Full History of the Ancient Britons: Origins to Post Rome DOCUMENTARY

Throughout its

history

, the British Isles have always been a land of many languages ​​and many cultures, some older than others. With a presence on the islands stretching into the mists of pre

history

, the British Celts predate the mounted Norman knights of Duke William, the Saxon Fyrds of Alfred the Great, the great pagan army of Ivar the Boneless, and the legions of the Emperor Claudius. . As this litany of conquerors might suggest, the British Celts have spent much of their history in constant retreat. However, there is much more to her story than pain and loss. In this special feature-length

documentary

, we will do justice to the fascinating society and history of the Celtic peoples of Britain, covering everything from their

origins

to the wars with Rome, the departure of the Empire and the arrival of the Anglo-Saxons.

The Saxons and the mythical age of Arthur. Please consider liking, sharing, commenting and subscribing, it helps a lot. As we will see, Britain has been conquered and colonized many times throughout history by various peoples, usually arriving in force and causing epic clashes of civilizations. What if we could see clashes from even more distant realms? That's where our sponsor Rise of Kingdoms comes in. It is a free strategy game for PC and mobile devices where you explore and conquer new lands and fight with different civilizations from different eras in easy-to-manage real-time battles. There are fourteen real civilizations to choose from with their own famous generals and unique units, and if you want to see which one is the best, now is the time;

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And remember to use our other link below to register for the big multi-civilization event with big prizes up for grabs, all for free. Today, the Celtic languages ​​and cultures of Britain are greatly marginalized. The Insular Celtic languages, once the predominant forms of speech throughout the British Isles, today survive in daily use only in their westernmost margins. Irish and Welsh fare best, with a relatively healthy population of speakers in the hundreds of thousands, but the fate of Scottish Gaelic, Cornish and Manx is plagued by many more doubts. Breton, a Celtic language brought to France's northwestern peninsula by British immigrants in the early Middle Ages, also faces a bleak future.

However, modernity has caused renewed interest in Celtic identity. Today, Celtic heritage is a source of pride for people not only in the British Isles but also for tens of millions of people in Canada, the United States, Australia and even South America. Perhaps nowhere is the romantic appeal of Celticism more evident than in the corpus of modern fantasy. JRR Tolkien, a proud Englishman, once remarked that “Welsh is of this soil, of this island, the chief language of the men of Britain; and Welsh is beautiful.” Tolkien's passion for all things Celtic is reflected in the social fabric of Middle Earth.

Sindarin, the language of the Gray Elves of Beleriand, was built primarily from Welsh vocabulary, while influences from British and Gaelic folklore are omnipresent throughout the Silmarillion. Later giants of the genre like The Witcher's Andrzej Sapkowski and Wheel of Time's Robert Jordan continued this Celticophile trend. Consequently, modern fantasy fans, even those who know nothing about Celtic history or culture, have unconsciously learned to associate quintessentially Celtic motifs with the more

ancient

, mysterious, and magical aspects of the literary worlds they love. All of this serves to underline that today “Celtic” identity is widely considered something to be treasured, making it ironic that throughout ancient history it never existed.

Today, the word "Celtic" enjoys great popularity as an ethnic identifier. However, when used in a historical context, the term becomes much more confusing. Although the countless tribes that dominated the forests and hills of Britain in the centuries immediately preceding the rise of Rome are

post

humously labeled “Celts,” there is little evidence that they considered themselves part of anything resembling a single ethnic group. In theory, if one acquired a time machine, he would travel to Britain in the 1st century BC. C. and wander the land speaking to chariot-riding locals in the various dialects of ancient Briton, said locals would not present themselves as "Celts," an exonym first introduced in the writings of an ancient Greek, but as warriors of the Catuvellauni, Iceni, Brigantes, Dumnonii, etc.

However, it cannot be denied that these enigmatic ancient peoples shared closely related religious practices, social customs, and languages. Greek and Roman writers, including one Julius Caesar, realized this, while the material artifacts left for modern archaeologists to find also suggest a strong sense of cultural continuity between the so-called “Celtic” regions of the world. ancient. So, in the words of Professor Barry Cunliffe, a rock star of European archaeology, professional historians who refer to the regionally diverse but ultimately related peoples of Iron Age Britain as “the Celts” “They are not being completely scandalous.” Having now covered the disclaimer to end all disclaimers, let's go back in time and journey deep into the mists of prehistory, where the story of Britain's oldest people begins.

The Celts may be Britain's oldest surviving culture, but they were not the first. The presence of homo sapiens on the islands dates back at least 40,000 years. Agriculture and livestock began to develop during the Neolithic, about 6,000 years ago. Today, the stone age is synonymous with primitive, but the British of this era were quite the opposite. They lived in sophisticated sedentary dwellings, had vibrant styles of artistic expression, and were capable of transporting enormous 25-ton upright stones over great distances to create giant monuments, the most iconic of which you've probably heard of. Around the second millennium BC, the Bronze Age came to Britain.

Bronze is an alloy composed of two metals: copper and tin and, coincidentally, Cornwall and Devon had some of the largest reserves of tin in Europe. As such, Britain became the Silicon Valley of the Bronze Age world, the key terminus of a trade network with tendrils that spread across huge swaths of Europe and the Near East. Through intermediary towns along the Atlantic coast, British tin reached the great Levantine cities of Tire and Sidon. Although Stone Age and Early Bronze Age Britons left many cultural belongings for archaeologists to analyze, they were not literate societies, so we ultimately know very little about how they identified themselves and what language they spoke. .

However, most historians agree that they were probably not yet Celts at that time. This begs the question: when, how and from where did Celtic culture arrive in Britain? The traditional narrative about the

origins

of the Celts is the Hallstatt theory, which posits that Celtic culture originated in the first millennium BC. in the heart of central Europe, from where it spread on horse-drawn ceremonial chariots across the continent, eventually reaching Britain. However, in some circles, the Hallstatt theory has recently fallen out of fashion in favor of a newer theory called "the Atlantic Celts." This hypothesis maintains that the origins of the Celtic language and culture are not found in Central Europe but in the west of the continent. coast.

Let's set the scene: it was around 1200 BC. C. and the Mediterranean world was on fire. The marauding Sea Peoples, whoever they were, were devastating the coasts of Egypt, Mycenaean Greece, and the Hittite Empire, bringing those civilizations to their knees and collapsing the once sophisticated trade networks that connected them. Meanwhile, in the West things were relatively good. As in the early Bronze Age, the Atlantic seaboard during this era was a maritime highway where trade flourished. Between the pyrite deposits of western Iberia, the gold and copper mines of Brittany and Ireland, and the tin deposits of Cornwall, there was abundant wealth for all those communities facing the infinite horizon of sapphire.

Between the 13th and 7th centuries BC. C., artifacts along the Atlantic coast begin to become more homogeneous. From Iberia to Ireland, the presence in the archaeological record of almost identical-looking 'carp-tongue swords', round shields with concentric designs, ritual war chariots and large cooking cauldrons suggests the emergence of a culturally uniform social caste of elites warriors whose life path revolved around martial prowess and ritual feasts. Furthermore, the fact that these artifacts are often found in the context of religious offerings thrown into lakes, rivers, and swamps indicates the emergence of a shared belief system involving the appeasement of the chthonic gods of the land.

Finally, it is likely that as this system of shared values ​​evolved, so did a lingua franca: a common form of speech through which it spread. Thus, the theory goes, the culture and language that spread along the Atlantic coast in the late Bronze Age were the earliest form of the Celtic “pack.” This would make the Celts of Britain not the westernmost end of a migratory expansion that began in the Alpine mountains, but part of the original coastal heartland where the culture originated. In exploring the ethnogenesis of Celtic Britain from a modern archaeological perspective, there is a general lesson to be learned.

Since the ancient Celts had no written records of their own, historians have traditionally relied overwhelmingly on the writings of Greek and Roman authors for literary accounts of their society. From that perspective, Britain was always at the end of the world, a land of barbarians too far from the centers of civilization to be relevant to anything or anyone. However, as we have now seen, this was not the case. For millennia, before the Roman legions set foot on the island, Britain was a dynamic cultural center and vibrant commercial hub with influence stretching for thousands of miles. In the words of Barry Cunliffe, the Celts of Britain and their Bronze Age ancestors were “far from the distant, ignorant periphery of the bright and beautiful Mediterranean, but part of a cohesive cultural zone capable of spectacular development based on local innovation. "The 8th century BC marks the twilight of the Bronze Age and the beginning of the Iron Age.

