Caesar's invasions of Britain
During his
Gallic Wars,
Julius Caesar invaded Britain twice, in
55 and
54 BC.
[Caesar, Commentarii de Bello Gallico 4.20-35, 5.1, 8-23; Dio Cassius, Roman History 39.50-53, 40.1-3] The first invasion, made late in summer, was a reconnaissance expedition which gained a beachhead on the coast of
Kent but achieved little else. The second was more successful, setting up a friendly king,
Mandubracius, and forcing the submission of his rival,
Cassivellaunus, although no territory was conquered.
Britain had long been known to the
classical world as a source of tin, and had been explored by the
Greek geographer
Pytheas in the 4th century BC, and possibly by the
Carthaginian sailor
Himilco in the 5th. But its position on the edge of the known world, beyond the
Ocean, made it a land of great mystery. Some writers even insisted it did not exist,
[Plutarch, Life of Caesar 23.2] and Pytheas's voyage was dismissed as a hoax.
[e.g. Strabo, Geography 2.4.1]During the course of his conquest of
Gaul, Caesar had learned a number of things about the island of Britain and its inhabitants. The
Belgae, reputed to be the most warlike of Gaul's three ethnic groups, had settlements there,
[Commentarii de Bello Gallico 2.4, 5.12] and Belgic fugitives used the island as a refuge.
[ Commentarii de Bello Gallico 2.14] The
Veneti of
Armorica controlled seaborne trade to the island, and during his war against them in 56 BC, called upon British allies to fight for them.
[Commentarii de Bello Gallico 3.8-9]In late summer, 55 BC, Caesar decided to make an expedition to Britain, because, as he says, "in almost all the wars with the Gauls succors had been furnished to our enemy from that country," and although it was too late in the season to conduct a full-scale campaign, a reconnaissance expedition was desirable and feasible. He may have had other motives:
Cicero refers to the disappointing discovery that there was no gold or silver in the island;
[Cicero, Letters to friends 7.7; Letters to Atticus 4.17] and
Suetonius reports that Caesar was said to have gone to Britain in search of pearls.
[Suetonius, Lives of the Twelve Caesars: Julius 47]He summoned merchants who traded with the island, but they were unable or unwilling to give him any useful information about the inhabitants and their military tactics, or about harbours he could use. He sent a
tribune,
Gaius Volusenus, to scout the coast in a warship. Volusenus reported back after five days, but had been unable to disembark or to identify a suitable harbour. Within days, ambassadors from some of the British states, warned of the impending invasion by merchants, arrived promising their submission, and Caesar sent them back, along with
Commius, king of the Gallic
Atrebates, to use their influence to win over as many other states as possible.
He gathered a fleet at
Portius Itius (
Boulogne) consisting of eighty transport ships, sufficient to carry two
legions (
Legio VII and
Legio X), an an unknown number of warships under a
quaestor. Another eighteen transports of cavalry were to sail from a different port. Clearly in a hurry, Caesar himself left a garrison at the port and set out "at the third watch" with the legions, leaving the cavalry to march to these ships, embark, and join him as soon as possible. In light of later events, this was either a tactical mistake or (along with the fact that the legions came over without baggage or heavy siege gear)
[Commentarii de Bello Gallico 4.30] confirms that the invasion was not intended for complete conquest.
When he came in sight of the British shore, the massed forces of the
Britons gathered on the hills and cliffs (ie the
White cliffs of Dover) overlooking the shore dissuaded him from landing there, since the cliffs were "so close to the shore that javelins could be thrown down from" them onto anyone landing there. After waiting there at anchor "until the 9th hour" (presumably waiting for his cavalry transports, and for the wind and tide to become favourable) and meanwhile convening a council of war, he ordered his subordinates to act on their own initiative and then sailed the fleet about seven miles along the coast to an open beach. In the absence of archaeological evidence at the landing point, this beach was most probably at
Walmer, which is the right distance up the coast from the White Cliffs.
["Caesar's Landings", Athena Review 1,1] It was thought in the 19th century to be near
Deal Castle - hence a house there named
SPQR - but is now thought to be half a mile further south, where it is now marked by a concrete memorial.
