni of Sussex, and over some at least of the small clans known as Belgæ.

Meanwhile, north of the Thames, the Catuvellauni was recovering from the effects of Cæsar’s invasion. It is at least possible that the discovery of rich gold-mines had something to do with their undoubtedly rapid rise in power. At any rate, Tasciovan, very probably the successor of Caswallon, coined most extensively in gold, silver, and bronze, and his widely-diffused coins show strong traces of Roman influence. His capital was certainly Verulam (St. Albans), since on most of his coins the Latinized name of the place figures. The Cantii and Trinobantes, however, still appear to have been the most civilized peoples of Britain. Tasciovan perhaps initiated a policy of aggression upon the Commian kingdom, and his son, Cunobelin, extended his sway over the entire south-east and south. The Iceni (Norfolk) and the Damnonii (Somerset, Devon, Cornwall) appear to have kept their independence, but may have paid tribute; and the Silures of South Wales were probably in Cunobelin’s sphere of influence. His capital seems to have been not his father’s Verulam, but the Trinobantian Camulodunum (Colchester).

The result of Cunobelin’s supremacy was that tribal wars ceased, and civilization and industry made great strides. Probably Cunobelin took care to pay polite attentions to Augustus and Tiberius—Strabo says as much—and though the former Emperor sheltered fugitive Commian and Trinobantian princes, there was no intervention in British affairs. Trade flourished. Strabo says that Britain exported gold, silver, and iron, as well as pelts, slaves, hounds, corn, and cattle. The last two items seem dubious, yet the sceptical Strabo is hardly likely to have noted them without good reason. Roman traders and travellers passed freely to and fro, and the southern regions became well known. It is at this period more than at any other that we must look for the rise of a commercial settlement at London. One of Cunobelin’s sons, Adminius, rebelled against him in A.D. 39, and fled to the Emperor Caligula. The latter’s military demonstration near Gessoriacum (Boulogne) has been noted (and probably misunderstood) by Suetonius. In A.D. 41 Caligula was assassinated, and succeeded by Claudius I., and in the same year Cunobelin died.

There is reason to believe that the flight of Adminius was only one of the family troubles that vexed the last years of the old ‘Rex Brittonum.’ His death was followed by intestine war; but after a short struggle, two sons, Togodubn and Caradoc (Caratacus), gained the ascendancy, and ruled jointly over their fathers realm. They doubtless had much to do in reconquering rebellious vassals, and, to add to their difficulties, one of their dispossessed brothers (or half-brothers) fled to Claudius. Togodubn and Caradoc thereupon very unwisely demanded his surrender. The result was the Roman Conquest.

Anderson.

CLAUDIUS I. (10 B.C.–A.D. 54).

The fifth of the Twelve Cæsars. He is best remembered as the Emperor who initiated the conquest of Britain. He was capable, learned, kindly, and well-meaning, but unfortunately weak and self-indulgent.

Claudius I. was perhaps tempted into the invasion by his dislike of the cruel rites of Druidism, which, now that Gaul was Roman, had its main stronghold in British Mona. But Roman capitalists had for years been acquiring interests in the island; when the occupation was an accomplished fact, they settled down to bleed it in true usurers’ fashion, with disastrous results. It is probable that the formation of something like a British Empire close to Gaul, where the old times were not forgotten, and where a great revolt did actually break out a generation later, seemed an alarming phenomenon. Doubtless also there were plenty of ambitious soldiers and politicians anxious to prove to the sensible and kindly, but weak, old Emperor that the honour of Rome could not brook the undiplomatically blunt requests of the British kings. Probably all these influences were brought to bear upon Claudius, and induced him to undertake a conquest which in the end contributed materially to the weakening of Roman power.

For the invasion Claudius concentrated four legions, with auxiliaries and cavalry, in Gaul. This meant 24,000 legionaries, supposing the cohorts to be at full strength, with, as is probable, as many auxiliaries. Taking the cavalry into consideration, and making a deduction of 20 per cent. for absentees, we can hardly reckon the force at less than 40,000 effectives; it may have been even stronger. The commander was Aulus Plautius, a veteran who had grown grey in war, and who, to judge from his record, was singularly fitted for his post. Claudius himself was on the way from Rome to join his army with the Prætorian Guard.

For all practical purposes the Roman army was still the army of Marius and Cæsar, but the proportion of auxiliaries and cavalry was much greater. Of the legions three came from the Army of the Rhine: II., ‘Augusta’; XIV., ‘Gemina Martia’; and XX., ‘Valeria Victrix.’ From the Army of Pannonia, or the Upper Danube, came Legio IX., ‘Hispana.’ The XIVth was to win the proud title of ‘Conqueror of Britain’ during its stay of twenty-five years. ‘Valeria Victrix’ remained for more than three centuries, and the IInd did not leave until 407.

The legions had now become so fixed in their frontier cantonments that to move them bodily to other regions was a delicate business. The new Army of Britain grumbled, and seemed about to mutiny. Its temper was not improved by the fact that the Imperial commissioner appointed to inquire into their grievances was the Emperor's treasurer, Narcissus, a Greek civilian! One can almost hear the Roman ‘Tommies’ asking, with much profanity, why their dignity should be thus insulted, and they expressed their contempt for the unmentionable civilian by a riotous demonstration. The old General, however, whom they respected, soon recalled them to their duty. The affair had important results, for the British kings were induced by the news to believe that the expedition would not sail, and so were unprepared when it suddenly appeared in Kent.

The landing-place this time was probably Rutupiæ (Richborough, near Sandwich), which for some centuries to come was to be the usual starting-point for the Continent. The men of Kent were too unprepared to attempt to oppose the landing, but they harassed the flanks of the army as it marched for the Thames along the old, old track that Cæsar had traversed a century before. This time the British guerrilla tactics had slight effect; there was ample cavalry to feel ahead, and ample light infantry to guard the flanks. We hear no more of the stunning and disordering surges of chariotry among the Roman battalions—indeed, there is some reason to believe that, with the introduction and breeding of larger horses fit for riding, it was already in a state of decline.

Meanwhile Togodubn and Caradoc had crossed the Thames, and were prepared to oppose the Roman advance at the Medway, probably near Rochester. The position was a strong one, with the broad river and expanses of mud flat and marsh in its front. Plautius, however, forced the passage by a wide turning movement up the river under his able legatus, T. Flavius Vespasianus, while a large body of Batavian and North Gallic auxiliaries, accustomed to amphibious operations, with the greatest daring swam the river on the right. The Britons were thus forced to abandon the river-bank, but they fell back on the high ground towards Cobham and Shorne and stood firm. Next day a great battle was fought. The Britons made a fine resistance, and nearly captured the legatus Hosidius Geta; but were at last defeated, and retreated to the Thames. One could wish that we had some better authority than Dion Cassius, who wrote more than a hundred and fifty years later, and is so confused and rhetorical that we read him with deep distrust. We long for even the unmilitary and epigrammatic Tacitus, but his books relating to the early years of Claudius are lost.

Dion says, in brief, that the Britons crossed the Thames near where it enters the sea. They did so easily ‘because they knew the firm ground ... and the easy passages, ... but the Romans following them came to grief at this spot.’ We can hardly imagine the Thames as fordable anywhere below London, and the probable meaning of the passage is that the Britons traversed the marshes by well-known tracks, and then crossed the river in boats or on rafts.

Now comes the most curious part; and, if Dion could be relied upon, we have an invaluable reference to the earliest London Bridge. The Celts, he says, again swam the river, and other troops forced a bridge a little way upstream. We can hardly imagine a bridge existing below London, and if it stood anywhere, it would certainly be at the one place clearly marked out by Nature for the passage across the river of the road from the south-east to Verulam. London was such a remarkable road centre in Roman times that we cannot easily believe that it was not so long before, and the construction of a pile bridge was certainly not beyond the resources of a powerful ruler like Cunobelin, who had, without any doubt, skilled foreigners at his disposal, besides abundance of unskilled labour. Moreover, it explains satisfactorily the importance of London, which Tacitus describes as a great trading centre only eighteen years later.

Whatever his authorities, Dion’s account of the operations, studied with the aid of the map, is logical and clear. The Britons are driven back from the Medway, and retreat to the estuary of the Thames across dangerous marshes—that is, we can hardly doubt that Vespasian’s turning movement cut their line of retreat on London, and they were forced to fall back northward by Higham into Cliffe Marshes. The Roman pursuit was checked by the difficulties of the ground, but Plautius was between the Britons and London. He therefore marched for the bridge. The Britons, hurrying from Tilbury Marshes, reached London too late to destroy the bridge or occupy it with more than a fraction of their forces, if indeed at all. The bold action of the Batavians, who accomplished a more difficult feat than the swimming of the Medway, coupled with the seizure of the bridge, forced the Britons to abandon the defence of the Thames.

Togodubn had been slain in the course of the campaign, but Caradoc was alive and undismayed. He retreated towards Camulodunum, not upon his ancestral capital of Verulam. Clearly, Camulodunum was of greater importance. Meanwhile Claudius had landed with the Imperial Guards and was coming up. Dion says that the fighting had been so fierce that the reinforcements which he brought were very necessary. This may be a flight of rhetoric, but it is evident that the resistance was stubborn. Having effected a junction with his general, Claudius advanced on Camulodunum. Caradoc stood to fight somewhere on the road—perhaps at the Blackwater—and was defeated finally and utterly. Camulodunum was taken, the empire broke up or submitted, and the king, with his family and a remnant of his army, fled away across Britain into the country of the Silures (South Wales). Claudius himself only waited to enter Camulodunum and to declare it the capital of the Roman Province of Britannia, and then returned to Gaul.

The heart of the Catuvellaunian dominion was now occupied with little difficulty. The Iceni and Regni sent in their submission; but Caradoc with the Silures was preparing for a last desperate stand for freedom, if not for empire; and the Belgæ and Durotriges made a gallant resistance to Vespasian, who marched against them with Legio II. Thirteen fierce engagements were necessary before the conquest was complete, and Vespasian on one occasion owed his life to his son Titus, the future destroyer of Jerusalem. But his work was very thoroughly done, and within six years Roman rule was firmly established as far as the Exe. The wild Damnonii beyond that river were left now and afterwards very much to themselves. No doubt they made submission, but the great western road never went beyond Isca Damnoniorum (Exeter). The tin trade of Cornwall seems to have languished during the Early and Middle Empire; but when in the third century the mines once more began to disgorge their treasures, the ingots were carried to the sea on the backs of pack-animals. Until the eighteenth century pack-trains with correspondingly narrow tracks were the rule in Devon and Cornwall. The famous bridge of Bideford was scarcely more than wide enough to admit of the passage of a loaded horse.

By A.D. 47, when Plautius went home to enjoy a well-merited triumph, the whole south and east of the island appeared to be passing with little apparent effort into the form of a Roman province. The frontier probably followed for the most part the lines of the Lower Severn, Avon, and Welland, but in the centre it bulged outwards around Ratæ (Leicester). Here it would have been well for Rome to have halted. The territory already occupied was fairly settled, capable of great development, and the frontier was easily defensible. But a forward policy invariably brings trouble in its train. In the North Midlands the Coritani and Cornavii were restless, and behind them the great Brigantian tribe, which held the whole breadth of the North from Humber to Tyne, was ever raiding. Still greater was the danger in Wales, where the Silures of the south and the Ordovices of the north were the fiercest warriors of Britain, where was the Druids’ sacred home of Mona, and where King Caradoc, the last warrior of Caswallon’s famous line, had taken refuge.

Publius Ostorius Scapula, the new governor, had perhaps no alternative to the ‘forward’ policy; at any rate, he committed himself to it. He conquered the weak Coritani and Cornavii with slight difficulty, stationed Legio IX. at Lindum (Lincoln) to keep guard over them, and established a colony of time-expired veterans as a garrison for Camulodunum. Then he turned upon Caradoc. Legio II. moved forward from Glevum (Gloucester) to Isca Silurum (Caerleon), while Scapula with the XIVth and XXth established himself with his base at Viroconium, the camp, afterwards the town, beside Wrekin, whose ruins have been laid bare in our own days. The men of Cambria were thrown on the defensive by the great force directed against them. Caradoc manœuvred among the mountains, harassed the Roman line of march, cut off detachments, but was at last brought to bay in A.D. 50. All that could be suggested to counterbalance the superiority of the Romans in everything but mere numbers he did. He posted his army behind a roaring mountain torrent, with both flanks protected by craggy heights, and his centre covered by ‘sangars’ of piled stones. The wild warriors of Wales swore by their gods to conquer or die. Caradoc rode up and down the line, bade them save themselves and those they loved from slavery and death, told them (with justifiable stretching of truth) how his ancestors had repulsed the mightiest of the Cæsars, and besought them to do their duty to the last. They did not fail him, but fortune was against them. The battle was furiously contested, but the entrenchments were stormed at last; and after bravely rallying in the face of the legions and renewing the fray, the Britons finally broke and fled. Caradoc’s wife and daughter were taken captive in the camp, and the king, fleeing for aid to the Brigantes, was surrendered to the Romans by the Queen Cartimandua. The story of how he and his family were dragged in chains through Rome to make a holiday for its cosmopolitan populace, and released by the kindly Emperor, is well known. One could wish that the old ruler, whose character has suffered so much at the hands of detractors, had spared a brave man and two helpless women the cruel humiliation of public exposure as well. But probably no Roman was capable of such generosity. Aurelian treated Zenobia as Claudius treated Caradoc, and from the bas-reliefs on the column of Arcadius we see that the Christian Romans of the fourth century were capable of dragging female captives, pinioned like criminals, in triumphal procession.

