By the end of September my army was formidable in numbers, and composed of very good material. I must have had five or six thousand free and unattached comrades, besides two thousand peasant spearmen from my own dominions. Such an army had not been seen in Britain since Constantius conquered the land from the usurper Allectus more than two hundred years ago; no combination of the ruler of Corinium and the King of the Dumnonians, with all the petty princes they could gather to help them, should be able to meet us in the open field.
In the first week of October Cynric arrived, with a splendid little war-band. He had spent all my treasure, so that there was not an ounce of gold anywhere on his person; but he had done his duty so tactfully that none of the neighbouring Kings were annoyed at losing their best men, nor so eager for the new expedition that they wished to come in person. I gave him two nights’rest, and announced that the great army would set out the day after to-morrow. October is perhaps rather late in the season to start a campaign, but my men were enured to the British winter, and I hoped to catch the Romans off their guard. Of course, they must have heard rumours of the mighty host that I was gathering, but they would expect me to start next spring. The year’s harvest would be gathered, but not yet eaten, and I would find food wherever I went.
Before we set out I had a long talk with Cynric about the new menace from this Roman general in the north. As I had expected, the dear boy had exerted himself to get accurate news, and he gave me a rational account of what he knew. In the first place, the man’s name was Artorius, although the Celtic peasantry who spoke no Latin called him the Bear, which is Art in their language; Cynric thought this would be a valuable clue to his family and upbringing, but it left me no wiser than before. I suppose my grandfather had known all the honestiores of Roman Britain, and he could have placed anyone as soon as he knew his family name; but in my boyhood the country was already falling to pieces, and neither my father nor I had ever been north to the country round the Wall. I could say it was not a south-country name; neither the King of the Dumnonians nor the King of the Demetians belonged to such a family, nor had they married into it. This was all to the good; Artorius would not be allied by blood to my foes, and I hoped he would stay in the north, where he had been so successful. It appeared that the Roman slaves in Kent had heard about him in the queer way that rumour circulates among the poor; they were loyal to their Jutish masters, for they would still be slaves whoever ruled in Cantwaraburh, but they were proud that a man of their blood had done such great deeds.
The story was that this Artorius was an honestioris, who had made the long journey to the city of New Rome or Constantinople; there he was supposed to have learned the military art from the drill-masters of the Emperor’s guard. Then he had come back to Britain with a holy mission to cleanse the land of all barbarians. His bands were not exactly mercenaries, though they expected pay from the Kings they defended; they would only fight in what they regarded as a just quarrel, against heathens. That was simple enough, but I was puzzled to know why Artorius had been so often victorious. There. Cynric could not help me; the slaves said that it was because his cause was just, but I knew that was nonsense; I myself have triumphed over a good many just causes. The only scrap of gossip that Cynric had been able to pick up was that Artorius and all his men were mounted, and made a habit of turning up suddenly when the Saxons thought they were many days’march away. That again seemed a likely thing to happen. A properly-trained Roman soldier would have maps of the country, and would plan where to strike; with a band of mounted men he could always outmarch and outguess the barbarians, who did not know the short cuts. But Roman bands often turned up unexpectedly; as a rule they gained nothing by it, for the Germans beat them when the clash came. This Roman must have some other secret if he defeated the Saxons every time he met them. It did not matter very much; he was safely up in the north, and perhaps I would get more reliable news before he came south.
It was about the middle of October when we marched. We were by far the largest barbarian army that had ever been seen in Britain, five thousand well-armed comrades and about three thousand peasant spearmen. The men were divided into little groups under their chosen captains, but these never numbered more than twenty to fifty men; otherwise the whole army acted in one mass, without any large tactical divisions. It was really too large a force to be under a single command, and things would have been easier if I could have split it into three or four legions; but that would have put too much power into the hands of the legionary commanders, and we might have faced a civil war when it came to dividing the conquered lands. Also you must remember that I could not send written messages to my subordinates, and had to carry everything in my head.
I had never been farther west than Corinium, nor farther north than Ratae; but I had a fairly clear idea of the general shape of Britain. I thought that with this great army I might conquer the south and west at least as far as Deva, which was famous as an impregnable fortress. Thus there were three states to be overcome, the Kingdoms of Dumnonia and Demetia, and the territory of Corinium, which still called itself a municipality. The last was my first objective. The Romans would naturally expect me to attack the Dumnonians, my nearest neighbours. I hoped by a swift march and a surprise attack to find Corinium badly garrisoned, with its walls in a poor state of repair. Accordingly, we marched northwest as fast as we could move, and only plundered the deserted villages on our immediate line of march.
