Was Caesar's invasion of Britain a disaster?

0:00Hey friends, if you love this podcast and want to decide what history we cover, then you need to become a Dan Snow's History Hit subscriber. Pitch your topic and if I like it, we'll make it into a subscriber exclusive episode. So far we've covered the English Reformations, the Hudson Bay Company, the Trail of Tears, all of which have been decided by dedicated subscribers. So take the reins of your favourite podcast by heading over to historyhit.com slash subscribe or sign up in your podcast player.

0:32This message is brought to you by Apple Card. Ah, fall. That cozy season where we swap the swimwear for sweaters and sunnies for scarves. But before the Halloween decorations are put away or Thanksgiving table has been set, there's already holly jolly music playing in the grocery store, reminding you that the year is coming to a close. Time to kick end of year into high gear. When you use Apple Card with Apple Pay, you earn 2 % daily cash back on all purchases, including food, decorations, gifts, and more. Get a head start on your end of year purchases. Apply for your Apple Card in the wallet app on your iPhone today and start using it right away with Apple Pay.

1:05Subject to credit approval, Apple Card is issued by Goldman Sachs Bank, USA, Salt Lake City Branch, terms and more at applecard.com. Therapy's biggest impact doesn't show up in some dramatic breakthrough. It shows up in the smallest moments. You bite your tongue instead of escalating. You put your phone down instead of firing off that text. You say what you actually mean instead of what would hurt someone else the most. Nobody applauds those moments, but they quietly change your life. That's what growing feels like, and that's exactly what Grow Therapy is here for. Grow is therapy that works, covered by insurance.

1:39Sessions average$21 with insurance, and some pay as little as$0, depending on their plan. There are no subscriptions, no long-term commitments. You just pay per session. Grow connects you with thousands of high-quality, licensed therapists across the U.S., offering both virtual and in-person sessions, nights and weekends. You can search by what matters, like insurance, specialty, identity, or availability. And you can book a therapy session in minutes and begin in as little as two days, not the national 48-day average. See if you could pay as little as$0 for therapy in seconds at growtherapy.com slash ACAST.

2:18That's growtherapy.com slash ACAST. growtherapy.com slash ACAST. Availability and coverage vary by state and insurance plan. In Our Time is a world-class seminar every week. Why was Jeremy a lonely snail? What were lines doing in York in the third century? I'm Misha Glennie, and every week I'm joined by expert guests to explore the ideas that shape our world. It's one of the first times, really, that you consistently see someone painting teeth. I know that sounds bonkers. If I was going to define mathematics, I would say it's the study of structure. In our time, listen on bbc.com or wherever you get your podcasts.

2:57Tea or coffee? Love a cup of tea.

3:10When Julius Caesar, arguably the greatest warlord in history, set his sights on a misty island at the very edge of the known world, he had no way of knowing what waited for him. Beyond those towering white cliffs of Dover, it was a mysterious island that his contemporaries called Britannia. In this episode, we're going to follow Caesar on those two military expeditions across the English Channel. We'll see how rough seas and shifting tides and very determined British opposition nearly destroyed the first invasion, and how determination and clever logistics and cavalry skirmishes and a bold strike across the Thames helped to make the second.

3:53For Caesar, Britannia was less a new province to conquer than it was a political performance. It was a chance to show that even this territory, beyond the edge of the known world, should tremble, should bend the knee before the might of Rome. and in fact it showed that the people of Rome should bend the knee to him. Joining us is Simon Elliott, Dr. Simon Elliott, best-selling historian, archaeologist, author, broadcaster, great friend of history hit, an expert on all things Rome. We're going to talk Caesar across the seas. Enjoy. T minus 10. Atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima. God saved the king.

4:32No black-white unity till there is first and black unity. Never to go to war with one another again. and lift off, and the shuttle has cleared the tower.

4:47Simon, thanks for coming back on the podcast. Absolute pleasure. What are these mysterious islands, Britain and Ireland? They're beyond the ocean. What do the Greek and Romans, before Caesar ever sets foot in it, what do they know about this place? The reality is, Dan, I think the Romans knew very little about Britain. So from their perspective, it's a fantastical place. You're looking at something that's akin to Mordor or something similar in Lord of the Rings or anywhere in Game of Thrones. It's basically a place of difference of which they knew little. But they do know there's valuable stuff there.

5:21They do, but it's important to contextualise why Caesar's invasions are so important, which we'll come to. Caesar's invasions are so important because they put Britain properly onto the Roman map. Before that, the Romans knew that their exports onto the continent are various metals, agricultural produce, arable, wool, hunting dogs, interestingly. And also, very interestingly, Britain in the pre-Roman period is a great place to go and get slaves. So that means that most of the major tribal groupings and confederations in Britain are fighting each other all the time. Okay, and then merchants from the Rome world, from the Mediterranean, can arrive at the beach and trade, pick up these slaves, pick up this tin, copper, hunting dogs, and then they take them back to the Rome world.