Having been tracked all the way along the coast by the British cavalry and chariots, the landing was opposed. To make matters worse, the Roman ships were too large to go close inshore and the troops had to disembark in deep water, all the while attacked by the enemy from the shallows. The troops were reluctant, but according to Caesar's account were led by the
aquilifer (standard bearer) of the 10th legion who jumped in first as an example, shouting-
"Leap, fellow soldiers, unless you wish to betray your eagle to the enemy. I, for my part, will perform my duty to the republic and to my general."
[Commentarii de Bello Gallico 4.25]The British were eventually driven back with
catapultae and slings fired from the warships into the exposed flank of their formation and the Romans managed to land and drive them off. The cavalry, delayed by adverse winds, still had not arrived, so the advantage could not be pressed home nor the enemy pursued. Caesar uses this as an excuse for not enjoying what he modestly calls his "accustomed success".
[Commentarii de Bello Gallico 4.26]The Romans established a camp (of which no archaeological trace has been found - otherwise the landing point could be placed with certainty), received ambassadors and had Commius, who had been arrested as soon as he had arrived in Britain, returned to him. Caesar claims he was negotiating from a position of strength and that the British leaders, cowardly blaming their attacks on him on the common people, were in only four days awed into giving hostages (some immediately, some as soon as they could be brought from inland) and disbanding their army. However, with his cavalry coming within sight of the beachhead but then being scattered and turned back to Gaul by storms, with food supplies running short and with his return journey threatened by storm damage to his exposed beached ships during the high tide, this was not the case. Realising this and hoping to keep Caesar in Britain over the winter and thus starve him into disaster, the Britons attacked again, ambushing one of the legions as it
foraged near the Roman camp, making use of a form of cavalry attack that was novel to the Romans:
Their mode of fighting with their chariots is this: firstly, they drive about in all directions and throw their weapons and generally break the ranks of the enemy with the very dread of their horses and the noise of their wheels; and when they have worked themselves in between the troops of horse, leap from their chariots and engage on foot. The charioteers in the mean time withdraw some little distance from the battle, and so place themselves with the chariots that, if their masters are overpowered by the number of the enemy, they may have a ready retreat to their own troops. Thus they display in battle the speed of horse, [together with] the firmness of infantry; and by daily practice and exercise attain to such expertness that they are accustomed, even on a declining and steep place, to check their horses at full speed, and manage and turn them in an instant and run along the pole, and stand on the yoke, and thence betake themselves with the greatest celerity to their chariots again.
[Commentarii de Bello Gallico 4.33]The foraging party was relieved by the remainder of the Roman force and the Britons were again driven off, only to regroup after several days of storms with a larger force to attack the Roman camp. This attack was driven off fully, in a bloody rout, with improvised cavalry that Commius had gathered from pro-Roman Britons and a Roman
scorched earth policy. Once again the British sent ambassadors and Caesar, although he doubled the number of hostages, realised he could not hold out any longer and dare not risk a stormy winter crossing (he had set out late in the campaigning season and the winter
equinox was approaching), and so allowed them to be delivered to him in Gaul, to which he returned with as many of the ships as could be repaired with
flotsam from the wrecked ships. Even then, only two tribes felt sufficiently threatened by Caesar to in the end send the hostages, and two of his transports were separated from the main body and made landfall elsewhere. In short, the campaign had not been a success. Nonetheless, it was an unprecedented feat, and the
Senate decreed a
thanksgiving of twenty days when they received Caesar's report.
A second invasion was planned for the summer of 54 BC.
Cicero wrote letters to his friend
Gaius Trebatius Testa and his brother
Quintus, both of whom were serving in Caesar's army, expressing his excitement at the prospect. He urged Trebatius to capture him a war chariot, and asked Quintus to write him a description of the island. Trebatius, as it turned out, did not go to Britain, but Quintus did, and wrote him several letters from there - as did Caesar himself.
