Caesar: Life of a Colossus

by Adrian Goldsworthy

  Once across the river, the legions found no one to fight. The Sugambri had already fled with their possessions into the deep forests, urged on by the horsemen of the two migrant tribes who had sought refuge amongst them. In a similar way the Suebi evacuated their settlements and sent their families and herds into woodland where they could best hide from the invader. Their warriors were told to muster at a well-known place in the centre of their lands, where their army would confront the Romans. Caesar had no particular wish to penetrate deep into their territory or to seek battle. For eighteen days he ravaged the land, burning farms and villages and harvesting or destroying their crops. Then he withdrew to the western bank of the Rhine, breaking down the bridge behind him. He had shown the Germans of the region that the Roman army was both willing and able to reach and attack their lands whenever it chose to do so. The fate of the Usipetes and Tencteri, and before that the defeat of Ariovistus, provided dire warning to any tribe who tried to settle in Gaul. The leaders of the Ubii were assured that Caesar would return to aid them if the Suebi moved against them once more. For the moment, the frontier of Gaul was secure.'7

  RECONNAISSANCE IN FORCE - THE FIRST EXPEDITION TO BRITAIN, 55 BC

  It was now late in the summer, but Caesar was still determined to launch an attack on Britain. It could be little more than a raid, hastily prepared and with the expectation of returning to winter in Gaul. The fleet constructed to fight the Veneti, along with whatever ships had been captured in that campaign or could now be provided by his allies, were gathered on the coast in the territory of the Morini (modern Pas de Calais). Caesar himself marched with the legions from the Rhine to rendezvous with them, their arrival prompting the previously hostile Morini to decide that making peace with Rome was the prudent course for the moment. In addition to his oared warships the proconsul had just under 100 sailing ships to serve as transports. This was not an especially large total for the task in hand. Caesar decided to take the barest essentials when it came to baggage and very little food, since at that time of year he could expect to supply himself from the ripe crops in the fields. Two legions, the Seventh and Tenth, were squeezed into eighty transports. It seems likely that by this time these mustered no more than 4,000 men apiece, so that on average 100 would have been in each vessel. Some legionaries may instead have acted as rowers in the warships. A further eighteen transports were allocated to the cavalry, perhaps providing enough space for several hundred of these along with their mounts. His senior officers, plus their staffs and whatever possessions they considered to be essential, were transported in the cramped conditions of the war galleys. In comparison to the armies he had led in recent years, it was with this small force that Caesar set out to invade Britain. The bulk of the army remained in Gaul, sizeable columns being sent under its legates to subdue the Menapii, and those of the Morini who had not surrendered. An additional force acted as garrison to his embarkation port, which was most likely near the site of modern Boulogne - the land around what is now Calais does not yet seem to have been reclaimed from the sea. After all the preparations, the Roman fleet did not set sail until late August.18

  The probable coastline of Britain and Gaul in 55Bc

  During the weeks before setting out Caesar had tried to gather as much information about Britain and its inhabitants as possible, but had in fact discovered very little useful information. He interviewed traders who had travelled to the island, but they claimed to know little. Caesar was planning a landing in the south-eastern corner of Britain, while the principal trading ports at this time lay much further west, one of the most important being at Hengistbury Head. Therefore the merchants may genuinely have known little about his target, but it is more than likely that they were also reluctant to supply him with information at all. The trade to Britain seems to have been mainly in the hands of Gauls, with few Romans operating on these routes. Many of these men came from the coastal tribes of Gaul that had so recently been suppressed by Caesar. It would have been entirely reasonable for these men to resent Roman intervention in the island, fearing that this would open the market to Roman competitors. Having failed to learn anything very useful by this method, Caesar sent a warship on a reconnaissance voyage across the Channel. One of his officers, Caius Volusenus, was placed in charge of this. He returned after five days with a series of observations about the coastline, but since he had not risked a landing the detail contained within these must have been limited. The coastline of south-eastern England was very different at this period, with much of the lower lying land such as Romney Marshes still under the sea. Thanet was a genuine island, and the lagoons around the Wantsum Channel could have offered an extensive sheltered anchorage for the invaders. However, Volusenus does not seem to have discovered this. The news of the Roman intentions reached the British tribes and a number of leaders sent representatives to Caesar's camp on the Gaulish coast. These offered to accept alliance with Rome and the usual demand for hostages as surety. The proconsul decided to send his own envoy back with the deputations, and chose Commius, a Gallic chieftain whom he had made King of the Atrebates, for this task. Commius was believed to have influence and connections amongst the British tribes. In fact, these proved of questionable value, for on arrival in Britain he was almost immediately imprisoned. No report came back to Caesar of his mission. In a real sense Caesar was sailing into the unknown when he set out for Britain, but he was impatient to be off and achieve something more tangible and spectacular - and perhaps less controversial - before the year was out. When the winds turned in his favour he led the warships and the legions out of harbour.'9