Undismayed by the fate of their King, the Silures fought on desperately. Again and again they gained considerable guerrilla successes. Foraging detachments were attacked; two cohorts destroyed; a strong brigade of legionaries surrounded, severely defeated, and only saved from destruction by the arrival of reinforcements. Scapula died of vexation and fatigue, and the Silures just afterwards attacked and defeated a whole legion. Scapula’s successor, Didius, was threatened by the Brigantes, who were growing angry at the ignominious part to which Cartimandua’s policy condemned them, and the Cambrians, despite constant warfare, remained unsubdued.

In A.D. 59 C. Suetonius Paulinus, one of the best soldiers of the Empire, took command in Britain, and at once initiated a vigorous offensive. He determined to turn the flank of Wales, as it were, and strike a staggering blow by uprooting the Druid stronghold in Mona. Didius appears to have fortified Deva (Chester), and now Paulinus enlarged it, moving the XIVth and XXth Legions there from Viroconium, and making it his base for the advance. In A.D. 60 he arrived on Menai Strait with flat-bottomed boats for the transport of his infantry. The Ordovician warriors were massed on the shore of Mona to oppose the landing; frantic women, clothed in black and bearing blazing torches, with wild eyes and tossing hair, like the Furies, as the superstitious soldiers muttered, rushed about exhorting the men and screaming curses at the hated Romans. Behind the Druids were engaged in their dreadful rites, and the shrieks of the perishing victims rang over the Strait. For a while there was something like incipient panic among the Romans, but the fierce adjurations of their officers steadied them, and when they had effected a landing, burning with rage at their hesitation, there was small hope for the Britons. The fighting men were cut down in thousands, women and children involved in the hideous massacre. The Druids were slaughtered at their rites, or tossed upon their own flaming pyres. The sanctuaries were destroyed, the sacred groves cut down, and Paulinus might hope that he had dealt a decisive blow, when jaded messengers dashed into camp with the stunning tidings that all Roman Britain was in a flame of revolt.

The rebellion had been long brewing, and for it the Roman civil and military administration, above all the Roman capitalists, were to blame. To create farms for retired veterans the military chiefs had recklessly evicted native landowners. The military settlers insulted and oppressed their British neighbours. The discipline of the legions, relaxed by years of guerrilla warfare, was probably bad, and it would seem that Paulinus, a soldier before all, was not the man to trouble himself about the rights of civilians, especially if they were also barbarians. The Imperial procurator (i.e., practically financial agent), Decianus Catus, was calling for the repayment of various loans advanced by Claudius to chiefs; presumably Nero needed money for his expensive pleasures. The British chiefs were careless and ostentatious, and, now that they could not enrich themselves by plunder in war, were apt to borrow heavily—of course, from Roman capitalists. Many of them were hopelessly embarrassed, unable to pay the iniquitous interest, much less the principal; and the greedy usurers were only too ready to drag them further into the toils. Nero’s famous minister, the Stoic Seneca, was one of the worst offenders. Usury was a chief source of his vast income. Now, as if to add fuel to the smouldering fire, he suddenly called in his British loans, 40,000,000 sesterces (£360,000). Cherchez la femme! say the French when trouble threatens. No doubt the saying is not without truth, but a study of history, and especially of Roman history, leads rather to the conclusion that the greed of the speculator has been responsible for a great deal of the world’s misery.

Just at this juncture died Prasutagus, King of the Iceni. He made the Emperor heir to his kingdom, and joint inheritor of his vast personal wealth, evidently in the hope that his widow Boudicca and her two daughters would thereby be assured of protection. Paulinus and Catus must share the blame for what followed. The country of the Iceni was treated like conquered territory. Military violence went hand in hand with civil spoliation. The widowed queen was actually whipped by the scoundrels who dishonoured the Roman name; her orphaned daughters were foully outraged. One can only hope that the vile deeds were committed by one or two especially degraded creatures; but neither their associates who looked on, nor those who sent them, can escape blame.

It was the last straw. The Iceni rose as one man at the call of their outraged Queen. Tall and stately of presence, with bright eyes and thick, flowing, red-gold hair, was the sorely wronged widow of Prasutagus, and as, splendid in the barbaric magnificence of a British queen, she harangued her liegemen, told of violence and lashes, and insults unmentionable, pointed to the shame-bowed forms of her violated children, the rage of the Iceni rose to fever heat. Out from the bounds of their country poured the wild barbaric host, and ill fared it with the Roman who strayed across its path. News of the rising came all too late. Quintus Petilius Cerealis at Lindum called in all that he could of the IXth Legion and marched southward, but the Iceni had a long start. On they rushed across Suffolk towards doomed Camulodunum, the Trinobantes rallying to them with fierce unanimity. ‘Colonia Victrix’ had no walls; only the temple of Divus Claudius and some neighbouring buildings formed a sort of citadel. Catus sent what soldiers he could—only two hundred—to help the colonists in the defence; but time was lacking wherein to raise entrenchments, and little had been done when the Britons were at hand, and swept through the city in a whirlwind of vengeance and destruction. Some of the defenders held out for two days in the temple, then it, too, was taken. There were hideous scenes. The outrage-maddened princesses were little likely to restrain their furious tribesmen. The innocent perished with the guilty, without distinction of age or sex; women were stripped, scourged, horribly mutilated, and left to die a lingering death of agony impaled on stakes. Such was the harvest of the seed sown by military oppression and capital-owning greed.

Now followed a great but obscure campaign. Tacitus is a little less vague than usual, but gives not a hint as to chronology. The main point is that London was already the most important place in the island. This is clearly indicated, but everything else is exceedingly difficult to follow. So far as can be ascertained, the sequence of events was this: Boudicca, having destroyed Camulodunum, faced round to meet Cerealis, who was approaching from Lindum. His force was attacked by the raging horde of Britons and practically annihilated. Some 3,000 legionaries and many auxiliaries perished; only the remains of the cavalry, with Cerealis, cut their way out and escaped.

Paulinus meanwhile was hastening to the scene of operations. He left, perforce, a strong garrison in Deva, and marched for London with the XIVth Legion, some picked cohorts of the XXth, some auxiliaries, and cavalry. He sent off orders to the IInd and IXth Legions to join him. A glance at the map of Roman Britain will show that London was the natural place of concentration.

We may assume that Cerealis’s action in marching from Lindum had, at any rate, drawn the Britons away from the vital point. Paulinus reached London before Boudicca. Then the blow fell. No troops were there. The IXth Legion, we know, had been destroyed. Pœnius Postumus, the temporary commander of the IInd, paralyzed by the responsibility, perhaps thought fit to transmit the order to his absent superior, and at any rate stood fast on the Lower Severn. London was not fortified—it must have been crowded with fugitives—and Paulinus’s entire strength, according to Tacitus, was but 10,000 men. There is really no reason to believe, as has been suggested, that he had outpaced his army and had only his escort with him. The position is quite clear. He had ordered a concentration at London, and it had failed. Instead of 20,000 men or more, he had only 10,000 wherewith to defend an open town crowded with refugees. He decided that London must be abandoned. Of its population, swollen, probably, by much of that of Verulam, those who had most to fear—i.e., the Continental residents—followed the march. Some, doubtless, escaped on shipboard, but many, probably those of British birth, remained.

Conjecture has been busy with the direction of Paulinus’s march. The old view was that he moved on Camulodunum; the more modern one, followed by most recent writers, is that he retreated on Deva to rally its garrison. Neither, however, commends itself to the authors. Let us study the position.

Paulinus at London had 10,000 combatants in hand but was burdened with a mass of non-combatants at least equal in number. At and about Deva were perhaps half a legion and auxiliaries—say, 5,000 men. At Lindum, practically blockaded, were the remains of the IXth. About Isca Silurum and on the Lower Severn was the IInd Legion with its auxiliaries. At Viroconium and other places in the west, and in some of the Kentish towns (i.e., Rutupiæ), there were certainly garrisons. The British host was somewhere north-east of London.

The question of supplies must be considered. It was probably near harvest-time, as the Welsh campaign and the subsequent operations would have consumed most of the summer. The richest districts of Britain were Essex, Kent, and the Lower Severn Valley; but Essex was in the hands of the Britons, and Paulinus could draw no supplies from it.

Wherever Paulinus went he had to feed his army and its hapless incubus of refugees. The London-Deva road traversed the thinly-peopled and thickly-wooded Midlands; the way to Colchester was barred by the Britons.

THE CAMPAIGN OF A.D. 60 AGAINST BOUDICCA. THE POSITION AT THE TIME OF PAULINUS’S ARRIVAL IN LONDON.

The chief roads (mainly British trackways) are shown with broken lines. Each infantry block roughly indicates 5,000 men. The whole country north of the Thames was hostile to the Romans, perhaps much of that to the south also. The Roman troops at Lindum (Lincoln) were only the defeated remnant of the IXth Legion. It should be noted that of the settled and corn-growing districts, one was occupied by the Britons, and there remained open for Paulinus’s army, and the crowd of refugees which accompanied it, the choice between Kent or the Lower Severn Valley. The IInd Legion at Isca Silurum (Caerleon) had orders to march on Londinium, and Paulinus would expect it to be well on its way. The heavy black line stretching south-west from London indicates the probable direction of the Roman retreat.

The object of Paulinus was to complete his frustrated combination. At Deva, two hundred miles away, were perhaps 5,000 men; at Lindum, a hundred and thirty miles to the north-east, perhaps an equal force, dispirited by defeat. If he took the road to Deva, or that to Lindum, he would have the Britons upon him. Is it conceivable that this able general, with supply difficulties aggravated by his mass of non-combatants, would deliberately plunge into the midst of the enemy, in order to join one of his two smaller detachments, when in the Lower Severn Valley lay a whole legion and its auxiliaries. If his orders were being obeyed, it should be already on the march; but if it had not yet concentrated, its nearest detachments were only a hundred miles away. A study of the map will show that, if London were abandoned, Corinium (Cirencester) would be the natural point of concentration for Paulinus’s army, the IInd Legion, and the garrisons of Deva and Viroconium. The troops round Lindum and the garrisons in Kent must, for the moment, be left to themselves. We are justified in thinking that Paulinus would move in the direction of his largest outlying corps—the IInd Legion. Considerations of supply would also take him westward. Food might be found in Kent, but not reinforcements. The conclusion is that, for every reason, the direction of the retreat would be westward. Paulinus no doubt crossed the Thames, presumably by the bridge at London, which would, of course, afterwards be destroyed, and retreated towards Calleva (Silchester).

It is probable that Verulam was taken and sacked by the Britons after Paulinus had passed through it. Tacitus only says that it fell at about the same time as London. The British host then moved on to London, which shared the fate of Camulodunum and Verulam. The massacre here was probably the worst, for it would, naturally, apart from its commercial importance, be full of fugitives.

From the ruins of London the Britons moved on after Paulinus, who was marching slowly, troubled, so Dion says, with want of supplies, and encumbered with the refugees from London. Another massacre would have taken place but for the fact that before the pursuers could get at the victims they must reckon with the ten thousand desperate veterans who formed the rearguard. But the danger grew greater. The Roman army was too small to adequately guard the unhappy throng of fugitives that impeded its march; the IInd Legion did not come, and Paulinus turned to bay. He chose a strong position in a defile, with woods behind and on both flanks. His legionaries were deployed across the entrance; the light troops apparently along the front and in the woods; the cavalry behind. This narrow valley may reasonably be looked for among the hills between the south-west of London and Silchester, and as the most open, and therefore safest, route would have probably been by Banstead, Epsom Downs, Headley, Ranmore, and Guildford, the scene of Boudicca’s defeat may be somewhere along that line. The retreating Romans would, in this case, have quite likely debouched into the gorge of the Mole by the valley that runs into it from Headley. Continuing their westward march, the way up to the top of the downs would be almost facing them as they crossed the shallow river where Burford Bridge now stands. It is conceivable that the idea of turning to bay at this point would occur to Paulinus as his force marched up the dry and rapidly narrowing valley, whose sides are sufficiently steep to concentrate the attack on one front.