6:05So merchants were doing trade before the Roman legions ever set foot. Absolutely, and I actually think you probably find that actually merchants were embedded within sort of late-time age Britain. I think actually the trade side of thing was something the Romans had got covered, but what they didn't really know is any detail about the place. So it really, really was a place of difference and a place of fantasy. Julius Caesar, people have heard of him. People can go back and check out that excellent YouTube we made about Julius Caesar being the greatest Roman commander, question mark. You think he was?

6:34Julius Caesar conquers what is now France and Belgium. Yeah. An astonishing campaign of conquest. Yeah. Incredibly bloody, incredibly brutal, but incredibly effective. And is that what then, well, he stands at Calais and he looks across and thinks, what's that place? I mean, is that basically what happens? So firstly, Dan, that's a really, really important point. Caesar's two incursions to Britain in 55 and 54 are not isolated events. They're both part of his wider Gallic conquest. So let's contextualise what's going off here. Caesar's been consul. 59 BC, he gets given the governorship of the province of Cisalpine Gaul, which is northern Italy, north of the River Po, where Gallic people are living, but by that point, not the enemies of Rome.

7:19He also gets... It's been conquered. He also gets given control of Transalpine Gaul, which are the Roman territories north and west of the Alps. That includes Norberdensis, which is the Roman province which runs along the Mediterranean coast. So for example, Marseille. Right, so what we call Southern France. So Caesar's in charge of this important chunk of territory from Northern Italy right the way across Southern France. Yes, but randomly he also gets given the governorship of Illyricum, which is Dalmatia, which is a bit random but think about what's happening at the Times it's 59 BC so this is the beginning of the first triumvirate with Crassus and Pompeii so they divided up their own world between these three super rich warlords absolutely yeah and the key thing there is they agreed that they wouldn't oppose each other's legislation in the Senate so you have a degree of political peace descending between the optimates in this case Pompeii and Crassus these are the pro-senatorial reactionaries sort of aristocratic absolutely yeah and then Caesar who is popular so he's more of a radical.

8:18Man of the people. Yeah. Self-starved. But Caesar, Caesar is driven by two things all the time throughout his entire life. The lust for glory. Yeah. He's got a sense of destiny which drives him, I think. Very relatable. But also, he's very avaricious. So he's after wealth. His family are senatorial, but they're not that rich. His father died young. So he's always after wealth. And so he gets given the governorship of southern Gaul, basically, and the north of Italy. and what could go wrong. This is a man driven by a lust for wealth and power. Yeah. It's a unique story. And straight away, he doesn't muck about.

8:53Yeah. You've never heard this one before. Okay, go. This is one of the most brutal examples of it. So he doesn't muck about. In 58 BC, he invades Gaul. And he doesn't just invade Gaul. He's looking for an opportunity. Just by himself. The Senate doesn't go, you must invade Gaul. He just... Absolutely. So he's been given four legions. He wants to keep them busy. So he fights in 58 BC, the Helvetti. who are a transalpine Gallic confederation and then he travels over the Rhine north and east and he fights the Germanic Suebi and he's not just fighting small tribal groupings he's fighting hundreds of thousands of people but he's winning okay so now he's got a taste for this and all the time by the way he's writing back to Rome's narrative saying look what I've done I've done this I've done that Julius Caesar I've said it before Dan the greatest PR man in the ancient world everything we know about him he wrote genius and then you're going to 57 BC and then he targets the most dangerous of the Gauls who are in Gallia, Belgica to the north, so this is in the Rhine Delta and in Belgium and in northern France and he fights some really difficult campaigns there.

9:56He almost loses the Battle of the Sabbaths, but he's ultimately successful. 56 BC, he's then on the Channel Coast, so he's fighting the Veneti and the Veneti are the main maritime nation in Gaul. He's just on a massive tear across Western Europe. And he keeps going and going and going. Basically, this is a man. He's got a taste for it, right? He's getting glory back in Rome because he's winning, and also he's actually accruing wealth as he's doing it. And you can get a sense of the character of Julius Caesar when he's fighting the Veneti, because he fights a maritime battle against them and he wins.

10:25Then he invites the Veneti's main elders from their council to come and meet him and have a peace agreement, and he murders them all, right? Very Roman, very gritty, very gritty. And that brings us to 55 BC. So he's defeated the Veneti. there are a couple of confederations still on the coast which haven't submitted yet but you know he wants a bit more glory and he just looks across the channel and there's britain and he thinks right i can take roman arms to places which to most romans would be a sort of fantasy land i think there are three real reasons why caesar decides the risk involved here is high level okay this is a land of which the romans know little apart from the trade they certainly don't know the people, as we're about to find out.