During this time, we can assume that the Celtic culture that had developed on the Atlantic coast began an eastward march towards the interior of France, Iberia, southern Germany, Austria, Bohemia and other places where Celtic culture is known to have flourished in the immediate centuries before the rise of the Roman Empire. In these places, Celtic warrior elites came into contact with. other rich and sophisticated societies, such as the Greeks through the colony of Massalia, the Etruscans of northern Italy, and the nomadic Scythian horse lords. The cultural influences of these foreign peoples, along with the fantastic wealth that came with the establishment of. exchange networks with them, resulted in the development of a dynamic new Celtic "cultural package" known today as the La Tene Culture, which developed in four separate tribal centers, mainly along the Moselle and Marne rivers. , soon spread throughout much of Europe.

The La Tene period, which lasted from approximately 450 to 50 BC. C., is the most emblematic era of ancient Celtic history. His artwork is what the conventional mind considers essentially Celtic, with cauldrons, drinking vessels, weapons, shields, armor and jewelry characterized by spiraling stylistic patterns. It was also during La Tene's heyday that the Celtic world crashed into the Greco-Roman one. In fact, it was during these centuries that ancient bands of Celtic warriors sacked Rome, invaded theBalkans and Greece, they settled in Anatolia and then Rome did not reverse them in a staggered conquest that lasted centuries and finally ended with Vercingetorix throwing his arms at the feet of Julius Caesar. and, most relevant to this story, Emperor Claudius leading his legions across the Channel to Britain – the last Celtic frontier.

But now we are getting ahead of ourselves. Before we launch into talking about the arrival of the Imperial Eagle to the shores of Albion, let us first pause briefly in the march of history and paint a picture of what society would have been like in Iron Age Britain, as part of the cultural world of La Tene. as immediately before the Roman conquest. First, let's talk about the linguistic landscape. While it is likely that a single Proto-Celtic language once existed, by the end of the Iron Age it had diverged into several related but mutually unintelligible forms of speech.

In most of what is now England and Wales, a language called Common Brittonic was spoken. This language was probably mutually intelligible with the Gaulish language spoken in much of continental Europe at about the same time. The rocky crags of the Scottish highlands echoed with the Pictish language, a language so poorly documented that historians debate whether it was a dialect of Common Briton, its own distinctive Celtic language, or even a non-Celtic language entirely. Finally, the melodious prose of Gaelic was spoken in Ireland. This language formed a separate branch of the Celtic language family, of which Celtiberian, another divergent Celtic language spoken in Spain, was probably also a part.

The linguistic diversity of Iron Age Britain is still reflected in the Celtic languages ​​of today, which are divided into two branches, the descendants of Common Briton: Welsh, Cornish and Breton, and the descendants of Old Gaelic: Irish, Manx and Scottish Gaelic. Society in Iron Age Britain was highly decentralized and divided into a mosaic of tribal territories. Broadly speaking, the landscape was dominated by high hillforts, where a local chieftain and his group of warrior elites kept a watchful eye on the handful of surrounding agricultural communities. In fact, while the ancient Celts are often portrayed, with some reason, as an extremely warlike people, it is worth noting that after taking into account a chieftain, his warrior aristocracy and a small caste of artisans and specialized trades, the 90 % of Celtic society was made up of unglamorous but economically crucial subsistence farmers.

After all, everyone, including the powerful warlords, needed to eat. Still, British Celtic society was undoubtedly warlike, with social prestige directly linked to feats of strength and victories won in combat. As such, intercommunal fighting, although probably mostly small-scale, was routine and ritualized. Warfare among the Iron Age Britons was probably not conducted so differently from their Gaul brethren on the continent. All in all, facing these war bands on the battlefield was a horrible experience. Both Roman and Greek records report the terrifying nature of the Celts, stating that before any confrontation, they roared and boasted, performing ritual war dances while releasing a deafening roar with their boar-headed war trumpets.

All this may seem juvenile to the modern observer, but if one puts oneself in the shoes of a superstitious commoner fresh from an ancient olive farm or the slums of Rome, one can appreciate the almost supernatural terror that a crowd of screaming, dances, horns -The muscular men must have had it blaring. One thing that distinguished British warriors from their Gaulish relatives during this era was their mastery of the chariot. The Chariot, an elegant two-wheeled horse-drawn vehicle, had become a mainstay throughout the Celtic world during the early La Tene period, replacing the cumbersome four-wheeled ritual chariots that had served as symbols of power since the Middle Ages. of the Bronze.

However, by the time the continental Celts faced the Greco-Roman world, the chariot had fallen out of use as a battlefield unit in favor of mounted cavalry. However, in Britain it persisted as an instrument of war and would later confuse the likes of Julius Caesar, whose legions had never encountered such vehicles until his raid on the misty island. Another aspect of British Celtic society that baffled the strictly patriarchal Romans was the apparent normalization of women in positions of political or military power. Exactly how much political capital and social equality women had in both ancient Britain and the rest of the Celtic world remains a topic of debate among modern historians.

However, the Roman writer Tacitus, in his book Agricola, commented that "the British make no gender distinction among their leaders." However, it should be noted that Tacitus made that observation to contextualize the story of a certain specific warrior queen, whose story will absolutely be covered later in this

documentary

. Greek and Roman writings and sculptures have given us a romantic image of the average Celt as a towering noble savage, red-maned, sporting a manly mustache and painted from head to toe in terrifying war paint. In reality, the average ancient Briton would not have been much taller than the average Roman or Greek.

While fashion differed from region to region, Iron Age Celts tended to dress conservatively in their daily lives. Men generally wore long-sleeved tunics and wide trousers woven from linen and wool. Women tended to wear long dresses, while both sexes often wore capes decorated with colorful checkered patterns made from natural dyes of copper, berries, plants, and rancid urine. Personal grooming was very important to the Celts. For example, both sexes were said to meticulously and pain

full

y pluck out all their body hair. Furthermore, there is some truth in the stereotypical depiction of the warrior's thick mustache, often depicted in both Celtic and Greco-Roman iconography;

It was probably a common fashion among Celtic men and was believed to be a sign of virility and virility. It was also said that Celtic warriors washed their hair with a mixture of slaked lime and water, which hardened it into hard white spikes. Jewelry was a common accessory among the upper classes. The brooch, a closure for a cloak, was a remarkably enduring feature of Celtic fashion for centuries. Bracelets and arm rings, made in the ornate, swirling style characteristic of La Tene art, were common. Celtic jewelry often had cultural or spiritual significance. The Torc, a heavy metal necklace, was perhaps the most important ornament.

Beyond its value as a symbol of status and rank, it had profound religious importance, as it was said to grant the protection of the gods to whoever wore it. The Celts of Britain shared many of their physical characteristics with their Gaulish cousins ​​on the mainland, but one thing unique to the islands was the practice of ritual tattooing. According to Roman accounts, the ancient Britons made a bluish dye from the isatis tinctoria flower called glasto, which, when applied to meat, was said to provide magical protection in battle. Let us now touch on the complex issue of religion.

The Celtic gods did not belong to an ordered pantheon like the Greco-Roman Olympians, and spirituality throughout the Celtic world was not uniform. Today we know of more than 400 Celtic deities, most of which were the patron of a single tribe or a local god associated with a certain area. However, there were also gods that were prominent throughout the Celtic world. These would include Taranis, who wields thunder, Maponos, the god of youth, Belenus, the sun god, Cernunnos, the horned one, Epona, the horse goddess, and Toutatis, the pan-tribal warrior protector. The ancient Celtic religion was a highly ritualized and deeply sophisticated belief system, which in many cases was facilitated by a class of professional priests.

It is here that we come to perhaps the most iconically enigmatic aspect of Celtic society: the druids. Today, druids conjure up a popular image of mysterious, long-bearded, white-robed old men harvesting mistletoe in ancient forests. However, far from being simply sages of the forest, druids wielded enormous political influence, often serving as peacekeepers and diplomats on behalf of their chiefs, mediating legal matters, serving as healers, and directing education in their tribe. Training to become a druid involved an intense 20-year regimen in which the practitioner had to memorize an enormous variety of oral histories, religious traditions, medicinal knowledge, astronomy, and, of course, religious rituals and divination practices.

Much of our knowledge of Druid practices can be attributed to the writings of the man, the myth, the legend himself: Julius Caesar. According to him, the druids organized a pan-tribal meeting each year in the Woods of the Carnutes, a sacred ground in northern France where important political or religious issues were resolved between the tribes. However, the center of druidic studies, the Harvard of the druidic world, so to speak, was located in Great Britain. In fact, the sacred island of Anglesey, located in what is now North Wales, would later be the scene of the violent climax of Rome's relations with the Druidic order.

