FOURTH BOOK OF THE WAR IN GAUL.--CÆSAR CROSSES THE RHINE,
SLAUGHTERS THE GERMANS, AND GOES INTO BRITAIN.--B.C. 55.
In the next year certain Germans, Usipetes and others, crossed the Rhine
into Gaul, not far from the sea, as Cæsar tells us. He tells us again,
that when he drove the Germans back over the river, it was near the
confluence of the Meuse and the Rhine. When we remember how difficult it
was for Cæsar to obtain information, we must acknowledge that his
geography as to the passage of the Rhine out to the sea, and of the
junction of the Rhine and the Meuse by the Waal, is wonderfully correct.
The spot indicated as that at which the Germans were driven into the
river would seem to be near Bommel in Holland, where the Waal and the
Meuse join their waters, at the head of the island of Bommel, where Fort
St André stands, or stood.[8]
Those wonderful Suevi, among whom the men alternately fight and plough,
year and year about, caring more, however, for cattle than they do for
corn, who are socialists in regard to land, having no private property
in their fields,--who, all of them, from their youth upwards, do just
what they please,--large, bony men, who wear, even in these cold
regions, each simply some scanty morsel of skin covering,--who bathe in
rivers all the year through, who deal with traders only to sell the
spoils of war, who care but little for their horses, and ride, when they
do ride, without saddles,--thinking nothing of men to whom such delicate
appendages are necessary,--who drink no wine, and will have no
neighbours near them,--these ferocious Suevi have driven other German
tribes over the Rhine into Gaul. Cæsar, hearing this, is filled with
apprehension. He knows the weakness of his poor friends the Gauls,--how
prone they are to gossiping, of what a restless temper. It is in the
country of the Menapii, the tribe with which he did not quite finish his
little affair in the last chapter, that these Germans are settling; and
there is no knowing what trouble the intruders may give him if he allows
them to make themselves at home on that side of the river. So he
hurries off to give help to the poor Menapii.
Of course there is a sending of ambassadors. The Germans acknowledge
that they have been turned out of their own lands by their brethren, the
Suevi, who are better men than they are. But they profess that, in
fighting, the Suevi, and the Suevi only, are their masters. Not even the
immortal gods can stand against the Suevi. But they also are Germans,
and are not at all afraid of the Romans. But in the proposition which
they make they show some little awe. Will Cæsar allow them to remain
where they are, or allot to them some other region on that side of the
Rhine? Cæsar tells them that they may go and live, if they please, with
the Ubii,--another tribe of Germans who occupy the Rhine country,
probably where Cologne now stands, or perhaps a little north of it, and
who seem already to have been forced over the Rhine,--they, or some of
them,--and to have made good their footing somewhere in the region in
which Charlemagne built his church, now called Aix-la-Chapelle. There
they are, Germans still, and probably are so because these Ubii made
good their footing. The Ubii also are in trouble with the Suevi; and if
these intruders will go and join the Ubii, Cæsar will make it all
straight for them. The intruders hesitate, but do not go, and at last
attack Cæsar’s cavalry, not without some success. During this fight
there is double treachery,--first on the part of the Germans, and then
on Cæsar’s part,--which is chiefly memorable for the attack made on
Cæsar in Rome. It was in consequence of the deceit here practised that
it was proposed by his enemies in the city that he should be given up by
the Republic to the foe. Had any such decree been passed, it would not
have been easy to give up Cæsar.
The Germans are, of course, beaten, and they are driven into the river
on those low and then undrained regions in which the Rhine and the Meuse
and the Waal confuse themselves and confuse travellers;--either here, or
much higher up the river at Coblentz; but the reader will already have
settled that question for himself at the beginning of the chapter. Cæsar
speaks of these Germans as though they were all drowned,--men, women,
and children. They had brought their entire families with them, and,
when the fighting went against them, with their entire families they
fled into the river. Cæsar was pursuing them after the battle, and they
precipitated themselves over the banks. There, overcome by fear,
fatigue, and the waters, they perished. There was computed to be a
hundred and eighty thousand of them who were destroyed; but the Roman
army was safe to a man.[9]
Then Cæsar made up his mind to cross the river. It seems that he had no
intention of extending the empire of the Republic into what he called
Germany, but that he thought it necessary to frighten the Germans. The
cavalry of those intruding Usipetes had, luckily for them, been absent,
foraging over the river; and he now sent to the Sigambri, among whom
they had taken refuge, desiring that these horsemen should be given up
to him. But the Sigambri will not obey. The Germans seem to have
understood that Cæsar had Gaul in his hands, to do as he liked with it;
but they grudged his interference beyond the Rhine. Cæsar, however,
always managed to have a set of friends among his enemies, to help him
in adjusting his enmities. We have heard of the Ædui in central Gaul,
and of the Remi in the north. The Ubii were his German friends, who were
probably at this time occupying both banks of the river; and the Ubii
ask him just to come over and frighten their neighbours. Cæsar resolves
upon gratifying them. And as it is not consistent either with his safety
or with his dignity to cross the river in boats, he determines to build
a bridge.