Each man carried food to last three days, but we had no baggage column. At that time of year every village should contain a good supply of corn, and there was no danger of starvation. Many comrades rode ponies on the march, but I did not bother to send them out as scouts; Saxon scouting parties are always too busy looking for plunder to remember to send back information, and in any case I did not fear a surprise attack by the enemy; our men marched well closed up, and a force large enough to attack us with any hope of success must be seen a long way off.
We had about sixty miles to go, and on the fourth day we approached the walls of Corinium. So far the campaign had been nothing but a picnic; the villages we marched through were evacuated at our approach, and the coloni, of course, carried off their valuables with them; but they could not move their corn at a moment’s notice, and we found plenty to eat. We had seen a few Roman scouts, but in three days they could not gather an army fit to meet us in the field, and there had been no fighting.
The great question was whether the citizens of Corinium would man their wall, or whether they would take to flight. I sent some horsemen close to the walls, and they came back to say that the gates were shut, and that arrows had been shot at them.
A great many barbarian leaders would have marched past the town and gone off to plunder the valley of the Sabrina. But I was determined to try a siege, if I could hold my men together and get them to obey orders. The real bother was that now I would have to divide my troops; we must send one-half out foraging while the other tried to destroy the wall, and we should also in theory have pickets a day’s march away to give us warning of the approach of an army of relief. But you cannot deploy barbarians as though they are disciplined troops, and I knew that any pickets I sent out would soon drift away in search of booty; also Cynric was the only subordinate whom I could trust. The best I could do was to divide the army into two halves, one to forage under Cynric and the other for close siege-work with me. I promised that the two divisions would change places every week, so that each man should have his fair share of plunder and fighting, but I would stay permanently by the city.
The men accepted this decision without too much grumbling, and I went to have a close look at the city wall. What I saw did not encourage me, for it was in excellent repair and the garrison seemed numerous and confident. Of course, we could take it in the end if we went on trying long enough; but I had very little control over my followers, and they might get bored and insist on going somewhere else. I set them to making wicker hurdles, so that we could get close to one of the city
gates and try the effect of a battering-ram; that was all I could do for the moment, and I went back to our camp rather disheartened.
My original plans had been vague, except that of my three chief enemies I would attack Corinium first. Once the city had fallen I could advance to the mouth of the Sabrina, a central position between the Dumnonians and the Demetians. Actually I intended to march next against Demetia; then the Dumnonians would find themselves isolated. But all this depended on the speedy destruction of Corinium, which I had not expected to be held against the mighty army I had brought.
After working for several days at the hurdles we made a safe avenue leading to the largest of the city gates. It was more difficult to construct a good battering-ram, for there were no tall trees in the immediate neighbourhood, and we were not equipped to transport one from any distance. During this time I spent most of the daylight hours as close to the wall as I could get with safety, and I came to a very disturbing conclusion. There were plenty of armed men in the garrison, perhaps more than I would have expected to find in a town of that size; but the interior seemed to be deserted, and I never saw women or children. Presently there was no doubt at all; the useless mouths had been evacuated from Corinium before we began our siege, and the place was held by a picked garrison of Romans from all the west.
In these circumstances was it worth while going on? The valuable plunder must have been taken away, and there would be plenty of food for the garrison. We could not hope to starve them out, and it was very unlikely that they would leave part of the wall unguarded for us to escalade. If we did take the town, with heavy loss of life, my men would be disappointed when they found no gold and the army might go home. I had to decide by myself, for even Cynric was too barbarous to understand all the factors of the problem; but eventually I came to the conclusion, some time in November, that we ought to raise the siege.
At the end of the month it was obvious that we would never get a big battering-ram up to the gate, and I gave the order to march. The army was thoroughly bored, and delighted to be moving. I had observed a first-class road leading northwest, so we followed it towards the river Sabrina and the border of Demetia. On the second day we reached the river, only to find the passage blocked by another strong city, which I believe was the well-known town of Glevum. The citizens were not expecting us, and the place was full of women and children; but it was quite impossible to take it by assault, for immediately behind was a long bridge over the broad and unfordable Sabrina. This meant that the Romans could get reinforcements and supplies in safety from the far bank, while we could only attack from one side. Nevertheless I halted my army, and we sat down in a threatening posture. I hoped the Demetian army would come out to drive us away.
We kept our Yule outside the walls of Glevum, with the hostile town of Corinium cutting off our line of retreat; but I was longing to fight a decisive battle, and I was deliberately tempting the enemy to come out. As a matter of fact, it was quite good country to spend a few months in; the winter climate is mild, and the whole left bank of the river was covered with prosperous farms and villas. This part of Britain had never been raided by Saxons, although most of the villas showed signs of burning from two generations ago, when the Irish were still pagan and their pirates came to all the shores of Britain. We got excellent food from these villas, and some of them had their own vineyards.
