Conscience of the King

by Alfred Duggan

  It is a heart-breaking business trying to make Saxons take prisoners alive, even when their own convenience and the safe outcome of the campaign depend on their doing so. The robbers were still raiding our farms, all the more easily now so many of the defenders had been gathered into my army; my men continually skirmished with them, and often drove them away before they could do any damage, but they would insist on killing everyone left on the field, and I could not get the reliable information about the lair of the robbers that is easy to obtain if you torture a wounded prisoner properly. I had reluctantly made up my mind to wander through the trackless woods until we stumbled on them by chance, and had given the order to set out next day, when I had a great stroke of luck.

  We Romans of Britain were citizens of the Empire until not so very long ago, and in those days we acknowledged no superior except the Emperor and his civil servants, who might easily be our own relatives. When we set up all these Kingdoms, only two generations back, there was no tradition of loyalty to a hereditary superior, and many people disliked the thought that one particular family had got hold of all the power and prerogative of an Emperor. In consequence the Kingdoms never ran very smoothly, and when a local chief decided to make himself King there was always an outburst of discontent among his followers. The Germans, on the other hand, have had hereditary Kings from time immemorial, their followers obey them from long habit, and rebellions, apart from disputes about the succession among the members of the royal family, are very rare. Now Leoninus, or Natan-leod, had just proclaimed himself King, and naturally his chief captains, who had hoped to succeed him, were angry. One of them, who must have learned that I could read, shot an arrow into our camp by night, with a letter attached.

  Next day we marched southward. I had not dared to tell anyone, even Cynric, that I now had true information of the capital of the outlaws; I pretended that we were merely marching in what I considered a likely direction. As I have said already, I had no fear of the result of a pitched battle. My army was composed of peasant spearmen, and the lower class of Saxon are tough, stolid fighters, who don’t mind seeing their comrades killed beside them; their only drawback as soldiers is that they are slow and clumsy, from following the plough through thick clay for days on end. My men would be fighting for future peace and prosperity; the outlaws were rootless wanderers, and they would prefer flight to a stubborn defence.

  We pushed through the thick woodland, and soon came on traces of the enemy; their scouts moved through the undergrowth much faster than we could, and there were always a few of them hanging about in front, screaming abuse and loosing an occasional arrow. I rather hoped Leoninus would try an ambush, for my men were well closed up and that would bring us to close quarters; but he avoided battle, although we lost a few men from long-range arrows.

  I did not make straight for the enemy’s camp, but wandered for a few days in the neighbourhood; I did not want my men to think that Woden was leading me in person, for an undeserved reputation for divine assistance can be a nuisance in later life. But after enough false starts to make it seem plausible we eventually stumbled on our objective. I had feared that Leoninus might withdraw towards Dumnonia; my awkward army could not follow him into a hostile land, and in that case the whole expedition would have to be repeated next year. But luckily he had raided to the westward so often that the Roman Kingdoms would not give him shelter, and he had no choice, when his refuge was discovered, but to give battle or disperse his men in flight.

  He chose to stand a siege, counting I suppose on the notorious inconstancy of a barbarian army; it is well known that Saxons do not as a rule have the patience, or the organized food supply, to remain for more than a few days in front of a fortified place. But this barbarian army was led by a Roman, and I had made arrangements for oxcarts to follow with biscuit and bacon. The outlaws’stronghold was a little island of firm ground in the middle of a swamp, and a good timber breast-work had been built all round it. But at the end of a dry summer the swamp was not impassable, and after spending two days in making a causeway of logs I led my men straight at the wall.