Is there a schoolboy in England, or one who has been a schoolboy, at any
Cæsar-reading school, who does not remember those memorable words,
“Tigna bina sesquipedalia,” with which Cæsar begins his graphic account
of the building of the bridge? When the breadth of the river is
considered, its rapidity, and the difficulty which there must have been
in finding tools and materials for such a construction, in a country so
wild and so remote from Roman civilisation, the creation of this bridge
fills us with admiration for Cæsar’s spirit and capacity. He drove down
piles into the bed of the river, two and two, prone against the stream.
We could do that now, though hardly as quickly as Cæsar did it; but we
should want coffer-dams and steam-pumps, patent rammers, and a clerk of
the works. He explains to us that he so built the foundations that the
very strength of the stream added to their strength and consistency. In
ten days the whole thing was done, and the army carried over. Cæsar does
not tell us at what suffering, or with the loss of how many men. It is
the simplicity of everything which is so wonderful in these
Commentaries. We have read of works constructed by modern armies, and of
works which modern armies could not construct. We remember the road up
from Balaclava, and the railway which was sent out from England. We
know, too, what are the aids and appliances with which science has
furnished us. But yet in no modern warfare do the difficulties seem to
have been so light, so little worthy of mention, as they were to Cæsar.
He made his bridge and took over his army, cavalry and all, in ten days.
There must have been difficulty and hardship, and the drowning, we
should fear, of many men; but Cæsar says nothing of all this.
Ambassadors immediately are sent. From the moment in which the bridge
was begun, the Sigambri ran away and hid themselves in the woods. Cæsar
burns all their villages, cuts down all their corn, and travels down
into the country of the Ubii. He comforts them; and tidings of his
approach then reach those terrible Suevi. They make ready for war on a
grand scale; but Cæsar, reflecting that he had not brought his army over
the river for the sake of fighting the Suevi, and telling us that he had
already done enough for honour and for the good of the cause, took his
army back after eighteen days spent in the journey, and destroyed his
bridge.
Then comes a passage which makes a Briton vacillate between shame at his
own ancient insignificance, and anger at Cæsar’s misapprehension of his
ancient character. There were left of the fighting season after Cæsar
came back across the Rhine just a few weeks; and what can he do better
with them than go over and conquer Britannia? This first record of an
invasion upon us comes in at the fag-end of a chapter, and the invasion
was made simply to fill up the summer! Nobody, Cæsar tells us, seemed to
know anything about the island; and yet it was the fact that in all his
wars with the Gauls, the Gauls were helped by men out of Britain. Before
he will face the danger with his army he sends over a trusty messenger,
to look about and find out something as to the coasts and harbours. The
trusty messenger does not dare to disembark, but comes back and tells
Cæsar what he has seen from his ship. Cæsar, in the mean time, has got
together a great fleet somewhere in the Boulogne and Calais country;
and,--so he says,--messengers have come to him from Britain, whither
rumours of his purpose have already flown, saying that they will submit
themselves to the Roman Republic. We may believe just as much of that as
we please. But he clearly thinks less of the Boulogne and Calais people
than he does even of the Britons, which is a comfort to us. When these
people,--then called Morini,--came to him, asking pardon for having
dared to oppose him once before, and offering any number of hostages,
and saying that they had been led on by bad advice, Cæsar admitted them
into some degree of grace; not wishing, as he tells us, to be kept out
of Britain by the consideration of such very small affairs. “Neque has
tantularum rerum occupationes sibi Britanniæ anteponendas judicabat.” We
hope that the Boulogne and Calais people understand and appreciate the
phrase. Having taken plenty of hostages, he determines to trust the
Boulogne and Calais people, and prepares his ships for passing the
Channel. He starts nearly at the third watch,--about midnight, we may
presume. A portion of his army,--the cavalry,--encounter some little
delay, such as has often occurred on the same spot since, even to
travellers without horses. He himself got over to the British coast at
about the fourth hour. This, at midsummer, would have been about a
quarter past eight. As it was now late in the summer, it may have been
nine o’clock in the morning when Cæsar found himself under the cliffs of
Kent, and saw our armed ancestors standing along all the hills ready to
meet him. He stayed at anchor, waiting for his ships, till about two
P.M. His cavalry did not get across till four days afterwards. Having
given his orders, and found a fitting moment and a fitting spot, Cæsar
runs his ships up upon the beach.