One of the key duties of a druid was to officiate at sacrifices to the gods, sacrifices that were often human in nature. Human sacrifice is a common taboo associated with ancient Celtic religion and is often described by Roman writers as a central part of Celtic practice. According to the Roman author Lucan, different gods called for different forms of ritual slaughter. Toutatis's victims were drowned in a tub of water, while Taranis called for the men to be beheaded or burned alive in giant straw effigies. Human sacrifices often involved divination rites; The Greek historian Diodorus attested to a practice in which a victim was massacred so that his entrails could be read to interpret the will of the gods.

It should be noted, however, that the druids never wrote anything and kept much of their knowledge a closely guarded secret restricted to members of their order. We will never have their own accounts of their religious rites, while the Roman authors who wrote about these practices had a great interest in making their Celtic enemies appear savages and barbarians. It would be revisionist to deny the existence of human sacrifice entirely, but we must also take into account the limited perspective that modern scholars have offered on the topic. Speaking of the Romans, their influence was felt in Britain long before a single legionary had planted his caligae on the beaches of Dover.

Although the British's distant Gallic cousins ​​in northern Italy had brought the Eternal City to its knees and then kept the young Republic confined to its home peninsula for more than a century, the 3rd and 2nd centuries B.C. They had seen a reversal of fortunes as the intrepid Maniples of the Latins drove back the Italian Celts, crossed the Alps and then emerged onto the plains beyond, subjugating much of southwestern mainland Gaul. In retrospect, modern observers may see the ever-closer expanse between Rome and Britain as nothing more than the ominous harbinger of a conquest to come. For a time, however, the growing proximity of the burgeoning Republic made Britain's chiefs exceptionally wealthy.

Through a sophisticated network of tribal intermediaries along the Atlantic coast, southeastern Britain and late-republican Rome were connected in a system of material exchange that enriched both worlds: the British exported metals, corn, furs. and slaves in exchange for a large amount of goods. Mediterranean luxuries such as wine, figs and exotic glass decorations. However, as is often the case in history, sometimes all it takes to change a comfortable status quo is one man's ambitions. In fact, in the middle of the 1st century BC. C., a certain rowdy general, a descendant of Venus herself, crowdsurfed on the white cliffs of Dover.

Gaius Julius Caesar had arrived and with him had begun the long saga of war between the Romans and the British. It was the year 55 BC. C. and Julius Caesar had been devastating northern Gaul for three years. What had begun as a particularly dramatic episode of border patrols against the migrating Helvetii tribe had evolved into a major, protracted military campaign to conquer the very heart of the Gaulish world. The year 55 BC It marked the one-year consulship of Crassus and Pompey, the two statesmen who, with Caesar, formed the illustrious First Triumvirate. At this point, Caesar's relationship with these two esteemed friends and colleagues was quickly turning into a rivalry, and with Crassus and Pompey now in a position of immense power.Politically, Caesar needed his own political capital, which he could only obtain by doing something so bold that it would give him enough prestige to remain in the public eye.

To that end, he decided to go with his legions where no Roman had gone before: across the stormy Atlantic Ocean and into the lands that lay beyond. As mentioned above, all Roman exposure to Britain thus far had been indirect. To the average legionary, Britain was the mysterious, misty end of the world, and it was even popular in some Roman scholarly circles to deny that the island existed. Caesar, of course, knew better, for he had gathered a good deal of second-hand information about the island from notables in northern Gaul, who had long maintained diplomatic relations with the Britons.

Since "I want more followers on my Twitch stream than Crassus and Pompey" was not considered a valid reason to invade an entire country under Rome's legalistic approach to international relations, Caesar reasoned that his casus belli was to punish the British for supporting their enemies in continental Gaul. To be fair, there may be some truth to this. During the second century BC. C., the chiefs of the Belgian Gallic tribes migrated across the Channel and established themselves as local rulers in what is now southeast England. They introduced the practice of minting coins to the island; These coins were not used as a form of standardized currency per se, but rather as special political symbols that, when exchanged between two chiefs, bound them in obligations of friendship and mutual aid.

This indicates that cross-strait alliances between the tribes of Britain and Gaul were common. In fact, according to Caesar, shortly before his time, a Belgian king, Diviciacus of the Suessiones, ruled the allegiance of the tribes on both sides of the channel. After a brief detour across the Rhine River to massacre some Germans, Caesar prepared to begin the journey across the wine-dark expanse. He questioned some Gallic maritime merchants who regularly did business across the channel to obtain information about Britain, its people, customs, military tactics and good ports for making landfall, but the merchants remained silent, not wanting to reveal valuable information that could harm its final result.

Before his invasion, Caesar also sent Commius, one of his client kings among the continental Belgians, across the Channel, hoping that his prestigious Belgian lineage would help him convince some of the British chiefs to swear allegiance to Rome. . At midnight on August 23, Julius Caesar left Porcio Itio at the head of two legions, the VII and the X, along with a contingent of 500 cavalry. Problems immediately arose. Summer weather conditions across the English Channel were fickle and dangerous. Due to contrary winds, eighteen of Caesar's transport ships, which happened to be the ones transporting his cavalry, were blown back to the mainland.

However, by 9 a.m. the next day, the rest of the Roman fleet had sighted the horizon, and what a sight it was: a huge sheer cliff of pure white, rising straight from the ocean as if the sword of a god. I would have left. on the coast. The White Cliffs of Dover are one of Britain's most iconic natural landmarks, but they are an absolutely horrible place to land an invading army. Worse still, the Romans were expected, for as their ships approached, they saw a line of painted warriors staring down at them from the top of the cliff, howling and roaring, ready for battle.

Instead of staying where the enemy could launch missiles at them indefinitely from protected high ground, Caesar ordered his fleet to sail northeast until the cliffs began to disappear. Eventually, the Romans reached what modern archaeologists believe to be Pegwell Bay on the Thanet Peninsula, where they once again encountered the British band waiting for them on the sands, having been lying in wait for their ships along the coast. costs all the time. This was a highly mobile force, composed largely of cavalrymen and, most notably, charioteers, a unit with which Caesar's troops would not have been familiar. The invaders resolved to land and confront their enemies, but even here it was a daunting task.

Filled to the brim with armored men, the transport ships were too low in the water to sail close to shore, meaning the legionaries would have to land in deep water in heavy armor, hampering their mobility and dangerously exposing them. to missile fire. No man dared to take the step until, as Caesar tells it, the standard bearer of the . To the Republic and my general! Duly punished, the Romans began to jump overboard. The battle had begun when the legionaries approached the shore, they were attacked by a withering hail of projectiles, probably composed of slings, arrows and javelins in equal measure.

The Republic advanced through this deadly downpour and, upon reaching shallow water, managed to form an orderly battle line. When they reached the beach, a wall of fearless, howling warriors crashed into this line, but the legionaries held out, Latin discipline up to the mark. Celtic ferocity. Caesar watched calmly from aboard a ship. Whenever he saw a section of the line about to break, he deployed small platoons of reserves on board small rowboats, which were transported to the beach to shore up the crack. and the charioteers attempted to flank their enemy, they were attacked with catapults: artillery mounted on board Roman ships.

Finally, a signal was given and the British withdrew. Composed mainly of mobile mounted units, the Britons were able to separate and disappear into the forest easily, while the Romans, composed only of heavy infantry, were unable to pursue them. Still, the Romans had success

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y established a beachhead and quickly erected a fortified camp. Night fell without further incident and in the morning ambassadors from some of the local tribes arrived. These dignitaries arrived in peace and brought with them a familiar face: Commius, Caesar's Gaulish king. Commius's attempts to convince the British to accept Roman overlordship had apparently not impressed them, as they immediately arrested the Belgian ruler, but now, those same British had apparently changed their minds.

They claimed that they had no affiliation with the angry mob that had formed yesterday's "welcoming committee" and offered Caesar valuable hostages to ensure his compliance. Caesar had only been in Britain for two days, but in that time he had made a show of force in the engagement on the beach and had forced at least some local notables to pay tribute to him. So far, so good. However, the proconsul's luck immediately took a 180-degree turn in the following days. When the ships carrying Caesar's cavalry once again attempted to cross the channel, they were caught in a fierce storm and blown off course.