  I let Cynric win glory by being first inside the enemy camp; at the age of fifty-seven a commander is justified in showing his troops where to attack, and then waiting behind with the reserve. As a matter of fact, the battle was not nearly as fierce as I had expected. The robbers were not patriots defending their homes, like the Romans of the west who die with all their wounds in front; they were lazy thieves who had chosen the easiest life open to them in a war-torn land. As soon as our axe-men had hewn a breach in the palisade, they began to melt away to the rear. Leoninus fought gallantly until he was killed, as befitted a King, and he had a few comrades whose honour compelled them to die beside their master; once they were down, the resistance of the outlaws collapsed. They broke and fled in all directions, but a great many got stuck in the marsh; for in choosing the driest path of approach I had hit on the principal entrance to their fort, and my men blocked the way of escape. It was not until they began to scatter that I realized how numerous the enemy had been for they had been packed in close order behind their palisade; I think at the beginning they actually outnumbered us, and my followers claimed afterwards that they had slain five thousand men. Of course, this was a great exaggeration, as the tale of enemy losses always is, and many of the people killed were unarmed servants and camp followers. All the same, from the point of view of numbers engaged, this was one of the greatest victories of the Saxons during their settlement in Britain, and the poets composed many famous songs about it; yet it won us no new territory.

  After that great victory we were no longer molested by the type of robber who descends on a farm or village and plunders it by force, although naturally there were still raiders who drove off unguarded cattle and avoided battle by the speed of their flight. Cynric had won enough glory to make him content with a few more years of peace; the songs celebrated chiefly his courage, though my inspired leadership on the march was also mentioned. Best of all, my followers were now convinced of their own fighting capacity, and the next time they went into battle they would expect to win, even against superior numbers. It was suggested that I might now assume the title of King, but I pointed out that we had merely cleared the land of domestic robbers, and that such a step should wait until I, or Cynric, had enlarged our borders.

  6.

  515–519

  My Only Failure – Artorius and Mount

  Badon – The Great Victory of

  Cerdics-Ford

  Five years later I decided that I must lead an invasion. I had won prestige by my famous victory over Natanleod, which was rather surprising; for it had not been a very desperate affair, though it had evidently caught the fancy of the poets. But I still did not call myself King, though I had two German Kings for my neighbours. I was growing older every day, and I could not then foresee how many more years of life I should be granted; before I died I wanted to have a throne to hand on to Cynric. My dearest ambition as a young man was to win complete independence, and I then thought all titles of honour were the playthings of foolish minds. But ambition is never really satisfied; the plans I had made for a purely selfish existence were not capacious enough now that I had to think of the happiness of my descendants.

  The time seemed ripe for a forward move against the Romans of the south; the three civilized states of Dumnonia, Corinium, and Demetia were at loggerheads among themselves, and there was no outstanding warrior among their Kings. A wide belt of no-man’s-land ran through the midlands, which could be settled by anyone brave enough to dwell there without the protection of an army and a law-court; so that I could have extended my dominions gradually, a little every year, without provoking a serious war. But that would not satisfy me; I wanted to win a famous battle, and overthrow a well-known dynasty; then I could call myself King of whatever land I conquered, and my family would reign after me with all the prestige of successful annexation. When I first suggested something of the sort, in the winter of
514, Cynric was eager to try his luck at once, like a true child of Woden. But I knew that a successful campaign must be planned, and nothing should be done in haste.

  Of course, the professional warriors of my war-band feasted with me at Yule; but there were very few of them, considering the extent of the lands I ruled. I don’t suppose we sat down more than a hundred strong in the hill-fort I had chosen, and we realized that our numbers were not equal to the task. That meant we should have to send out messengers to all the wandering Germans in Britain, and possibly overseas as well. I was faced with the same difficulty that had menaced me when the Portingas arrived; some chieftain might come with a war-band that completely overshadowed my little troop, or a warrior might do so well in the campaign that others were eager to follow him. In spite of the oaths they are always taking, no German thinks it wrong to leave the chief to whom he has sworn allegiance if he can better himself by following another, and I was already too old to take a prominent place in the front rank of a pitched battle.

  I explained all this to Cynric. I told him that his chance of succeeding me peacefully depended on how well he did in this war, that all our forces must always be under his command, even if he saw an obvious advantage in sending off a separate detachment, and that if any rival was making a name he must see to it that the man was killed in battle.