The generalship of the British chiefs appears to have been contemptible. They staked everything on a wild frontal attack. Worse still, their movements were encumbered by hordes of followers and a vast train of waggons, which was parked confusedly in the rear. For the last time Boudicca drove along the line and bade her warriors strike a crushing blow. Paulinus, on his side, addressed his men in brief soldierly words, which Dion amplifies into an harangue covering pages.

The Britons, as they came on, were smitten by storms of missiles from the light troops, which made havoc in their dense masses, but the headlong charge, nevertheless, seems to have driven in the skirmishers and reached the legionaries. But they were received with volley on volley of pila; rush after rush recoiled from the steady line; and then, when the fury of their charge began to slacken, Paulinus ordered the advance. The legionaries pressed forward shoulder to shoulder, like a wall of iron; the auxiliaries charged manfully on the wings of their heavily-armed comrades. As the line left the defile the cavalry swept round the flanks and fell upon the Britons, and though bodies and individuals doubtless fought bravely to the end, panic seized the host as a whole, and it fled wildly to the rear. The fatal waggon park dammed back the flying horde, and the Romans closed upon it and slaughtered their fill. The massacres of the Britons were avenged by the butchery, it is said, of 80,000 men, women, and children. Like many of the semi-barbarous peoples of the past, and the Abyssinians of to-day, their armies were encumbered by a numerous following of women-folk. Boudicca poisoned herself in her despair.

With the victory of Paulinus the last united opposition to Rome ceased. The reconquest of the south gave much trouble, and Paulinus himself was soon recalled, rightly enough, for his harshness and lack of political wisdom were clearly not less than his warlike skill. Civilian governors set to work to heal, so far as possible, the wounds of Britain, and for eight years the new policy of conciliation and reorganization was steadily carried out. After 71 the conquest of the Brigantes in the North was taken seriously in hand by Petilius Cerealis, now governor of the province. The brave Silures of South Wales submitted in 78, and the northern tribes were by 80 sufficiently cowed to enable that brilliant but overrated figure, Gnæus Julius Agricola, the father-in-law of Tacitus, to make his famous invasions of Caledonia. But in 86 they again broke out into revolt, and for thirty years gave continual trouble. About 119 they set upon Legio IX., the ever luckless ‘Hispana’—where is unfortunately not known—and annihilated it; never more does it appear in the Imperial muster-rolls. The subjection of the North seemed as far distant as ever.

So in 120 the Emperor Hadrian himself arrived in Britain to study the problem, bringing with him, to replace the lost troops, Legio VI. (‘Victrix’), whose headquarters were to be at Eboracum (York) for nearly three hundred years. He decided to draw a connected line of defence across the island from Tynemouth to Solway, which might serve at once as a bulwark against the North, and a base of operations against the Brigantes. The idea had been Agricola’s, thus showing that some at least of his relative’s overstrained eulogy is not misplaced. The line of forts which he had established was now reinstated, new ones built, and all connected by a solid rampart of turf, fronted by a deep ditch. While this was being carried out, and Hadrian was busy in the south, the field army, assisted by detachments from the Army of the Rhine, set to work to tame the Brigantes, and for a time succeeded.

THE ROMAN WALL FROM THE MILE CASTLE BETWEEN AESICA AND BORCOVICUS.

Hadrian’s policy, as is known, was to withdraw behind definite and easily defensible frontiers, and concentrate the energies of the government upon internal development rather than aggression. The trouble in Britain was that a true frontier was hard to find. Hadrian’s chosen line corresponded roughly with the Brigantian border, but it cut athwart the British tribes. To move on to the Forth was merely to add a large tract of very wild and sparsely peopled territory to the province, with the restless Brigantes still unsubdued far in the rear. As the conditions then were, Hadrian’s policy was sound; but it may be said, in short, that the original error of occupying the island was not to be redeemed by anything short of its complete conquest, and for this task, enormously difficult and entirely unremunerative, the Roman Empire, on the verge of decline in population and resources, had not the means.

Hadrian’s Wall is now crowned, except at one point, by the reconstruction in stone by Severus I. ninety years later; hence it was often supposed that the first wall was a stone structure. This idea may now be regarded as thoroughly disproved; the later wall stands upon and hides the foundations of the former, but near Birdoswald Severus’s engineers diverged a little from Hadrian’s line, and the earlier emperor’s construction may still be seen. The turf wall, replaced by stone, ran for seventy-three miles from Gabrosentum (Bowness) to Segedunum (Wallsend). In front of it, where it did not crown precipitous cliffs, was a ditch about 36 feet broad, and perhaps 30 feet deep. At each milestone there was a redoubt (castellum), and at more or less regular intervals along the whole line were fifteen large forts. Roughly parallel to the wall ran a military road, and a little way south of it a wide but shallow ditch between mounds, commonly called the ‘Vallum,’ the reason for which is a puzzle. It is best here to adopt Professor Oman’s very reasonable theory that it was the civil boundary of the province.

The wall and its forts were constructed by detachments from the legions, but it was garrisoned by the auxiliary cohorts, while the heavy infantry lay in reserve at the old military centres. Twenty-one infantry cohorts and six alæ of cavalry made up the original garrison, and some of them kept their stations for centuries. Nearly three hundred years later there were at least eleven, and probably more, of these regiments still on the wall. Behind, the legions occupied their camps for generation after generation, as if nothing could disturb them. For two hundred and eighty-two years after Hadrian’s visit, Legio VI. lay at York. The XXth ‘Valeria Victrix’ made its home at Deva (Chester) for more than three centuries; while Secunda Augusta, which had landed with Plautius in 43, did not leave Britain until 407, after a sojourn of three hundred and sixty-four years!

CHAPTER III
THE ROMAN PROVINCE AND THE EARLIER TEUTONIC INVASIONS

After Hadrian, in what Florus jokingly termed the great Emperor’s ‘walking about Britain,’ had reorganized the island, and established the famous military frontier, Britain settled down to a more or less eventful existence as a Roman province. The unfortunate results of the enterprise, into which Claudius had perhaps been led partly against his will, soon began to be apparent, even if to all thinking men they were not plain as early as the reign of Hadrian. The military boundary chosen by Trajan’s successor corresponded roughly with the northern border of the Brigantes, but it was not the frontier of Britain, which extended from Clyde to Forth. Therefore, in 140-141, the governor, Lollius Urbicus, the lieutenant of Antoninus Pius, moved the frontier forward to this line, and covered it by another rampart, strengthened by ten forts, only a few miles apart. It was the old, old story—a forward policy can never halt.

The Roman terminus stood between Forth and Clyde for a few years only. The wild Caledonians—‘Picts,’ as perhaps the Roman troops were already calling them—saw their independence threatened now as formerly by Agricola. About 155 the irrepressible Brigantes again broke out into rebellion. They were only subdued after a fierce struggle, during which the garrison of the northernmost wall must have been largely recalled. The result was the gradual abandonment of the recently occupied territory. The Caledonians raided through the ill-occupied wall, inflicted at least one severe defeat on a Roman force, and, as excavations appear to show, stormed some of the forts. By about 190 the frontier was again at Hadrian’s Wall, with advanced stations at Habitancum (Risingham) and Bremenium (High Rochester), respectively twelve and twenty miles from Corstopitum (Corbridge), just south of the Wall, Castra Exploratorum (Netherby), and one or two other places. So, after every effort, the ‘British Enterprise’ ended in an unsatisfactory compromise. The Roman frontier was neither ethnic nor natural, and the wretched Britons between Roman and Pict were literally between hammer and anvil. In 196-197 the governor, Decimus Clodius Albinus, took almost the entire army to Gaul to contest the Empire with Severus I. He was defeated and slain at Lugdunum (Lyons), and the troops returned to Britain; but they must have suffered very heavily, besides being thoroughly discontented with the Emperor, who had slain their own commander. This weakness and disorganization gave the wild Caledonians too good an opportunity to be missed. They appear to have occupied the territory north of the Wall, and even to have crossed the fortified line itself.

So in 208 Severus himself arrived with powerful reinforcements. In 209 he advanced, and for two years pushed slowly and doggedly forward. His solution of the problem was the heroic one of subduing the whole island. The losses of the army in the two campaigns were relatively enormous—fifty thousand men, it is said. The stern old Emperor was generally ill; he suffered fearfully from gout, but he never faltered. On over the desolation of wild Caledonia, slowly, painfully, but with a grim determination more terrible than the fiercest onslaught, with Severus in his litter at its head, the devoted army wrought its way, and at last drew near to the ‘extreme end of the Isle of Britain.’[A] Severus had won his last victory, for the barbarians were cowed by the steady advance. They sued for peace, and the grim old conqueror returned to Eboracum to die. His worthless son Caracalla retroceded the conquered territory to the Picts, receiving in exchange a more or less nominal homage; but there is every reason to believe that the barbarians were daunted, and gave little trouble for many years. Severus left behind him, as a perpetual monument to his greatness, the gigantic reconstruction in stone of Hadrian’s Wall, whereof the remains survive to this day.

[A] Herodian.

After his departure, Britain entered upon a period of prosperity hitherto unknown. It was saved by its insular position from taking more than a passive part in the wild chaos of civil and foreign war that overwhelmed the Roman Empire in the third century, and is described by a contemporary writer as being in a very flourishing condition. The Picts were held completely in check by the fortified lines of the Wall. Perhaps, also, they were involved in warfare among themselves. At any rate, not until the end of the century did Britain again know the fear of foreign invasion. This time it was not from the North, but from oversea. The little cloud, no bigger than a man’s hand, had arisen in Germany, which was to grow until it overshadowed all the heavens, and ended by forming a new nation on what had been Celtic soil.

For long generations Germania had been seething with disorder, for reasons which cannot here be considered. Tribe was pressing on tribe; the whole mass of wild barbarism was being forced against the Rhine and the Danube, behind which lay the Roman Empire, sorely weakened by invasions, plague, famine, economic decay, and misgovernment. The North-German tribes—Franks, Saxons, Angles, Jutes, Frisians—finding raids over the Rhine difficult, dangerous, and more and more unremunerative, began to take to the sea. Their craft as yet—perhaps to the end—were small open vessels, incapable of rough sea-work, and obliged to hug the shore as far as possible. The raiding flotillas ran down what are now the coasts of Denmark, North-West Germany, and Holland, and turned to right or left on Britain or Gaul, according to information or inclination. Others, more daring, or encouraged by spells of fine weather, ran across from Frisia to the coasts of Essex, Suffolk, and Norfolk, and landed for hasty raids on those rich agricultural districts. These appear at first to have been met merely by detachments of troops; the Roman naval force in the Channel was small. But when the famous organizer and statesman, Diocletian, took up the task of saving the Empire in 284, he abandoned timid defensive strategy. His colleague, Maximianus, to whom he entrusted the West, organized a great fleet in the Channel, and placed in command a distinguished naval officer, Marcus Aurelius Carausius, with the title of ‘Count of the Saxon Shore.’ He cleared the sea of the pirates, but, presently accused of misappropriation of booty, set up in Britain as independent ruler. He even endeavoured to conquer Gaul, but only succeeded in permanently holding Gessoriacum (Boulogne). His naval power, however, rendered his position invulnerable, and Diocletian and Maximianus stooped to acknowledge him as their colleague. He was assassinated in 293, but his murderer and successor, Allectus, held the province for three years longer. He was not the equal of Carausius, and allowed Constantius Chlorus, Cæsar of the West, to build ships unmolested in Gaul until he was able to cross the Channel and overthrow Allectus (296).

Constantius and his more famous son, Constantine the Great, resided for long periods in Britain, and, partly to this circumstance, partly to the renewed peace brought about by the protection of the fleet of the Saxon Shore, the province enjoyed another lease of prosperity. Indeed, there is some reason to believe that the period 296-350 was the most prosperous that Roman Britain ever knew. Building was going on vigorously. When Constantius II. rebuilt Augustodunum in Gaul he levied artisans for the work in Britain, a circumstance which points to a condition of great prosperity. The western mines were being actively worked; Damnonia (Devon and Cornwall) was evidently being drawn much more closely into the Roman sphere of civilization. Something of the same kind seems to have been taking place north of the Wall, though here the Imperial influence was of a much fainter character.