That same storm destroyed transport ships anchored off the beach, sinking some and leaving others inoperable. In a strange and unknown land, with no mobile explorers and no food, Caesar was now stranded. This fact did not go unnoticed by the British. Realizing that if they could trap him until winter, they could starve him, the natives renewed the attack. Caesar immediately organized routine foraging parties to collect food and wood to repair his ships. But his bond was tightening. One night, under the cover of darkness, the British hostages escaped from the Roman camp unnoticed. Not long after, a squad of charioteers ambushed a group of Roman hunters.

The camp's reinforcements repulsed this attack, but a few days later, a massive army appeared from the tree line before the Roman stockade. Evidently, the natives had been working hard to form a grand tribal coalition to crush Caesar's ambitions for good. However, once again, the legionnaires held the line. In this, they had the unlikely help of Commius, who had after all been able to gain some local support, probably from the traditional enemies of the tribes who opposed Caesar. Supported by an improvised force of native British cavalry, the Romans prevailed and the hostile British horde was defeated. After this, the Romans were able to finish makeshift repairs to their ships, which they hastily boarded and quickly returned to Gaul.

Frankly, Caesar's invasion of Britain had been a failure, and he had been lucky to get away with it. Of course, anyone even remotely familiar with the man would know that he wasn't exactly the "leave good enough alone" type. So, he immediately began planning the second invasion: the electric boogaloo, and this time there would be no half measures. The invasion force that assembled at Portius Itius in the summer of 54 BC. C. was more than double the size of the previous year and consisted of five complete legions composed of up to 25,000 professional soldiers. They would be transported aboard an armada of 600 ships.

These were not the leaky tubs of the previous invasion, which had proven so vulnerable to the wrath of Taranis, the Celtic storm god. Instead, these new ships had been inspired by the ships of the Gallic Veneti maritime tribe, making them much better suited to withstand the capricious winds of the channel. He was accompanied by a force of Gallic cavalry led by several local chiefs from northern Gaul. By taking these Gallic kings with him on campaign, he reduced the risk of rebellion on the mainland while he was on the island and also sent a simple message to the British: "I have forced your kinsmen across the sea to do what I command, and by Jove, I will do the same to you!

The fleet set sail on the night of July 6, and Caesar left his subordinate, Labienus, behind in Porcius Itium to manage a cross-Channel supply chain so that Unlike of the last time, the Roman expedition to Britain was able to reposition periodically. The fleet was within sight of misty Albion the next morning. They probably landed where they had the previous year, at Pegwell Bay. native horde on the sand to meet them. Upon landing, Caesar immediately established a fortified beachhead, then took the bulk of his forces and marched inland to find the enemy's position at a crossing along the River Stour.

The legionnaires discovered a large British force. A battle ensued in which the Romans gained the upper hand, prompting the Britons to flee in their fast chariots. This time, Caesar had the cavalry to pursue, but the sun was setting and the terrain was unfamiliar, so he decided to play it safe and camp. The next morning, the proconsul received news that another storm had caused serious damage to his ships. The damage was not as severe as last year, but Caesar was still forced to return to the beach and prioritize repairing his ships. Meanwhile, many tribes in Britain had put aside their differences and united around their most powerful warlord, a man named Casilvelaunus.

Far more than a simple barbarian brute, Cassivelaunus possessed a strategic mind that rivaled Caesar's. Realizing that his lightly armored Celtic warriors could not defeat Romanus' heavy infantry in a pitched battle, he pinned his hopes on the 4,000 chariots under his command. After the Roman cavalry defended some raids against his foraging parties, Caesar once again gathered the bulk of his forces and marched inland toward the River Thames. During this hellish advance, Casivelauno's Fast & Furious street racers hounded the Roman column like a swarm of wasps. Using hit-and-run tactics, the charioteers closed in and threw javelins at the invaders, then Tokyo drove away as they were pursued, disappearing into the forest.

The Roman cavalry did their best to repel these attacks, but pursuing them was dangerous. At one point, a contingent of Roman horsemen was lured into the depths of the forest and ambushed on all sides. However, just like last time, Caesar received a bit of deus ex machina in the form of local support. Not all the tribes of southeastern Britain were very depressed with Cassivelaunus in charge. The Trinovantes were particularly dissatisfied. Recently, Cassivelaunus had killed his king and forced his son, Mandubratius, into exile. At some point before the invasion of Britain, Mandubratius had fled to Gaul, where he became a ward of Caesar.

Now the Trinovantes approached the proconsul, offering him submission if his Prince would be returned to them. Caesar obeyedhappily, and soon after, five other tribes with grievances against Casivelauno: the Cenimagni, Segontiaci, Ancalites, Bibroci and Cassi, also approached and pleaded. Caesar's new native allies gifted him with invaluable information: the location of the hillfort of Casivelaunus, which was probably located on the modern site of Devil's Dyke in Hertfordshire. Caesar headed directly to this fortress, wanting to finally force his cunning enemy to participate in the pitched combat that had hitherto alluded him. Knowing that the storm was approaching his door, Cassivelaunus sent word to his allies Cingetorix, Carvilius, Taximagulus and Segovax, the "Four Kings of Kent", and ordered them to mount a diversionary attack on the Roman beachhead to force Caesar to divert his forces. .

In the end, this was a failed tactic, as the rump guard on the beach was able to repel the four chieftains' assault, and after a brief encirclement and siege, Caesar was able to capture the fortress of Cassivelaunus, although he apparently failed to capture the Warlord. the same. Still, with his warrior's mustache badly singed, Casivelauno decided to throw in the towel and enter into negotiations with his patrician enemy. The terms of the surrender were quite lenient. Cassivelaunus delivered valuable hostages into Caesar's hands, agreed to pay an annual tribute to Rome, and promised not to seek revenge against the Trinovantes or any other tribe that had turned against him and was now under Roman protection.

After this agreement, the proconsul left with his armies. He had unfinished business in mainland Gaul and had to leave before the peak of the storm season. Ultimately, Gaius Julius Caesar's invasion of Britain did not establish any permanent Roman presence on the island, although it did set a precedent of several chiefs from southeastern Britain becoming autonomous client-kings under Roman influence and protection. . This status quo would endure for generations, but a century later the Imperial Eagle would return to British shores, and this time, it was there to stay. It was the year 41 AD. and the Roman Empire had a new Princeps.

Claudius was not the type of man normally called emperor. A shy, frail boy struggling with a limp and a speech impediment, he had stumbled upon the Imperial Purple only because he was too pathetic to be seen as a threat during the political purges committed by the Mad Emperor Caligula, and was the only member . of the imperial family abandoned the throne after the assassination of Caligula. But he was no fool and he knew that to gain the support of his soldiers, he needed to shed his cowardly reputation and undertake a great conquest like his great dynastic ancestors Caesar and Augustus.

To do this, he chose the only corner of the Celtic world that had not yet been completely subordinated to the Roman Empire. Recently, Caratacus, king of the Catuvellauni, had been making aggressive expansions of his own, conquering Camulodunum, the tribal capital of the Trinovantes, and deposing Verica, the former king of the Atrebates. Both the Atrabates and the Trinovantes were Roman clients, and Caratacus's predecessor, Cassivelaunus, had agreed to respect the latter's sovereignty in the treaty he had signed with Caesar a century earlier. Because of this, Claudius was given a valid casus belli for his invasion of Britain, with his expedition framed as a mission to protect Rome's allies and punish Caratacus for violating the treaty signed by his ancestor.

In AD 43, 98 years since Julius Caesar first raided Britain, Roman troops began gathering at Gesoriacum in preparation to cross the channel. To lead this invasion, Claudius appointed Aulus Plautius, a distinguished senator and capable general. The force that was gathered was made up of the Legio Rome. In addition to the regular legionaries, auxiliaries were summoned from the conquered peoples of the Empire. They came primarily from the Germanic Batavian tribe and the native tribes of Gaul, who were recruited by their imperial masters to participate in the subjugation of their British cousins. In total, the invasion force numbered 45,000 soldiers of light infantry, heavy infantry and cavalry, of which half were made up of Roman citizens and the other half of Gallic and Batavian auxiliaries.

By the time of Claudius, Gaul had been fully incorporated into the Roman Empire, but the Celtic tribes of Britain still had a mystical aura in the eyes of the Romans. This was nothing new, of course, the mainland Gauls had also once been seen as supernatural demons, only to be completely demystified through centuries of contact and conquest. But to the Romans of the 1st century AD, Britain was a land shrouded in a fog of mystery, full of untamed savages, long-haired and streaked with disturbing blue tattoos that gave them the appearance of vengeful spirits. Of course, south-east Britain had been in the Roman sphere of influence since Caesar's hot summer in Kent a century earlier.

