Caesar's Legion: The Epic Saga of Julius Caesar's Elite Tenth Legion and the Armies of Rome (9 page)

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The Britons had hidden in the woods all night, knowing the legionaries would return in the morning for the last of the wheat. Now, while their infantry streamed along the perimeter of the wheat field and closed around the men of the 7th like the jaws of a vice, surrounding them, the tribal chieftains signaled to their cavalry and chariots, which had been waiting some distance away. The chariots sped up. Running back and forth along the Roman line, the vehicles were hard-to-hit weapon platforms, with the nobles standing beside the drivers and hurling javelins on each pass. The noise of pounding hooves and drumming wheels would have been deafening, with the legionaries losing count of how many chariots there were—hundreds, maybe thousands. The following year, according to Caesar, the Britons would put four thousand chariots into the field against him.

Sometimes the drivers would run out onto the chariot pole as far as the yoke as the chariots careered along at full speed, then ran back to their driving positions, as quick as lightning, just to awe the men of the 7th, who’d never seen anything like it in their ten years in the Roman army.

The British cavalry charged forward in bands, threw their javelins, then parted to allow the chariots to return in a rehearsed move, sliding through the gaps between the cavalry squadrons. To the legionaries, it would have been almost pretty to watch, had they not been fighting for their lives. Then a new tactic emerged: the chariots wheeled around and halted, the nobles jumped down, ran at the Roman line, and began hacking at the legionary shields with their swords. If the legionaries advanced against them, the nobles ran back to the waiting chariots, which then took off with them, leaving the Roman line disjointed so that the legionaries had to quickly retreat before they were caught out in the open by other chariots waiting close by for just such an opportunity.

There was an air of confidence about the Britons. They had the Romans surrounded in foreign territory and cut off from help. None had been allowed to escape to bring reinforcements. And these much-vaunted legionaries were looking disorganized and afraid. Probably as far as the tribesmen were concerned, the annihilation of the 7th Legion was just a matter of time.

Back at the Roman camp by the beach, Caesar was working in his headquarters tent, the
praetorium,
dictating to his Greek secretaries. Julius Caesar, man of destiny, man in a hurry, never wasted a minute. When traveling to and from Gaul, while carried in a litter he always had one of c05.qxd 12/5/01 4:55 PM Page 38

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his secretaries riding with him, taking down his dictation. Sometimes he made part of the journey driving his own chariot, and on these occasions a secretary sat on the floor taking notes as his commander drove and composed at the same time, while a soldier of his bodyguard stood at the back of the chariot with a drawn sword in one hand and holding on for dear life with the other. On the march with his legions, Caesar often rode with a secretary mounted on either side of him, dictating a different piece to each. Occasionally Caesar would dictate to three or four different secretaries at a time. The material might be chapters of his numerous books—he wrote about subjects as varied as astronomy and public speaking, and his famous military memoirs. He even wrote poetry when the mood struck him—on the overland trip to Córdoba from Rome in 61 b.c. he’d passed the three and a half weeks writing a poem titled “The Journey.” Then there were his official dispatches, orders to his subordinates, reports to the Senate. And a torrent of private letters to his friends and allies back home. Politics, like soldiering, was in his blood. And because intrigue is the currency of politics, Caesar had invented a secret cipher, known only to his most intimate friends, involving the transposition of letters on the written page. Using this, he was able to safely pass on instructions and advice, to seek favors and to promise them, and so to manipulate affairs at home in his absence without fear of the letters falling into the wrong hands and his plans being uncovered.

One of the nonmilitary projects Caesar was working on in Britain was a scientific study of the length of the days on the island. As a matter of course, his legions were equipped with water clocks to time the three-hour watches in camp, and Caesar had several servants meticulously time the hours of sunlight between dawn and dusk each day using dedicated water clocks. It’s likely he was now pacing his tent, dictating a preliminary analysis, comparing the length of the days here to those in various parts of Gaul, when a colonel of the 10th Legion burst in. Stopping in midflow, Caesar would have looked up with an impatient frown, then recognized the colonel as the tribune of the watch, and noted a concerned look on his face.