  It was no use inviting the Kings who lived to the eastward. If a real King came with all his force I should have to take second place before the campaign had even begun, and that would be the end of my hopes for a throne. On the other hand, the masterless men who lived brutishly on the Roman borders were not the best material for a conquering army. Most of them had been turned out of the regular war-bands precisely because they were too turbulent to live under the rule of a King, even a German King. In the end we decided against sending a popular poet into the lawless lands to recruit these ruffians; but it would be equally dangerous to send openly to the Kings halls, asking the comrades to change their leader. What we really wanted was a strong rumour that there were good pickings to be had by those warriors who came to Venta next autumn, when the mighty Cerdic Elesing was about to take the field; it would have to be quite unobtrusive and unofficial. I wished that I still had about me some of my old Roman companions; it was the sort of delicate underhand business that a Roman politician would have enjoyed, but I had to work through heavy-handed Saxons, whose only idea of finesse was to tell the most obvious and easily-detected lies. We puzzled over the matter, and finally my dear Cynric volunteered to go on the dangerous journey himself. There was, of course, a risk that he would never come back; but being the heir to a ruler is a dangerous trade, as my brother Constans had long ago found out.

  It is a common German custom for the heir to a great man to fill in the time while his father is growing old by visiting neighbouring countries and comparing foreign manners and customs; it may possibly enlarge his understanding, and at least it puts him where he cannot cause a fatal accident to the parent whose death he is waiting for. Cynric was too honourable to do me any harm, but we could use the custom to send him on tour of the more organized courts of German Britain, where he would make a point of dropping hints to all the warriors he met. The dear boy was after all my son, and he must have inherited his father’s cunning.

  Then I made a public speech summoning all the peasants who were bound to serve in my army, to be at the meeting-place in Venta immediately after the harvest. In normal circumstances it would be ridiculous to give such long notice, for the Romans were bound to hear of it, and we threw away all chance of taking them by surprise; but this campaign was not to be a raid to capture unguarded booty, but a full-scale attempt at conquest; I should be all the more pleased if I found a large Roman army where I could defeat it in one great battle. I also hoped that an early announcement would help to spread the news among those Germans who were tired of peace, and bring some of my neighbours to Venta without further invitation.

  I have already explained that though our land was rich in corn and sheep, it was not a good place for gathering portable treasure. Before Cynric could set off to visit his Woden-born cousins in the Kingdoms of the east, I had to empty the cellar in a ruined Roman villa where I kept my secret hoard for emergencies. As all the well-born warriors, both Roman and German, carry a great deal of their property into battle in the form of jewellery, every little clash between bands of raiders yields a good dividend to the side who hold the place of slaughter and can strip the dead; so that during all these years there had been a steady trickle of valuable objects into the hoard. It was a wrench to empty my emergency reserve, for if anything went seriously wrong during the summer I would have to flee ill-provided, and start again as a poor hired swordsman at the age of sixty-four. Yet in a sense the very magnitude of the gamble gave me a thrill; I had not taken a chance of that kind since I entered the Sea of Vectis with five ships twenty years ago. I had finally made up my mind that the only way to be happy was to trust Cynric absolutely; he might go off and raise a band of pirates with the gold I had given him, and there was nothing I would be able to do about it; but if he wanted to he could have done it ten years ago. This perfect trust between possessor and heir is a very rare thing in this degenerate world, and I suppose it accounts for a good deal of my success. But it is wrong to say that I was merely very lucky to have a trustworthy son; I have had plenty of tiresome relatives in the past, and if I had not trusted Cynric I would have dealt with him as I had dealt with Constans and Frideswitha.