11:09You're crossing not mere Nostrum in the Mediterranean, you're crossing the English Channel. So the Romans call it Oceanus, so it's not their sea. It's a very dangerous ocean to cross. Yeah, tides, currents, shocking weather. Which the Romans didn't understand at all, as we'll see. And it's also quite late in the campaigning season that he chooses to do it as well. So there's a huge amount of risk. I have to say, Julius Caesar is very, very canny for most of his career as a political and military leader, this is his worst campaign in 55 BC. And it's one that he could easily have lost. It could have cost him his life, as we'll see.

11:40Because he could have been, apart from anything else, he could have just been cut off in what is now Kent for months on end. Well, he almost was. Right. Okay. Well, come on to that. Okay. But the reasons why, Dan, he chooses to come across are, number one, wealth. So he knows that there's all these various goods there that he can make money from. Number two, glory. So he knows that this will be so astonishing that no one will believe it in Rome if he managed to do this. And number three is because where have all the refugees been going from the conquered Gallic nations been going to Britain. So it's become a thorn in his side where all these people are egging on the Britons.

12:14Go on, go on, get Caesar. Because the people of what is now Northern France and Belgium have got kinship with the people of Britain. Same language, religion, all that sort of stuff. They're tribes with the same name. So they've got the Parise in East Yorkshire. They've got the Parise in Gaul. They've got the Atrabartis in the Thames Valley. They've got the Atrabartis in Gaul. You've got the Belgae along the south coast. You've got the Belgae in Gaul. These are people who've got kinships between each other. So they're the three reasons why Caesar makes this astonishing decision to do what I call an armed incursion to Britain.

12:45Okay. So he's done an armed incursion, gone across the Rhine, fought some campaigns, and then withdrawn. So it's not unusual for him to sort of go in, smash some people up, check out the lie of the land, and then come back. That's his plan. Absolutely. He's also built a big bridge when he crossed the Rhine as well. So he's showing his expertise as an engineer as well. But now he's looking across the Channel. Does he have to build a fleet? In actual fact, he orders ships to be sent to him from the Mediterranean. Wow, they go all the way around. So these ships aren't particularly suitable for operating in Channel water, which has an impact later on.

13:19Okay, so he succeeds where Philip of Spain fails in 1588 and gets a fleet round from Iberia right the way around to the coast of northern France. Where are we talking, roughly speaking? What about Boulogne? Boulogne, okay. and he embarks. He does. So he's got 80 ships for his legions, who are the legions. He's only taking two this time. He's probably got, by this point, in the middle of his Gallic campaigns, he's probably got about eight legions, but he only takes two. That's seven, and his own pet legion, the 10th legion. And then he's also got some cavalry, who are Gallic mercenary cavalry, to come with him as well.

13:54So he's got 80 ships for the foot troops, and he's got 18 ships for the cavalry. And they set sail around midnight on the given day late in the campaigning season. But before that, there's an issue. Even before the sale, there's an issue because he's not done his reconnaissance properly. Very unlike Caesar. Very unlike Caesar. So firstly, he talks to the local Veneti nobles, the ones who he didn't murder, to say, can you tell us anything about Britain? And guess what? They say, not really. Can we go home now, please? And then he sends one of his leading legates, who's a very good land general, who's got no expertise at all at sea.

14:31with one galley to scout the coast of the southeast of Britain. He spends four days looking at all the various landing places, and he alights on the worst landing place you could think of landing an army, the beaches below the White Cliffs of Dover, which is the easiest defendable place in northwestern Europe, probably. So that's where Caesar's going to. And then thirdly, he sends an Atrobatian king from Gaul called Commius, who's got people in the Thames Valley who are also Atrabartis, so he thinks that the Britons will know them, to try and broker a peaceful landing. And of course, as soon as he lands, he gets arrested.

15:08He doesn't appear again for the rest of the campaign. So it's all gone wrong. But Caesar still does it anyway. He throws his Hail Mary. So the ships sail across. He does sail into the unknown, doesn't he? Totally. This is proper, proper Tolkien on Game of Thrones. They arrive off the coast of the White Coast of Dover, and guess what? The native Britons all know what's happening because they've captured Commytee, they're all lined up. You can imagine the sort of airfix, sort of ancient Britons in the chariots and with all the troops and everything, all lined up going up and down, going up and down.

15:37It's a horror show. Oh, that's not going to work, is it? And can I interrupt you, because I find this so interesting. This is the first time that someone has written down their experience of being in Britain that we have preserved. It's the first invasion that we know about of Britain. And it is the only invasion in British history, and there have been dozens, that is opposed on the beach. So Saving Private Ryan style, where guys are on the beach waiting for that invasion force. Usually people just land, march inland, you know, Henry VII or William the Conqueror. So this is an opposed invasion.