The colonel would have advised that there was a worrying sight to be seen from the guard towers by the praetorian gate. Caesar would have followed the young colonel out into the main street of the camp, then hurried with him toward the nearby rear gate of the camp, passing off-duty men of the 10th lounging around in front of their tents who would have followed the general’s urgent passage with turning heads. At the gate, the ten men of the sentry detail—ten was the standard number of sentries c05.qxd 12/5/01 4:55 PM Page 39

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assigned to each camp gate, according to Polybius—can be sure to have stood with their hands on the hilts of their sheathed swords, looking anxious. Caesar and the colonel can be expected to have clambered up a ladder into one of the wooden guard towers on either side of the praetorian gate, the gate that traditionally faced the enemy.

There, legionaries on tower duty would have pointed to the west. As Caesar followed their gaze, he saw, rising above the trees on the still morning air, a massive dust cloud, obviously man-made. The legionaries would have remarked that the boys from the 7th Legion were over there.

Caesar didn’t have to be told that. He knew well enough which direction the men of the 7th Legion had taken when they set off on their foraging expedition that morning and would have already worked out that the dust cloud must have been raised by the pounding hooves of horses and the churning wheels of chariots.

Turning to the tribune of the watch, Caesar issued a stream of orders.

The two guard cohorts were to march with him at once. Two off-duty cohorts were to relieve them, and all the remaining cohorts of the 10th Legion were to be called to arms and sent on his heels.

By the time his servants had strapped on Caesar’s armor and equipment, the two guard cohorts would have formed up in their ranks behind their standards in the main street, facing the tribunal, while the rest of the camp was in a commotion of preparation, with men running to answer the call of “To Arms” being trumpeted all around them. Caesar is likely to have addressed them briefly from the tribunal. Looking out over the faces of the twelve hundred waiting men, he would have told them that their comrades of the 7th Legion were in trouble and that they were going to their aid.

The men of the new sentry detail drew back the gate. Orders issued forth from centurions, and the two guard cohorts swung about and marched out the open gateway, like all camp gateways built just wide enough so that ten legionaries could pass through side by side. Caesar led the way.

With him marched his personal standard-bearer and his deputies and staff officers. All were on foot because even Caesar’s own steed had been sent to Ambleteuse to make the crossing on the ships that had been modified with stalls for equine transport. There was not a single horse in the Roman camp—even the thirty horsemen of King Commius’s escort were off searching for fodder.

At Caesar’s order, the trumpets of the two guard cohorts would have sounded “Double Time,” and the men of the 10th hurried in the direction of the ominous dust cloud in the distance. As they drew closer, they heard c05.qxd 12/5/01 4:55 PM Page 40

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the thunder of horses’ hooves, the rumble of chariot wheels, and the hollering and yelling of the attacking tribesmen. The distant fields were now empty of the tribespeople who had been innocently going about their business earlier in the day.

When Caesar and the men of the 10th came into view, the 7th Legion was holding its ground, but the ranks were tightly packed and suffering from the rain of missiles coming from the Britons surrounding them.

When the tribesmen became aware of the approach of Roman reinforcements, their attack faltered. The tribesmen to the east, fearing an attack in their rear, pulled back, opening the way for Caesar to link up with the 7th. The men of the 7th were now able to regroup behind their correct standards and open up their ranks. Standing in their units with comrades of their own squads once more, they can be expected to have poked fun at each other in their relief to be back among friends, and waited for the next order from their own mean but familiar centurions.

Soon six more cohorts of the 10th came pounding over the horizon.

As the two legions formed an extended battle line in their cohorts, Caesar held his position, and the Britons withdrew. When the danger had passed, Caesar marched the legions back to the beachhead. The men of the 7th gratefully regained the safety of their camp, refreshed themselves, and had their wounds seen to. But Caesar was not pleased with them. The 7th had not displayed the fighting qualities he’d come to expect of his best troops.

