6
Even an exceptional commander such as Caesar could find himself in an untenable position because he lacked accurate or timely intelligence about an area that he planned to invade. To illustrate this point, I will examine in this chapter Caesar’s two campaigns in Britain in 55 and 54 bc. Although the Romans ultimately gained the upper hand, neither of these campaigns qualifies as a resounding success, and at many points Caesar and his men were put in great danger as a consequence of poor intelligence gathering. Both campaigns have been portrayed as merely intelligence-gathering forays in and of themselves. As such, they were of limited value, and if conquest was the goal, then they were not great successes.
Caesar may have had several motives for attempting an invasion of Britain, but the practical military reason he gave in his Commentaries was security. Britain was known to have sent troops and supplies to the Gauls fighting against the Roman Army, and it was to Britain that leaders of the Gallic resistance fled after their defeat.2 For his audience, Caesar exaggerates the threat posed by the Britons, and asserts that Britain could even become a base from which agents and even armies could cross into Gaul and foment insurrection against the Roman forces there. At face value, however, the motive of security is less than convincing, since Roman command of the English Channel made serious support improbable.3 More likely, Caesar was drawn there by the lure of loot, of a virtually unknown territory, and of the fame that conquering it would bring him.4 As T. Rice Holmes wryly put it, Caesar “hoped to do more in Britain than recover his expenses.”5 If Caesar’s invasion of Kent in 54 bc was aimed at conquest, then why did he change his mind after being in the country only seven weeks, and why did he leave in a rush, never to return? The expedition had raised great expectations in Rome, and the news of its failure was received with disappointment.6
The target
Inhabitants of the island Caesar dreamed of invading were no mere handful of barbarians. In the first century bc, Britain had been settled by Iron Age peoples who had close ties with the Gallic tribes across the Channel.7 Commerce flourished, the populations were relatively large, and at least seven different British tribes had their own coinages. The economic motives that Caesar claimed for conquering Britain may have been justified, since tribes in southwest Britain and Wales controlled considerable mineral wealth in tin deposits and copper mines.8 Details, however, were hard to come by. Roman and Greek merchants had landed there many times, but, with few exceptions, they had not ventured into the interior of the island and they knew little about its natural resources. Gallic traders and captured Britons were naturally reticent when giving the Romans information, and what little they were forced to tell was, for the most part, inaccurate.9 It is reasonable to think that ignorance about Britain put a strain on Caesar’s men; almost one hundred years later, Claudius’s men came close to mutiny, because “the soldiers were indignant at the thought of carrying on a campaign outside the limits of the known world.”10 And this was in ad 43, well after Caesar’s Commentaries had been written. Caesar came to the conclusion that it would be worth his while to reconnoiter the island, if only to acquire first-hand information about the country and its inhabitants. If he also found the island lay open to immediate conquest, so much the better.
Planning considerations
The first thing Caesar should have realized was that the Britons knew the Romans were coming. British intelligence sources included traders crossing the Channel, who brought the British chiefs news of Roman preparations. Gallic refugees who had seen the Romans in action persuaded some of the British chiefs to send envoys to Caesar, assuring him of their good faith. In response, Rome’s ally, Commius, chief of the Atrebates, visited Britain at Caesar’s behest and ordered the local tribes to submit to Caesar when he landed.11 The intention was, no doubt, to bring other tribes over to Caesar and thus to acquire supplies and assure safe passage through several areas. The confused state of Caesar’s intelligence can already be seen in his use of Commius as an envoy. The Atrebates may have had influence in the southeast of Britain, but their main influence lay farther west than the area Caesar was planning to invade. Commius was arrested by the Kentish chiefs as soon as he landed.12 Thus Caesar’s first diplomatic overture ended in failure.
In his first serious attempt to collect intelligence, Caesar sent a tribune, Gaius Volusenus, to reconnoiter the British coastline with a war galley to obtain, via visual observation, intelligence on suitable landing sites. Volusenus spent five days cruising along the south coast of Britain. Certainly any observations about tides, weather, or sailing conditions he collected would be useful. Intelligence on the activities and resources of the Britons, however, would have been beyond his capabilities, because he never actually landed. Caesar commented mordantly that Volusenus learned “as much as possible for an officer who did not dare to leave his ship and entrust himself to the rough natives.”13 What was greatly missing was intelligence about good harbors or anchorages, the tides of the Channel, and the weather conditions. Specifically, we know in retrospect that the failure to find the port of Richborough was a blunder that marred the entire expedition. Caesar mistakenly believed that Volusenus had returned with enough intelligence for him to begin operations.
Clearing the English Channel
After submitting to Caesar in 57 bc, the Veneti of Brittany rebelled at the beginning of 56 bc because they heard that he was about to invade Britain and they feared the loss of their monopoly of the trade with the island’s southwest.14 This revolt gave Caesar a pretext for an expedition to Britain that might be both punitive and exploratory. However, naval superiority would have to be achieved before amphibious operations could be undertaken. And this would not be an easy task as the Venetic fleet was larger than that of the Romans, and, one might guess, its sailors more skillful in dealing with the Channel tides and its weather conditions. Potential bases for Venetic ships on the broken Breton coast were innumerable and would be difficult for the Romans to access. The Veneti, however, played into Caesar’s hands by confronting the Roman fleet first. Caesar writes that the Venetic ships were much taller than the Roman ones, making it impossible to attack them with missiles or to board them, even if the Romans had added turrets to their ships.15 They were even too stoutly built to allow a ramming attack. So instead, the maneuverable, oared Roman vessels were driven into the middle of the Gallic fleet and, using sharp hooks attached to long poles, the Romans reached out and cut the halyards that attached the yards to the masts on the enemy ships, thus destroying their sails and rigging. This opened the way for boarding parties. Some of the undamaged Venetic ships tried to escape, but the wind subsided, and the Romans were able to storm these ships as well.16 The Roman victory was total. Following the destruction of the Venetic fleet, Rome liquidated the nobility and sold the rest of the people into slavery. The commercial connection between Brittany and southern Britain was inalterably changed and would follow a different pattern from that time on. With the waters cleared of enemy ships, and Volusenus’ reconnaissance complete, Caesar was now ready to launch his attack.
Embarkation
The limited size of Caesar’s task force indicates to most historians that this “invasion” was merely a scaled-up reconnaissance effort. Caesar decided to bring over only two legions, the Seventh and the Tenth, comprising a total of no more than 10,000 troops, which he transported by some of the recently captured Venetic ships. This was rather large for a reconnaissance effort, and yet far too small for a full invasionary force. One wonders if Caesar simply misjudged how many troops he would need.