For a small body of settlers our situation would have been ideal. We would have begun to plough, and after a few years the Romans would have accepted the loss of their fields, as had happened many times in the east. But we had come to conquer Kingdoms, not to win farms; it was absurd that just because we were in overwhelming strength we could not do as much as three shiploads of pirates.
In the spring of 516 I led my men southwest to the mouth of the river Sabrina, merely for the satisfaction of saying that we had crossed Britain from sea to sea; then we returned. We would see if the Dumnonians were any more eager to defend their farms than the cautious Demetians.
I had a pleasant surprise, for the southwesterly road led to the famous health resort of Aquae Sulis. This had never been a large city, even during the most prosperous days of the Empire, but wealthy invalids had made offerings to the Healing Gods, and the temples and baths were the most elaborate and luxurious in the whole island. It was unwalled and completely undefended, although the Dumnonians had barricaded some of the stone buildings as a frontier post. They evacuated it when we approached, and my barbarians had the run of the lovely carved and sculptured palaces round the spring. Of course, there was no valuable plunder left, except the bronze clamps in the great stone walls of the temples; but the baths themselves were in working order, and I lived for the last time in a real Roman house, with plastered walls, clean stone floors, and a properly weather-tight tiled roof. I even washed myself clean again, and tried to persuade Cynric to do the same; he enjoyed swimming in the great bathing pool, but no German will take the trouble to wash unless a Roman has built a bathing-place for him.
When we had finished wrecking Aquae Sulis we were at a loose end again. Now that the weather was getting warmer my troops rather enjoyed their holiday, and although we had found no plunder we were all living well on captured beef and corn. It is curious how quickly any particular campaign becomes a habit; we had wandered about the open country for so long, eating food that our enemies had harvested, that we would have been surprised if we had suddenly been compelled to fight a stubborn battle. We hung about Aquae Sulis for some weeks, until all the food in the immediate neighbourhood had been gathered. I had no idea what to do next, and was wondering whether to look for an unguarded ford over the river Sabrina, when in May, after we had been in the field for more than six months, I got word of a Roman army.
It seemed that our enemies were afraid to do anything obvious, for their army had not come to drive us away. Their plan was not the defensive but the counter-offensive, which works among civilized states but is usually a waste of time against barbarians. In other words, the army of the Demetians was now on the headwaters of the Thames, threatening the homes of the Saxon settlers by that river. Everyone clamoured for a bloody battle as soon as possible, and next day we began our march to the northeast, looking for the Roman army.
The great expedition had dwindled after six months in the field, even though there had been no fighting to speak of. A few lucky warriors had found plunder worth taking home, many of the peasant spearmen had gone off to plant their spring corn, while the winter had brought the usual number of deaths from disease. All the same, we must have been about four thousand strong when we marched out for the great battle that would decide the fate of Demetia as a Roman Kingdom.
We had another look at the walls of Corinium, but the garrison was still there, and they lined their defences without flinching when we made as if to attack; they had been isolated in enemy territory since the autumn of the previous year, and they showed more determination than was usual among the Romans; we took it for granted that they had heard of the victories won by Artorius in the north, but it did not worry us. We would deal with them after we had won this battle.
From Corinium we took the road to Calleva. By now it was too late to rescue the squalid villages on the banks of the Thames, and I thought the Demetians would be moving southward, to pillage the farms of my country. It is sixteen years since all this happened, but I remember every detail; these were very important events for the future history of Britain, and I will describe them as well as I can.
On the third day from Corinium we had swerved north to get in touch with any fugitives who might be hiding in the thickets by the Thames. There is a great range of chalk hills south of the river; I do not know the local name for these hills, but one of them bears a great Horse, cut out of the chalk long before the Romans came to our land; it is known as Mons Badonicus, a name that is likely to be remembered. It was about midday, and we were marching eastward along the plain to the north of these hills. We had plenty of corn in our wallets, and a small he
rd of cattle; some of our mounted men had been sent up to the sky-line, to see if the enemy was near, but when we halted for dinner they naturally came back so as not to miss their meal. I ought to have sent others up there at once, to give warning of any attack, but we had been in the field for so long without meeting the enemy that I had grown slack, and in any case we all thought we could beat off any charge the Romans could make. That was what we had come there for. We were lying on the grass as we ate, and most of the men had taken off their helmets. But when we heard the trumpets on the hill-top we had time to spring to our feet and close our ranks. My men were veterans of many a raid, not the sort of people to lose their heads because the enemy appeared when they were not expected.
Cynric had been eating beside me, and there was no time to send him off to take command of the right wing, the usual place for the heir to the war leader. Our best comrades at once formed up round him, while I took my place in the second line, since I was too old for hand-to-hand fighting. All this time we could hear the noise the Romans make before charging, but we could not see them, for the curve of the hill-side hid the summit from our view.
Conscience of the King Page 23