Something must be said of the towns. They were not numerous or specially important. It must be remembered that Britain as a province was comparatively poor and unsettled as compared with Spain or Asia Minor. Its relative prosperity at this period was thrown into relief by the fact that Gaul had long been suffering from barbarian invasions; it is not improbable that there had been immigration from the Continent. To return to the towns: Camulodunum seems never to have recovered from its destruction by Boudicca. When it was rebuilt, its walls enclosed an area less than that of several other places. Glevum, and probably Lindum, were colonia; Verulam had been a municipium since the commencement of the Roman epoch. Eboracum was undoubtedly the principal place north of the Trent; Corinium, Viroconium, Calleva, Isca Silurum, and other places, had considerable local importance. Aquæ Sulis was much frequented as a health resort; but the most important city of the province from the time of Carausius onwards was undoubtedly London, which about 340 received the title of Augusta, with, in all probability, exceptional privileges. Its name was far too ancient to be ousted by a mere honorary appellation, but Londinium Augusta was certainly the largest and most important, if not the finest, of Romano-British towns. Its walls enclosed an area of some 380 acres. The average of population per acre in modern London is about sixty, but in Berlin it is one hundred. Sanitation was ill-understood in those days, and in a commercial centre like London the crowding was probably often dense. The normal population may have been about 50,000. The area of Verulam was about 203 acres; its population, perhaps, 20,000. Such importance as it still retained may have been largely due to the fact that it was a pleasant place of resort from busy and overcrowded London. Viroconium, with an area of 170 acres, and Calleva with 102, can hardly be credited with more than 10,000 and 5,000 inhabitants respectively. Population does not flock into places of no special commercial importance. Glevum, Lindum, Eboracum, and Corinium were all, perhaps, as large as Verulamium. Many of the ports on the south coast must have attained considerable size. But Britain, unlike Gaul, was not a province of great cities. Apart from resorts of merchants, such as London, the real centres of social life seem to have been the numerous villas.

Nor, apart from prosperity at certain periods, can Britain ever have been a paying province. The number of troops permanently maintained there must have approached 40,000; while Severus was in the island there were probably 100,000; in 400 the Notitia shows over 50,000. Besides the expense of the army, there was that of the vast and ever-increasing bureaucracy, and of the maintenance of roads and military works.

When the chief towns were walled we do not know. There is some reason to think that the fortification of London was begun by Severus I., but it is probable that most of the wall dates from a later period. The opinion of the authors, based upon careful examination of the quality of the work, is that it was constructed in great haste. The wall of Verulam is especially strong and massive, but whether it is so early as it is claimed to be is somewhat doubtful. Inscriptions are plentiful on the Wall of Severus, but not on those of the towns; and since the practice of commemorative inscriptions tended to die out in the fourth century, we are, perhaps, justified in supposing that the fortification of the towns was undertaken comparatively late. Everything is doubtful at present. We only know that the ‘departure of the Eagles’ left most of the British towns walled. Since at Silchester the wall crosses the ends of streets diagonally, the inference is that it was built at a late date to enclose only the closely inhabited area.

About 343 the Picts, hitherto more or less quiescent, again took to the war-path. Apparently the defences of the North had been somewhat neglected; the Wall of Severus was pierced, Corstopitum burned. The Emperor Constans came in haste from Gaul in the winter to face the danger, drove back the raiders, and appears to have received some sort of homage from them, for Julius Firmicus speaks of the Emperor as having ‘extended the Empire.’ His coercion was at any rate severe enough to impose peace for seventeen years. But in 360 troubles again broke out. The Picts renewed their raids, and for the first time we hear of a new enemy to Britain—the Scots. They were destined to give their name to the northern part of Britain in the far future, but for the present they were probably neither more nor less than adventurers from Ireland. The name may signify a ‘broken’ or landless man, though the Scots as a whole appear to have had their home in north-east Ireland. Perhaps they were a confederation of broken clans and war-bands. They crossed to Caledonia, and established a settlement in the modern Argyll. At the same time some of the Picts had effected a small settlement in Ireland and in Galloway. The two peoples were thus in close communication, and a united attack from them was what might have been expected.

About 360, then, Picts and Scots began to direct raids upon the north and west of Roman Britain. After a while they were joined by the Attacotti, who seem to have been a confederation of the Britons beyond the Roman Wall—i.e., between Tyne and Forth. For a time these raids produced only slight effect, and in 360 Britain was exporting quantities of grain to Gaul for the relief of suffering provincials there. But by 364 the invaders were growing more daring. There is reason to think that other Irish tribes were assisting them, and now the ‘Saxons’—that is Angles, Frisians, Jutes, as well as Saxons—appear once more on the scene. Ammianus Marcellinus says that they were ‘in conspiracy’—that is, were acting in unison—and this is very probable. In 367 they made a combined attack and broke up the defence by two almost simultaneous victories. The Roman Army of the North was defeated; its commander, Fullofaudes, was slain, and the force broken up and dispersed; while Nectarides, Count of the Saxon Shore, was defeated and slain by the Saxons. The results were very serious. Probably here and there detachments of troops held out behind the walls of the larger towns and fortresses; but the invaders seem to have overrun a great part of the country north of the Thames. Ammianus says that they dispersed over the country in small marauding bands.

The Emperor Valentinian I. sent to cope with this most dangerous irruption a gallant Spanish officer, Theodosius, entrusting to him large reinforcements of Teutonic mercenaries and two regiments of the Imperial Guard. Theodosius’s first care was to clear the Midlands, a task involving much rapid marching and hard fighting, but successfully carried out. He wisely did not threaten disbanded troops with military punishment, and thus was able to rally the Army of Britain on the corps which accompanied him, and to completely reorganize it. In 369 he cleared the north, and, so Claudian tells us, pursued the enemy oversea to their refuges—presumably the Irish coast and the Hebrides. Whatever exaggeration may be behind the poet’s eulogy, there is no doubt that Theodosius gained great and, for the time, decisive successes. Although the theory of a new ‘province of Valentia’ between the Walls of Hadrian and Antoninus is due to a misunderstanding of the words of Ammianus, there is some reason to think that Theodosius did in a sense advance the border. He abolished the ‘Arcani,’ a sort of frontier intelligence corps composed of border Britons, and this may imply supersession of them by advanced detachments of regulars. Secondly, we find Attacotti soon after serving in considerable numbers in the Roman army, a circumstance which seems to imply complete defeat, if not political subjection. Thirdly, while Ammianus says that Theodosius restored all the frontier forts, excavation appears to indicate that the line of the Wall with its mile-castles was not repaired. The evidence is not quite conclusive, for the remains of the last occupation lying nearest to the surface would be the first to perish. The frontier was guarded in force till forty years later. This has been contested by Mommsen, who suggested that the roll of the Army of Britain in the Notitia Dignitatum was copied from an earlier list in order to hide the chasm caused by the destruction of corps in the Picto-Scottish wars. Professor Oman has satisfactorily rebutted this theory. He points out that, though there is a remarkable survival of old regiments, yet intermingled with them are many with unquestionable fourth-century titles such as ‘The Thundering Moors,’ ‘The Senior Lions,’ and ‘The Bears of Valentinian.’ Claudian distinctly states that to meet Alaric, Stilicho withdrew troops from the North of Britain. Coins of Maximus (383-388) have been found on the Wall, proving an occupation until almost the end of the fourth century; and lacking, as there is, information of any great disaster, it cannot be asserted that the Roman hold on Britain was not effective until the last. The case of the Attacotti is suggestive, and there is evidence (some of it certainly late) that the British tribes between the walls were practically adjuncts of the province and co-operating in its defence.

The arrangements of Theodosius sufficed to ensure the safety of the province for some fourteen years. That much damage had been inflicted is certain, and perhaps Britain never entirely recovered from the effects of the invasions of 364-368. It has been suggested that Deva, Viroconium, and other towns in the west, had been destroyed by the Scots; but this seems very doubtful. A fact to be noted is that there was already a considerable Teutonic element in the island in the shape of many numeri formed out of prisoners taken in the chronic wars on the Rhine. In 371 the Emperor Valentinian sent over to Britain a whole Alemannic sub-tribe.

In 383 the Army of Britain revolted against Gratianus, the successor of Valentinian I., and proclaimed as Emperor an able Spanish general, Magnus Clemens Maximus, who held high command in the island, but had been passed over by Gratian’s ministers for promotion. The Picts and Scots seized the opportunity to renew their raids, but were repelled by Maximus, who then, however, crossed to Gaul to expel Gratian. The troops joined him, Gratian was murdered by one of his officers, and Maximus became supreme over Gaul and Spain. Gratian’s brother, Valentinian II., retained Italy for a while, but in 387 Maximus expelled him. He hoped, perhaps, to repeat the deeds of Constantine I., who had conquered the whole empire from the West, but fate decreed otherwise. In 388 Theodosius I., Emperor of the East, son of Count Theodosius, came up against him, and he was defeated at Aquileia, captured, and executed.

Gildas says that, to defend himself against Theodosius, Maximus stripped Britain of her warriors, and so paved the way for the ruin that was to come. This, however, is very doubtful, and Gildas cannot be relied upon except for his own times. But Claudian may be believed when he says that Britain suffered from Pictish and Scottish raids, though he no doubt paints his picture in the darkest colours. The ‘Historia Brittonum’ says that about 385-390 the Scots were in possession of North Wales, but that they were driven out by an army led by Cunedda and his eight sons from the land of the Otadini—i.e., the Lothians (Manau Gododin). If this statement—and it is very precise—may be taken as historical fact, it can only mean that the Otadini now formed part of the province, and that an auxiliary force led by one of their chiefs was employed to clear North Wales of the Scots. Cunedda was clearly a Romanized Briton; his father Æternus and his grandfather Paternus bear just the quaint names that were common among Romans in the fourth century. It is possible that Cunedda’s campaign was initiated by Maximus. ‘Maxim Gwledig’ (= Maximus Imperator) bulks largely in British legend, and it is permissible to suppose that there was some solid reason for the respect paid to his memory. The theory that Wales, and possibly Damnonia, were defended by their own local levies accounts satisfactorily for the fact that in the Notitia we find no regular troops stationed in those regions. It also explains the early formation of monarchical states among them, which is a feature of the next century. Finally, if a large part of the warriors of the Otadini went to Wales, we might expect to find the defence of the north weakened, and, if Claudian may be trusted, this is what did happen.

When Theodosius the Great died in 395 the Roman Empire was already sorely pressed, but for more than ten years ruin was staved off by the great Vandal Stilicho, guardian of the weak young Emperor Honorius, and Commander-in-Chief in the West. Amongst other things, he reorganized the defences of Britain. The General in the North was called the ‘Duke of the Britains’ (Dux Britanniarum). From Brancaster, in Norfolk, to Southampton Water extended the district of the Count of the Saxon Shore (Comes Littoris Saxonici). Both were under the supreme command of the Count of the Britains (Comes Britanniarum), who controlled a reserve force which could be used at need to strengthen either north or east. The VIth Legion was still at York; the IInd was now at Rutupiæ; and there were besides thirty-seven auxiliary regiments of infantry and sixteen of cavalry—nearly 60,000 men in all. There were also two naval squadrons—one stationed on the ‘Saxon Shore,’ the other off the Lancashire coast.

One most important fact must be kept steadily in mind: the Army of Britain, though it contained some foreign corps and a large number of soldiers of foreign extraction, was in the main British in composition and feeling. For centuries the troops of each Roman province had been very largely recruited locally, either by conscripts or the children of the soldiers themselves, often trained to camp-life and war from their youth up. A so-called Moorish cohort would perhaps not contain a single Moor, and so on throughout the army. A regiment stationed in Britain kept its name, but was made up with British recruits.

In 402 King Alaric and the Visigoths set out to invade Italy, and Stilicho was forced to weaken the Army of Britain for the defence of Ravenna and Rome. Among the troops withdrawn was the VIth Legion—its long residence at York at last at an end—and none of them ever came back; for though Stilicho hurled invasion after invasion out of Italy, on January 1, 406, a horde of Teutons poured over the frozen Rhine and began to waste Gaul. Like an army whose line has been pierced, the provinces found the Germans interposed between them, and Britain was cut off from Italy.

Thereupon the Army of Britain appears to have decided that Honorius and Stilicho were useless as defenders of the Empire, and resolved to save it themselves—by mutinying! They selected a certain Marcus as emperor, and almost immediately murdered him. A second, named Gratianus, had the same fate; but the third, Constantine, was made of sterner stuff, and wore the purple for over three years—perhaps because he was wise enough to leave Britain. He decided to imitate the example of ‘Maxim Gwledig,’ and crossed to Gaul in 407. This is the event so often, and wrongly, called the ‘departure of the legions.’

