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.
[Illustration:
_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.
[Illustration: 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.
[Illustration: 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!