  There were problems from the beginning. The cavalry had not yet embarked, and by the time that they had hastened to another port and gone aboard the eighteen transports allocated to them the weather had changed. Although he had spent some time with warships in the eastern Mediterranean, Caesar consistently underestimated the power and unpredictability of the sea, and especially the English Channel. The cavalry transports were unable to follow. The main convoy had left before dawn and the leading elements reached Britain - probably somewhere near modern Dover - by late morning. Volusenus may well have located the natural haven at Dover, and it is quite possible that Caesar had chosen this for his landing. However, at this point the beach was overlooked by high cliffs, at the top of which crowds of British warriors were waiting. Caesar waited at anchor until late afternoon, when most of his straggling convoy of ships had concentrated. His senior officers were rowed across to his flagship for a meeting and told that the nature of the operation required them to respond especially quickly to his signals. Once all the ships had caught up, they were to move 7 miles along the coast to a good landing spot that seems to have been located by Volusenus on his earlier patrol. The Britons shadowed the Roman fleet as it moved, but only their cavalry and chariots were able to keep pace with the ships and contest the landing. Volusenus' beach was probably near Deal or Walmer, and was wide and not dominated by high bluffs. Yet even so the Britons knew the ground and the tides and the Romans did not. Horsemen and chariots swooped in to attack the legionaries as they tried to disembark. The transport ships were not designed to land people or cargo directly onto a beach and ran aground while still in fairly deep water. The legionaries had to wade their way forward, encumbered by their bulky equipment. They were vulnerable to missiles, which they could not easily dodge or ward off with their shields, and arrived on the beach scattered in ones and twos and in little shape to mount an organised resistance. There is no evidence that the legionaries had been given any special training for this operation. Caesar comments that on this occasion his veteran troops failed to show their normal enthusiasm and aggression, but in the circumstances it was hard for the assault on the beach to generate any momentum.20

  Caesar signalled to his warships, ordering their captains to head for the beach and run in as close as they could so that the crews on their decks could bombard the Britons with slings, bows and bolt-shooting artillery. This helped to relieve th
e pressure on the assaulting infantry, but even so they were making little progress:

  And then, when our soldiers were still hanging back, mainly because of the depth of the water, the eagle-bearer of the Tenth offered up a quick prayer and then yelled out, `Jump down, soldiers, unless you want to give up your eagle to the enemy; everyone will know that I at least did my duty to the Republic and my commander!' After saying this in a loud voice he jumped off the ship and began carrying the eaglestandard towards the enemy. Then our `squaddies' called out to each other not to allow so terrible a disgrace [as to lose the standard of their legion] and leapt down from the transport. When those on the nearby ships saw them, they followed and began to close with the enemy.21

  There was still heavy fighting, and the Romans' line was ragged as the legionaries formed up with the first officer or standard-bearer they met, just as they had done when surprised at the Sambre. As a rough fighting line developed, Caesar watched from the deck of his flagship and sent forward parties of men in rowing boats and his light scouting vessels to reinforce any group that became cut off. Although the Britons resisted fiercely, by their nature cavalry and chariots were not suited to defending a position and in the end they gave way. Their mobility ensured that most of them escaped. It is interesting that Caesar did not name the heroic eagle-bearer (aquilifer), although he does have a tendency to celebrate the collective exploits of the Tenth rather than the deeds of individuals from the legion. Presumably the man was not of sufficiently high social class to warrant a mention by name. The army would have known who he was, and although he does not mention it, it would have been expected that as a Roman general Caesar would have rewarded the man with promotion, a decoration and wealth.22