Constantine had been chosen Emperor in order to carry out the task with which Stilicho had failed to successfully grapple. Is it to be supposed that he would have dared to leave Britain defenceless, even had he so desired? The idea is absurd. He no doubt took to Gaul a considerable force, which must have been mainly British, and his chief general, Gerontius (Geraint), was a Briton. But to suppose that, as Gildas wails, the province was left defenceless, and that the inhabitants were so effeminate and cowardly as to be incapable of bearing arms, cannot be allowed. It is certain that the Britons were among the best fighting peoples of the Empire, and when Constantine crossed to Gaul in 407 he undoubtedly left his base properly garrisoned. It is not even certain that the IInd Legion left Britain.

Constantine laid hands on a great part of Gaul and Spain—so far as they were not held by barbarians—and marched down to the Rhone to oust Honorius, who had just murdered his guardian and principal stay, the great Stilicho. Gerontius, however, revolted from him, and in 411 he was besieged in Arelate (Arles), captured, and executed. Meanwhile, what of Britain? In 409 came the first mutterings of the coming storm. The Saxons and their allies made raids both on Britain and Gaul. Thereupon the provincials disowned Constantine, who was clearly no more of a success than Stilicho, expelled his officials, elected others of their own choosing, raised new levies of troops, and repulsed the raiders. This is vouched for by the chronicler Zosimus. The ministers of Honorius, beset by many troubles, had already sent word to the British communities that they must defend themselves, and the provincials probably regarded their action as one of adherence to the legitimate Emperor as against usurpers of the type of Constantine. Certainly there was no conscious withdrawal from the Empire.

The course of events can only be dimly conjectured. In the east the Romanized cities probably took the lead. In the west and north matters went differently. These regions were less civilized, and the political unit was the tribe and not the city. In North Wales Cunedda was practically king, and small monarchial states soon sprang up elsewhere. In the north, about 450, St. Patrick tells us of a military state (Strathclyde), ruled by a chief whom he calls Coroticus, who possessed both a paid army and a fleet, and had not only beaten off the Scots, but had made retaliating raids on Ireland. Both Cunedda and Coroticus are called Gwledig (overlord) in the Welsh genealogies, and Cunedda at least appears to have held the post of Dux Britanniarum (General of the Northern Frontier). Apparently after his death a new state named Reged arose on the Wall; it was founded by Coel—the ‘Old King Cole’ of an irreverent nursery rhyme. Speaking roughly, we may say that in South Wales and Damnonia tribal kingdoms, in North Wales and the north-west military states, were the rule; while the cities apparently kept up Roman traditions, and by means of their walls maintained independence.

It will be seen that in many ways the outlook was bad for Britain. The interests of the military chiefs of the tribal dynasts and of the Romanized cities were certain to diverge, and hostilities between them were almost inevitable. Probably even the cities did not always find co-operation easy. It is possible that there were already numbers of Teutons in the country; there may have been Teutonic settlements on the coast of Lothian as early as 400. The fleet of the Saxon Shore had apparently disappeared, presumably during the troubled period 407-411. Finally, the country lacked the unifying bond of a common religion. It is practically certain that though the Christian Church in Britain was a vigorous organization, its adherents were in a minority. The church at Calleva is so small as to make it certain that the Christian population was only some hundreds in number, the total of inhabitants being, perhaps, 5,000. The fragments of a local god were found by the explorers around its pedestal—i.e., the statue was standing there when disaster overtook the place. When St. Germanus visited Britain in 429 he baptized thousands of converts. Probably in Britain, as elsewhere in the failing Empire, the adhesion of the upper classes to Christianity was nominal or non-existent, as it was to be for some generations; and the majority among the masses was frankly pagan.

Thus divided, distracted, with a defensive system disorganized by repeated withdrawals or shifting of troops, and with little prospect of co-operation between its cities and tribal cantons, Britain had to face attacks from three sides. On the north were the restless Picts, on the west the Scots, on the east the Teutons.

To construct anything like a connected narrative out of the few authorities who shed light on this period is almost, if not quite, impossible. The whole epoch has been called the ‘lost period,’ but it would not be by any means unfair to describe it as neglected. The authorities are scanty, obscure, and hopelessly confused; but it is possible, by careful study, to construct a not improbable skeleton of facts.

From 409 to 429 we have no clear indication of the course of events in Britain. It seems, however, to have been somewhat as follows:

Internally the process of reorganization with city states, tribal principalities, and military monarchies went on, probably with much jarring and intestine strife, of which there are indications in Gildas, and the queer mosaic of fairy tales, legends, genealogies, and scraps of lost chronicles called the ‘Historia Brittonum.’ The most remarkable fact is that the Picts and Teutons were in communication, and acted at times in conjunction. Various statements in the Life of St. Germanus, and in the ‘Historia Brittonum’ lead one to infer that the earliest settlements of the English in Britain were neither in the south nor the east, but on the Firth of Forth. According to the Northumbrian genealogies in the ‘Historia Brittonum,’ Soemil, the predecessor of Aella of Deira, in the fifth generation, was the first to separate Deira from Bernicia. This must mean that he founded a Teutonic principality in the north-east. Bernicia is, apparently, a corruption of Brigantia (Bryneich, or Berneich, in the ‘Historia’).

If, as early as 420 (Soemil can hardly be placed much later), the Angles were able to effect permanent settlements in north-east Britain, they were probably raiding there years before. That their raids, more or less in conjunction with the Picts, penetrated a considerable distance south is also probable, though the establishment of the kingdoms of Strathclyde and Reged in this quarter tended to check them. It was probably during the intestine struggles, which resulted in the founding of these states, that the English effected their lodgments. The men of Strathclyde and Reged soon began a series of fierce attacks upon them, and for a century and a half they were confined to narrow, and perhaps disconnected, slips of coast; but once established, they were never really dislodged. The Britons, who had the Picts and Scots also on their hands, and were further distracted by dynastic broils, never made the united attack which might have driven the English, to use Napoleon’s famous phrase, ‘into the sea.’

In the west the Britons were probably more occupied with the Scots and Irish than with Picts, though it is highly probable that German pirate squadrons occasionally harassed the south-west. In Lancashire and western Yorkshire was the kingdom of Theyrnllwg, and to the east another called Elmet, whose capital was Loidis (Leeds). Both these states may have represented sub-tribes of the Brigantes. In the western Midlands was the kingdom of Powys, and in the south-west Damnonia. In Wales there were at least three states, probably corresponding to the old tribal cantons of the Ordovices, Silures, and Demetæ. Gwynedd, under the dynasty of Cunedda, appears to have been generally regarded as the chief state, and the suzerainty of its kings was sometimes effective. There are indications that Cunedda, at least, ruled both Gwynedd and Theyrnllwg, but, as usual in Celtic dynasties, his successors divided his heritage.

On the whole, it seems, as is natural, that while the British states were in course of formation, the Picts and Scots were able to raid the province with comparative success for some years. About 425 Dathi, Ard-righ (suzerain king) of Ireland, is said, in the Irish annals, to have been slain oversea; and this may have occurred on a raid against the Britons. In 429 Germanus, Bishop of Auxerre, who had formerly been ‘Dux’ of Aremorica, and Lupus, Bishop of Troyes, came to Britain to combat the Pelagian heresy which had sprung up in the island. It is curious that a Church which had so far failed to Christianize the province could produce a heresiarch like Pelagius; but the phenomenon is not by any means unparalleled.

Germanus was one of those fine men about whom all that was best of society rallied in those terrible days. One biography of him, written by a Gallic priest, survives; another, probably composed in Britain, is lost, but was known to one of the compilers of the ‘Historia Brittonum.’

Germanus and Lupus met their Pelagian opponents in synod at Verulam. We are told that they worshipped at the tomb of St. Alban; and as this lay outside the walls, it may be considered as certain that the south-east had not been visited by raiders. The sanctity of the spot explains the choice of it as the meeting-place. We might rather have expected London, but it is noteworthy that St. Paul’s is said to have been built on the site, not of a former church, but of a temple of Apollo; and it is possible that London, a great resort of merchants, was rather a stronghold of eclecticism, if not paganism, than of Christianity.

The Gallic bishops had other and more mundane work to do before they departed. Some part of the island, probably the north-east, was being wasted by a joint invasion of Picts and ‘Saxons.’ There must have been men in the British levies opposing them who had heard of Germanus as a soldier—officers and men of the old Imperial cohorts—and a message was sent begging the Gallic bishops to join the camp. The point upon which the biographer dwells is naturally the conversion and baptism on the eve of battle of thousands of the pagan peasant soldiers, but we may suspect that the old warrior Germanus was busily engaged as well in drilling and organizing his motley troops. His generalship appears to have been very good; he drew the enemy into a battle on his own chosen ground. The British army was stationed in a valley, the centre in battle array at its head, the wings carefully concealed, thrown forward along both sides. To inspirit the new levies, Germanus gave as the word for the day ‘Alleluia.’

The ‘Saxons’ and Picts, presumably in the dense column formation common to barbarians, pushed boldly up the valley against the British centre, but when they came to close quarters Germanus let loose the ambushed wings. With wild shouts of ‘Alleluia! Alleluia!’ the Britons poured down to the attack, and a complete rout ensued, the barbarians breaking up and throwing away their arms in panic-stricken flight. A river lay athwart their line of retreat, and the passage of this proved as fatal as the battle. The result appears to have been to secure the north for a time at least. When next we get a glimpse of these regions we find a strong British state taking the offensive against the Picts, and gaining territory from them; this may very well have been due to the victory of Germanus. The battlefield cannot be identified, but it is as well to warn visitors to Maes Garmon, near Mold, that this site is an extremely unlikely one. Picts are not likely to have raided in this direction, and the English did not appear there for at least a century and a half.

It is to be inferred from the ‘Vita S. Germani’ that in the south-east at least Britain was still under Roman civil government. We hear nothing of kings or even chiefs. Roman official titles are mentioned, and we are told that the magnates were richly attired. It is impossible to make anything of the strange statement in the ‘Anglo-Saxon Chronicle’ that in 418 the Romans in Britain burned their treasures and fled to Gaul. The Chronicle is far too late to be of any authority for this period. Its chronology cannot in any case be depended upon; but it is just possible that there really was during this period a migration of some sort, perhaps of non-British officials and their families. It must not be forgotten that Britain not only extended northward to the Forth, but also, perhaps, already had a colony in Gaul—the modern Brittany. The ‘Historia Brittonum’ makes the quite credible statement (though some of the details look rather absurd) that this settlement was initiated by Magnus Maximus, but, at any rate, we know from Sidonius Apollinaris that in 469 it was a very large one. Possibly, the statement above may refer to some incident connected with Brittany.

Finally, it is very necessary even to-day to warn readers against the foolish idea that ‘Romans’ and Britons were at this date distinct peoples. A Roman meant during the Imperial period anyone under the Roman Government possessing civil rights—that is, almost all the free population. A Roman might be by birth a Briton, a Gaul, an Italian, a Greek, an Illyrian, a Jew; and a Briton or a Greek was neither more nor less a Roman than an Italian. The average Roman legion rarely contained Italians, much less inhabitants of the city of Rome; but, nevertheless, the soldiers were Roman. So with the civil administration: a Roman Ministry might contain members of every race under the Roman rule. Once, again, we must repeat that men were Roman by virtue of their political status, and not by reason of their national origin. The Britons were Romans—Romano-Hellenic, that is, in manner and customs, Latin in speech. The Roman government never definitely abandoned Britain. In the troubles of the fifth century the province was left, like many other regions, under local autonomy until such time as the central government could again exercise control, and for various reasons this never occurred. The country almost insensibly drifted apart from the labouring Roman world, but a hundred years later its people still called themselves ‘Cives,’ and were proud that they were Romans.

After the events of 429, it appears that the course of history somewhat changed. The ‘Alleluia’ victory apparently checked serious foreign invasions, but there is no reason to doubt that, as the ‘Historia’ says, Britain was in alarm. The Roman world was in wild disorder, which must have affected Britain; but when, in 447, Germanus once more came to combat Pelagianism, we do not hear of foreign war. Yet a Gallic chronicle says that Britain was conquered by the Saxons in 441, and Gildas states that in 446 some British provincials sent a miserable letter, called ‘The groans of the Britons,’ to the great general Aëtius, who then upheld the Roman name in Gaul. The latter statement we can neither accept nor deny. Possibly it is only one of Gildas’s rhetorical flights; possibly, if the incident occurred, it referred only to a single community. The Gallic chronicler may have been misinformed, or his chronology may be wrong. In any case, his statement must be rejected. Perhaps there was a raid in 441, the consequences of which were exaggerated by those who were responsible for the report made of it in Gaul. It seems impossible that, if the English conquest had already begun in 447, we should hear nothing of it in connection with the second visit of Germanus.