The legions were ordered to Portus Itius (thought to be Boulogne), where eighty infantry transports were assembled.17 Eighteen horse transports were ordered to Portus Ulterior (perhaps Ambleteuse), eight miles to the north, where the cavalry was to embark (see Map 16).18 The bulk of the Roman Army was left in Gaul under the command of the generals Sabinus and Cotta, and P. Sulpicius Rufus was to guard the harbor at Portus Itius.19 Finally, soon after midnight on 25 August 55 bc, the force under Caesar’s command took up their anchors and headed out to sea.
Map 16 Caesar's campaigns in Britain.
The intelligence the Britons had on the unsettled situation in Gaul, plus the small size of the Roman expeditionary force, must have delighted the British chieftains, who knew they could muster many times the number of troops necessary to throw the Roman invaders back into the sea before they ever set foot on shore. The Britons thus waited confidently along the clifftops for the Roman legions to land.
The arrival
By 9:00 a.m. the next morning, on August 26, as Caesar reports, the ships anchored just off the chalky cliffs of Dover. Thousands of British warriors from all the southern tribes had been alerted by their coastal sentinels and were now standing, fully armed, atop the heights, ready to shoot straight down at the beaches below. Caesar himself summed up his first mistake tersely: “this was clearly no place to attempt a landing.”20 Having been confronted by his first big surprise, he summoned his staff officers and senior commanders to the war galley for a discussion of how to land 10,000 men on a hostile shore against a large, vigilant, and well-prepared native army. Moreover, seizing and securing a beachhead would have to be a purely infantry action, since the second surprise had by now emerged: the cavalry had not arrived. The eighteen transports under sail from Portus Ulterior with cavalry on board had missed the evening tide on the 25th, and after catching the morning tide on the 26th, were driven back to the continental coast by a contrary wind. Caesar’s lack of knowledge about weather conditions in the English Channel, and his inexperience in amphibious warfare, combined to cause a severing of the lines of communication and transportation between Roman troops in Britain and those in Gaul.21 When his cavalry failed to arrive, Caesar was forced to land without them.
In conference with his officers, Caesar presumably passed on the intelligence gathered by Volusenus and announced that the beaches (thought to be the modem locations of Walmer and Deal) which lay to the northeast would be the landing sites. The fact that fresh orders were necessary confirms that there had been a change in the plan of operations. At 3:30 p.m., when both the wind and the tide were favorable for a landing, Caesar gave the signal to weigh anchor and, after sailing about seven miles up the Channel, the ships were grounded on the shore, perhaps around Walmer.22 The defenders’ massive forces, composed mostly of horses and war chariots, moved slowly along the cliffs, keeping pace with the Roman ships, and then when the landing site became evident scurried to the beaches. By the time Caesar was ready to commence landing, it was low tide, a circumstance that prevented his galleys and transports from getting close to the cliffs because of the draft of his ships. Consequently, the soldiers would have to wade over 200 yards to dry land in the face of heavy fire from the British warriors. Faced with this prospect, the Roman troops hesitated. In this emergency, Caesar’s ingenuity did not desert him. To relieve the pressure, he ordered the warships to run aground on the enemy’s right flank, and from there to harass the Britons with the fire that they could bring to bear from their archers, slingers, and artillery. Seeing the infantry still holding back, the standard-bearer of the Tenth Legion shouted: “Jump down men, unless you want to betray your eagle to the enemy: I at any rate shall have done my duty to my country and my general.” He then promptly leapt from the ship clutching the legionary standard.23 Thus encouraged, the others from his own vessel followed and the men from the rest of the ships did the same. But even this heroic action did not lead to the immediate success it deserved. The men were unable to form up correctly in their units, and the Britons surrounded them as they disembarked in small groups. Caesar now had the rowboats from the warships and his scout vessels filled with soldiers, and by sending them to points where reinforcements were needed, he gradually brought the situation under control. Once the legions could form up properly on the beach, they charged and quickly routed the Britons. This was the first place where the absence of cavalry made itself felt. Caesar was unable to follow up his success and turn it into a complete victory.24 The beachhead was secured by 7:00 p.m. that evening. The tribes of Kent treated for peace and agreed to surrender hostages, including Commius and his thirty retainers, to Caesar.
Without cavalry, Caesar could not pursue the Britons or venture into the surrounding countryside for further reconnaissance. The next day, however, sails were sighted and the eighteen transports carrying the Roman cavalry finally caught up with the main force. But this was not the end to their transport difficulties. By afternoon, the transports were coming close inshore when a squall gusted suddenly from the northeast, scattering the heavy ships before they could make landfall. Because Caesar had not beached his transports, their anchors dragged and they were driven ashore. Twelve were wrecked and most of the remainder seriously damaged. Some of them made it back to Ambleteuse safely that night; others were blown down the Channel.25 This caused near panic in the camp and, for Caesar, it was a disaster. The Romans not only lost the valuable reinforcement of cavalry, but their transports were also destroyed. Now they could do no further reconnaissance, and the legionary soldiers were forced to repair their ships. They became vulnerable to the British forces, which began new attacks.
Thus immobilized, the situation of the Roman expeditionary force was bleak. The Roman forces were a small contingent of hungry men with no provisions, stranded on a hostile shore with no clothing or equipment for a protracted winter campaign. They also had no facilities to repair or rebuild the lost transports, nor other ships to replace them, and no reserves to call in should the Britons mount a large-scale counteroffensive. The Britons took advantage of their good luck and mobilized again, but this time they did not concentrate for an attack on the main body of the Roman forces, but instead engaged in guerrilla warfare. By harassing Roman foraging parties, patrols, and outposts, the British hoped to prevent the legions from replenishing their provisions and to starve them out with a protracted campaign of attrition.
Lack of reconnaissance made the Romans unaware of what was brewing, so when Caesar dispatched the Seventh Legion to fetch grain from a nearby field the officer in charge did not deploy scouts. The troops laid aside their weapons and went to work with their reaping hooks. The only cavalry they had to guard them were Commius’s thirty retainers. It seems that the ordinary precaution of keeping some of the cohorts under arms was neglected.26 Suddenly the enemy’s chariots and cavalry emerged from the adjacent woods and descended upon the scattered and unarmed reapers. They would have been annihilated had not Caesar come to their rescue with more troops.
The Britons made one more daring frontal attack on the Roman camp, but they were defeated, and the British sent envoys to sue for peace. Caesar was fortunate that this last success came just in time to allow him to leave Britain without losing face. Because of the late season and his damaged ships, his departure could not be postponed. He took twice the usual number of hostages, and boarded those storm-damaged ships that his troops had managed to render seaworthy. He sailed to Gaul before the weather turned from bad to worse, thus ending the reconnaissance of 55 bc.