[Letters to friends 7.6, 7.7, 7.8, 7.10, 7.17; Letters to his brother Quintus 2.13, 2.15, 3.1; Letters to Atticus 4.15, 4.17, 4.18]In 54 BC, determined not to make the same mistakes, Caesar returned with a larger force. According to Caesar's own account the fleet comprised some 800 ships, many of which were built to Caesar's specifications: broader and lower for easier beaching. Men of all ranks across the Roman Republic swarmed to join the expedition, to cash in on the trading opportunities. Labienus was left at Portus Itius to oversee regular food transports from there to the British beachhead.
The Britons did not oppose the landing. Caesar put this down to their being intimidated by the size of the fleet, but equally this may have been a strategic ploy to give them time to gather their forces or simply because they were unconcerned. Caesar made an immediate night march inland, driving the Britons back and capturing one of their
oppida (possibly to be identified with the
hillfort at Bigbury Wood, Kent). Nevertheless he was forced to retreat and regroup when his ships were once again damaged in a storm. The Romans, coming from the non-tidal Mediterranean, were unused to Atlantic and
Channel tides and storms, but this was nevertheless poor planning on his part, considering his ships had also been wrecked the previous year. However, Caesar may have exaggerated the number of ships wrecked to magnify his own achievement in rescuing the situation.
[Commentarii de Bello Gallico 5.23]Caesar was on the coast on 1 September, from where he wrote a letter to Cicero. News must have reached him at this point of the death of his daughter
Julia, as Cicero refrained from replying "on account of his mourning".
[Cicero, Letters to his brother Quintus 3.1]The Britons had appointed
Cassivellaunus, who had recently overthrown the king of the
Trinovantes and forced his son,
Mandubracius, into exile, to lead their forces. Cassivellaunus knew he could not defeat Caesar in a pitched battle and, disbanding the majority of his force and relying on the mobility of his 4,000 chariots and superior knowledge of the terrain, used
guerrilla tactics to slow the Roman advance. Fully halting it may not have been his tactical aim, but if it was, he failed, as Caesar was able to cross the Thames and began to besiege his hill fort (probably the one at
Wheathampstead), whose location had been revealed to him by Mandubracius and other Trinovantian ambassadors. Cassivellaunus sent word to his allies in Kent ("4 kings of Cantium", possibly to be identified with the
Cantiaci) to attack the Roman beach-head to draw Caesar off, but when this attack failed he decided to come to a negotiated peace with Caesar, mediated by Commius (or, as Caesar inflates it, 'surrendered'). Tribute and hostages were agreed (though there is no evidence either was ever sent), Mandubracius was installed as king of the Trinovantes and Cassivellaunus undertook not to make war against him. Caesar wrote to Cicero on 26th September, comfirming the result of the campaign, with hostages but no booty taken, and that his army was about to return to Gaul.
[Letters to Atticus 4.18] He then left, leaving not a single Roman soldier in Britain to enforce his settlement.
Caesar alleges the invasion could only last a season due to growing unrest in Gaul and Caesar's re-manoeouvering within the
First Triumvirate, but this has been said by some to excuse his at best moderate success in Britain.
Commius, Caesar's
Atrebatian ally, later switched sides, fighting in
Vercingetorix's rebellion. After a number of unsuccessful engagements with Caesar's forces, he cut his losses and fled to Britain.
Sextus Julius Frontinus, in his
Strategemata, describes how Commius and his followers, with Caesar in pursuit, boarded their ships. Although the tide was out and the ships still beached, Commius ordered the sails raised. Caesar, still some distance away, assumed the ships were afloat and called off the pursuit.
[Frontinus, Stratagemata 2:13.11]As well as noting elements of British warfare (particularly the use of chariots) which were exotic and unfamiliar to his Roman audience, Caesar also aimed to impress them by making further geographical, meteorological and ethnographic investigations of Britain. He probably gained these by enquiry and hearsay rather than direct experience, as he did not penetrate that far into the interior, and most historians would be wary of applying them beyond the tribes with whom he came into direct contact.