  Caesar was ashore, but his army had no cavalry, limiting its capacity not only to pursue a defeated enemy, but also to scout and gather intelligence from the surrounding countryside. The legions constructed a camp as usual, probably just behind the beach. In the normal way the oared vessels were dragged ashore, while the transports sat at anchor offshore. Fortunately the successful landing in the face of determined resistance was enough to overawe the closest tribes, whose leaders sent to Caesar and willingly began to give the hostages he demanded. Caesar probably also demanded grain supplies. Commius was released by his captors and returned to Caesar. He brought with him some thirty of his retainers along with some Britons, all of whom were mounted and provided Caesar with at least a small force of horsemen. As the Commentaries put it `by these things, peace was established'. However, there were some things beyond Caesar's control. Four days later the cavalry transports set out again from Gaul and came within site of Caesar's camp before a storm blew up and drove them away. The weather turned worse - as it often did and still does in the Channel at the end of summer - but the Romans had either not been warned as Caesar claims, or had not bothered to listen to the Gallic sailors who sailed these waters. The storm may also have been an especially bad one and the Roman fleet suffered terribly, with twelve ships dashed to pieces and most of the rest damaged to a greater or lesser extent. Lacking significant food supplies and for the moment cut off from the Continent, Caesar's army was placed in a very difficult position. The Britons quickly realised its vulnerability and decided to renew the war. The chieftains quietly slipped out of the Roman camp. Knowing that the legions lacked food, they decided to cut off the grain supply. The Romans would be starved into submission, or made to fight them at a disadvantage. If this first expedition could be utterly destroyed, then it was not unreasonable to think that the invaders would never return .21

  While some men worked to repair as many ships as possible, each day parties of legionaries went out to harvest the wheat in the fields around the camp. As each area was used up, the parties had to go further afield and it was fairly obvious where the Romans would go next. The Britons prepared an ambush, hiding their forces in woodland bordering on the fields. After several days, foragers from the Seventh were suddenly attacked by a large force, again consisting mainly of chariots and cavalry. Chariots had long fallen out of use among the Gauls, but persisted in Britain and Ireland for several more centuries. They were expensive pieces of equipment, affordable only to the tribal aristocracy. The aristocratic warrior fought, while an unarmed charioteer controlled the team of two ponies. Social changes, along with increasing availability of large numbers of bigger cavalry mounts, probably explained the disappearance of chariots in Continental Europe. British chariots were fast and light, but they were not projectiles that rammed into the enemy - the remarkably persistent myth that scythes were fitted to their wheels is not based on a shred of reliable ancient evidence. Caesar gave a detailed description of chariot tactics, knowing that his audience would be fascinated by these exotic vehicles, so reminiscent of Homeric heroes:

  This is how they fight from chariots - to start off with they drive all over the field and throw javelins, and so with the terrifying appearance of the horses and the roaring of the wheels they often shake the order of the enemy ranks; when they have charged forward between the troops of their own cavalry, they jump down from the chariot cars and fight on foot. In the meantime the chariot drivers withdraw gradually away from the fighting and wait in such a way that, if they [the warriors] are hard presssed by a host of foes, they may have an easy means of escape. Therefore in battle they combine the speed of cavalry and the steadiness of infantry, and by daily use and training they are so skilled that they are able to gallop their horses down the steepest of slopes and retain full control, to stop and to turn in an instant, to dash out along the yoke and then like lightning run back to the car.24