The only conclusion to which it is possible to come is that after the ‘Alleluia’ victory Britain, though more or less harassed by sporadic raids, was for some years comparatively free from barbarian attacks.

CHAPTER IV
THE ENGLISH CONQUEST

Although the English invasion of Britain is by far the most important of all those which have affected the island, it is impossible to focus any very clearly defined picture of the happenings during the long period of nearly two centuries that followed the so-called departure of the Romans. The picture is blurred, but certain strong outlines are conspicuous, and in this chapter an attempt has been made to concentrate attention on these salient features.

The incident which led to the English invaders obtaining a secure foothold in south-east Britain was probably connected with internal troubles rather than foreign invasions. The Celtic chieftains of the south-west were less occupied than their northern contemporaries in repelling foreign invaders. They must have cast longing eyes upon the wealthy Romanized cities, and cherished hopes of bringing them, or some of them, under their sway. Vortigern, one of these rulers, probably prince of the Silures, seems to have partially succeeded in doing so, and about A.D. 450 appears as supreme over the south as far as Dover Straits. Whether his suzerainty extended north of the Thames must be considered very doubtful.

The ‘Historia Brittonum’ describes the situation as follows:

‘After the above-said war, the assassination of their rulers, and the victory of Maximus, who slew Gratian, and the termination of the Roman power in Britain, they were in alarm forty years. Vortigern then reigned in Britain, and in his time the people had cause of dread, not only from the inroads of the Picts and Scots, but also from the Romans, and their apprehensions of Ambrosius.’

The passage is a very confused one, and what appear to be the significant sentences are italicized. The opening statement is a kind of summing-up of the confused sections which precede it. It has been seriously misunderstood by several authors, but its meaning is fairly obvious. The chronology of the ‘Historia’ is its most hopeless feature, but here it presents no great difficulty. Forty years after the end of the Roman power, Vortigern reigned in Britain. As we have seen, direct Roman rule ended in 410-411. We therefore arrive at the year 450-451. Bede says that Hengist entered Britain in the reign of Marcianus and Valentinian III.—i.e., after 450; but he is out in his reckoning, and so makes the date A.D. 449. Gildas makes it after 446. Probably it was after 447, for in that year St. Germanus again came to Britain, and no foreign troubles are mentioned. On the other hand, the ‘Historia’ says that Vortigern died while St. Germanus was in the island—i.e., in 447. This would place the invasion of Kent in 445 or 446, and if it really did occur then, it agrees somewhat better with the famous letter to Aëtius recorded by Gildas. But we dare not trust Gildas for anything before 470, and the ‘Life of St. Germanus’ used by the compilers of the ‘Historia’ was evidently a very fanciful work. On the whole the chronology of the English invasions is very uncertain. The one definite indication is that Vortigern’s reception of Hengist took place forty years after the end of Roman power in Britain.

Vortigern was also in fear of Ambrosius. This is a most interesting statement. The Ambrosius here mentioned may very well have been the father of the greater figure soon to be noticed. The name is a Latin one, and Ambrosius was almost certainly the leader of the Romanized inhabitants as distinct from the Kymry of the West. His family seems to have been a notable one, for we can hardly doubt that they are the forbears of the Ambrosius Aurelianus celebrated by Gildas. Where Ambrosius had his stronghold is not known; quite possibly he was in league with London, Verulam, and other Roman towns, and was perhaps the chief of their forces.

Finally, Vortigern was afraid of the Romans. This is probably exactly the state of affairs if he reigned from about 440 to 450; for the great general Aëtius was very active in Gaul during this period, and may have sent assistance to the Romanizing party in Britain. Quite possibly in the letters mentioned by Gildas the ‘barbarians’ were the Kymry, and the second visit of St. Germanus may have been as much political as religious.

However this may be—and everything during this period is largely conjecture—there is no reason to doubt that Vortigern, whose suzerainty was evidently a most uneasy one, did, as the ‘Historia’ says, employ German mercenaries under Hengist and Hors, or Horsa. Very likely he had other bands in his pay, but the fame of this one has outshone that of the rest.

Hengist is practically beyond doubt an authentic historical figure. He is probably to be identified with the Hengist in the famous poem of Beowulf, who made a truce with the Frisian slayers of his lord Hnæf. The custom was for the followers to die with their lord or avenge him. The fact that Hengist did neither would be quite enough to cause his disgrace, and the ‘Historia Brittonum’ distinctly says that he was an exile. It also appears to bear out the ‘Historia’s’ character of him as a cunning and low-minded, if able, man.

The followers of Hengist only manned three ships, and possibly they were in a distressed condition when Vortigern took them under his protection. As the small band can hardly have been of much account by itself, we must suppose either that the king employed Hengist to raise a mercenary force, or that when the breach between employers and employed occurred, the latter were joined by swarms of adventurers. The ‘Historia’ says that, owing to Hengist’s persuasions, Vortigern employed in all fifty-nine ships’ crews. The romantic feature of the affair, according to the ‘Historia,’ is that Vortigern fell violently in love with Hengist’s daughter, who accompanied him, and married her. It was not quite an honour for the Jutish maiden Hrothwyn (Rowena), if indeed that was her name, for Vortigern’s amours were numerous and indiscriminate. She merely became one of his harem. But if the incident be true, it is another application of the French proverb, Cherchez la femme! The marriage was certainly the beginning of woes for Britain.

Vortigern apparently defeated and slew Ambrosius with the help of his German mercenaries, but then his troubles began. The Isle of Ruim (Thanet) had been assigned as the land-recompense of the mercenaries, but they declared that it was too small. Bede says that it supported six hundred families in his day, and as fifty-nine ships’ crews would mean hardly less than fifteen hundred warriors, the latter were, from their own point of view, perfectly right. In any case, they were accustomed to living by their swords, and presumably believed that Vortigern, allied to them by marriage, would give way to pressure exercised by the old and still practised methods of slaughter and pillage.

At any rate, in 455, if we may trust the ‘Anglo-Saxon Chronicle,’ the bands of Hengist broke out of Thanet and began to move westward, ravaging as they went. Probably at first they did not attack the walled towns; they may merely have intended an armed protest. Where Vortigern was or what he did we cannot say; his sons Vortimer and Categirn led the opposition to the invaders. A battle was fought at a place not specified, and Hengist was driven back into Thanet. Presumably reinforced from the Continent, he again emerged from his fastness, and encountered Vortimer in two battles, both claimed as British victories, but clearly indecisive. One was on the Durgwentid River (perhaps either the Stour or Darenth), the other at Rit-hergabail or Episford, generally supposed to be Aylesford on the Medway. Horsa and Categirn were both slain. It was apparently an English reverse, for the fourth battle was fought by a Roman monument on the shore of the Channel. The invaders were defeated and driven on board their ships; but Vortimer, unfortunately for the Britons, died soon afterwards, perhaps of wounds received in the battle. The story goes that he desired his followers to bury him at the spot where Hengist had landed—presumably therefore at Ebbsfleet—so that in death he might keep watch over the country that he had for the moment saved. He was not obeyed. Geoffrey of Monmouth, who may perhaps have had some written authority for his statement, says that he was buried at London.

Vortigern now reappears on the scene, and opens negotiations with the invaders. The ‘Historia’ says that Hengist arranged a conference and banquet of six hundred unarmed notables, three hundred from each side. He, however, ordered his own followers to hide knives in their shoes, and when the feast was in full progress every Jute drew his dagger upon his helpless British comrade. Vortigern alone was spared, and, probably in fear of his life, concluded peace on very disadvantageous terms. There is no reason to discredit the story, except the quite inadequate one that the ancestors of Englishmen could not be guilty of such treachery.

This catastrophe appears to have ended Vortigern’s sovereignty in the south, and he fled to his own Welsh realm. There is a wild legend that Germanus called down fire from heaven upon him, but Germanus had died in Gaul some years before. The motive of the legend is obvious: no fate was too terrible for the hated dynast who had betrayed Britain, and the temptation to bring in Germanus must have been irresistible. Vortigern’s genealogy appears to have been well known, and his descendants were ruling in south-east Wales ten generations later.

Hengist does not ever appear to have lost Thanet, and in the disorder after Vortigern’s death he was again able to invade Kent. In 457 he won a victory at Crayford, and the Britons retreated to the walls of London; yet in 465, and again in 473, the invaders are apparently still fighting in Kent. As the Jutish kingdom never extended far beyond the bounds of the modern county, there is every reason to believe that the conquest of Kent was a very slow and difficult process.

Meanwhile, however, the successes of Hengist attracted the notice of his kinsfolk in Germany, and expeditions, not for purposes of plunder, but for permanent conquest, were being formed. The supposition must be put aside that England was founded as a number of separate states by independent bands of invaders. That the Britons made a stern resistance is beyond doubt, and to have been successful the invaders must have been acting in large and more or less organized bodies. Moreover, the invasions were national ones. Kent, indeed, possibly Sussex, may have been independent creations by chiefs of bodies of mixed mercenaries, but the whole English people (Angel-cynn) sooner or later took part in the settlement. It was a great national migration, and undoubtedly one of the most remarkable in history. The emigrants could not march by land, like the Goths and Franks, in great masses, which could bear down resistance by sheer weight of numbers and courage. They had to transfer themselves over hundreds of miles of sea in more or less frail open craft, at the mercy of every gale; yet in the course of a century the name of Angle had vanished from the Continent, and become peculiar to Britain. Possibly a remnant of the people remained behind; to this day a district of Schleswig bears the name of Angeln.

Bede says that the invaders came from three nations of Germany, the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes. This appears to be so far true in that these three peoples took part in the migration; but while practically the entire English nation came, they were accompanied by only a few Saxons and a portion of the Jutes. It is very probable, also, that fragments of nearly all the Teutonic tribes on the Continent were in the invading hosts. The kingdom of Kent is said to have been Jutish; certainly its social structure differed remarkably from that of the other English states, but Hengist himself seems to have been an Angle. Bede says that the Kentish Code was written in the English language. The confused grammatical structure of the present English tongue certainly points to a mingling of races, and on the whole we may infer that the invasion was conducted not only by the Angles, but by many kindred tribes, and that these latter in course of time gradually came to regard themselves as English also. Early mediæval writers use the terms ‘Angle’ and ‘Saxon’ indiscriminately.

The invaders were no mere barbarians. Their deeds were often barbarous enough, no doubt; but it must be said that the picture drawn by Bede of kings like Aethelberht and Eadwine and their followers shows them in a very favourable light. Perhaps Bede idealizes; possibly in the course of a century the invaders had softened somewhat; but as that century had been passed for the most part in warfare, the latter conclusion is unlikely. At any rate, the English brought with them a highly organized social system, and judging merely from recorded facts, they were, as a nation, possessed of many of the elements of civilization.

ANGLO-SAXON WEAPONS AND OTHER OBJECTS IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM.

1 and 2. Shield-boss and knife from Anglo-Saxon cemetery at Long Wittenham, Berks. 3. Shield-boss, about 7 inches in height, from grave at Twickenham. 4. Iron sword found in the Thames, about 3 feet long; the wooden handle is a rough copy of one found in Cumberland. 5. Spear-head, about 28 inches long, found in Thames, London. 6, 7, and 9. Spear or lance heads. 8. Brace of shield showing hand-grip in centre, about 16 inches long, from Droxford, Hants. 10. An iron lamp or cup, about 12 inches high, from a grave at Broomfield, Essex. 11. Anglo-Saxon bronze bowl from a grave at Sarre, Thanet.

Neither were the invaders a mere disorderly throng of ill-armed and unarmoured marauders. The evidence of archæology is all to the effect that they were acquainted with, and used, defensive armour. Probably only the upper classes wore it, but as elaborate and costly coats of mail have been found in graves in Schleswig and Denmark dating from this period, this deduction cannot be made without qualification. Mail and weapons, which latter have been found in thousands, would hardly be buried, and therefore lost, unless they could be easily replaced. The chiefs undoubtedly rode to battle; the deposits are full of horse-trappings. On the whole, we may imagine the armies which conquered Britain as being more or less like those of the Homeric Greeks. The nucleus consisted of the king and his retinue, with a larger or smaller following of nobles and their retainers equipped with mailshirt, helmet, and shield, and armed with sword and spear. Though they rode to war, they probably, with few exceptions, fought on foot. Whether their peasantry were regarded as fighting men is doubtful. Professor Chadwick thinks that they were not. In that case the conquest of England was effected by armies consisting of chiefs with larger or smaller bands of well-armed followers combined into armies under kings or generals. Perhaps only when they had gained a firm foothold in the country did the English bring over their peasant retainers and serfs to till the land, while the fighting men protected them or carried out further conquests. The frequent gaps in the war-bands may have been filled up partly by levies from the peasantry, partly by adventurers from all sides. Success must have brought many of the latter to the English standards.

