Ancient Britain and the Invasions of Julius Caesar. T. Rice Holmes
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of Brittany submitted to him and gave him hostages. It was probably about this time that Crassus made his celebrated voyage to the tin-producing districts of Cornwall;1282 and it seems not unreasonable to conjecture that it was the news of his mission which gave the alarm to the Veneti. They arrested two officers whom he had sent to make a requisition of corn: the other maritime tribes of Brittany and Normandy threw in their lot with them; and an embassy was sent to Crassus to demand the restoration of the hostages. Messengers were promptly dispatched to inform Caesar, who had gone to Illyricum. He sent orders to Crassus to have a fleet of war-galleys built in the estuary 56 B.C. of the Loire, to summon oarsmen from the Roman Province of Southern Gaul, and to impress seamen and pilots. Meanwhile the Veneti were engaging fresh allies, and reinforcements were hastening from Britain to join them. The allied fleet was speedily assembled on the coast of the Morbihan. Caesar hurried back to join his army, and on his arrival made all the necessary dispositions for preventing the spread of the insurrectionary movement. Crassus was dispatched southward into the country of the Aquitani, from whom, it is true, little danger was to be expected: another general, Titurius Sabinus, was sent northward into the peninsula of the Cotentin, to prevent the tribes of Northern Brittany and Western Normandy from joining the Veneti; and Labienus, Caesar’s most capable lieutenant, marched eastward through the heart of Gaul to the neighbourhood of Treves, with orders to watch the Belgae and repel the German tribes, who were believed to be in communication with the Gauls, in case they attempted to cross the Rhine. Labienus appears to have had little trouble; but Crassus and Sabinus encountered and defeated their respective enemies. Caesar himself invaded Venetia, and entrusted Decimus Brutus with the command of his fleet. During a great part of the summer Brutus was detained in the mouth of the Loire by stormy weather; and Caesar spent the time in endeavouring to reduce the strongholds on the Venetian coast. These operations were fruitless; but on the first fine day the struggle was brought to an issue. The decisive battle was fought in Quiberon Bay.1283 The allied fleet numbered two hundred and twenty sail, while the Roman galleys were reinforced by ships lent by friendly tribes who inhabited the maritime districts south of the Loire. The ships of the Veneti and their allies were so heavy and so stoutly built that it would have been useless for the galleys to attempt to ram them; and they stood so high out of the water that the legionaries were unable to throw missiles with effect. But the Roman engineers came to the rescue as they had done in the First Punic War. Long poles had been prepared, armed at one end with sharp-edged hooks. The galleys swifter and more mobile than the Gallic ships, which had no oars.1284 When the fleets approached each other, two or more galleys ran alongside one of the enemy’s ships; and the halyards were seized by the hooks. Instantly the rowers pulled away: the halyards snapped, and yards and sails fell down, leaving the helpless hulk to be boarded by the legionaries. ‘Thenceforward,’ wrote Caesar, ‘the fight turned upon valour, in which our soldiers easily had the advantage.’1285 When several ships had been captured, the Veneti abandoned the fight and made haste to escape. But their ships had hardly been put before the wind when they were becalmed; and the galleys, running swiftly in and out among them, captured them one after another, all but a few which contrived to reach land when darkness fell.
SOUTH EASTERN BRITAIN
The Veneti surrendered unconditionally. Caesar was determined to teach the Gauls that ‘the rights of envoys’1286 must be respected in future. The Venetian senate were put to death; and all the tribesmen who failed to escape were sold into slavery.
Campaign against the Morini.