  Chariots allowed an aristocratic warrior to look spectacular on the battlefield, were mobile missile platforms and let a warrior go forward to fight single combats on foot and then retire as necessary. They came from an older tradition of warfare, which celebrated the personal prowess and heroism of individual warriors. Yet, in combination with the British light cavalry and especially against an enemy entirely on foot, they were dangerous opponents. Some of the Roman foragers were cut down, the rest surrounded and exposed to the javelins thrown by opponents whom they could not easily catch. The outposts, stationed outside the Roman camp as part of the army's normal routine, reported that there was a large cloud of dust visible in the direction where the foragers had gone. It was far larger than would normally have been thrown up simply by the legionaries' feet. Caesar guessed what had happened and immediately led the outposts off to rescue his men. Before he left, he ordered two cohorts to relieve them in position outside the ramparts of the camp and the rest of the army to follow as soon as it was equipped and formed up. The expedition to Britain was small in scale compared with earlier campaigns, but even so it is striking that a proconsul commanding eight legions and many auxiliaries personally led a force of less than a thousand men into battle. The arrival of these cohorts was enough to check the Britons. Caesar formed up facing them for a while, but then led the foragers and his relief force back to the main camp. The Britons had won a small victory, and more importantly had prevented the Romans from gathering the grain. Encouraged by this success, they mustered their forces for an all-out attack on the Roman camp. Caesar formed up his legions, along with Commius' tiny troop of cavalry, on the plain outside the rampart to meet them. In massed fighting the legions were at their best and the Britons were quickly routed, although very few were caught by the pursuers. Caesar's men had to content themselves with torching the neighbouring farms and villages.25

  The reverse was sufficient to persuade many British leaders once again to sue for peace. Caesar now demanded double the number of hostages, but said that the Britons must transport them to Gaul as he was no longer willing to delay his return there. Somehow all of the army was crammed into the surviving warships and the sixty-eight transports which had been restored to some sort of order. It was now near the September Equinox, but Caesar's luck held and in a patch of fair weather he set sail just after midnight. All of the ships made it back, tho
ugh two transports were driven off course and landed on the coastline of the Morini. Seeing a good opportunity for plunder, the local warriors began to attack them, more and more gathering as the news spread. When reports of this reached Caesar the entire cavalry of the army was sent to their relief, and brought them off without the beleaguered men having suffered a single fatality. Next day Labienus took the weary legionaries of the Seventh and Tenth legions in a swift punitive expedition against the tribe. Unlike 56 BC the summer had been dry and this reduced the extent and difficulty of the marshes of the region. The Morini soon surrendered. The Menapii had also been defeated by the legions sent against them before Caesar had left for Britain.26

  In most practical respects the first expedition to Britain had been a failure and, indeed, had narrowly missed becoming a disaster. It had not even contributed a great deal to Caesar's pool of intelligence concerning the tribes of the island, for he had been confined in a narrow stretch of country for the few weeks he had spent there. Some help came from the native chieftains who came as hostages or sought refuge in his camp, much as they had done at Gaul. It is unclear how many came across the Channel over the winter months, but at least one refugee prince does seem to have come to him, driven from his own tribe by his enemies. By 54 BC Caesar had a little more information, though scarcely enough to justify the effort required to gain it. Left until very late in the campaigning season, the preparations for the first raid were inadequate and the forces involved too small for the task. All of these were errors for which Caesar was responsible. In this sense the campaign was scarcely his greatest achievement, although as usual he showed his huge ability in getting himself and the army out of a series of difficult situations. Yet by the end of the year Caesar must have realised that, in propaganda terms, the British expedition was a fabulous success. Rome went wild when the news of this adventure arrived, thrilled at the idea that its legions had now crossed to that strange and mysterious isle. The Senate voted Caesar twenty days of public thanksgiving, five days more than he had been awarded at the end of 57 Bc after three campaigns of genuine value. This formal recognition by the Republic of his achievements was the best possible answer to the attacks of Cato, which may possibly have been made at the same meeting. The year ended well, but Caesar was already resolved to return to Britain in the following summer. He remained curious about the place, and especially its rumoured wealth. The reaction back in Rome also made a second visit attractive - the scale of the celebrations may even have made it essential to live up to such acclaim.27