Having said so much, we will proceed to give, as far as is possible, a sketch of the conquest; but the reader must be warned that it is largely conjecture. The skeleton narrative which follows has been constructed with care, after study and comparison of the earliest authorities—Gildas, Nennius, and Bede, and the few other early mediæval chroniclers who notice Britain—but probably there is hardly a statement which is not open to criticism.

At first the invaders appear to have come rather as bands of raiders than as conquering armies, but Gildas implies that some of them, at least, dashed right across the island to the Irish Sea. His lurid descriptions of the destruction of towns may be taken for what they are worth; it is to be noted that he does not name one of them. He appears to say that the shrine of St. Alban had been destroyed, but as it almost certainly lay outside Verulam, it need not be assumed that the town shared its fate. As a fact, judging from what occurred on the Continent, walled towns were able to defy large hosts of barbarians.

No doubt the raids were destructive enough, and Gildas, despite his exasperating style, probably does not overstate the misery in those districts which were wasted by the marauders. But it is certainly rash to deduce from his narrative that the whole of Eastern Britain up to the central watershed, including all the important Roman towns, was conquered and ruined within a few years after 450. The archæological evidence is of the scantiest. The sites of the greater Roman towns are almost all built upon. Calleva and Venta Silurum were small places and of no special importance. The site of Verulam has scarcely been touched.

It is needless to say that all maps of Britain at this period are purely conjectural. There is no real clue as to the lines of advance of the invaders. The probability is that they made their way inland along the rivers. After a time the bands are found coalescing into armies; for this must be the meaning of Bede’s statement that Aella, whose coming is placed by the ‘Anglo-Saxon Chronicle’ in 477, was the first ‘Bretwalda.’ The chronology is, of course, worthless, but that Aella really did command the English host for a time is highly probable. His main sphere of action is said by the Chronicle to have been Sussex; but probably, commanding as he did an army whose base was the sea, he had other fields of operations. His chief exploit is said to have been the storm of Anderida (Pevensey) in 491, according to the Chronicle, but probably earlier. He, with his son Cissa, ‘beset Anderida, and slew all that were therein, nor was there afterwards one Briton left.’

The Britons, according to Gildas, were for a while unable to make any effective resistance to the attacks of their enemies, who were being steadily reinforced from oversea; but after a weary time of ravage and defeat, a Roman (Romanized Briton) named Ambrosius Aurelianus, perhaps a son of the Ambrosius who had opposed Vortigern, took the lead. The plan of accepting the suzerainty of Kymric dynasts for the sake of peace and unity had led to disaster, and men were ready to rally to one who stood for Roman traditions. Ambrosius succeeded in organizing an effective resistance, and the result seems to have been that he was acknowledged as king in the south at least. The ‘Historia Brittonum’ states that Vortigern’s son Pascentius was subject to him, and in the Welsh traditions he appears as ‘Emrys Gwledig.’

Nevertheless, the success was only partial. It appears certain that the Teutons were firmly established on the eastern coast as well as in Kent and Sussex. Ambrosius fought against them incessantly with varying fortune all through his reign, but if he confined them to the territory which they had already won, and checked their raids inland, it was as much as he could do. The invaders’ base was the sea, and they could attack when and where they pleased; we do not hear, nor is it probable, that Ambrosius succeeded in organizing a navy, and no other means could have definitely checked the advance. On the other hand, Ambrosius probably had to some extent the advantage which unity of command gives, while his opponents’ operations would often be disunited and erratic. In the midst of the struggle Ambrosius died.

His gallant efforts appear to have produced important results. Not only was he able to pass on his power to his descendants, as Gildas witnesses, but a more or less united resistance was kept up against the invaders. In the place of Ambrosius the cities and kings appear to have chosen as Commander-in-chief, or Dux Bellorum, a certain Artorius, famed in legend as ‘King Arthur.’ He may or may not have been the immediate successor of Aurelianus; perhaps here again Geoffrey of Monmouth had some authority for interposing a third figure between the two, though ‘Uther’ looks suspiciously like a variation of Arthur. Artorius may have been a relation of Ambrosius.

At any rate, his leadership was signalized by a long succession of victories. The ‘Historia Brittonum’ gives the rather suspicious round number of twelve, but as it is obtained by there having been four battles in the same locality, there is no obvious reason for doubting it.

The first battle was at the mouth of the river Gleni; the second, third, fourth, and fifth on the river Dubglas, in the region Linuis; the sixth on the river Bassas; the seventh in Celidon Wood. The eighth was at Gwinnion Castle, and in this fight it is especially noted that Arthur’s standard was an image or picture of the Virgin. The ninth battle was at the City-of-the-Legion, the tenth on the Ribruit or Tribruit, and the eleventh on a mountain called Agned. The twelfth was at Mount Badon, and in it Arthur is credited with the slaughter, single-handed, of nine hundred and sixty Saxons!

Of these twelve engagements the field of the seventh is practically certain. Coit Celidon must be the Caledonian Forest (on the upper Forth). This fixes some of the battles at least as fought in the north; and this is rendered more probable, because one recension of the ‘Historia’ says that the Virgin of Gwinnion was afterwards deposited at Wedale, near Melrose. The Gleni may be the Glen in Northumberland. The Dubglas must clearly have been a most important strategic point if four battles were fought there.

THE PASS THROUGH THE LAMMERMUIRS.

The extraordinary network of fortifications indicates the vast strategic importance in the past of this highway between the Lothians and north-eastern England. The broken black lines indicate localities now under cultivation, and where, consequently, the fortifications are no longer obvious.

If the first batch of battles occurred in the north, it is fair to assume that they were fought against the Angles, and this practically fixes them in the north-east. There is good reason for believing that the Angles had very early established themselves in this quarter. Now, it is worthy of note that there is to-day a streamlet called the Dunglass at the entrance of Cockburnspath, the pass through the eastern corner of the Lammermuirs, south-east of Dunbar, which played an important part in the Great Civil War over eleven centuries later. Cockburnspath is just the place at which one might expect battles between rival forces moving from north to south and vice versa. The hills around are still covered with the remains of fortifications, many apparently of great antiquity. It may be that the course of the war in this neighbourhood was as follows: The English moving south from their settlements on the Firth of Forth were met and defeated by Arthur, perhaps on the Glen, and retreated to Cockburnspath. After a succession of engagements, they were driven thence, again defeated on the Bassas (locality unknown), and finally pursued into the Caledonian Forest.

The seat of war then appears to shift southward. Gwinnion may have been fought to drive off some of the invaders who had got into the rear of the Britons while the latter were fighting at the Forth. Urbs Legionis is probably in this instance York. The Ribruit and Agned cannot be identified; Mons Badonis or Badonicus is supposed to have been Bath, but there is no reason for this identification; it probably arose out of the similarity between Badon and the English appellation of Aquae Sulis. Wadon Hill, near Avebury, and Badbury (? Baden-burh) Rings in Dorset have both been identified with this mysterious site. It seems from Gildas that it was a fortress. Probably it was besieged by the invaders, and relieved by Arthur in a battle which stayed the English advance for many years.

BRITAIN FROM ABOUT 500-570.

Showing the probable effects of the Romano-British rally under Ambrosius Aurelianus and his successors. No towns are indicated within the English areas, as it is probable that all had been deserted or destroyed.

The date of these events is doubtful. Gildas, in a sentence which is the despair of all Latinists, seems to say that the battle of Mons Badonicus was fought forty-four years and one month before he wrote his book. We know that he wrote some years before the death of King Mælgwn of Gwynedd (A.D. 547). This fixes the date of the battle at about 500. The ‘Annales Cambriæ’ put it in 516, but the ‘Annales’ are as late as the ‘Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.’ Mr. E. B. Nicholson has suggested that the forty-four years are to be reckoned from the appearance of Ambrosius to 516. It is quite possible that the great leader did commence his campaigns about 472, but Gildas hardly gives us the impression of a man capable of very accurate chronology. But if he were born on the day of the battle, as he says, it would be a simple matter. On the whole, we may reasonably say that the battle was fought about the year 500, and its effect was to stay the advance of the English in the south for at least forty-four years.

One would willingly hear more of the men whose efforts for a while stayed the flowing English tide; but practically all that is known is here set down. The ‘Annales Cambriæ’ state that twenty-one years after Mons Badonicus Arthur and Medrant fell in a battle at Camlan. Arthur is repeatedly mentioned in the bardic poems of Wales, but we cannot tell to what extent these works may have been altered in later ages.

Whatever the fate of Arthur, and whatever the extent and nature of his influence in Britain, his victories staved off ruin for half a century, but no longer. The curse of Britain was that there were too many dynasts for ever warring among themselves. The picture that Gildas has painted may be highly coloured, but there is no reason to doubt that when the danger appeared to be over, the old tribal quarrels began again. Strathclyde and Reged were divided among the different branches of the Houses of Coroticus and Coel. About 540 the energetic but unscrupulous and dissolute Mælgwn, King of Gwynedd, succeeded in getting rid of his related competitors. He may also have asserted a primacy in the south and west, for Gildas calls him ‘Insularis Draco’ (Island Dragon), though it is true that this may simply refer to the fact that the seat of the Cunedda dynasty was at Aberffraw in Mona. Gildas overwhelms him with turgid invective and garbled quotations from Scripture—in fact, his so-called history is, on the face of it, nothing but a sermon directed at Mælgwn. He also denounces two other Welsh dynasts—Vortipore of the Demetæ, and Cuneglass of Powys(?), and two princes with Latin names—Constantinus of Damnonia and Aurelius Caninus. The first name of the latter suggests that he may have been one of those degenerate grandsons of Ambrosius Aurelianus of whom Gildas speaks.

It is in the interval between Mons Badonicus and 577 that the Saxon Chronicle places the conquest of Wessex. To discuss this matter in detail would be to occupy far more space than is here available, but it may be said, in short, that there is every reason to believe that the Chronicle’s chronology is wrong; that it is highly improbable that the West Saxons ever came up Southampton Water, the shores of which were occupied by Jutes at an early date; finally, that Cerdic is a very doubtful figure. The West Saxons were also, and commonly, called Gewissæ, ‘the Confederates.’ Cerdic is a Celtic name; it is, indeed, the same as Coroticus, or Caradoc, and this fact, coupled with the curious name of the kingdom, suggests that Cerdic may have been a Celtic prince, who founded a kingdom with the aid of English mercenaries or allies, and became so identified with them that his origin was forgotten. The latest opinion is that Wessex did not start from Hampshire at all. Some of the battles mentioned—i.e., that with Natan-leod—may be authentic, but they were the work of Jutes. Any delimitation of the territory occupied by the invaders at the time must necessarily be a very vague one; but it is probable that when Gildas wrote they fell into three sections. South of the Thames—largely south of the Weald—a long English-Jutish strip of territory stretched from Southampton Water to Thanet, never reaching far inland except in Kent, which was solidly occupied, and, perhaps, always the wealthiest of the new States.

North of the Thames indications are even vaguer. Professor Oman is of opinion that all the Romano-British cities in Eastern Britain perished very early, mainly on the authority of Gildas, who appears to give ‘a picture of a Celtic Britain which does not extend anywhere towards the east coast.’

To attempt to make any definite geographical deductions from a writer so vague as Gildas is rash; as a fact, we know that his five dynasts are only some of several, and the territory of one of them who bears the most suggestive name of all is not specified. Aurelius Caninus may just as well have been king of London and Verulam as of Glevum, Corinium, and Aquæ Sulis. Opinion is steadily trending in the direction of a belief in the continuous existence of London through the ‘lost’ centuries. This is too great a question to discuss here, but on practical military grounds it may be pointed out that London, strongly fortified, apparently populous, and situated astride of a great river, was eminently fitted to be the curb of a barbarian invasion. There is also to be considered the curious fact that the country round London was called Middlesex, as if it at one time formed a sort of buffer between East and West Saxons. The name certainly seems to show that London and its territory became English late.