Several days of torrential rain followed, confining the legionaries to their tents. They kept their arms within reach, expecting to see more of the Britons. They weren’t to be disappointed. In this interim, the tribes of southeastern England sent messengers far and wide, telling other tribes how paltry the Roman force was, how easy it would be to destroy the invaders, and how much Roman plunder was the Britons’ for the taking—with the result that as soon as the weather cleared, a vast force of British infantry and cavalry converged on Caesar’s camp. Roman lookouts gave plenty of warning, time enough for the legions to put on their decorations and helmet crests before they marched out and formed battle lines in front of the camp.

The British infantry immediately charged the Roman front line and were promptly repulsed. Steadily, the legions advanced, driving the Britons back the way they had come. Caesar now had a small cavalry force at his disposal—the squadron of thirty Atrebate troopers who had accompanied King Commius—and he sent them after the fleeing tribesmen. Not only did these mounted men harry the Britons for miles, they c05.qxd 12/5/01 4:55 PM Page 41

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also set fire to every one of the numerous Gallic-style timber and thatch farmhouses they found dotted around a wide area of eastern Kent, before returning to camp.

Again the British sent envoys begging for peace. This time Caesar demanded twice as many hostages as before, to be sent to him on the Continent. His naval officers informed him that they had been able to repair all but twelve of the transports damaged in the storm, and every one of the warships had been baled dry. At a squeeze, Caesar could take all his men back to France. With the equinox about to bring infamously stormy weather down from the north, he was ready to go.

Within days the army reembarked and sailed away. The crossing back to Boulogne was uneventful except for the closing stages. A strong wind blew down from the north and separated two of the transports from the rest of the convoy, pushing them farther along the French coast. The three hundred legionaries on board—men from either the 10th Legion or 7th Legion—were able to land without difficulty, but once they were ashore, they were attacked by French warriors of the renegade Morini tribe, who saw them as easy pickings.

Although they were surrounded, the legionaries held their ground and slipped a messenger away to Caesar up the coast. He immediately sent his idle cavalry from Ambleteuse and followed with the remainder of the 7th and 10th Legions. The surrounded legionaries held out for four hours until relief arrived, suffering a few wounded but no fatalities. As soon as the Roman cavalry appeared, the Morini scattered.

So drew to an end the first invasion of Britain. The men of the 10th went into winter camp at Boulogne, suspecting that unfinished business lay across the water for them. And when they heard that just two of the dozens of British tribes who had promised to send Caesar hostages had kept their word, the men of the 10th knew where they would be heading once the next campaigning season arrived.

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While Caesar spent the winter on business in northern Italy and the Balkans, the legions back in Gaul weren’t idle. They worked industriously through the cold and wet, fulfilling Caesar’s instructions to repair his existing ships and to have the maritime tribes build a large number of new ones, many to Caesar’s own design. Some of the new craft were flat-bottomed, and all were equipped with oars as well as sails for added maneuverability.

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When Caesar arrived back in Brittany in the spring of 54 b.c., he found he now had twenty-eight warships and more than six hundred new transports at his disposal, built from local timber, their sails and tackle brought up from Spain. Combining these with the surviving ships from the previous year’s expedition, he had enough vessels to take five fully equipped legions and two thousand cavalry with him on his next jaunt across the Channel. The tribes that had failed to keep their word to him and withheld their hostages were soon to be in for a rude surprise.

The units allocated to the latest amphibious operation were the veteran Spanish legions—the 10th, of course, plus the 7th, 8th, and 9th—as well as the northern Italians of the 12th Legion. Even though it had been raised at the same time and in the same region as the 12th, Caesar didn’t have much time for the 11th Legion. According to his staff officer Aulus Hirtius, even several years later he felt the 11th had yet to prove itself.