of what the Lower Thames meant as an avenue of approach to invasion
during the Dark Ages that were coming to a close, and what it was to
mean as an obstacle to a passage of armies during the centuries of
the Middle Ages which were about to open. The Lower Thames played
no great part between this date, 1016, and the invasion of William
the Conqueror. A fleet seems to have stood on it perpetually for the
defence of the kingdom under Canute, but did not serve as an avenue of
invasion, nor was that fleet brought to action.
[Illustration: PANGBOURNE]
The Lower Thames last appears before the Conquest as an element in
warfare when Godwin and his sons enter the mouth of the River in
1052, the fifty ships of the King not daring to offer battle. London
favoured this particular advance, allowed Godwin to pass under the
Bridge without obstacle (which shows how the masts were stepped), and
with that successful but hardly challenged expedition ends the first
chapter of the Lower Thames in English warfare: the chapter of its use
in the Dark Ages as an avenue of invasion into the heart of the country
and against London and, already by the early eleventh century, its
strategical value as an obstacle to the movement of troops from north
to south.
The Lower Thames in the warfare of the Middle Ages, and indeed up to
that of the seventeenth century and the Civil Wars--that is, throughout
a space of six hundred years (from 1066 to 1644), appears in English
warfare only in the character of the main obstacle of crossing South
England.
It is impossible to develop a negative aspect of this kind at any
great length, nor is it even possible to affirm it as an universal
negative. I can indeed call to mind no case of the transport of troops
in any considerable numbers from the north to the south of the Lower
Thames, or vice versa, during the period in question. But even if some
considerable exception be discovered, it does not affect the general
thesis that the great groups of civil war which marked the history
of England in the Middle Ages and during the seventeenth century were
powerfully affected in their strategy by the interruption to eastern
communications to north and south, which was caused by the Lower Thames
and its estuary.
Thus the whole plan of the Wars of the Roses, infinitely confused
though it is in detail, involves a striking up from or down to London
with perpetual action west of London, but there is never any attempt
to turn a southern or a northern position by the crossing of the Lower
Thames in force--at least that I can call to mind. You have the same
thing earlier in the Barons’ Wars. When Henry III. wishes to make a
base for himself in South England and begins by advancing on Rochester,
Simon makes no attempt to cut across anywhere below London. On the
contrary, he marches south from that lowest crossing, making sure of
intercepting the King on his march round parallel with the coast. In
the succeeding campaign the line of the Severn determines everything,
and here again the Upper Thames is crossed and recrossed as well, the
Lower Thames not at all; and when we come to the great Civil Wars of
the seventeenth century or, as our forefathers called them, “the Great
Rebellion,” you have perhaps the clearest instance since the campaign
of Edmund Ironside of how the estuary of the Lower Thames determined
by its obstacle the strategy of the east of England. Speaking in very
general terms and from the point of view of strategy alone as distinct
from the great moral and social forces at work, the Parliament won
because it continuously held not only London but a great triangle of
the Eastern English land; Kent in the main, and all East Anglia, and
after the second year of the war Lincolnshire as well.
Now imagine in the place of the estuary of the Thames continuous land
communication and you will see what a difference that change would have
made. Charles at the very beginning of the campaign, though he could
not have besieged a town as large as London, could very probably have
marched past it and chastised East Anglia, broken up its recruiting
centres, etc., confident that there was open to him an alternative
retreat to the west upon either side of London. Nay, he could, had he
been successful in this early part of the war, in an East Anglian raid
have continued that success in the south-east. He might, I imagine,
have isolated London, though he could not have besieged it. As it
was, the two halves of his enemy’s country divided for _his_ purposes
by the Lower Thames were for _their_ purposes united by common radii
converging at London and by the control of all the Lower River as a
continuous avenue of transport and supply.
What was still heartily Royalist in Sussex (and I believe I may
count here many of the castles) was, through the action of that same
obstacle, a hopelessly isolated patch which Parliament had later little
difficulty in reducing. But suppress the Lower Thames and it would have
given Charles a solid base for advance.
We must not exaggerate the point, for the strategy of the time was very
confused, and sometimes at first almost purposeless; but none the less
in any campaign, however muddled, the main natural strategy imposed by
topography invariably appears, and for what it is worth I cite it in
this case of the Lower Thames and of the Civil Wars.
The third point, of course, in this connection of the Lower Thames with
the Civil Wars waged in this island is the position of London: and that
position is twofold. London has one great strategical character as the
lowest crossing place of the Thames; it has another great strategical
character as the chief natural base in the island.
The first of these two characters is obvious, and as obviously recurs
throughout the whole history of battle between the Norman Conquest and
the Parliamentary Wars. Whoever has possession of London has possession
of the secure crossing place nearest the sea which gives immediate
interior communication between one section of the east of the island
and the other, and as a rule to have possession of London is to have
command sooner or later of the whole of the south and east upon that
account.
But the second character, London as a base, is of even more importance.
You had here a town so great that after the Dark Ages it need never
stand a siege. It is further a town the supplies of which under
primitive conditions lay almost always uncut. Unless a man had so
considerable a fleet that he could cut off supplies by River, so well
organised a transport that he could keep both banks of that broad
stream perpetually in touch, and finally so very large a command that
he could hold the whole circuit of the walls securely and the Bridge
end on the Southwark side as well, London could not be, strictly
speaking, besieged, and, from the Danish Wars onwards, London never was.
Not only was this great centre of supply nourished by the Thames immune
from such isolation, but it could also furnish stores of provision,
remounts, and all that was necessary for a medieval army in quantities
more than sufficient for the restoration or recruitment of such a
force; hence we find London perpetually turning the scale during six
centuries of fighting, and it is almost true to say that he who has
London ultimately wins the war. It was the size of London, and in
particular its value as a recruiting centre, which checked Charles I.
after Edgehill. London made the fortune of Simon de Montfort; London
appears to have remounted the Barons in the most critical moment of
the campaign of Magna Charta; and London was the necessary pivot upon
which William the Conqueror was compelled to hinge all his work of
pacification after Hastings. Indeed, the position of London could not
be better illustrated than in this early example, where the Norman
found it impossible or inadvisable to attempt a direct attack upon
it, was compelled to isolate it temporarily by sweeping a line of
devastation around it, and made it his first care to recognise its
customs and pre-eminence in the kingdom.
With the conclusion of this brief survey of the part which the Lower
Thames and London as the creation of the Lower Thames has played in the
history of warfare I must close this Essay.
I would close it, as I began it, by the qualification that all those
material causes which are the delight of one who traces out the effects
of historical geography are but half the story. Of the spirit of place
and of the human motive without which such mere topography would be
meaningless, I have said little or nothing in this consideration of the
River of London building up London through two thousand years; but that
is because this business of the soul in any historical matter must be
separately treated, and that in a spirit always alien, and sometimes
antagonistic, to the chain of material cause and effect.
Nevertheless, it is the soul of London and of London River which has
driven forward the story of both of them together, much more than any
material limits within which that soul was compelled to act. And that
is why to-day overlying the vestiges--often now completely hidden--of
the original material framework, London and the River rather control
that framework and what were once the necessary condition of port and
market and crossing place than are controlled by them.
FOOTNOTES:
[5] The reader should be warned that this famous action has been
ascribed by modern pedantry to all manner of other places and sites.
For my part I will trust our ancestors, the tradition of the place, and
the obvious strategies of the Roman Road.
[6] Or Milton Creek out of the Swale. So Professor Oman will have it
in his book upon _England Before the Conquest_. But he gives no proof.
Milton on the Thames itself would have seemed a much safer and more
accessible base.