Julius Caesar (18 page)

A combination of these political difficulties, together with unsuitable weather, meant that the second expedition to Britain, well-planned though it had been, started several weeks earlier than the previous one but still nearly a month later than it should. There would be too little time to achieve any major conquest or advance before the onset of autumn would badly upset both ships and plans. Pompey might joke about mudflats, but Caesar was finding out that the sea to the north of France was more formidable than any fast-running river or battlement built by men.

After being subjected to the vagaries of the tides (alarming enough for the Mediterranean men) the fleet, which for a time had run out into the North Sea clear of the land with a southwesterly behind it, finally fetched up somewhere near Sandwich. The landing was unopposed; no natives at all were to be seen and Caesar comments, rather naively perhaps, that they had been frightened by so many ships and had gone inland to hide. It was true that 800 ships—of whatever size—was something that the Channel would not see again in a combined fleet for some 2,000 years. But all that had happened was that the threatened British in the southeast of the island had sensibly withdrawn, while making up their minds whether to place themselves under the command of a supreme chief. This was Cassivellaunus, whose kingdom was in the area of St. Albans in Hertfordshire. Also, well aware from the reports circulating about the arms, equipment, and fighting abilities of the Romans that they were no match for them in an open battle, the Britons hoped to lure the Romans into unfamiliar territory, much of it still untamed forest land.

Caesar was eager to make contact with the enemy, for he knew that he dare not hazard his troops in the interior. Only an open engagement in which the weight of the legions could make itself felt (he had five with him) would sufficiently overawe the Britons to compel mass surrender and the default of one tribe from another. (He knew that all barbarians—Gauls, Belgians, Germans and now Britons—were consumed by intertribal warfare and that, given one hard blow, their uneasy alliances crumbled in a flash.) Unfortunately for him, his eagerness to get the troops ashore and into action as quickly as possible, coupled with his ignorance of this northern sea, led him into an error that almost proved fatal. He left the invasion fleet well-guarded by some cavalry and one legion, but he left it at anchor. The weather seemed fair, there were men to watch over the ships, and they looked secure enough off a sandy shore. Then, as had happened before, the unpredictable wind and weather of this northern climate took its toll. When Caesar had marched inland with the legions as far as the Great Stour and was in rapid pursuit of the enemy, who had fallen back before him, the news came up from the coast—there had been a violent gale which had totally destroyed a number of the ships and severely damaged almost all the others.

This would have daunted many a man and would have broken the spirit of some, but Caesar—while he had to abandon his lightning offensive—turned back to the first task in hand. He had taken a great interest in the construction of this invasion fleet, and it was to some extent due to his own negligence (for a commander is ultimately responsible for everything) that for the second time the Romans had been unprepared for the vagaries and violent shifts of wind and weather in this sea. Why had the boats not been beached (they were later)? And why had the cables which had proved too light in the blow of the year before not been doubled up or more?

He acted with his usual practical efficiency and had every man with boatbuilding or carpentry experience drafted from the legions to work on the ships. Other vessels which were still capable of getting to sea were sent back to Gaul to bring over more experienced workmen, as well as to order the construction of replacements. Labienus, who had been left in charge of Gaul during Caesar’s absence, was ordered to put all his troops on to this new project. Meanwhile, only three days after landing in Britain, all military operations were suspended and the entire force was set to hauling the ships ashore and building a fortification to contain not only the remains of the fleet but also serve as a garrison for the army. Again, it is important to give his full due to the Roman legionary, the man who made the empire possible and who made the reputations of generals and the wealth of senators. From roadbuilder to boatbuilder, from bridges to battlements, from fortified camps to siege-engines, the legionary and his centurion
were
Rome. For ten days now they labored to erect this camp-cum-boat-pound in an unknown land. On the eleventh day Caesar conducted a final inspection of the work; and then the legionaries, after polishing their arms and armor, fell in again to march to war.

During this respite the British tribes had temporarily sunk their differences and had nearly all elected to come under the leadership of Cassivellaunus. An exception were the Trinobantes in Essex, who had been conquered by Cassivellaunus and the young son of whose defeated king had already come over to Caesar. But the amalgamation of the other tribes under the coordinating intelligence of this British leader was to provide Caesar and his legionaries with a very tough opposition, as well as a style of warfare which the Romans had never encountered before.

Cassivellaunus was well aware that the Romans sought a straightforward pitched battle and was determined to deny it to them. Battles of this type, proposed by the Romans and accepted by the Gauls, Belgae and Germans, had invariably led to the latter’s defeat. In any case, the Britons did not rely on infantrymen in warfare but on horsemen and chariots—the latter being something with which the Roman infantry-man was unfamiliar. Chariots had been used from Homeric days in Europe and in the East by most of the early civilizations, but they had been found unsuitable in later warfare and had survived only for races in the public games or for processions where (like the State Coaches in modern Britain) their function was decorative and symbolic of power. Those which the British now brought out in their hundreds against the Romans were purely functional, designed for war and nothing else.

Caesar says that at one moment about 4,000 charioteers were brought up against the legions, but this does not necessarily mean that number of chariots. There were enough in any case to cause grave disruption in the Roman lines, when Cassivellaunus launched his first attack just as the legionaries were digging in. The soldiers on guard at the perimeter were hurled aside by the weight and number of the galloping horses and chariots, while the fighting men aboard them leapt down and attacked the legionaries within. When Caesar sent reinforcements to back up the threatened positions the Britons immediately jumped back aboard the chariots and disappeared into their forests.