But, to the average commoner legionnaire with no higher education in contemporary geography and geopolitics, Britain was little more than a land of spirits and bogeymen. Thus, even before the invading force set sail, Aulus Plautius faced a major mutiny at his hands. His men flatly refused to cross the ocean, which was considered the border of humanity's own world. According to the Roman historian Cassius Dio, this mutiny was quelled in the bud when Narcissus, a former slave in the service of Emperor Claudius, set up the court of General Plautius and began haranguing the soldiers for their cowardice. Whether deeply humiliated or amused at being punished by a former slave of all things, the legionaries erupted with cries of 'Io Saturnalia!', a reference to the Roman festival in which slaves became masters for a night, and They resolved to follow Plautius across the sea. .

The aforementioned Dion Cassius, whose writings are, incidentally, the only ancient source chronicling this invasion, does not indicate where Plautius's invading force made landfall, but modern archaeologists confidently place the site at Richborough, Kent. Landing 45,000 men and all their horses, equipment and supplies on a beach was a long and cumbersome process, which made it even more peculiar that the Romans were able to do it without hindrance. No native force had come to oppose the Roman landing. It is very likely that a large coalition army led by Cativellauni had been waiting on the beaches of Kent until recently. But, after learning of the mutiny of Roman troops from cross-channel Gaulish traders, the threat of an imminent invasion was greatly diminished and most of the gathered tribes dispersed and returned to their farms.

From Richborough, Plautius led his expedition westwards along the River Stour, where he still encountered no native resistance. However, this calm before the storm would not last. By then, the Catevellauni and their allies were frantically taking up arms. As soon as news of the Roman landing spread throughout the country, his enormous multi-tribal army began to reconstitute itself, led by King Caratacus and his brother, Togodumnus. Cassius Dio does not mention the location where this British force met, but the consensus of modern historians is that the two brothers chose to hold out somewhere along the western bank of the River Medway.

This dynamic duo of Catuvellauni royalty likely commanded the loyalty of nearly every tribe in southern Britain and was capable of amassing a massive horde. However, it would take time for this pan-tribal force to filter down from the peripheral regions. As such, the brothers deployed a vanguard to delay the Roman advance. When Plautius attempted to ford the River Stour at a location near modern Canterbury, he eventually encountered armed resistance from the warriors of Cantiaci. According to Cassius Dion, the Romans easily repulsed this vanguard and ensured their surrender. Around this time, another tribe, the Dobunni, approached Plautius with his emissaries and pleaded before the Imperial Eagle.

Plautius left behind a small contingent of soldiers to build a fort near Canterbury and secure his initial lands, then continued west toward where the main indigenous host was gathering to oppose him. After crossing the Stour, the Roman army probably advanced in a wide column along a prehistoric path that the Britons and their ancestors had maintained since the Stone Age. Eventually they reached the east bank of the River Medway, probably a shallow but marshy ford about four miles above present-day Rochester. There, the legionnaires and their auxiliaries came face to face with the dragon they had come to slay: an absolutely enormous crowd of painted warriors watching them from across the water.

Dio Cassius does not give us the number of Caratacus and Togodumnus's army, but historians have claimed that the British host may have numbered a staggering 150,000. Whether or not this number is exaggerated, the natives certainly outnumbered the invaders by a significant number. The four legions were deployed in a long battle line along the river bank, and a tense confrontation ensued. The ball was in the Romans' court, as the British's main objective was simply to maintain their position and the responsibility for advancing fell on the invaders. However, launching a frontal assault across the water would be disastrous for the Latins, and both Plautius and the Catevellauni brothers knew this.

According to Cassius Dion, the Britons were overconfident in their position, because “they pitched their camp rather carelessly,” without expecting that the Romans would be able to cross the river. It's hard to believe that a pair of battle-hardened warlords like Caratacus and Togodumnus were so naïve as to believe that about 500 meters of water would stop the Roman war machine in its tracks. But, if we take Cassius Dion's account of the barbarians' supposed arrogance at face value, then their arrogance would be their undoing. Plautius knew that he needed to create a diversion before attempting to ford the river with his main army.

To that end, he prepared a ruse, ordering the legions to appear busy and move decisively to convince the enemy that large-scale preparations were being made for an immediate assault. As the British watched all this with fascinated anticipation, Plautius deployed his Batavians to silently enter the water some distance upstream and make a stealthy crossing. Originating from the swampy lowlands of what is now Holland, the Batavians were experts at swimming across even the fastest rivers in full arms and armor. The Germanic auxiliaries reached the British side of the Medway unnoticed. From there, they attacked not the dense mass of native warriors crowded on the shore, but their tethered chariots and horses, which would have been parked in a group behind the horde and left relatively unguarded.

The Batavians fell on these war vehicles, breaking the wheels and hamstringing the legs of the steeds that pulled them. When the British realized what had happened, they were probably furious. The horse and chariot were the symbol of status and martial pride of the British, and to have destroyed them so savagely would no doubt have provoked apoplectic fury in many warrior elites. As the Batavians retreated across the water and a chaotic native horde turned its attention to their maimed steeds, Plautius had finally gained the distraction he needed. Once cast, he ordered Vespasian to lead the Legio II Augusta across the river.

Advancing carefully through the shallow swamps, the second Legion apparently managed to reach the opposite bank unnoticed. When the British realized they had been outmaneuvered, they launched into the advancing force. However, Vespasian held the line and his 5,000 legionaries withstood the tsunami of Celtic ferocity that crashed into his scutums. The Romans had successfully established a bridgehead on the British side of the river, forcing the British to withdraw and regroup. As night fell, Plautius ordered the Legio IX Hispania under Hosidius Geta to cross under cover of darkness and reinforce Vespasian. The next day, the fighting began again. Far from being defeated, the British fell on the Romans with renewed cruelty.

Without regard for their own lives, wave after wave of screaming half-naked Celtics rushed against the bristling shield wall of their steel-clad enemies. Evidently, the British initially had the advantage and were able to create some dangerous fissures within the Roman line. At one point, Cassius Dio notes that Legio IX was under serious threat of being flooded, and Hosidius Geta himself narrowly escaped capture. Evidently, it was Geta who changed the course. Infused with a brave second wind, the Legacy of the Ninth gathered hismen and turned the tide, probably executing a successful enveloping movement that ultimately put the British horde to flight.

The Battle of Medway ended in a decisive victory for the Romans. Although Caratacus and Togodumnus had escaped from the battlefield, the army they had gathered had likely suffered massive casualties, and their prospects of fielding a force large enough to meet Plautius's four legions head on were bleak. The Romans were now effectively the masters of Britain's southern lowlands. After the battle, Caratacus and Togodumnus retreated to the Thames with what remained of their army, pursued by the Romans. According to Cassius Dio, the British crossed the water at a point where the river emptied into the ocean and formed a lake during the tide.

The brother kings of the Catevellauni hoped to use this complex terrain to once again oppose the imperial advance despite their diminished numbers. However, it appears that Plautius was able to find a pre-existing bridge upstream or have his soldiers build a pontoon. Crossing with their legions while their Batavian harassers swam through the water on a different stretch of the river, the invaders "engaged the enemy from several sides at once, felling many of them, leading to another British defeat, but while the Romans were pursuing them." Without due caution, large groups of legionaries got lost on the marches where they were ambushed and shot down.

During this battle, Togodumnus appears to have died. According to Cassius Dio, the death of King Catevellauni revitalized the fighting spirit of the British, completely battered and thirsty for revenge. At this point, Caracatus had probably accepted the fact that he no longer had the manpower to confront the Roman legions head-on. Having bid an anguished farewell to his eastern lowland kinsmen, whom he was now forced to leave at the mercy of the Imperial Eagle, he and his followers retreated to the mountainous highlands of western Britain, where they intended to launch a stubborn, persistent and brutal guerrilla war against the inevitable Roman advance.

And yet, that progress did not occur. For the moment, Plautius refrained from marching towards the hills and preferred to consolidate what was already in his power. Despite having little or no part in the actual conquest, Emperor Claudius was eager to enjoy the glories of it. Thus, once the southeastern part of the island was free of all resistance, Plautius sent Augustus to look for him. The imperial procession arrived in August with the Emperor, his Praetorian Guard, and a contingent of war elephants. Shortly after his arrival, Claudius entered Camulodunum, the capital of Cativellauni, which had been abandoned by Caracatus during his retreat westward.