For Caesar this had been a disappointing venture.27 The objectives of the expedition remained unaccomplished and he displayed an uncharacteristic lack of foresight in undertaking so risky a venture. The time for preparation had been too short, the intelligence woefully inadequate. Owing to the excessive draft of his transports, the disembarkation had entailed unnecessary loss. By neglecting to ship supplies, Caesar had exposed the Seventh Legion to the risk of a calamitous defeat, while the unexpected absence of cavalry made it impossible to obtain information about the nature of the country, thus weakening the effect of his final victory. All he managed to do was conduct a few skirmishes with southern British tribes, casting doubt on his ability as a commander. The political faction in the Senate supported by Pompey and Crassus would be quick to criticize him for undertaking an invasion of Britain, a hostile island, so late in the season. As well, the very legality of this undertaking was open to question, since Britain lay outside his province of command, Transalpine Gaul. Had there been a Roman defeat, they would have faulted him for not detaching a large enough force with equipment and provisions for a proper campaign. Nor had Caesar provided for the safety of his fleet during a time of uncertain weather. Overall, he could expect a reprimand for having conceived a hurried plan, made worse by inadequate intelligence.
Knowing this operation could have jeopardized his command in Gaul, Caesar played up the “conquest” of Britain in his dispatches, and gained through propaganda what he had lost in the field. The Senate voted him an unprecedented period of fifteen days’ thanksgiving.28 One might ask whether this vote of confidence was inspired by his friends or by his enemies. By providing its seal of approval, the Senate committed Caesar to a full-scale expedition the following year, and now his enemies could hope for the real possibility of literally shipwrecking his career.29
Whatever he may have put over on the Senate, Caesar had achieved little by this reconnaissance in force. The punitive intention of the invasion that he had stressed as his main objective was hardly accomplished. There was no tangible military gain, no loot, and virtually no hostages. In fact, only two British tribes sent the promised hostages; the others sent none.30 Almost nothing was learned about the coast of Britain that any Channel trader did not already know, and the failure to gain information about harbors was surprising in one whose intelligence operations were normally so efficient. The interior of Britain and its mineral wealth lay as yet undiscovered, and Caesar had not yet encountered the most powerful of the southern British tribes, as the events of 54 bc were about to prove. Apart from the fame of having landed with armed force on an island about which little was known, and whose very existence had been disputed, he had nothing to show for his efforts. Even Cassius Dio describes him as having “retired empty handed.”31 There was no doubt in Caesar’s mind that he would have to return to Britain, this time for a full-scale invasion with a force sufficient to conquer the whole island – at least three times as many troops and far more extensive equipment. The campaign of 55 bc had placed a blot on his military reputation that he intended to erase before another year was out.
The invasion, 54 bc
By the summer of the following year, Caesar had organized a much larger force for the invasion of Britain. And this time he took every precaution to ensure success. This was not the last-minute, make-do affair of the previous year. Six hundred transports of a new design, together with nearly two hundred of the vessels used in 55 bc, and twenty-eight war galleys had been ordered to be ready by the spring of 54 bc. They would be used to transport five legions and 2,000 cavalry troops, plus horses and a large baggage train. The large cavalry component would be necessary to neutralize the threat posed by the British war chariots.
This new force was designed to hit hard and follow up its victories. The 600 new transports were custom-built to Caesar’s specifications.32 To facilitate loading and beaching, the ships had a lower freeboard than was common in the Mediterranean, a design chosen by Caesar as a consequence of local tidal patterns, and because the coastal waves in the Channel were smaller.33 To allow for heavier cargoes, including numerous pack-animals and horses for the cavalry, the hulls were constructed broader at the beam. The new craft were fitted with oars as well as sails, since rowing was made easier by the low freeboard; this gave them a maximum propulsive ability.34 In total, the invasion force numbered some 30,000 troops. Unlike the previous year’s effort, this was no mere reconnaissance mission. The invasion force was the largest fleet the Channel must have seen until 1944. It was certainly the largest army ever sent by sea outside the bounds of Roman territory.
The fleet was assembled at Portus Itius. To insure that his absence from Europe did not inspire uprisings in Gaul, Caesar rounded up potential Gallic leaders and took them with him to Britain as hostages. The army in Gaul was left under the command of Titus Labienus, with three legions and 2,000 cavalry to protect the harbors to which Caesar’s ships would return on the homeward sailing. Labienus was also responsible for keeping Caesar’s forces in Britain resupplied with grain, if their stay was prolonged or if supplies were not locally obtainable. Most importantly, he was to see to it that Gaul remained peaceful. Caesar was convinced that this time he was prepared.
At sunset on 6 July 54 bc, the legionaries and the animals embarked onto the transports, while the archers, slingers, and artillerymen boarded the galleys.35 A total of 800 ships weighed anchor and sailed on the ebb tide with a gentle southwesterly wind over the 30-mile voyage to Britain. Around midnight, the wind died down and the oarsmen struggled against the tidal current to keep the ships on course. Around noon the next day, 7 July, they landed unopposed on the beach thought to be between Deal and Sandwich, that had been identified as the best landing place during the previous year’s raid. The approach of an armada this large alarmed the British warriors, convincing them to flee to higher ground rather than to make a stand on the beach.36
Caesar sent out scouting parties immediately, and some of them soon returned with British prisoners, who told Caesar that a large native force had earlier concentrated on the beaches, but that it had subsequently retreated inland and hidden itself when it saw the size of the Roman fleet.37 By midday, the entire army had disembarked and a seaside base camp was established under the command of Quintus Atrius, who was given ten legionary cohorts and 300 cavalrymen to protect the fleet and the camp. Caesar did not, however, issue any specific instructions regarding the protection of his ships from the elements. The craft were left quietly riding at anchor, vulnerable to the treacherous southerly winds that would soon be blowing. The captains and pilots were ignorant of those winds that once more were to prove the downfall of the invasion fleet. The mistake of 55 bc was repeated in 54 bc.
The pursuit
Caesar was eager to engage the Britons as soon as possible. His intelligence about the situation may have come from sending out a troop of cavalry to reconnoiter in the afternoon. He may have trusted his prisoners for information about the location of British forces, although this was a dangerous gamble on his part – venturing a march through hostile and unknown country during the hours of darkness on the basis of unverified information. The thought that he could be leading his men into a well-planned British ambush either did not occur to Caesar, or he had a means to verify the location of the enemy troops to which we are not privy. In any case, Caesar and the main body of his army left the base camp past midnight and marched inland to the River Stour, 12 miles from the beach landing camp. At daybreak on the 8th, the Romans encountered British forces at a ford on the Stour,38 and the Romans did not sustain a single fatality in the brief, predawn skirmish. The Romans easily dispersed the Britons, who then retreated to the hill fort at Bigbury, a site with earthwork and ditch enclosures (see Map 16). Roman scouts discovered that the main British force had retreated only a mile and a half from the river ford.39 Since breaching the fort was a simple engineering problem, the Romans took it without much trouble. The men of the Seventh piled earth against the defenses and locking their shields over their heads in the classic testudo (tortoise) formation, took the fort by storm with only a few casualties. The next day Caesar sent out three columns of cavalry to overtake any fugitives.