16:05It's very rare. It's one of the most difficult military battles to fight, an opposed invasion, because there are so many variables involved that you can't control. So Caesar does wisely now determine that I'm not going to land in Dover. So basically, it's like the wacky race. He hot-foot-sit along the coast going north, and he gets to that wide expanse of beaches from the Wandsome Channel, where Richborough is today, down through Sandwich and Walmer and Deal. They're the beaches where he starts landing his troops, but the Britons have arrived as well. So that's why you have this really, really risky battle taking place.

16:34There's a battle on the beach, basically. On the beach, and the Romans don't have invasion barges, etc. There's people jumping out of galleys, etc. So if you look at the strategy that Caesar used for the battle, it was an effective one in that he got galleys with ballista either end of the invasion beaches firing in, etc. But it still wasn't working. and a lot of the Roman troops didn't want to come. Roman troops, historically, didn't want to come to Britain. You go later, Caligula had to give up an invasion of Britain because his legions refused. You go to Claudius with the successful invasion in AD 43, one of his freed men, Narcissus, had to shame the legionaries into boarding the ships.

17:11So the Romans didn't really want to do it. But here, there's an even more extreme example because a lot of the Roman legionaries refused to leave the ships. And allegedly, Caesar tells us, it takes the Aquilifer carrying the legionary Aquila standard, the eagle of the 10th legion to jump into the shallows and say, follow me. I'm willing to fight for my emperor and the glory of Rome, quote unquote. And they'll pile in and there's a battle and it goes one way and the other, one way and the other, and eventually the Romans win. Fighting in the shallows. In the shallows, wearing Lorica Hamata chain mail with coolest helmets on, with this huge scoot and body shield, et cetera.

17:47If you go under, you're going under, right? and he's not coming back. So this is a really risky battle, but the Romans eventually win. What does Caesar have to work? What do these legions look like? Dan, I think the Roman legionary of this period, the Caesarian period, is the elite warrior of the ancient world. His legions are 6 ,000 men. And they are legions which have been founded in this form by the great general and popularist leader, Marius. So about a few decades before. About a few decades before, yeah. But when Marius reformed the legions, he reformed all the legions. So instead of having various troops, some with spears, some with pilums, doing this, that, and the other, every single legionary now in those 6 ,000 is exactly, exactly the same.

18:32They're armed with two pilums and a gladius hispaniosus. So pilums jab for throwing. It's a lead-weighted javelin, yeah. Lead-weighted javelin. Armour-piercing javelin. Armour-piercing. Short stabbing sword. Absolutely, yeah. Brutally efficient. Remember the Roman fencing technique is all about stabbing, as you rightly say so you've got your Scutum shield those big famous shields that we're familiar with and then your legionary is carrying his gladius on his right hand side so when he draws it he takes the blow from the opponent and then he can kill him straight away because his thorax is exposed and so you're not doing all the fancy sword fighting it's just it's butchery it's an industrial scale killing machine right 6 ,000 men and those 6 ,000 men as well and they've got their helmets and the chain mail etc as well these 6 ,000 men are all engineers, trained engineers.

19:18And within the 6 ,000, 1 ,200 have a speciality as well. So there could be stone masons, there could be tar makers, there could be fletchers making arrows and everything. So this 6 ,000 men in the legion can do everything itself. It doesn't need a supply train. Oh, and all the sort of craftspeople that went along with it. So they've actually internalised that in the legion. Absolutely. It's astonishing. Well, remember, the Roman legion of this period, all the way through into the empire, towards the end of the empire, at the end of every day's marching enemy territory, they build a marching camp, which is a single or double six-metre-wide, six-metre-deep ditch.

19:53You've been marching, Dan, for six hours. Yes. And then you spend three hours building your marching camp. Extraordinary. And then you make the thread. Every night. Every night. Every night. So you're building huge ditches. You're building a bank with the earth from the ditch. You're building a palisade on top of it. And then you're laying out a fort, temporary fort, in exactly the same form as you have in a Roman stone-built fort, every single night. And you can do that because every legionary is an engineer. Every legionary is carrying two poles. Yeah, they carry the stakes with them. So you just go, there you go, dun, dun, right, let's go.

20:22In addition to carrying all their kit. So I mean, I often talk of Roman legionaries as being like sort of a middleweight Olympic weightlifter, all square and all muscle, because they're carrying everything and they're doing all the building themselves. Then it's up sticks and then off to the next one. Absolutely, yeah. Day's march, three hours building a marching camp. It's great for archaeologists though, because we can do a dot-to-dot tracing where all these campaigns took place, especially if you go into modern school. Isn't that amazing that you can still see them in the landscape? And some of them might have only been used for one night.

20:51Absolutely. Extraordinary. Absolutely. And that's why, if you look at, say, the native Britons fighting against Caesar in certainly 55, they find it so difficult to engage with the Romans in set-piece battle. Because if you've got 30 ,000 legionaries with your five legions, that's going to be devastating. If you try and attack them at night, they're in a marching camp, you're not going to get into it because you've got no siege equipment. So that's devastating as well. Providing Caesar gets his logistics right and gets a little bit of luck on his side, which he does, then is almost unstoppable.