There, dignitaries from many local tribes came to offer his submission. To most Britons, it would have been a truly imposing sight, the Imperial Overlord cloaked in resplendent purple, riding a massive gray monster in the capital where their defeated king once ruled. New times were approaching and the land of Britain now had new masters. However, the Roman conquest of Britain had only just begun, and it would take decades for their legions to dominate even the southern half of the island, let alone the wild and mountainous north. As is often the case in Celtic history, disunity hampered the British war effort.

Some tribes with already Roman-leaning leaders, such as the Iceni, quickly submitted and were allowed to retain limited independence as client kings under Roman rule. Even the resistance leader Caratacus himself was captured by Queen Cartimandua of the Brigantes, who handed him over in chains to the Romans. However, resistance continued in the northwest, led by the Silures and Ordovices tribes, who used hit-and-run guerrilla tactics to hinder the imperial advance for more than a decade. Still, the Roman war machine proved relentless and, by 60 AD, was invading the island of Ynys Mon, one of Britain's most important religious sites and home to the Druidic order of the islands.

Like their continental brethren, the druids of Britain had been a major driving force in the resistance against the Empire. When a Roman army led by Gaius Suetonius Paulinus arrived at the sacred island, they came face to face with a row of singing magicians dressed in occult robes, standing behind wild priestesses cloaked in black, waving torches and shouting curses in the mysterious language. British. The extremely superstitious legionaries remained paralyzed by absolute terror at the magic of the druids. But Paulinus instilled courage in his men and the Romans recovered, massacred everyone who stood before them, and burned all the sacred groves on the island to the ground.

The clearing of Britain's holiest site was aimed at crushing the native spirit and yet the resistance continued and its torch passed to an iconic warrior queen who needs no introduction. During the initial Roman invasion, the Iceni, a British tribe based in the east of the island, allied themselves with the Romans as a means of ensuring their protection. They paid tribute to the Empire, but were governed by their own kings, who saw how the wind blew. In 60 AD, the Iceni king Prasutagus died. In his will, the Roman emperor Nero was named co-heir with the king's two daughters.

Prasutagus did this to safeguard his kingdom and his home and facilitate their Roman rule, but his attempts to be nice to the new overlords would be in vain and would end up bringing nothing but grief to his closest relatives. After the death of King Iceni, the Roman legions marched to seize all of the tribes' territory. According to Tacitus, "both the kingdom and the house of Prasutagus were plundered as prizes of war," and the Icena lands were destined for annexation to the Roman province. This was a quintessential example of the harsh and oppressive conditions underlying the Roman occupation of Britain.

We only have Roman accounts from the time, but even these are enough to reveal terrible mismanagement ranging from cruelly negligent to downright criminal. It is possible that the Procurator of Britannia would have been under constant pressure to improve his cash flow, and the temptation of Icenic riches was too much to pass up. Furthermore, the forced recruitment of young teenage warriors into the Roman legions as auxiliaries was almost universally detested. Whatever the reasoning, when the king's widow, Queen Boudicca, protested against this treatment, she was flogged and Roman soldiers abused her daughters. Furious at this humiliation and wishing to expel the Romans from her lands, in 60 CE, Boudicca led her people into war.

Forming an alliance to oppose the imperial occupiers, the Iceni were quickly joined by their southern neighbors: the Trinovantes. The "British disaster," as Suetonius called it, had begun. The revolt came at a particularly bad time for the Romans, because the then governor of Britannia, Gaius Suetonius Paulinus, was in north Wales, selecting a druid island, and could not return quickly. Before long, the Iceni and their allies were marching south towards the Roman military colony of Camulodunum, modern-day Colchester. This city served as one of the main symbols of Roman domination in Britain and a constant sting to the pride of the Celtic warrior.

At this time it was almost completely defenseless, because its garrison, the Twentieth Legion, had headed west with Paulinus. To make matters worse, while Camulodunum was filled with Roman administrative and cultural buildings, it had few military fortifications, not even walls to hide behind. When the hated colony received news of the approaching storm, they begged the procurator of Londinium, Catus Decianus, for help. Instead of marching to the aid of his compatriots, the procurator sent them a meager force of 200 poorly equipped slaves. It is quite possible that Decianus completely underestimated the magnitude of the revolt. A 2,000-strong segment of the IX Legion rushed to the colony's rescue.

However, in their haste they were ambushed by Boudicca's Iceni forces and almost completely destroyed. Without any substantial relief arriving in time, the British descended on the city. Men, women and children were annihilated by hanging, crucifixion, burning and other cruel means, while the colony's buildings were burned to the ground. The survivors of this first wave fled to the great temple of Claudius for protection, and were protected for two whole days by Roman veterans and the small number of reinforcements sent to the city. Despite their resistance, the Celts paid off and stormed the temple, killing everyone they saw.

The destruction of Camulodunum was so complete that archaeologists can see a notable layer of charred rubble left by the sacking of the city, called the "Boudican destruction horizon." Later, a messenger arrived at Paulinus in Wales, informing him of the disaster and encouraging him to force his troops back to the east, while he rode quickly with a group of horsemen to assess the situation. Londinium was the rebels' next major objective. This Roman city, founded just after the conquests of 43 AD, had in the decades following Claudius's initial invasion become a bustling commercial center populated by merchants, travelers, Roman officials and their families.

Before Boudicca's horde of Brittonic warriors could reach Londinium, Paulinus arrived with his small mounted contingent and contemplated holding out to save the city. However, he quickly realized that without his legions, it was a foolish fight. Instead, he decided to abandon Londinium to its fate to buy time for his armies to concentrate, and retreated northwest along the road that would become known as Watling Street. Shortly after Paulinus's retreat, the same devastation that had struck Camulodunum now struck Londinium. The death and destruction was absolute. After massacring the population of Londinium, Boudicca set out in the direction of Verulamium, moving north along Watling Street before doing what he had done with the other two larger cities.

However, the lack of coins in the archaeological record could imply that the inhabitants realized what was coming and managed to escape with much of their portable wealth, possibly following Paulinus north. However, Verulamium also ended up being a blackened wasteland. Meanwhile, Paulinus had rallied with what forces he could muster and chose a location for the next decisive battle halfway up Watling Street, attempting to drive Boudicca as far west as possible to give the legionaries time to rest. The field on which the climactic battle would be fought was a place surrounded by wooden slopes with a narrow entrance and protected in the rear by a dense primeval forest of undergrowth.

Paulinus, a traditional Roman tactic of using the terrain to his advantage, knew that in this position, the Romans could not easily be attacked from the flanks or rear. Where exactly in central England the battle took place remains a matter of debate, and many locations have been proposed, including the town of Mancetter, but it could have been any number of locations. Wherever the eventual conflict took place, Paulinus had around 11,000 soldiers at his disposal, composed of approximately 7,000 highly disciplined legionary heavy infantry, drawn from the legio XIV Gemina and a vexillatio, or a temporarily separated segment of the legio XX.

The 4,000 additional troops were six cohorts of auxiliary infantry and two wings of cavalry, including the ever-fearsome Batavians of the Rhine region. Paulinus had attempted to reinforce his forces by calling in the legio II Augusta from the south, but his commander He ignored the request. In front of his defensive position there was, according to Cassius Dio, a horde of 230,000 Celtic shouters. These figures are highly questionable, but even if we divided the supposed Celtic horde by five, the Romans were still outnumbered by a ratio of five to one. Most of the rebel infantry were armed in the traditional manner of the Celtic La Tene warrior, girded with a combination of long swords, shields and short spears.

As for armor, it was very rare, and Celtic warriors probably went into battle wearing only a pair of baggy wool trousers. Instead, they relied on their fearsome physique and individual fighting ability to gain victory. Celtic aristocrats and military elites also formed a small force of agile, fast, open-fronted chariots. As the rebel force approached Paulinus's motley contingent, he arrayed his forces along a narrow defile, with his legionaries serving as the central force of his army in the center, three auxiliary cohorts on each of his flanks, and a wing of cavalry on each wing, anchored by the forests.

The dense forest cover to the sides and behind also meant that retreat would be impossible if theRomans were defeated, it would be an all or nothing battle. As the enemy forces prepared for the fray, both commanders attempted to motivate their men. Riding the royal chariot along with her two daughters, the queen, according to the probably inventive Cassius Dion, drove through its loose ranks, shouting to the warriors around her: "We Britons are accustomed to female commanders in war ". I am descended from brave men! But now I am not fighting for my kingdom and my riches. I am fighting like an ordinary person for my lost freedom, my bruised body and my outraged daughters...