No sooner had Caesar won his victory than weather problems cropped up again. Dispatch riders arrived from the beach camp at Deal with the bad news that during the night an easterly gale had whipped up and all the vessels had dragged their anchors and fallen afoul of each other. The coastline was littered with ships that had been driven ashore, and at least forty were totally wrecked. The flying columns were hastily recalled and Caesar ordered a general retreat to the coast. This was the second weather-related catastrophe in as many years for the landing force. Not only had Caesar suffered an identical disaster the year before, but he had had the bulk of his ships constructed to prevent it.40 Better geographic intelligence might have diverted this disaster. Had Caesar reconnoitered only a few miles further up the coast, he would have discovered the protected harbor at Richborough, the site where the Romans landed when they invaded Britain in ad 43 (see Map 16). It is certainly curious that even if Richborough was missed by Volusenus, it was not discovered by patrols after the landing. And since Caesar had his cavalry with him on the second voyage, there is no excuse for not being able to extend the range of reconnaissance.41
The negligence by which Caesar exposed himself to a repetition of the same disaster that he had suffered in 55 bc is difficult to understand. T. Rice Holmes has argued that whereas in 55 bc Caesar’s transports were anchored off the downs at Walmer, in 54 bc his anchorage was in the small downs off Sandwich, where the anchorage is much more secure, being more sheltered and with better holding ground and shallower water, and where vessels driven ashore on the sand would suffer less damage than on the shingle beaches around Deal. If this were true, then the contrast between the two anchorages would have been some excuse for Caesar’s conduct in 54 bc. It is strange, therefore, that Caesar does not mention it. All he has to say in his own defense, in words almost identical to the description of the beach where his fleet was wrecked the previous year, is that he anchored off a gentle open shore. The only point of contrast would seem to be that whereas in 55 bc his warships were beached, in 54 bc they were anchored with the transports. Thus in his impatience to close with the Britons, Caesar did not attend first to the security of his ships. Also deeply problematic was the fact that his intelligence people failed, even after the second disaster, to reveal the nearby existence of a safe harbor at Richborough. Another likely element of his failure is that Caesar was a gambler, who too often relied on luck. He probably thought the enemy was so terrified of him that he could “finish off the campaign in a gallop.”42 Instead, he was left with the results of his hasty decision.
An inspection of the wreckage revealed that forty of the vessels were beyond repair. Caesar then did what he had failed to do on landing; he took the precautions of having all the ships securely beached and protected by an entrenchment. He ordered the construction of a land fort within which the entire fleet of 760 ships could be enclosed. These ships were to be repaired as well as circumstances permitted. Craftsmen were brought from Gaul and, even with the men working in shifts both day and night, it took ten full days to repair the fleet. At the same time a message was sent to Labienus on the Continent, with instructions for him to build as many new ships as he could with the resources at his disposal.43
By 19 July the Roman fleet had been sufficiently repaired for Caesar to turn his attention to the Britons. He marched his troops back into the interior, but a significant shift in the political situation had meanwhile occurred. During the ten-day hiatus, as the Britons had become aware that the Romans were in retreat, they set aside their tribal feuds and elected Cassivellaunus as their leader. As ruler of the Catuvellauni tribe on the north side of the River Thames, he had, until then, been at war with most of the British tribes. Now, the general state of alarm caused them to confer upon him the supreme command, as he was the most renowned of the British warriors.
The British army, reconstituted and strengthened under the leadership of Cassivellaunus, met the Romans at the Stour crossing once again. The Britons used chariot warfare, with two horses pulling a driver and a warrior, the latter hurling javelins and then dismounting at close quarters to fight infantry-style. After a hard-fought battle, the Romans eventually drove back the Britons and then pursued Cassivellaunus toward the Thames. In the wooded terrain north of the River Thames, Cassivellaunus resorted to guerrilla tactics, which, as elsewhere, proved effective against Roman troops.44 Time and again his war chariots and cavalry swooped down and attacked the vanguard or rear guard, flank guards, or scouting details. Time and again the Romans halted and repulsed the attacks and then resumed their march. Sometimes after repelling the Britons, the junior Roman officers allowed their men to chase them into the forests, and each time it spelled disaster for the Romans. Too eager a pursuit without the requisite reconnaissance resulted in heavy and unnecessary casualties. Even at the end of a hard day’s march, when the Romans halted to erect a fortified camp, British warriors would burst out of the surrounding woods and rush the Roman detachments there to protect the fatigue parties. The entire operation was costing the Romans far too many casualties, and Caesar knew it.
Roman troops combed the countryside in search of Cassivellaunus, foraging, raiding, and torching many farming communities as they marched forward. Cassivellaunus responded with a scorched-earth policy, withdrawing people and flocks from the pathway of the advancing Roman Army. He was so successful that Rome’s Gallic cavalry could no longer venture out of communication range of the main body of troops, and the work both of foraging and of destruction was limited to what the legionaries could do in the course of their day’s march.
By now, despite only limited success by the Romans, delegations from five British tribes had appeared in Caesar’s camp to make peace overtures.45 They believed Cassivellaunus was fighting a losing battle and that the temporary British alliance was breaking down.46 They helped Caesar with vital intelligence on the whereabouts of the rebel chief, by disclosing the location of his secret stronghold, which was strategically placed among the woods and marshlands not far from Caesar’s own position.47 Nothing more plainly shows the counterintelligence ability of the Britons than the fact that they had kept their headquarters secret from the Romans, who had not learned this fact before. Had Cassivellaunus allowed even a handful of his subjects to be taken prisoner, the secret could hardly have been kept for so long. He had successfully kept them out of range of the Romans.
The Romans pursued Cassivellaunus to the Thames, where the large native force appeared in battle formation on the far bank. There were two points at which the river could be forded, but only one that could be crossed safely. Because of an opportune piece of intelligence from deserters, Caesar chose the Brentford crossing, a decision that saved him many unnecessary casualties.48 Even the crossing he did choose was not without its dangers, however. The Britons had implanted in the riverbed a line of pointed stakes that were not visible above the water. These stakes would have inflicted severe injuries, especially among the cavalry, had not Caesar been warned in time – by whom, we are not told. Nevertheless, the cavalry crossed first, closely followed by the infantry.49 (It should be noted that Caesar also does not explain how the underwater barrier of stakes were negotiated by his cavalrymen.)