Ethnography
The Britons are defined as typical
barbarians, with polygamy and other exotic social habits, similar in many ways to the Gauls,
[cf. his similar ethnographic treatment of them in Commentarii de Bello Gallico 6.11.20] yet as brave adversaries whose crushing can bring glory to a Roman:
The interior portion of Britain is inhabited by those of whom they say that it is handed down by tradition that they were born in the island itself: the maritime portion by those who had passed over from the country of the Belgae for the purpose of plunder and making war; almost all of whom are called by the names of those states from which being sprung they went thither, and having waged war, continued there and began to cultivate the lands. The number of the people is countless, and their buildings exceedingly numerous, for the most part very like those of the Gauls... They do not regard it lawful to eat the hare, and the cock, and the goose; they, however, breed them for amusement and pleasure.
[Commentarii de Bello Gallico 5.12]The most civilized of all these nations are they who inhabit
Kent, which is entirely a maritime district, nor do they differ much from the
Gallic customs. Most of the inland inhabitants do not sow corn, but live on milk and flesh, and are clad with skins. All the Britons, indeed, dye themselves with
woad, which occasions a bluish color, and thereby have a more terrible appearance in fight. They wear their hair long, and have every part of their body shaved except their head and upper lip. Ten and even twelve have wives common to them, and particularly brothers among brothers, and parents among their children; but if there be any issue by these wives, they are reputed to be the children of those by whom respectively each was first espoused when a virgin.
[Commentarii de Bello Gallico 5.14]Technology
During the
civil war, Caesar made use of a kind of boat he had seen used in Britain, similar to the Irish
currach or Welsh
coracle. He describes them thus:
[T]he keels and ribs were made of light timber, then, the rest of the hulk of the ships was wrought with wicker work, and covered over with hides.
[Caesar, Commentarii de Bello Civili 1.54]Religion
:"The institution [of
Druidism] is thought to have originated in Britain, and to have been thence introduced into Gaul; and even now those who wish to become more accurately acquainted with it, generally repair thither, for the sake of learning it."
[Commentarii de Bello Gallico 6.13]Economic resources
Caesar not only investigates this for the sake of it, but also to justify Britain as a rich source of tribute and trade:
[T]he number of cattle is great. They use either brass or iron rings, determined at a certain weight, as their money. Tin is produced in the midland regions; in the maritime, iron; but the quantity of it is small: they employ brass, which is imported. There, as in Gaul, is timber of every description, except beech and fir.
[Commentarii de Bello Gallico 5.12]This reference to the 'midland' is inaccurate as we would see it (
tin production and trade actually happened in the southwest, in
Cornwall and
Devon, and was what drew Pytheas and other traders). However, Caesar only penetrated to Essex and so, receiving reports of the trade whilst there, it would have been easy to perceive the trade as coming from the interior.
Geographical and meteorological
Though his measurements are not wholly accurate, and may owe something to Pytheas, his general conclusions even now hold water:
The climate is more temperate than in Gaul, the colds being less severe.
[Commentarii de Bello Gallico 5.12]The island is triangular in its form, and one of its sides is opposite to Gaul. One angle of this side, which is in Kent, whither almost all ships from Gaul are directed, [looks] to the east; the lower looks to the south. This side extends about 500 miles. Another side lies toward Spain and the west, on which part is Ireland, less, as is reckoned, than Britain, by one half: but the passage from it into Britain is of equal distance with that from Gaul. In the middle of this voyage, is an island, which is called
Mona: many smaller islands besides are supposed to lie there, of which islands some have written that at the time of the winter solstice it is night there for thirty consecutive days. We, in our inquiries about that matter, ascertained nothing, except that, by accurate measurements with water, we perceived the nights to be shorter there than on the continent. The length of this side, as their account states, is 700 miles. The third side is toward the north, to which portion of the island no land is opposite; but an angle of that side looks principally toward Germany. This side is considered to be 800 miles in length. Thus the whole island is about 2,000 miles in circumference.
[Commentarii de Bello Gallico 5.13]Caesar made no conquests in Britain, but did set up political
clients there, thus bringing the island into Rome's sphere of political influence. Diplomatic and trading links developed further over the next century, opening up the possibility of permanent conquest, which was finally taken up by
Claudius in AD 43. In the words of
Tacitus:
It was, in fact, the deified Julius who first of all Romans entered Britain with an army: he overawed the natives by a successful battle and made himself master of the coast; but it may be said that he revealed, rather than bequeathed, Britain to Rome.
[Tacitus, Agricola 13]