  So Cynric went off to celebrate the spring festival at the court of the South Saxons. Of course, when he gave presents to his hosts they would offer him gifts in return, and as they were Kings they would probably enhance their dignity by giving him something more valuable than they received; a covetous man could make quite a good thing out of visiting vainglorious and boastful Kings, if he started with a capital of really good presents. But though Cynric would be richly rewarded before he left each court, he ought to come back empty-handed if his mission was a success: he would have to give presents to the comrades, and all he would get in return would be a promise of swords in the autumn.

  To keep up my courage, I sometimes reminded myself that it is not every man of sixty-four, with an assured position in the world, who would risk all he possessed in a great throw of double or quits. All the same, I was very relieved when at the beginning of September the first recruits began to drift in; Cynric had not failed me.

  These first recruits were mostly homeless warriors who wandered over the length of Britain, fighting each year under a different King. They were accustomed to a very high standard of living, and they liked to wear gold on their weapons and round their necks, but most of them were genuinely more eager for glory than wealth, and would follow a skilled leader even if he were poor. They must not be confused with the savage dwellers in the Marches, who raided for their daily food and never went near any King who kept some sort of order in his hall. These were actually a very good class of men, and true to their given word, though they never gave it for long. Of course, they knew what was happening all over Britain, and I tried to learn whether any other leader was waging war on the Romans; it would be awakward if a great war had broken out in the north just when I was trying to enlist every unemployed warrior. They told me that all the Kingdoms were at peace, and that even the savage borderers were trying to settle down in an organized Kingdom of Marchmen, although they were still fighting among themselves to see who would be King of it. But they also told me why the north was at peace, and when I heard the reason I felt a little worried.

  It seemed that the Romans of the north had found a new leader, and that he had given the Germans of those parts such a drubbing that they were now on the defensive. That meant I ought to get plenty of good recruits for my expedition, but I did not like the tale of Romans beating Germans in a set battle. It seemed somehow against nature, although Heaven knows it used to happen often enough a hundred years ago.

  I questioned every new arr
ival who claimed to have come from the north. I wanted particularly to learn what territory was ruled by this new champion of the Romans, and whether his family was likely to have an alliance with the Roman states of the south. For as long as I can remember the Romans of Britain have not been such good fighters, man for man, as the Germans; of course, they still hold more than half of the island; but that is because they have stone walls, and their superior civilization enables them to plan their campaigns more coherently. But they had no business seeking out a German army in the open, and defeating it.

  None of my informants had actually taken part in these battles, for they told me that there had been more than one; in fact the overwhelming majority of those Germans who had met the new leader were dead; but he was now the talk of all north Britain, and they had heard who he was. I was surprised to learn that he was not a King; he seemed to be that very rare creature, a professional soldier of pure Roman birth, and he led a band of mercenaries in the service of the Roman rulers of the north. This was very odd indeed, for most true Romans despise soldiering, especially as a mercenary, and their comitatis are filled as a rule with Christian barbarians or unromanized Celts from the backwoods. Even in Italy, in the days when we still had occasional news from there, the generals were barbarians, and the last Roman military leader I had heard of, with the exception of Count Ambrosius, had been Count Aetius in Gaul.

  If it was strange that a Roman should take up warfare as his profession, it was even more strange that he should make a success of it. The Romans can drill, though as a rule that does not help them very much against a proper Saxon charge; their great strength is that they can read and write, and so keep proper lists of rations and numbers in garrison, and reckon the time it takes to build a fortification; that was why Anderida was about the only first-class fortress which had fallen to a Saxon assault. But in the field their troops usually attempt some complicated manoeuvre and tie themselves in knots, before they are broken by the German charge. This new man must have found some trick of tactics that was too clever for thick-headed Germans, and I wished I could speak to a survivor of his great victories. All my recruits from the north were full of unlikely stories about his prowess, but they could not tell me exactly what he had done to defeat the barbarians. I could only hope there was no reason why he should bother about the south country. In any case I would get more sense out of Cynric when he returned; I had trained the young man myself, and he knew the necessity of getting accurate information about possible enemies.