By the end of July or early August, the Roman troops had cut their way through the forest and marshlands and now stood in sight of the formidable Celtic hill fort at Wheathampstead (see Map 16).50 The Romans successfully stormed the fort while Cassivellaunus, his family, and many of the defenders escaped in the confusion. Making a virtue of necessity, Cassivellaunus may have misled Caesar into the belief that this victory was more decisive than it really was. The Kentish contingents suddenly disappeared, perhaps purposefully spreading the disinformation that Cassivallaunus had disbanded them. Whatever the method of spreading this rumor, it worked. Caesar himself admits that he believed the story and would never have ventured into the heart of the country with an intact enemy behind him. Yet only four days later, when the Roman main army was well out of the way, the Kentish troops felt strong enough to attack the main Roman camp at Deal, with its garrison, and thus caused Caesar to be hastily recalled.
The attack was repulsed, and Caesar does not make much of this attempt on his naval base, but he may have taken it more seriously than he admits.51 Here he was under attack, and then shortly thereafter decides to leave. He himself tells us that he had already decided to return to Gaul, even before the British overtures for peace were made. He lists two reasons: the approach of the equinox, and the unsettled state of Gaul. Neither excuse should be taken as genuine. Caesar taken over enough supplies to winter in Britain, so the state of the weather in the Channel was irrelevant. Secondly, Gaul was so quiet on his return that he was able to disperse his troops into winter quarters. It has even been suggested that if Commius had been used as the go-between, then the first overtures to peace may even have come from the Romans.52 The terms of the surrender Caesar negotiated with the Britons were quite moderate, again suggesting that he was simply anxious to extricate himself from a bad situation.
At Deal, Caesar found that only a few of the sixty new transports built by Labienus had arrived. Consequently, two voyages had to be made to ferry the force back to the Continent before the fall weather set in. He also transported to the Continent all the British captives, who would be sold as slaves in order to finance the expedition. Caesar was still contemplating another invasion to conquer the whole island and establish a permanent Roman garrison when the situation in Gaul finally did erupt and put an end to his plans. By the spring of 53 bc, a Gallic uprising under the leadership of Indutiomarus resulted in the defeat of three of Caesar’s legions. When Indutiomarus died, the banner was taken up by Vercingetorix in 52 bc, and for the next three years Gaul was beset by a series of vicious wars, in which Caesar and his army were hard pressed. The Gallic resistance was finally crushed, but Caesar never returned to Britain; indeed, Roman legions would not return again for another ninety-seven years, when the Emperor Claudius began the conquest of Britain in ad 43.
Success or failure?
Caesar’s own Commentaries on the Gallic War gives one of the clearest and most detailed accounts of an ancient military campaign known, and yet what these ancient accounts tell us is that he failed. When his British expeditions are examined in detail, they reveal not the perfect general lauded by modem authors such as Mommsen, Froude, Rice Holmes, Dodge, White, or Last,53 but rather the ambitious demagogue closer to Fuller’s interpretation, in which he is described as “a general who could not only win brilliant victories but also commit dismal blunders,” blunders so costly to himself that more than half of his campaigns were consumed in extricating himself from the results of his own mistakes.54 To spend over half a war extricating oneself from difficulties created by the enemy may or may not be good generalship; but to have to do so as a consequence of one’s own mistakes is incontestably bad generalship, even when the extrications are brilliant. And, of course, dismal military blunders follow from bad intelligence gathering. What these commentaries tell us is that we may never know exactly what happened in Britain, for if this account is the best face Caesar can put on his own actions, then something even less impressive must have happened in reality.
Three questions must be asked when assessing Caesar’s performance. What were his intentions? Did he collect the intelligence necessary to accomplish the task? And finally, did he achieve his goals, and, if not, why not? How one answers the first question really decides whether one rates his excursions as successful military operations or foolish blunders into unexplored territory about which he knew next to nothing.
For most historians, the raid of 55 bc stands as a reconnaissance in force undertaken to simply get a better look at the island, while the second raid of 54 bc is viewed as an amphibious assault. If the second raid was, as Kahn calls it “a police action,” then Caesar accomplished his purpose.55 He had frightened the islanders from supporting rebellion on the Continent, or from offering asylum to Gallic insurgents, and he had opened the island to Italian traders. If this was all Caesar planned, then he accomplished it. But this interpretation also requires us to take Caesar at his word, a dangerous practice with such a skilled propagandist. Did Caesar really transport 30,000 troops for such a small result? As one author puts it, “Caesar’s declared intention of reconnoitering rather than conquering the island… has the clear ring of self-justification.”56
Malcolm Todd, by contrast, is certain that Caesar planned to conquer Britain in the same way he conquered Gaul,57 and, had he not been called elsewhere, he would have pursued that goal regardless of the number of raids it required. The reconnaissance-in-strength of 55 bc was followed by a major expedition intended to subdue as much of Britain as possible. Todd is probably correct in saying that Caesar’s motives for pursuing a conquest in Britain were similar to his motives for invading Gaul in 58 bc. His ambitions had not been satisfied by the conquest of Gaul, and there was a remote and glittering prize of war offered just across the Channel. Although there may have been a very strong economic motive, it would never match that of personal glory in ancient accounts such as Caesar’s. The British adventure, according to this line of thinking, cannot be separated from Caesar’s other exploits in western Europe. Simply, it was one more opportunity for conquest and profit. It is even possible to argue that conquest and occupation had been expected of him by Rome.58 Neither, however, was achieved. The first step toward the direct administration of southern Britain had indeed been taken, but Britain could not be taxed without being governed, and Caesar could not leave an army on the island. There was no conquest and no new province. In this case he came, he saw, but he did not conquer.
If conquest was the goal, as Todd and others affirm, then both expeditions were failures.59 If the first expedition in 55 bc was a reconnaissance raid to gain information about the harbors on the southeast coast of Britain in preparation for the real assault, then it certainly failed.60 Even Caesar knew he had blundered. It is clear from the apologetic tone which more than once creeps into the narrative of both his expeditions, that his conscience was not at ease.61 He expected to be criticized for undertaking them, and on so small a scale and so late in the season; perhaps for trying it at all. He probably expected to be criticized for making no provision in the landing of 54 bc to ensure the safety of his fleet in a gale at high water in spring. He could expect to be criticized for not having brought supplies, both in the way of foodstuffs and of materials for repairing his ships in the event of damage. None of these criticisms can be altogether rebutted, and there are several factors that suggest a lack of intelligence as the source of his problems.