21:23Once he mounts the 54 campaign, which he does properly. We're going to come on to those in a second, but quickly on the British. Would I be right in thinking if they're fighting in a less disciplined fashion, they are relying on sort of longer-edged weapons, a little bit more heroic way of fighting. Looks fancy, but it means you need more space between. So these legionaries packed in, they're always going to be at an advantage. You can get more men per metre on that front line. Absolutely. And also the Romans themselves can form various formations as well. So they can form a coenus, so a wedge formation.

21:52And if you have a multiple coenus, it's almost like sort of a buzzsaw, isn't it? It's going straight through your opponents. Bang, stab. Bang, stab. Bang, industrial scale, killing machine. You can't stop me. Everyone's dead. Sorry, Dan. If you listen to Dan Snow's history hit The best is yet to come Stick with us

22:19This episode is brought to you by TikTok I never thought about the history of coffee You make it, you drink it, nothing more to it Then I've had a TikTok video about how people in the 1700s would pour their coffee into saucers to let it cool before drinking it I love that sort of discovery A detail, but suddenly you're imagining how people lived and drank and socialized. Now I wonder what will baffle historians about us. Mugs. It's a ceramic vessel, but crucially it has a handle. Well, that's the joy of TikTok, folks. You look for one thing and find yourself somewhere completely different. Your next discovery is waiting on TikTok.

22:56Learn more at tiktok.com slash discovermore.

23:04This message is brought to you by Apple Card. Ah, fall. That cozy season where we swap the swimwear for sweaters and sunnies for scarves. But before the Halloween decorations are put away or Thanksgiving table has been set, there's already holly jolly music playing in the grocery store, reminding you that the year is coming to a close. Time to kick end of year into high gear. When you use Apple Card with Apple Pay, you earn 2 % daily cash back on all purchases, including food, decorations, gifts, and more. Get a head start on your end-of-year purchases. Apply for your Apple Card in the Wallet app on your iPhone today and start using it right away with Apple Pay.

23:36Subject to credit approval, Apple Card is issued by Goldman Sachs Bank USA, Salt Lake City Branch, terms and more at applecard.com. Therapy's biggest impact doesn't show up in some dramatic breakthrough. It shows up in the smallest moments. You bite your tongue instead of escalating. You put your phone down instead of firing off that text. You say what you actually mean instead of what would hurt someone else the most. Nobody applauds those moments, but they quietly change your life. That's what growing feels like, and that's exactly what Grow Therapy is here for. Grow is therapy that works, covered by insurance.

24:10Sessions average$21 with insurance, and some pay as little as$0, depending on their plan. There are no subscriptions, no long-term commitments. You just pay per session. Grow connects you with thousands of high-quality, licensed therapists across the U.S., offering both virtual and in-person sessions, nights and weekends. You can search by what matters, like insurance, specialty, identity, or availability. And you can book a therapy session in minutes and begin in as little as two days, not the national 48-day average. See if you could pay as little as$0 for therapy in seconds at growtherapy.com slash ACAST.

24:49That's growtherapy.com slash ACAST. growtherapy.com slash ACAST. Availability and coverage vary by state and insurance plan. What started the Civil War? What ended the conflict in Vietnam? Who was Paul Revere? And did the Vikings ever reach America? I'm Don Wildman, and on American History It, my expert guests and I are journeying across the nation and through the years to uncover the stories that have made America. We'll visit the battlefields and debate floors where the nation was formed, meet the characters who have altered it with their touch, and count the votes that have changed the direction of our laws and leadership.

25:36Find American History Hit twice a week, every week, wherever you get your podcasts. American History Hit, a podcast from History Hit.

25:57So the Romans establish themselves, they get a bridgehead, at which point, because you're in the Channel, and because it's late summer, which can be quite hard to differentiate from winter, a storm smashes the fleet. The first thing Caesar does is the thing that every Roman military leader does when they're in enemy territory. He builds a marching camp. I bet he does. And that's for the two legions, right? So that's 12 ,000 men. That's a big marching camp. Ditches, stockade, a safe base. Dan, I reckon you're talking about a double ditch. Double ditch. I think we're double ditching. We're double ditching.

26:31I think we've got caltrops in there as well. I think we've got stakes. Caltrops, these little spiky things that can get into horses' hooves. Absolutely, yeah. And then I think you've got the bank with the palisade on top for 12 ,000 men, so it's big. And do you think that might be where Roman Richborough is today if people have been down there? More or less, more or less, yeah. I think so. But then, as you absolutely rightly say, a storm comes in, and he's not actually put his ships into a protected anchorage, which is nearby in the Wandsome Channel, by the way. And they're on the beach, and a lot of his ships get badly damaged.