Consider how many of you are fighting and why! Then you will win this battle or die. That is what I, a woman, plan to do!: let men live in slavery if they wish.” The comments made on the other side of the battlefield were much more forceful and serious, ignoring the apparent “rabble” in front of them. “Ignore the racket these savages make!” Paulinus prayed to the troops. “They are not soldiers. They are not even properly equipped! “We have defeated them before and when they see our weapons and feel our spirit, they will break.” With a roar of war cries from both sides, the British charioteers opened the battle, spinning up and down the Roman line, hurling insults and deadly javelins at the Romans in equal measure.

The Romans managed to resist this missile attack and before long the charioteers retreated while the war bands advanced. They arrived in a gigantic frontal assault, hoping to use the impact factor of their charge to break through and break the Roman line. However, the Romans' clever use of the terrain now came into effect. As the numerically dominant Celtic horde charged uphill, it naturally funneled into the increasingly narrow defile, which acted as a force multiplier, limiting the number of warriors who could confront the Romans at any given time and mitigating their load, due to its uphill nature. However, the screaming warriors charged forward and, just before crashing into the Roman line, were hit by a storm of legionary Pila javelins, which would have caused devastating casualties on lightly armed troops.

The Roman formation then charged downhill in a series of offensive wedge formations, aiming to cut deep swaths into the enemy mass. The legionaries smashed their enemy in the face with the metal center of their heavy scutum shield and then attacked with the gladius. With the momentum of their initial shock charge mitigated by the enemy's terrain, sophisticated tactics, and brutal efficiency, the battle turned. Boudicca's light infantry, who probably had little experience fighting the type of heavily armed and armored troops that Rome deployed, were progressively divided, slowly but surely over the course of the day. British vigor and ferocity were repulsed by Roman resistance and discipline, drawing ever closer to the semicircle of chariots behind them.

Catastrophically, women, children and the sick had accompanied the men in this battle. However, the chariots inadvertently served as a large net through which the Celts could not escape fast enough and were massacred. Despite fighting for their own lives and their lives, the Romans showed no mercy. Women, children and even draft animals were killed by the Roman gladius. We do not know how many died, but it is said that 80,000 Britons died on the battlefield, at the meager cost of 400 Romans. Although Boudicca managed to escape in his chariot, Tacitus tells us that he took his own life a few days later, while Cassius Dio says that the disease claimed him.

Poenius Postumus, the commander of Legio II who had refused to help Paulinus, committed suicide when he heard the news of the victory, clearly aware of the fate that awaited him for his insubordination. The legion itself fell into disgrace and remained II Augusta for the rest of his days. In contrast, legio XIV Gemina obtained the titles of Martia Victrix (martial and victorious), while legio XX obtained the title of Valeria Victrix (brave and victorious). The rest of the Iceni and Trinovantes were completely annihilated by the punitive Paulinus. After this defeat, Britain would increasingly consolidate itself as a Roman province.

Sporadic wars continued for another twenty years, but in 80 AD. Britain had been subdued. ...Or if? During centuries of imperial occupation, former Celtic territories such as Hispania and Gallia Transalpina had become central domains of the Roman Empire. Roads, aqueducts and large cities increasingly connected these peripheral territories with the heart of Italy. The Gaulish language survived among the peasantry for a time, but the local nobles, subjected to centuries of Latin education, had become completely Romanized in every significant sense. Britain was different. As the empires' furthest frontier territory, the British Celts never embraced Roman identity as much as their mainland cousins ​​had.

Of course, some did. The southern and eastern edges saw substantial spending on infrastructure leading to the development of Roman roads, villas and cities such as Londinium and Eboracum. Local elites soon accepted the program and adopted the Latin language as well as the symbols of Roman material culture. But this civilization existed on a gradient. If a man were to leave the paved streets of Londinium and travel north or west, the landscape would change. You would start to see fewer hillforts and villas, and more acacia roundhouses around Iron Age hillforts. The regions of what is now most of northern England and Wales had been where anti-Roman resistance had been strongest, and although the natives there had undoubtedly been conquered, they never truly embraced the Roman way of life as they had. their relatives from the southeast. .

It was here that classic Celtic staples such as La Tene artwork and tribal lifestyle survived. For almost all of imperial rule, these regions had to be kept under strict military occupation. But despite their independent spirit, these were not the last free Celts. If one headed further north, he would find himself facing a huge whitewashed wall that stretched from horizon to horizon. A huge structure that, at least in the eyes of the Romans, marked the border where civilization ended and untamed savagery began. Since the Iron Age, the northern half of the island of Great Britain, corresponding to modern Scotland and the northern tip of modern England, had been home to many tribes.

Perhaps the most powerful were the Caledoni, who lived in the highlands of modern Scotland. Their name was a proto-Celtic acronym meaning "those with hard feet", probably a reference to the rugged territory they inhabited. In later centuries, the Romans called them picti (Latin for painted). In these wild northern hills, between rushing rivers and rolling plains at the edge of the world, lay the last frontier of Celtic independence. The roots of Rome's early campaigns in the northern half of Britain in AD 69. After a year of civil war, one man eliminated all of his rivals and claimed sole dominion over the Imperial Purple.

That man was none other than Vespasian, the general who, in his youth, had been the hammer that shattered the British at the Battle of Medway. Vespasian's days of campaigning at the end of the world were over, but his ambitions to completely tame perfidious Albion were not. In 71 AD, he appointed one of his most trusted supporters, Gnaeus Julius Agricola, to command the Legio XX Valeria Victrix and bring order to the defiant brigantes, who had overthrown their pro-Roman queen Cartimandua and launched an open revolt against the imperial lordship. Evidently, Agricola was successful because six years later, in 77 AD, Vespasian appointed him governor of the entire province and gave him four legions to govern it.

At that time, Britain was one of the most heavily garrisoned areas of the Roman Empire, and with good reason. At 37 years old, Agricola inherited a barely tamed province. Boudicca's rebellion was still in recent memory, and even now there were sparks of insurrection in Wales and the north-west of England that had not yet been extinguished. Agricola's objectives during his tenure as governor were simple: impose Romanites on the conquered tribes of Britain and expand the Empire's borders to the hitherto unconquered tribes of the unexplored northern half of the island. Before we launch into Governor Agricola's epic showdown against the howling Scots, we must first be responsible historians and discuss the primary source chronicling his invasion.

Almost everything we know about Agricola's campaigns against the Caledonians comes from a biography appropriately known as The Agricola, written by the Roman historian Tacitus, who happened to be Agricola's son-in-law. So not only are we dealing with our usual problem of viewing ancient Celtic history through an exclusively Roman lens, but we are also dealing with the fact that our main primary source was written by a man with a nepotistic interest in glorifying its main character. As such, many modern historians are highly critical of Tacitus. However, it is not really in our hands to judge a 2,000-year-old proto-ethnographer, so we will simply describe his interpretation of events as they stand.

When Agricola was a little boy, his mother always told him: “Son, no Scotland for you until you're done with Wales.” Taking that wisdom to heart, he spent the campaign season of 78 AD. crushing the stubbornly defiant Ordovices. Making good use of the mobile and amphibious Batavian auxiliaries that had previously played a pivotal role in the initial conquest of Britain, Agricola crushed the Ordovices in battle. Continuing where Gaius Suetonius, the “Kentucky fried druid” Paulinus, had left off two decades earlier, he proceeded to completely subjugate the sacred island of Anglesey. That winter, Agricola spent heavily on infrastructure throughout the territory of the conquered tribes, building temples, courts of law, and Roman villas for the tribal elites who obediently adopted the Roman way of life.

At the time, much of south-east Britain was on the path to Romanisation, as Celtic nobles whose mothers and fathers had fought tooth and nail against Roman expansion developed a taste for the toga, the hall, the bath and the elegant banquet. Curiously, Tacitus is somewhat cynical about this and comments: “In his ignorance, they called all this civilization when it was nothing more than a part of their servitude.” Despite having a clear admiration for his father-in-law's military victories, Tacitus criticized the more hedonistic and luxury-loving elements of Roman society and conveyed a grudging respect for what he considered the "untamed barbarian", whose life, in His imagination was brutal, but more honest than the Roman one.