The first intelligence gap was that he did not know how dangerous a matter it was to ship an army to Britain without having first secured a sheltered harbor for the transports. Had he understood the conditions of ocean rather than Mediterranean conditions, he would either never have gone to Britain in the late summer of 55 bc, or he would have insisted on a sheltered harbor, or a reserve fleet, or both. Even more amazing is that his misfortunes in 55 bc failed to teach him this lesson, for he repeated the mistake the following year.62
If Caesar’s first expedition was for reconnaissance, to gather intelligence for the second landing, then what exactly did he learn? As to how a fleet could sail to Britain and remain there safely until it was needed again, he learned nothing. He also seems to learn nothing about the geography of Britain as a whole, or about its natural resources. And he learned little about the military resources the Britons could bring in their efforts to resist him, because he only came into contact with a handful of East Kentish tribes.63 R.G. Collingwood notes: “one cannot believe either that the information gathered in the reconnaissance came up to Caesar’s expectations or that it was worth winning at the expense of so considerable an effort and so great a risk.”64
Caesar did learn some useful things about the Britons. He learned that unlike the Gauls of his own time, the Britons made use of chariots in warfare, and he saw how these were handled. He describes these tactics with care and pays high tribute both to the skill with which the chariots were driven and to their effectiveness in battle. Yet the information did not allow him to overcome the chief tactical problem that this presented to the Romans: the difficulty of pursuit. On his reconnaissance in 55 bc, Caesar was without cavalry except for the 30 men of Commius’s bodyguard. Even in his invasion the following year, he was, like all Roman commanders, inadequately furnished with cavalry. Consequently, charioteers could always escape him when their attack failed.65
The ironic fact is that conquering Britain was well within Caesar’s reach. Had he collected better intelligence to plan the operation, taken his time, and arrived with the correct troops and provisions, he might have had the opportunity to cross the Thames and strike at the British tribes before they had time to organize. Instead, because of his setbacks, the Britons had time to forget their differences and form an effective alliance against him. The alliance did not last very long, but the loss of time and initiative it created cost Caesar a resounding conquest. The most ambitious project of his career had ended in failure and disappointment. Caesar had lost a campaign and a year of valuable time, and a heavy blow had been dealt to his career, which heretofore had relied on the certainty of victory and the continued expansion for the Romans. Driven on by impatience, a craving for spectacular successes, and the hope of booty, he overreached himself and walked blindly into an untenable position.
It is not clear whether he knew he had overreached himself. If he did not, then the situation in Gaul soon made it clear.66 Because no garrison was left in Britain, Caesar’s compact with Cassivellaunus was worthless, and it seems improbable that any tribute was paid.67 He became famous for being the first Roman general to set foot on a distant and little-known land of no political, strategical, or economic value to Rome. Furthermore, the price of this fame was his absence from Gaul, which gave the smouldering discontent there time to grow and a national rebellion to foment that threatened to annul all his successes.68 In many ways the real winners were the Britons. While in purely military terms the Romans did gain the upper hand, from the economic point of view it could well be argued that the Britons scored a counterintelligence victory over Caesar by keeping their intelligence secrets about the wealth and natural resources of the island. Had the Romans known and appreciated this potential, it might have prompted them into an earlier attempt at conquest. Caesar learned nothing of Britain’s silver-bearing lead mines, its copper mines, the gold in western Britain (Wales), or the iron works. And although it has been argued that the Romans did know about British tin mines and their trade routes, Caesar did not discover their extent, nor did he conquer the area in which they were located.69 Similarly, he learned nothing of agriculture outside of the area he visited, nor was he aware of the spinning, weaving, pottery-making or metal-working found throughout the island. The prevailing opinion in Rome during the hundred years thereafter was that Britain would not be a lucrative addition to the provinces.70 Yet, trading patterns were set up; one of the larger tribes in southern Britain, the Trinobantes of Essex, benefited considerably from Caesar’s patronage, and in the aftermath of the expeditions much of the cross-Channel trade apparently passed through their territory. It may be that they were granted a monopoly by Caesar in return for their pro-Roman stance. At any rate, in the ninety years that followed their leaders grew rich and were able to acquire quantities of Roman luxury goods, such as wine, fine pottery, and silverware.71
Caesar was what Peter Salway calls “a tactical opportunist.”72 As such, he relied a great deal upon his proverbial good luck. But had his luck gone the other way, the results would have been disastrous. Had the gale been worse, had the majority of his ships been destroyed instead of the minority of them, had the Britons been more energetic in preventing his troops from foraging, or had they collected a fleet powerful enough to hamper the movements of his returning transports, catastrophe would have surely ensued. Caesar, like many other commanders, took calculated risks. True, he extricated himself from dangers that would have proved fatal to a less-talented commander. But had it not been for his coolness and the soundness of his tactical judgment, his career might have ended ingloriously on the coast of Kent. He had neglected the importance of intelligence gathering, and the price paid was the failure to achieve his goals and the risk of losing some of the finest units of the Roman Army. It had been a near miss, and Caesar felt compelled to introduce excuses to preempt criticism that might seep back to Rome.
The preponderance of modem opinion falls on the side of Caesar’s British adventures being unsuccessful.73 I would suggest that the cause of that failure was often a lack of adequate intelligence or not acting appropriately given that intelligence. Todd rates the two expeditions as “among the least important, and certainly the least successful, of that conqueror’s career.” On its results he writes: “the two excursions did little or nothing to alter the relationship between the Britons and Rome. This was to come later as a result of diplomacy, not invasion.”74 T.N. Dupuy adds: “He had in fact accomplished nothing of lasting importance to Rome.”75 Another commentator calls the expeditions “short and comparatively unimportant episodes in the life of the greatest man of the age.”76 Caesar’s two expeditions had provided some basic information on the terrain, inhabitants, and the political, economic, and military customs of Britain, which is our only historical record for the time period. But he had revealed rather than bequeathed Britain to Rome. With better planning and intelligence Caesar might well have achieved his goal, but his ambition and impatience overcame his better judgment. As intelligence gathering operations, his campaigns were of limited value and, as acts of conquest, they were entirely unconvincing.
Notes
1. An earlier version of this material was published as “Caesar, Intelligence and Ancient Britain,” International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence, 15, 1 (spring 2002), pp. 77–100.
2. Caesar, BG 2.4.14.
3. J.F.C. Fuller, Julius Caesar. Man, Soldier, and Tyrant (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1965), p. 121.
4. This is suggested in a letter from Cicero to his friend Trebatius Testa dated May 54 bc, just before Caesar’s second expedition. He says: “I hear that in Britain there is not an ounce of either gold or silver. If that is so, I advise you to capture some war-chariot, and post back to me as soon as you can.” W. Glynn Williams translation, Loeb Classical Library edition.
5. T. Rice Holmes, “Caesar’s Second Invasion of Britain,” in Ancient Britain and the Invasions of Julius Caesar (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1907), p. 327.
6. Tacitus wrote that the British “retained their freedom and were never tributaries to Rome,” Annals 12.34: vacui a securibus et tributis.
7. See S. Mitchell, “Cornish Tin, Julius Caesar, and the Invasion of Britain,” Studies in Latin Literature (Brussels: Collection Latomus, 1983), vol. 3, p. 91.
8. “Landings of Caesar in Britain,” Athena Review 1.1; B. Cunliffe, Iron Age Communities in Britain (New York: Routledge, 1991), p. 459.