27:02So he knows from that point that he's going to be restricted in what he can do. But also, something else has happened as well. His cavalry hadn't arrived. Because they missed the tide, and they continue to miss the tide. so I don't know who's actually in charge of those ships. And I bet they didn't last long when Caesar got back. So Caesar is left with far too few boats, and also he's got no ability to scout ahead or to pursue a broken enemy. So he's very limited in what he can do. So he sends the 7th Legion out to go and forage, and then he sends the 10th Legion to the beach to repair the ships.

27:36But of course the Britons are watching, and as soon as the 7th Legion go out and start foraging, they get ambushed. And Caesar has to physically, showing great personal bravery, lead the 10th out, his own pet legion, and then they save the day and the day is saved and they go back to the marching camp. The Britons say, we'll sign a peace deal. A bit later, they turn up with a bigger army. Caesar puts both legions out outside the marching camp. Another set-piece battle takes place. The Romans win. Peace deal's agreed. Hostages. Caesar goes home. So the Romans win but realise that they ain't going any further inland.

28:07No, because they can't because they've got no cavalry and also a lot of the ships have been destroyed as well. Remember the way that the Romans campaigned with the fleets. They often campaign along the coast and always down river systems because they can use the fleet to keep supplying them. So without the cavalry and the fleet, they just can't go very far at all. And you can make the case, this certainly isn't the way it's portrayed in the Lady Bird book of Julius Caesar and Roman Britain, but you can make the case that Caesar just fled back to Gaul with his tail between his legs. Yeah. Because his option would have been to overwinter in a marching camp in enemy territory.

28:38That's not going to work. No. Winter in England. So my point earlier, that is Caesar's worst campaign. And we take his word for it that he won that battle outside the walls of the camp. I mean, I guess they fought themselves to draw in a way because they can defeat the enemy in the field, but they're still surrounded by bandit country. They still can't break out of this camp. We're almost certainly missing 90 % of the narrative of the whole campaign. Caesar's certainly spinning every single thing that comes his way. And there's a desperate amount of spinning taking place here, by the way, because effectively he lost.

29:06Yeah. There must have been some dark nights there. He's alone in this hostile foreign land, further from Rome than ever before, with an uncertain route back to Europe and surrounded by enemies. And you can imagine the legion who's in the camp saying, you know, what's wrong with the old man? Yeah, he's getting off the oil. Has he lost his touch? Has he lost his touch? And by the way, the interesting thing to remember here as well is, in terms of the Gallic conquest, we're in the middle of it. Right? So Gaul hasn't been conquered. He's still got a lot of his legions back in Gaul, keeping the place locked down where he conquered it, with other places to conquer.

29:39So if it begins a raveling in Britain, it could go all the way through into Gaul and the whole thing could unravel and remember the last two years of the Gallic campaigns in 53 and 52 there he's fighting revolts right so it could all really badly unravel yeah for all he knows it's all going completely tits up on the continent if the Brits do sign a deal and let Caesar go disembark his troops and leave that was a catastrophic mistake because getting on ships on a beach with a determined enemy all around you is very very difficult indeed absolutely right and they paid the price because the following year.

30:13To be fair to Caesar, so he has this shocker, but to fair to Caesar, he comes about the following year. I mean, as you say, that's Caesar, isn't it? To have that experience and think, I'm going back. Dan, that's Roman. Yeah. Right? True grit, this trait that you will never give up. You'll always come back and win. You'll only agree to a piece on your own terms. That's very Roman. And if Caesar hadn't done that, that would have broken the back of his reputation, I think, in Rome. So I think, actually, he's made a rod for his own back. he's got to go back to Britain. But this time, the other trait the Romans have, of course, is learning from your mistakes, nicking other people's ideas.

30:47So this time he really does it well. So 54 BC, what's he do differently? Firstly, he takes 30 ,000 men. Holy Moses! Not 12 ,000 men. Okay. So if you look at the various narratives of the big Roman campaigning forces in Britain where this fits, Caesar II, 30 ,000 men, Agricola in Scotland, 30 ,000 men, the Claudian invasion Jinder Aulus Plautus in AD 43, 40 ,000 men. Severus in Scotland, 50 ,000 men. So that's in the top four. And that's a huge force for a start. Secondly, he realises one of his weaknesses, he's got his invasion beaches, but one of his weaknesses was the ships. So he copies ship designs from the Veneti and actually builds proper landing ships, which can get the troops stored properly.