Cæsar confesses to a good deal of difficulty in getting ashore. When we
know how very hard it is to accomplish the same feat, on the same coast,
in these days, with all the appliances of modern science to aid us, and,
as we must presume, with no real intention on the part of the Cantii, or
men of Kent, to oppose our landing, we can quite sympathise with Cæsar.
The ships were so big that they could not be brought into very shallow
water. The Roman soldiers were compelled to jump into the sea, heavily
armed, and there to fight with the waves and with the enemy. But the
Britons, having the use of all their limbs, knowing the ground, standing
either on the shore or just running into the shallows, made the landing
uneasy enough. “Nostri,”--our men,--says Cæsar, with all these things
against them, were not all of them so alert at fighting as was usual
with them on dry ground;--at which no one can be surprised.
Cæsar had two kinds of ships--“naves longæ,” long ships for carrying
soldiers; and “naves onerariæ,” ships for carrying burdens. The long
ships do not seem to have been such ships of war as the Romans generally
used in their sea-fights, but were handier, and more easily worked, than
the transports. These he laid broadside to the shore, and harassed the
poor natives with stones and arrows. Then the eagle-bearer of the tenth
legion jumped into the sea, proclaiming that he, at any rate, would do
his duty. Unless they wished to see their eagle fall into the hands of
the enemy, they must follow him. “Jump down, he said, my
fellow-soldiers, unless you wish to betray your eagle to the enemy. I at
least will do my duty to the Republic and to our General. When he had
said this with a loud voice, he threw himself out of the ship and
advanced the eagle against the enemy.” Seeing and hearing this, the men
leaped forth freely, from that ship and from others. As usual, there was
some sharp fighting. “Pugnatum est ab utrisque acriter.” It is nearly
always the same thing. Cæsar throws away none of his glory by
underrating his enemy. But at length the Britons fly. “This thing only
was wanting to Cæsar’s usual good fortune,”--that he was deficient in
cavalry wherewith to ride on in pursuit, and “take the island!”
Considering how very short a time he remains in the island, we feel that
his complaint against fortune is hardly well founded. But there is a
general surrender, and a claiming of hostages, and after a few days a
sparkle of new hope in the breasts of the Britons. A storm arises, and
Cæsar’s ships are so knocked about that he does not know how he will get
back to Gaul. He is troubled by a very high tide, not understanding the
nature of these tides. As he had only intended this for a little
tentative trip,--a mere taste of a future war with Britain,--he had
brought no large supply of corn with him. He must get back, by hook or
by crook. The Britons, seeing how it is with him, think that they can
destroy him, and make an attempt to do so. The seventh legion is in
great peril, having been sent out to find corn, but is rescued. Certain
of his ships,--those which had been most grievously handled by the
storm,--he breaks up, in order that he may mend the others with their
materials. When we think how long it takes us to mend ships, having
dockyards, and patent slips, and all things ready, this is most
marvellous to us. But he does mend his ships, and while so doing he has
a second fight with the Britons, and again repulses them. There is a
burning and destroying of everything far and wide, a gathering of
ambassadors to Cæsar asking for terms, a demand for hostages,--a double
number of hostages now,--whom Cæsar desired to have sent over to him to
Gaul, because at this time of the year he did not choose to trust them
to ships that were unseaworthy; and he himself, with all his army, gets
back into the Boulogne and Calais country. Two transports only are
missing, which are carried somewhat lower down the coast. There are but
three hundred men in these transports, and these the Morini of those
parts threaten to kill unless they will give up their arms. But Cæsar
sends help, and even these three hundred are saved from disgrace. There
is, of course, more burning of houses and laying waste of fields because
of this little attempt, and then Cæsar puts his army into winter
quarters.
What would have been the difference to the world if the Britons, as they
surely might have done, had destroyed Cæsar and every Roman, and not
left even a ship to get back to Gaul? In lieu of this Cæsar could send
news to Rome of these various victories, and have a public thanksgiving
decreed,--on this occasion for twenty days.