9. Austin and Rankov, Exploratio, p. 100.
10. Dio Cassius 60.19.2. For a discussion of what Caesar did wrong in Britain, see P.B. Ellis, Caesar’s Invasion of Britain (New York: New York University Press, 1978), pp. 13–16.
11. Caesar, BG 4.21.18–26.
12. S. Frere, Britannia: A History of Roman Britain (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1987), p. 19.
13. Caesar, BG 4.21.1–5; 4.21.26–30, H.J. Edwards translation, Loeb Classical Library edition; Austin and Rankov, Exploratio, p. 100; on the bravery required for a one-man reconnaissance mission of this type, see M. Gichon, “Military Intelligence in the Roman Army,” in H.E. Herzog and R. Frei-Stoba (eds), Labor Omnibus Unus (Wiesbaden: Franx Steiner, 1989), p. 159.
14. Strabo 4.4.1.
15. Caesar, BG 3.8
16. C. Meier, Caesar, trans-David McLintock (New York: Basic Boots/Hazor Collins, 1995), p. 274; V. Belfiglio, “Roman Amphibious Warfare in 55 bc,” Military and Naval History Journal (March 1998), p. 5.
17. Since Caesar never names this port for the first expedition, but only for the second one, identifying Portius Itius as the site of both departures is a guess. Dio Cassius 40.1 says that Caesar landed at the same place on both expeditions, but not that he sailed from the same place. For the supposition that he may have departed from different places, see H.E. Malden, “Caesar’s Expeditions to Britain,” Journal of Philology 17 (1888), pp. 163–78. A second question is the modem identification of Portus Itius. For this, see Athena Review 1, 1, p. 2; M. Todd, Roman Britain (New Jersey: Humanities Press, 1981), p. 18 identifies Portus Itius as Gesoriacum, the harbor of Bologne; similarly Frere, Britannia, p. 19; Ellis, Caesar’s Invasion of Britain, p. 84 identifies it as Wissant. On both the point of departure and the point of landing based on sailing conditions in the Channel, see H.D. Warburg, “Caesar’s First Expedition to Britain,” English Historical Review 38 (1923), pp. 226–40.
18. On the identification of Ambleteuse, see Napoleon III, Emperor of France, A History of Julius Caesar (New York: Harper Bros., 1866), vol. 2, p. 175.
19. Caesar, BG 4.22.
20. Website: Ibid., 4.23.
21. For an extremely detailed discussion of the sailing conditions in the Channel, see Warburg, “Caesar’s First Expedition to Britain,” pp. 226–40, who argues for a camp west of Dover. Malden, “Caesar’s Expeditions to Britain,” pp. 164–78 believed the landing place was Romney Marsh.
22. J. Wacher, The Coming of Britain (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1979), p. 2 puts the landing at Walmer; M. Todd, Roman Britain (London: Fontana, 1981), p. 21 puts it “in the neighborhood of Deal and Worth”; Rev. E. Cardwell, “The Landing Place of Julius Caesar in Britain,” Archaeologia Cantiana 3 (1860), p. 17 for Deal; R.G. Collingwood, Roman Britain (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1994), p. 44 points out that if Caesar’s estimate of 7 miles from Dover is correct, it must have been close to Walmer Castle, but not so far north as Sandwich, or he would have surely discovered Richborough. For suggestions of landings in the other direction, see: W. Ridgeway, “Caesar’s Invasion of Britain,” Journal of Philology 19 (1891), pp. 201–10, who argues for Pevensey Bay; R.C. Hussey, “On Caesar’s Landing Place in Britain,” Archaeologia Cantiana 1 (1858), pp. 94–110, for Winchelsea.
23. Caesar, BG 4.25, trans. Anne and Peter Wiseman, The Battle for Gaul (Boston: D.R. Godine, 1980).
24. P. Salway, The Oxford Illustrated History of Roman Britain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), p. 22.
25. Caesar, BG 4.28. See Ellis, Caesar’s Invasion of Britain, p. 103.
26. Caesar, BG 4.32. See Rice Holmes, Ancient Britain, p. 321.
27. Napoleon III, too, thought the operation a second-class venture. See his History of Julius Caesar, vol. 2, p. 223.
28. Caesar, BG 2.35.4. A supplicatio or religious festival or fast, on account of public success.
29. The consul designate, L. Domitius Ahenobarbus, was scheming to have him recalled from the Gallic command. See C.E. Stevens, “The Terminal Date of Caesar’s Command,” AJPhil 59 (1938), p. 176. J.V.P.D. Balsdon, “Consular Provinces Under the Late Republic – Caesar’s Gallic Command,” Journal of Roman Studies 29 (1939), pp. 170ff.
30. Meier, Caesar, 282. Cicero wrote to Atticus (4.17): “The result of the war in Britain is looked forward to with anxiety. For it is proved that the approach to the island is guarded with astonishing masses of rock and it has been ascertained, too, that there is not a scrap of silver in the island, not any hope of booty except from slaves; but I don’t fancy you will find any with literary or musical talents among them [i.e. slaves who would bring in a high price].” E.O. Winstedt translation, Loeb Classical Library edition.
31. Dio Cassius 40.1.
32. Website: Ibid.; Caesar’s figures on the number of ships are confusing. Fuller, Julius Caesar, counts: grand total, 800 ships (Caesar, BG 5.8), made up of 540 of the 600 new ships, 60 of which failed to sail (Caesar, BG 5.5.), plus 28 galleys and 232 old and private ships (Caesar, BG 5.8). He compared the number of ships between the two expeditions, p. 124, note 2.
33. Caesar, BG 5.1.8–17.
34. Rice Holmes, Ancient Britain, p. 326.
35. Website: Ibid., p. 313.
36. Caesar, BG 5.8.10–29.
37. Website: Ibid., 5.8.
38. The little River Stour, later the site of Canterbury. See Cunliffe, Iron Age Communities in Britain, p. 147. Rice Homes, Ancient Britain, pp. 595–665 and 678–85 discusses the location in great detail. For the argument against the greater River Stour as the site of the battle, see H.E. Malden, “Caesar’s Expeditions to Britain,” Journal of Philology 19 (1891), p. 13.
39. Caesar, BG 5.9. On Bigbury, see especially R.F. Jessup, “Bigberry Camp, Harble-down, Kent,” Archaeological Journal 89 (1932), pp. 87–115, which provides a geological and physiographical map of the site. Cunliffe, Iron Age Communities of Britain, p. 147, also with map.