31:29And build ships that are suitable for the English Channel. And makes sure that he uses the right time of year as well. So he's actually in the campaigning season now, not towards the end of it. and then they come over to the land of the same invasion beaches but this time the Britons don't oppose it because they realise the Roman force is too big okay interesting so they let them get ashore yeah and you've got the whole summer ahead of you now and then Caesar decides he's going to head inland immediately and he keeps his whole force together remember building a marching camp at the end of the day and then moving on moves 20 kilometres he fights his first battle near the River Stout which is near Canterbury and here the Britons have actually only deployed chariots and light cavalry the idea being to sort of slow the romans down but caesar's own cavalry who are germans and gauls actually smashed straight through them it's worth remembering people forget actually with these germans and gallic ally cavalry that they're ferocious they're headhunters so if you look at a lot of the tombstones of later roman auxiliary cavalrymen in britain they're carrying a head or there's a headless corpse near them they're all german or gallic but later in the roman empire so it's a native thing being headhunters so they smash through and caesar carries on building marching camps and then he comes to very near to modern canterbury bigbury hillfort which he has to besiege and he only uses the seventh legion and they build a ramp up to the ramparts and they eventually get in there butcher everybody first phase of the invasion job done so he's being very methodical he's got the tools he's got the many needs things going well if you've got 30 000 men and you keep them together, it doesn't matter how many troops the Britons can put in the field.

33:05These are the elite warriors of the ancient world. And they're going to eviscerate anything that comes in front of them. And I think the British know this as well. At this point, incidentally, it's worth reflecting who the Britons were. So the various confederations in the battle space we're talking about, the strategic battle space, are the Kantiaki in modern Kent, the Trinovantes in eastern Essex, the largest of the confederations, the Catabaloni, who are across sort of the north of London through to the region of St. Albans. The Atrabartis in the Thames Valley, they're the main people. Then you might get people from the Iceni, North Norfolk coming in, or the Coriol Taui from the Midlands, or from the Belgae, from the South Coast.

33:42But broadly, we're talking about, I think, the Kantiaki, the Trinovantis, the Catevoloni, and the Atrabartis. And by this point, they have one leader. I think it's the leader of the Catevoloni. Now, Caesar doesn't tell us who this individual is the leader of, but he does give us his name. which is Cassavallonus. And Cassavallonus is the leader of opposition. And so he tries to oppose the Romans in a set-piece battle, and it fails. He then flees across the Thames. And the set-piece battle is on the Medway? Where is it? I think this set-piece battle is near the Thames, actually. You do have the famous river-crossing battle from the Claudian invasion, but this, I think, is near the Thames.

34:24So they're marching up the south bank of the Thames. Absolutely, and it fails. They've got their ships supporting them, bringing supplies. Ballistas and everything. Absolutely as well. Shooting others. The whole lot. Providing fire support, right? And then they need to do another amphibious assault. So the question is, where does Caesar choose to pursue the native Britons back across the Thames? And I think it's probably near New Tilbury. So I don't think it's anywhere near modern London. I think it's actually much further downriver. I think it's near modern Tilbury. Gets them into Essex, and then that gets you pursuing the native Britons.

34:54And eventually they go all the way through to their capital, which is thought to be what later became Roman Verilamium, which is St. Albans. And there's another siege. The Romans win. And this time Caesar has a proper victory. And eventually the native Britons then sue for peace. And this is a much better peace for the Romans because it involves tribute being paid and also a lot of hostages. And that tribute may well have continued to have been paid to the Romans all the way through to the reign of Claudius. So it's actually probably quite a big victory for Caesar. So he's captured enemy bases He has defeated them.

35:31He has got cash. He can go home. And he can tell everybody that he's done the job. I did a good job the first time. Spin, spin, spin, spin, spin, spin, spin. But this time I've really done the job and I've got the hostages and I've got the tribute to prove it. And you can send the hostages, what he sends them back to Rome so everyone can have a look at them. But then he goes back to Gaul and the Gallic Wars continues. So that's the point I was making earlier about this is just an integral part of the Gallic Wars. Britain might be a fantastical place of difference, but nevertheless, the campaign is not a separate, campaign.

36:00It's all part of his Gallic Wars campaigns. This is the first ancient text we have describing Britain. What are some of the details it gives us about life? The Brits, don't tell me, says they're always drunk all the time or something. No, he's got some salacious comments about the mating habits where a British woman would mate with 12 British men. There are some mentions of the British diet where he says they don't eat meat, they drink a lot of milk that kind of thing but in actual fact I think Caesar's totally utterly focused on the military campaign here and I think in actual fact all the details that he gives you are actually the kind of details that you would get in a political history of a military campaign so we moved on now from the hearsay because now Britain is on the Roman map he doesn't stay they didn't leave a garrison no but I do think that the Romans leave behind small mercantile settlements here and there.

36:56So I think actually Roman London, as an example, Londinium as it later became, I think that was founded as a mercantile settlement sometime after Caesar II, probably around Cornhill. And they've got a deal with the locals saying, look, let these Romans trade here, otherwise we'll be back. Absolutely. And they're paying tribute. You know, the native British tribal leader is paying tribute to the Romans. And was this, because this is something I find really interesting about the Roman world and the British imperial world as well. Sometimes it's not about the red on the map, it's actually about what's going on beyond those borders.