It remained only to subdue the Morini, who had never yet acknowledged the supremacy of Rome. Caesar marched against them: but the season was too far advanced; and he found it impossible to strike a decisive blow. The Morini would not risk a battle, and took refuge in their forests. Caesar allowed himself to be surprised on the outskirts and lost a few men, though he succeeded in punishing his assailants; and after the legions had spent some days in cutting down trees, capturing baggage, and driving off cattle, stormy weather set in, and rain fell so heavily and continuously that they could no longer live safely in tents, Its failure leaves Caesar’s base not quite secure. and were forced to abandon the campaign. Owing to this failure, which Caesar hardly atoned for by ravaging the cultivated lands as he retreated, the base of operations for the expedition which was to take place in the following year was still insecure. On the other hand, the maritime tribes between the Somme and the Pyrenees were effectually subdued; and Caesar was absolute master of the sea.
55 B.C. Caesar determines to sail from the Portus Itius (Boulogne.)
When the campaign of the following year against the Germans was over, Caesar marched westward into the country of the Morini, ‘because,’ as he tells us, ‘the shortest passage to Britain was from their coast.’1287 Probably he had already ascertained what was the best port to sail from; but any competent cavalry officer could have procured the information in a couple of days. Between the Scheldt and the Somme there was only one harbour which would satisfy all his requirements. Calais did not then exist: Sangatte, on the east of Cape Blancnez, was at best a mere roadstead; and the sandy waste between Cape Blancnez and Cape Grisnez, from which the village of Wissant derives its name, though it possessed two tiny creeks formed by rivulets, offered no shelter for a fleet and no facilities for building or repairing ships, or for provisioning an army. The Canche, the Authie, and the Somme, if at that time they were used as harbours, were too far from Britain. But the estuary of the Liane, on whose right bank stood Gesoriacum, the village whose site is now covered by Boulogne, combined every advantage. Caesar, Latinizing its Celtic name—the port of Icht, or ‘the Channel harbour’—called it the Portus Itius. Gallic merchants sailed from it to the ports of Kent: from the time of Augustus it was the Roman port of embarkation for Britain, and at a later period the naval station of the Roman Channel Fleet. The estuary, longer, wider, and deeper than it is now, was protected from every gale by the bold bluff of land which on the west throws out the promontory of Alprech, and which then projected northward considerably beyond its present limit.1288 Vessels of light draught could enter the harbour at low tide. Shipyards lined its banks. Roads connected it with the interior; and timber in abundance could be floated down the river from the forest of Boulogne. The heights that look down from the east upon the harbour, about half a mile south of the column which commemorates the assemblage of Napoleon’s ‘Grand Army’, offered an excellent site for the encampment of the force that was destined to protect the communications; and perhaps a detachment may have been posted on the opposite bank of the river.1289 If the distance in a straight line to Britain was a little longer than from the creeks of Wissant, the passage, owing to the set of the tidal streams and the prevalence of south-westerly winds, was more convenient. Caesar therefore gave orders that vessels should be collected from the adjacent coasts, and assemble, along with the galleys which had been docked after the war with the Veneti, in the Portus Itius.
He attempts to obtain information about Britain from Gallic traders.
The summer was now far advanced; and Caesar saw his first expedition must be a mere reconnaissance: but, as he tells us, ‘he thought that it would be well worth his while merely to visit the island, see what the people were like, and make himself acquainted with the features of the country, the harbours, and the landing-places.’1290 Though on a clear day he could see beyond the straits those ‘astonishing masses of cliff’ which haunted the imagination of Cicero,1291 he was about to venture into an unknown land. The Italians of that time knew hardly anything of the island which they vaguely regarded as the end of the inhabited world, except that it produced tin, some of which found its way to the markets of the Mediterranean.1292 Perhaps Cicero and other cultivated men had read extracts from the journal of Pytheas: but Pytheas was a discredited writer; and, after all, his description of the Britons who lived in the time of Alexander the Great would have been little more useful to Caesar than Bernier’s account of the empire of Aurangzeb would be to a traveller who intended to spend a winter in India. Caesar sent for traders from all parts of North-Eastern Gaul, and questioned them about the island:—How large was it? What tribes inhabited it? What were their methods of fighting, their manners and customs? What ports