40. And yet in Caesar, BG 5.9.1 he expresses little anxiety over the safety of his ships.
41. Rice Holmes, Ancient Britain, p. 664, n. 7 does not face this fact. Rice Holmes refutes this suggestion by saying it might be dangerous to land in a harbor with a narrow entrance in the presence of an enemy, but in 54, even if he had wanted to land on an open beach in the first place, Caesar could have, immediately upon landing, sent his ships round to Richborough – a mere 2 or 3 miles. There is even less reason why he should not have moved there after the storm, instead of spending two precious days in beaching them.
42. Fuller, Julius Caesar, p. 125.
43. Caesar, BG 5.11.
44. He did not have much choice. Although this was the first time Caesar had to face chariots in considerable numbers, he soon realized that by keeping his own horsemen in close contact with the legions, when the clash with the charioteers came, the heavy Roman infantry could move in quickly and engage in hand-to-hand fighting with a foe ill-equipped with body armor and thrusting weapons. Once this technique was grasped, the only advantage of the British war chariot was in the initial confusion it could cause in the battle line. Nevertheless, it remained in use for centuries after Caesar left Britain.
45. These included the Trinovantes and their allies, the Cenimagni, Segontiaci, Ancalites, Bibroci, and Cassi. The latter five tribes are known to us only through Caesar’s account.
46. Cassivellaunus had killed the king of the Trinovantes. His son, Mandubracius, fled to Caesar’s protection in Gaul. The Trinovantes asked Caesar to install him as king, and offered surrender terms, hostages and supplies of grain. In return they were promised Roman protection against Cassivellaunus and immunity from Roman attack.
47. Caesar, BG 5.21. This is thought to be the hill fort at Wheathampstead, located on the west bank of the River Lea, near St. Albans. Caesar refers to it as an oppidum and it should not be considered a capital because the Cautvellauni had a number of fortified strongholds. If it had been a capital, the Trinovantes would certainly have known where it was and told Caesar. See C. Hawkes, “Caesar’s Britain: An Oppidum for Cassivellaunus,” Antiquity 54, 210 (March 1980), p. 138.
48. Rice Holmes, Ancient Britain, p. 344. Caesar dismisses the story of the march (which must have lasted a week) in a single sentence, and this contains no clue of what problems he had along the way. A.H. Burne, The Art of War on Land (Harrisburg, PA: Military Service Publishing, 1947), p. 74 rejects Rice Holmes’s choice of the Brentford Crossing in favor of Conway Stakes. For defense of the Brentford Crossing, see Rev. H. Jenkins, “On Caesar’s Passage of the Thames,” Journal of the British Archaeological Association 16 (1860), pp. 133–44.
49. Caesar, BG 5.18.
50. Ever since Mortimer Wheeler’s excavations in the 1930s, Wheathampstead has been the main candidate, but the identification is not universally accepted. See Salway, Roman Britain, p. 36; J. Wacher, The Coming of Britain (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1979), p. 9; and Todd, Roman Britain, p. 25 for other possibilities.
51. Caesar, BG 5.22; Rice Holmes, Ancient Britain, pp. 348ff.; Salway, Roman Britain, p. 36.
52. Todd, Roman Britain, p. 26.
53. T. Mommsen, The History of Rome (Glencoe, IL: Free Press, 1957), vol. 4, pp. 430 and 343; J.A. Froude, Caesar: A Sketch (New York: Scribner’s. 1895), p. 550; T. Rice Homes, Caesar’s Conquest of Gaul (New York: AMS Press, 1971), pp. xii and 42; T.A. Dodge, Caesar: A History of the Art of War (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1894), vol. 2, pp. 767 and 691; E.L. White, Why Rome Fell (New York: Harper, 1927), p. 136; F.E. Adcock, “Caesar’s Dictatorship,” CAH, vol. 9, p. 705, who also points out that Caesar made “no single advance in the art of war.” The same author, in Roman Art of War Under the Republic, p. 123, adds that this was because he did not need to.
54. Dodge, Caesar, vol. 12, p. 692. Wacher, Coming of Rome, p. 4: “The first formal Roman contact with Britain can hardly be rated an outstanding success… The expedition was probably only rescued from complete disaster by the quality of Caesar’s generalship; a lesser man might have been closer to total failure.”
55. A.D. Kahn, The Education of Julius Caesar (New York: Schocken Books, 1986), p. 268.
56. See Mitchell, “Cornish Tin, Julius Caesar,” p. 91.
57. Todd, Roman Britain, p. 26; see also R.G. Collingwood and J.N.L. Myres, Roman Britain and the English Settlements (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1937), p. 34: “it can hardly be doubted that his plan was to conquer the whole island.”
58. Salway, Roman Britain, p. 32.
59. See Bume, Art of War on Land, pp. 67–80.
60. See Graham Webster’s judgment, The Roman Invasion of Britain (Totowa, NJ: Barnes & Noble, 1980), p. 36; R. Legg, Romans in Britain (London: Heinemann, 1983), p. 1: “Julius Caesar conquered Gaul, but he bungled the invasion of Britain.”
61. See C.E. Stevenss comments in “55 bc and 54 bc,” Antiquity 21 (1947), p. 5.
62. Collingwood and Myres, Roman Britain, p. 40.
63. Website: Ibid.
64. Website: Ibid.
65. Website: Ibid.
66. Meier, Caesar, p. 293.
67. See Stevens, “55 bc and 54 bc,” p. 8.
68. And thus Fuller, Julius Caesar, p. 126, calls it “an escapade.”
69. Compare, for example, Tacitus, Agricola 20, who says that while in Britain, Agricola did his own reconnaissance, chose campsites and reconnoitered estuaries and forests.
70. The literature on the Cornish tin trade is enormous. See Mitchell, “Cornish Tin, Julius Caesar,” pp. 80–99, who believes that securing control of the tin mines was the motivation for the entire campaign; a useful recent survey which cites the ancient evidence is F. Villard, “La Céramique grécque de Marseille,” Essai d’histoire économique, VIe-IVe siècle (Paris: E. de Boccard, 1960), pp. 137ff.
71. B. Cunliffe, “Relations Between Gaul and Britain in the First Century bc and Early First Century AD,” in S. Macready and F.H. Thompson (eds), Cross-Channel Trade Between Gaul and Britain in the Pre-Roman Iron Age (London: Society of Antiquaries, 1984), pp. 3–23. See also Cunliffe, Iron Age Communities of Britain, p. 546, which shows how the core zone became politically divided into two power blocks, with the north of Thames group, the Catuvellauni/Trinovantes, becoming dominant, developing oppida and a market economy.
72. Salway, Roman Britain, p. 27.
73. See John Wacher’s comment in “Britain 43 bc to ad 69,” in CAH, vol. 2, p. 503: “Caesar’s expeditions… bore no long-term success.”
74. They were of little consequence militarily, but a success in diplomatic and symbolic terms.
75. T.N. Dupuy, The Military Life of Julius Caesar: Imperator (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1996), p. 60.
76. Stevens, “55 bc and 54 bc,” p. 3.