37:23is you might march into what is now parts of Ukraine or the Caucasus, knock a few heads together, not establish your own province, but they become part of your kind of wider Roman world, right? And that's what's happening in Britain. It's a really interesting point there, actually, Dan, because the territory we've been talking about is in the southeast. So it'll be really intriguing to know what the impact of Caesar's incursions, especially if he's getting to St. Albans, has on the confederations and the tribes further away, like the Brigantes in the north, for example, or even further north into the region of modern Scotland.

37:55And we literally don't know. And it's intriguing that when Claudius comes back for the invasion, which works in AD 43, he targets the southeast, he uses the same invasion beaches, and he basically recreates Caesar II with his own invasion, but stays. Why didn't he be garrisoned, start another Roman province, like he'd done in Gaul? Was it just a bridge too far? Just too difficult? I think he may have been planning to come back later. So there's evidence of a very large marching camp on the Isle of Thanats. Which is on the Thames Street, sort of north Kent, as you're heading in towards London. It's a very odd place to put a marching camp, because it's on the Isle of Thanat, which then was an island separated from mainland Britain by the Wantsham Channel.

38:32The theory there is that that might have been a major logistic space, which the Romans were planning to use, to support a longer stay. And it's just that Caesar chose to go home. But he may have been planning to come back, but he didn't get the chance. And he extracted what he needed. He was getting cash. He had some general promises of obedience. He had what he needed for his Roman audience. Dan, fame and money. Fortune and glory, kid. And then, well, France, as we now call it, Gaul was harder to conquer, as you said, there were rebellions. And then he gets involved in a massive battle for the whole future of the Roman world.

39:04He gets involved in a civil war in Italy itself and beyond. If you think about it, so he's dead in 44 BC. So we're going to take it through to 52 BC when he's finally defeated Versingheterix and won the Battle of Elysia or the Siege of Elysia. So he's finally defeated any Gallic uprisings. And by the way, that campaign, the overall Gallic campaign was so brutal that the Romans found it much easier to incorporate Gaul into the Roman world than they did with Britain. So it took Caesar six years. It took the Romans 40 years in Britain to establish a northern frontier on the Salwa-Firth timeline. So that's how brutal Caesar's campaign was.

39:37I mean, we're told by the primary sources he killed a million and he enslaved a million. That's probably in a population of about 8 million. So that's a quarter of the population disappearing. so the gallic world becomes part of the roman world very very very quickly so that campaign is a big win it's such a big win that of course all the political classes in rome from the optimality side start turning against them ultimately is faced with crossing the rubicon river which is near ravenna on the north eastern adriatic coast and taking military troops into the roman peninsula which is what begins the civil war round of battles which ultimately sees him the victor the last man standing before he's assassinated.

40:15Dictator and then assassinated. Absolutely, yeah. So he's busy. He's busy. He can't get back to Britain. Fame and money. That's what it's all about. Fame and money. Well, thank you very much, Simon, for coming on the podcast and telling me all about that. Julie sees Dan one of my heroes. Yeah, I can tell. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Dan Snow's History Hit. You know, you could have watched this episode and others on YouTube. That's right. You can peek behind the curtain of how we record this podcast on our YouTube channel. Very exciting new development here. Just click the link in the show notes and head over to subscribe.

40:49New YouTube releases every Friday, friends. Don't miss out.

41:01This message is brought to you by Apple Card. Ah, fall. That cozy season where we swap the swimwear for sweaters and sunnies for scarves. But before the Halloween decorations are put away or if Thanksgiving table has been set, there's already holly jolly music playing in the grocery store, reminding you that the year is coming to a close. Time to kick end of year into high gear. When you use Apple Card with Apple Pay, you earn 2 % daily cash back on all purchases, including food, decorations, gifts, and more. Get a head start on your end of year purchases. Apply for your Apple Card in the wallet app on your iPhone today and start using it right away with Apple Pay.

41:34Subject to credit approval, Apple Card is issued by Goldman Sachs Bank, USA, Salt Lake City Branch, terms and more at applecard.com. In Our Time is a world-class seminar every week. Why was Jeremy a lonely snail? What were Lyons doing in York in the third century? I'm Misha Glennie and every week I'm joined by expert guests to explore the ideas that shape our world. It's one of the first times really that you consistently see someone painting teeth. I know that sounds bonkers. If I was going to define mathematics, I would say it's the study of structure. In Our Time. Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.

42:08Tea or coffee? Love a cup of tea. Have you been enjoying my podcast and now want even more history? Sign up to History and watch the world's best history documentaries on subjects like how William conquered England, what it was like to live in the Georgian era, and you can even hear the voice of Richard III. We've got hundreds of hours of original documentaries, plus new releases every week, and there's always something more to discover. Sign up to join us in historic locations around the world and explore the past. Just visit historyhit.com slash subscribe