This was, as Caesar put it, “a new kind of warfare.” Similarly the British cavalry did not operate like the Roman or the horsemen encountered in Europe—where the sheer weight of the charge was used to overwhelm the enemy—but fought in open order, with groups of reservists posted at various points to the rear who, when the advance horsemen tired or weakened, swept up to take their place. No more than the charioteers or the men on foot would they fight a standing battle, but would constantly withdraw, seeking to extend the Roman horsemen and draw them away from their compact groups. Seeing that his heavily armed legionaries were at a disadvantage in this warfare where mobility played so large a part, Caesar tried to entice the Britons to attack the fortifications behind which the legionaries took up their positions, and out of which raiding parties were sent to ransack the countryside for food and cattle. But Cassivellaunus steadily withdrew before him, retreating to his own land on the north side of the Thames, so that, still seeking an open battle or at least the siege and conquest of a town, Caesar followed him north to the river. At a place where the Thames was fordable, Cassivellaunus had driven stakes into the riverbed and banks in an attempt to deny the crossing to the enemy, while he and his army waited for them on the northern side.

Caesar, who had thought of so much in his preparations for this campaign had not neglected one master-card, something which he had kept in reserve, either for a pitched battle or for just such a case as this. He had brought across from Boulogne an Indian elephant (and we know that it was Indian because the large African bush elephants are untamable while the African forest elephants—which Hannibal had used in his famous campaign—were too small to support a large how-dah such as is described). Elephants had been used in warfare in the East for many centuries but they were principally useful in war when organized in massed lines, especially upon the wings of an army, to break up the cavalry of the opposing forces (horses unfamiliar with them being afraid of their smell and size), and also to act like tanks upon the infantry. It is easy to see why in the deserts and flat plains of the East they had long been a formidable weapon and why they had been abandoned in Europe’s less suitable terrain. The elephant had, however, one other use, which for a time had proved an advantage to the Carthaginians in Spain and, until they had discovered its weaknesses, even against the Romans in Europe. This was a purely psychological one: the sight of the immense and hitherto unknown animal lumbering toward a foot soldier was almost certain to induce panic. Caesar had rightly calculated that the barbarous Britons in their remote island would never have heard of an elephant, let alone seen one. He had brought it along for just such an occasion as now presented itself.

Polyaenus, a Macedonian writing in the second century AD, describes in his
Stratagems of War
how Caesar made use of this strange beast against the Britons at the crossing of the Thames:

Caesar had with him a very large elephant, an animal which the Britons had never encountered before, and he had armored it with iron scales. Upon its back he had put a large tower containing archers and slingers, and he had it sent ahead into the river. The Britons were terrified at the sight of this huge and unknown beast, from the tower on whose back came a volley of arrows and stones, and one and all—men, horses and chariots—they turned tail and fled. Through the terror inspired by this single animal, the Romans were able to cross the river in safety.

(We know no more about this Indian elephant, whether it died in Britain or whether it was transported safely back to Gaul.)

Caesar was nevertheless forced to admit that, unable to bring the enemy to battle, his troops were being increasingly demoralized by their guerrilla tactics. (The only success was the capture of a fortified town belonging to Cassivellaunus—somewhere in the area of modern St. Albans.) As he advanced, his troops ravaging the country as they went, he was haunted by the approach of autumn and winter. He had seen what summer storms could do in the seas between the island and Gaul. The only alternative to returning with his purpose unachieved was to winter in Britain, unthinkable without a really adequate base and good supply of grain and other provisions. Besides, Gaul itself needed his almost constant supervision. But political dissension among the Trinobantes and a number of smaller tribes succeeded where the military option had failed and, as more and more Britons came over to him, support for Cassivellaunus steadily dwindled.

In some desperation the British leader sent a message to the four chieftains of Kent asking them to attack Caesar’s base camp: a wise enough move which, if successful, would have left the Romans cut off in a hostile land with winter approaching. But the cohorts on guard at the base had further strengthened their defenses, were alive to such a potential move, and when it came hurled back the attackers. Cassivellaunus through an intermediary now asked for terms and Caesar was happy to seize upon the occasion. Although he must have been deeply concerned at the position in which he found himself he nevertheless needed to impose conditions that would look good in Rome. Accordingly, it was arranged for hostages to be handed over, for an annual tribute to be paid, and a guarantee to the new king of the Trinobantes that he and his tribe would remain unmolested. They would, in theory, be under the protection of Rome and would fulfil the same position in Britain as the Aedui in Gaul and the Remi in Belgium.

The equinox was approaching and Caesar remembered the previous year’s weather. Since there were not sufficient boats ready as yet for the whole army to sail together to France, he sent it back in two waves. Even this very nearly ended in disaster, for the convoy returning for the second load ran into a violent gale and many of the boats had to seek refuge in Gaul. Eventually the last of the troops were pulled out and made their way without incident to Boulogne. The historian Florus wrote that “Caesar returned with much richer spoil than the first time.” It could hardly have been less, since the first visit had ended in a hurried evacuation—and this was little more. One suspects that the businessmen who had invested in the expedition got a poor return—some loot maybe from the captured fortress, and some illiterate slaves. Cicero even cautioned his friend Atticus, who speculated in such commodities, against buying British slaves since they were likely to be deficient in any civilized attainments. Before the invasion there had been much talk in Rome of the riches that the island would yield but, although the land had some mineral wealth, Caesar’s costly year of 54 produced practically nothing. Even the
Commentaries
can hardly disguise the fact that the expedition was a failure. Suetonius cites it as one of only three in Caesar’s whole career. It was to be a century before the Romans returned and conquered part of southern Britain. They never at any time conquered it all, and this latecomer to the Roman Empire was to be one of the first to leave when the legions were ultimately summoned back to Rome.