The English north of the Thames possibly lay north and east of a line drawn from Leicester to the mouth of the Thames. If so, their abode corresponded roughly to the later ‘Danelaw.’ They probably formed, like the Vikings, a confused mingling of petty kingdoms, earldoms, and the camps of war bands. What was going on north of the Humber is not known, but certainly the Bernician Angles in Lothian were fighting hard with the British kingdoms of Strathclyde and Reged. Not until 547 did they take Bamborough. The beginnings of Deira were probably still later; it is not at all certain that the English had as yet any footing in Yorkshire. Had a second Ambrosius Aurelianus or Artorius arisen to coerce the warring British states into unity, the English settlements might have been conquered, as were those of the Danes by Alfred and Eadward I.

This was not to be. About 540 the Anglian settlements were fast increasing in strength. The whole ‘Angel-cynn,’ in fact, were streaming over to Britain every year as fast as their ships could take them. Probably they were forced on by the disorder in Europe, and the pressure caused by the migrating Slavs and the raiding Avars with their kindred tribes. At any rate, about 550 we find the English once more on the move, and this time the Britons had no Ambrosius or Arthur to save them.

About 547 King Ida of Bernicia took Dinguardi, soon to be Bebban-burh, and began to push southward in the teeth of a desperate resistance from the Britons of Reged under King Dutigern. The struggle was celebrated in the songs of the great bards, Talhærn, Aneurin, Taliesin, and Llywarch. Ida left twelve sons, several of whom reigned after him. The most celebrated was the fierce raider Theudric—‘Flamddwyn,’ the ‘Burner,’ as the Britons called him. After much fighting, he was completely defeated by Urien of Reged, and forced to take refuge on Lindisfarne. But Urien was murdered by his own jealous kinsfolk in the hour of victory, and Theudric, reinforced by new Anglian war bands, was able to take the offensive again. The murder of Urien seems to have broken the British power. His son Owen was slain by the ‘Burner,’ and Theudric ranged up and down the country, wasting it mercilessly, and finally establishing English Bernicia so strongly that it was never again in peril (circa A.D. 570).

Meanwhile, in the south, too, about 571, the English had begun a fresh advance under Ceawlin, the first authentic king of the Gewissæ or West Saxons. He probably commanded a large confederate army collected from all the English states between Humber and Thames. A great battle was fought at Bedford. The English were completely victorious, and conquered the whole of the south-east Midlands as far as the Thames. The towns captured are given their English names by the ‘Anglo-Saxon Chronicle,’ which is only to be expected; by the ninth century their Roman appellations had vanished. The effect of the victory would naturally be to leave London isolated. Possibly it maintained its independence for some time, but by 596 it was certainly included in Essex or Kent. Perhaps it had been in alliance with Kent for some time, for Ceawlin had hostilities with the young King Aethelberht, and the possession of London may have been the casus belli.

The battle of Bedford firmly established the kingdom of the Gewissæ, and Ceawlin probably extended his sway southward to the Weald and the New Forest. Perhaps it was now that Calleva was finally abandoned. The confines of the Britons were narrowed, and the last seats of the old Roman civilization (if it had not by now entirely disappeared) were about to fall into the hands of the English.

In 577 Ceawlin went westward, perhaps from Calleva, with the whole host of the Gewissæ. At Deorham, probably Derham, north of Bath, he met a confederate British army under three kings—Conmail, Farinmail, and Condidan. The last name may perhaps be read (Aurelius) Candidianus. The English victory was complete; the three kings were slain; Glevum, Corinium, and Aquæ Sulis, together with the whole valley of the lower Severn, fell into the hands of the conquerors.

Ceawlin’s later fortune was not equal to that of his earlier days. He was defeated in an attempt to penetrate Wales, and his motley host then revolted and deposed him. The Gewissan state became subject to Aethelberht of Kent, who now succeeded to Ceawlin’s position of ‘Bretwalda.’ Nevertheless, Ceawlin had done his work; the battle of Deorham was the most decisive struggle in the war which won Britain for the English.

North of the Humber, after the death of Aethelric, the last of Ida’s sons, Aethelfrith, the son of Aethelric, became king of Bernicia about 593. He made himself supreme also over Deira, and in 603 gained a most complete and decisive victory over a confederation of Strathclydian and Regedian Britons, Scots, and Irish from Ulster, under Aedan, King of the Scots of Dalriada. The result was the destruction of Reged, which survived only in a few scattered fragments, and the consolidation of English power in the north. Then, in 613, the Northumbrian king advanced upon Deva; a glance at the map will show his admirable strategy. Bede’s half-sorrowful praise of him (he was a heathen) was evidently well deserved.

BRITAIN ABOUT 613.

Showing the effects of the victorious campaigns of Ceawlin and Aethelfrith. The line of the Anglo-British frontier was extremely vague, and the indications are therefore only approximate.

Before Deva there gathered for battle Cadwan, King of Gwynedd, the most powerful of the Kymric princes; Brochmail, King of Theyrnllwg; and Selim, perhaps Prince of Powys. Near Deva lay the great monastery of Bangor Iscoed, with its 2,100 monks; and, after spending three days in prayer and fasting, 1,200 of the latter accompanied the Britons to the field. They stood apart, and a detachment of warriors under Brochmail guarded them. Aethelfrith watched the gestures and movements of the strange company, and the sound of their chants and prayers floated across to him. ‘They bear not arms,’ he said to his chiefs, ‘but our enemies they be, for their imprecations assail us. Slay them first.’ The grim order was obeyed. Brochmail and his followers were put to flight; the monks were butchered ruthlessly, and then, having disposed of supernatural enmity, the English turned to fight their secular adversaries. The battle was long and desperately contested, and Bede says that Aethelfrith’s army suffered severely; but it ended in another great English victory. Two British kings were slain; Cadwan and Brochmail fled with only a remnant of their army.

Aethelfrith did not live to complete the conquest of the north; he died in civil strife four years later. But the battles of Deorham and Deva ensured the complete conquest of Britain. The British states were hopelessly parted from one another, and could never again combine for resistance, even had they the will to do so. They were, in 620, as their foes had been in 520, cut into disconnected masses. Worse still, they occupied wild and barren territories, and the dynastic conditions did not make for internal peace. Nor did they ever again produce a really great leader. After Deorham and Deva there was never any real hope of recovering the lost ground, and to Ceawlin and Aethelfrith this result was almost entirely due.

Inadequate and nebulous as this narrative of the events of a period of such vital importance to the English nation may appear, yet out of it there stand forth certain clearly-defined epochs and figures. The invaders at first only plundered, until an apparently chance incident opened the way to permanent settlement. For a time the tide of conquest and occupation was checked by the series of brilliant victories gained by Ambrosius and Arthur, but the civil broils of the Britons prevented any permanent success over the continually multiplying enemy; and with the advent of two really great leaders on the side of the invaders, the older inhabitants found themselves hopelessly penned up in the barren regions of the west. Thenceforth Britain was Britain no longer, but Angle-land—England.

CHAPTER V
THE VIKING RAVAGES

From 596, the year of the coming of St. Augustine, to 793, England was practically untroubled by foreign invasion, except in so far as the raids of the still independent Kymry come under that heading. The period was by no means peaceful; the three great kingdoms—Northumbria, Mercia, and Wessex—were frequently at strife, and once or twice the Welsh interfered with effect in their wars. Wessex was nearly always torn with intestine war. After 758 the condition of Northumbria was one of chronic anarchy.

In 793 Mercia, under the great Offa, the friend of Charles the Great, was the suzerain state of England, supreme over all the English and Welsh kingdoms south of the Humber. Northumbria was ruled by Æthelred, son of Æthelwald (known as ‘Moll’), a savage tyrant who, however, appears to have been capable of keeping order, if only by force, in his anarchic realm. He was in alliance with Offa, whose daughter Ælflaed he married, and also with Charles the Great; and his position seemed fairly secure when, in 793, a squadron of pirate-ships sacked Lindisfarne. Next year the descent was repeated, and Bede’s monastery at Jarrow was sacked. The pirate squadron was, however, shattered by a storm, and its leader taken and put to death.

A VIKING WARRIOR.

The details are taken from objects in the British Museum.

The raiders were Scandinavians—‘Vikings,’[B] as they have come to be called, from the fact that their settlements, though scattered all over the Baltic region, lay thickest in the ‘viks’ (fjords), and especially along the shores of the great ‘Vik,’ the Skager-Rak and Christiania Fjord. All these communities were ready, on slight pretext, to take to warfare and plunder, and leaders were never wanting. Politics, economic conditions, and mere half-savage love of adventure, all played their part in driving them seaward; and once the Vikings had tasted plunder, desire of more soon led them far afield.

[B] The ‘i’ in Viking is short.

The Scandinavians were as yet heathens, and were to continue so for long centuries. They were not altogether barbarians, despite the savagery which appears so terribly in their deeds. Their social condition was well developed, and they were not without a tincture of civilized culture and art. In metal-work their achievements were notable.

They had long been renowned as boat-builders. Tacitus especially notes their proficiency in that science. It does not appear, however, that they took any part in the Teutonic attacks on the Roman Empire, but in 515 a Danish chief named Hygelac raided the coast of Frankland. He was defeated and slain by Theudebert I.

It was, perhaps, the conquest of the Saxons by Charles the Great which alarmed the Danes into attacking Christendom. Before 793 scarcely anything is heard of hostility from them. But Denmark, bordering on Saxony, naturally became the refuge of the Saxon chiefs, and was gradually drawn into the conflict. About 800 King Godfrid took up a position of open hostility to the new “Roman” Emperor of the West. In 808 Charles apparently meditated an invasion of Denmark, and in 810 a Danish fleet of two hundred sail ravaged Frisia. Two years later Godfrid prepared to invade the Frankish Empire, but was assassinated. His successor sued for terms, and Charles the Great died in peace.

Nevertheless, the impulse had been given, and from 793 onward Viking ravages began to afflict Europe. For many years they were confined mainly to Ireland, which was wasted almost from sea to sea, the result being, of course, that its brilliant art and literature were steadily destroyed. The wasters of Ireland appear to have been chiefly Norwegians; Denmark was involved in civil war. Frankland, no doubt, appeared too powerful to annoy with impunity. England also seemed strong. The raids of 793-794 were directed on anarchic Northumbria.

However, in 834 the Danish civil wars were at an end. The Danish king was the savage Horik, ‘Fel Christianitatis’—the Gall of Christianity. In Frankland the kindly but weak Emperor Ludwig ‘the Pious’ was engaged in civil war with his sons. In England the Mercian supremacy had come to an end, and had been succeeded by that of Ecgberht of Wessex. The opportunity appeared to have come, and the Danes, backed by adventurers from all Scandinavia, began a series of terrible ravages in Western Europe. First, as with the English attacks on Britain, there were isolated plundering descents; then larger and better organized expeditions; finally, great hosts migrating for purposes of settlement.

Such terms as ‘great’ must here be taken in a relative sense. Scandinavia is to-day the most thinly-peopled region of Europe; a thousand years ago its population was far scantier.

The Viking ships were long open boats, raised at bow and stern, steered by a paddle fastened to the starboard quarter. They had one mast with a square sail, but were normally propelled by oars. In size they varied. At first they were certainly small, and though excellent in the fjords, were of little use for rough sea work. Doubtless the Scandinavian builders soon discovered this, and began to develop their craft, until they turned out Olaf Tryggvason’s Long Serpent, the wonder of the North. But the average number of men to each ship can hardly have exceeded sixty, and it is doubtful whether the Vikings in England ever collected more than 10,000 men in one field.

THE OSEBERG DRAGON SHIP.

(From the Museum at Christiania.)

The hosts were heterogeneous, unstable, and ill-disciplined, liable to disown an unlucky or unpopular chief at a moment’s notice.

The Vikings, however, began with at least three advantages. It is doubtful if the early English were ever, except from necessity, a maritime people. In any case, it is clear that in the ninth century they had almost entirely forgotten the nautical qualities of their ancestors, and that no English state possessed warships. The Franks appear to have allowed such squadrons as Charles the Great had constructed to check the Danes to decay.

Secondly, neither in England nor Frankland was there as yet any real sense of national union. The various English states were jealous and disunited. Wessex was slow to aid Mercia, and Northumbria, apart from its anarchic condition, disliked both. Concerted action was almost an impossibility. Even more so was this the case in Frankland. The Vikings, on landing, could generally rely upon having to meet only the local levies.

Thirdly, the invaders had for a long time at least an immense tactical superiority. They were for the most part trained fighting men, physically powerful, brave, ferocious, thoroughly inured to war and bloodshed, well equipped with arms offensive and defensive. The only troops on the English side equal to them were the ‘thegns’ and the royal bodyguard, and the Vikings could easily rout superior numbers of the ill-trained and ill-equipped country folk.