Tacitus' fondness for the “noble savage” trope will become evident in the way he described the undefeated Caledonians whose territory his father-in-law would soon invade. With the south pacified, in the summer campaign season of 79 AD. C., Governor Agricola launched his first foray into unknown and untamed lands beyond imperial control. Tacitus does not provide the composition of his father-in-law's forces, but it is likely that they consisted of the Ninth and Twentieth Legions, based at Carlisle and York respectively, with a contingent of Batavian and Gaul auxiliaries attached. The Roman expedition advanced on two fronts: Legio XX Valeria Victrix took the western route towards Galloway and Legio IX Hispania marched along the eastern coast.

Surprisingly, the invaders met very little resistance from the locals, and the Novantae, Solgovae, and Votadini tribes quickly submitted. Tacitus states that although the legions were “beaten by summer storms,” the natives were “so petrified with fear that they dared not attack.” It's easy to understand why. The threat of the Roman army was not only the invincible image of its heavy infantry but also its monstrous logistical prowess. As Agricola advanced, he oversaw the construction of a network of forts and roads to consolidate his achievements, maintain a reliable supply line, and pave the way for future campaigns. If we put ourselves through the eyes of a lowland Scotsman of this era, we can understand why many decided that it was ill-advised to use arms against an invader who not only outgunned and outmanned them, but was capable of level hills and cut down forests within them. days and erecting fortresses in the span of a single afternoon.

It is estimated that, throughout his northern campaigns, Agricola had more than 35 permanent wooden forts built throughout Scotland. After spending the winter of 79 in their well-supplied forts, in the spring of 80 AD, Agricola's legions advanced towards the Tay Fjord and subdued the Venicones tribe, extending their network of roads andcastras towards their territory. The Governor's conquest of Scotland was achieved very slowly, hill by hill, but by maintaining this glacial pace, he ensured that his achievements were stable and logistically sustainable. By AD 81, the Isthmus of Forth-Clyde had been completely absorbed by the Roman border, with a line of forts running along its southern coast.

These forts were periodically resupplied by the Roman navy, which now operated along regular supply routes along the coast. That same year, Tacitus mysteriously comments that Agricola embarked on a ship and defeated peoples unknown until then to the Romans. This may simply mean that he crossed to the other side of the Firth of Clyde, but traditionally, it has been popularly theorized that the body of water that Tacitus mentions Agricola crossed was the Irish Sea. This is supported by the fact that, according to Tacitus, at some point, a regional Irish king was exiled from his homeland and crossed the sea, where he came under the protection of Agricola.

We can imagine the Roman governor considering the idea of ​​using this exiled Gaelic leader as a pretext to launch an invasion of Ireland. Irish folk legend tantalizingly waters the seeds Tacitus plants. Tuathal Teachtmhar, a legendary Gaelic king, is said to have been exiled to Britain as a child and returned to Ireland leading an army to claim the throne. The traditional date of his return is between 76 and 80, and archeology has found Roman or Romano-British artifacts at several sites associated with Tuathal. Regardless of whether Agricola immersed himself in the land of the Gaels or not, in the year 81 AD.

C. he had definitely gained firm control over the lowlands of Scotland, making the craggy peaks and valleys of the misty highlands the only part of Britain whose soil was intact. by the footprint of the legionary's caligas. Here lived the roaring Caledones tribe and their vassals, and here Agricola would finally come face to face with the Pictish ferocity that future generations of Romans would learn to fear. When the campaign season of 84 AD began. C., the intrepid governor resumed his advance northward, advancing along the border fault of the highlands, where the gentle hills and steep cliffs of the two geological zones of Alba meet.

At the head of his army, he deployed the Roman fleet along the east coast to spread fear and confusion in the coastal settlements. However, unlike their lowland cousins, the grass-covered Caledonians were undeterred by the advance of the indomitable Imperial war machine. Under his leadership, a large confederacy began to form, composed of almost all the highland tribes, as well as contingents of lowland warriors who were not content to bow to Agricola as his chiefs had done. Deep in the mountains, a massive army gathered to oppose the Roman advance. This army was led by a man named Chalgacus, whom Tacitus describes as a peerless warrior king, "the most distinguished in birth and valor" among all the Scottish chiefs.

Calgacus, whose name means "swordsman," is Tacitus's ideal noble savage: a man who would die to preserve a brutalist but free life rather than accept servitude amid the comforts of Latin civilization. The climactic clash between Calgacus and Agricola occurred on a hill called Mons Graupius. Modern historians do not know where this hill was located, other than it could have been anywhere north of the River Tay. Wherever he was, it was there that Calcagus led his enormous host, and there he intended to oppose the Romans. Agricola's army was camped nearby, and when the location of the Caledonian army was revealed to him, Agricola hurried and encamped with his army at the base of the slopes.

He followed a steady gaze, with the Romans at the bottom of the hill and the Scots at the top. Evidently, Calgachus was quite a charismatic orator, because before the battle began, Tacitus attributes a moving speech to him: “For us, who dwell in the remotest reaches of the earth and of freedom, this remote sanctuary of the glory of Britain has until now had been a defence. Now, however, the furthest limits of Britain are left open. But there are no tribes beyond us, nothing but waves and rocks, and the even more terrible Romans, from whose oppression one seeks in vain to escape by obedience and submission.

Thieves of the world, having exhausted the earth with their universal plunder, plunder the depths. If the enemy is rich, he is rapacious; if he is poor, they covet dominion; Neither the East nor the West have been able to satisfy them. They are the only ones among men who covet poverty and wealth with equal enthusiasm. They give the lying name of empire to the theft, to the slaughter, to the looting; They make a solitude and call it peace.” Not to be left behind, Agricola turned to the men who had followed him to the ends of the earth and made a moving speech: “Often on the march, when the swamps, the mountains and the rivers were draining your strength, did I hear to our bravest men to exclaim: 'When will we have the enemy before us?

When will we fight? Now he is here, expelled from his lair, and your desires and your courage have free reach, and everything favors the victor, everything is adverse to the vanquished. Better is an honorable death than a shameful life, and it would not be a shameful end to perish in the extreme confines of the earth and nature! With brave cheers from both sides, both Romans and Scots began to form battle lines. The Caledonian Confederacy probably numbered about 30,000 members. Calgaco organized his infantry concentrated in two lines, one on the lower slopes of the hill and another in reserve at the top.

On the plain at the foot of the hill between the two armies, he stationed his charioteers, who ran back and forth along the battle line, hurling insults and fearless bluster toward his enemies. With an army of perhaps 12,000 men in total, Agricola was deeply outnumbered. His forces consisted of three legions proper, ten wings of auxiliary cavalry, and eight cohorts of auxiliary light infantry, which were composed of non-citizens from the Germanic Batavi and Gaulish Tungri tribes. Agricola kept the legions and four wings of cavalry in reserve, with his back to the makeshift camp where they had spent the previous night.

On the front line, he placed his Germanic and Gaulish auxiliaries, with the remaining cavalry units supporting them on the flanks. The battle began with both sides throwing their javelins and spears at each other. The Caledones remained indomitable in the face of this withering hail, deflecting the approaching missiles with their short shields or by crouching. After this initial salvo, Agricola ordered his auxiliaries to advance. The Batavian and Gallic infantry advanced to engage the Scots while the governor's front-line cavalry thundered forward, pinning down the opposition charioteers. The main battle lines collided with the resounding crash of iron against steel.

Although neither side lacked bravery or ferocity, Tacitus claims that it was a discrepancy in equipment that was the decisive factor. In this very close competition, with men pushed against each other like sardines, the short swords used by the Batavians and Gauls were much more effective than the long swords used by the Caledones. Slowly, the Roman auxiliaries began to gain ground on their Scottish enemies, pushing them up the hill. Soon, the front-line auxiliary cavalry, having driven off the charioteers, joined the fight. However, by fighting as they were on a slope, the tactical advantage of their mounted mobility was nullified and they were assimilated into the bloody meat grinder.

Seeing their comrades driven back, the British further up the hill, who had hitherto not taken part in the action, now began to gradually descend the slope in an attempt to outflank the advance, turn and attack from behind. Agricola, who had anticipated this maneuver, called in the four wings of cavalry that he had kept behind in case of emergency to reverse and outflank this flanking attempt. The reserve cavalry charged so furiously against the approaching opposition that what was intended to be an advance disintegrated into a rout. Completely surrounded, the Caledone lines were broken. Carnage was the order of the day, as Mount Graupius was stained red with the blood of the Highlanders.

As for Calgacus, his fate is ultimately unknown. Curiously, Agricola had achieved his military masterpiece without losing a single Roman citizen. The legions saw no active fighting during the battle and, once again, it was the Batavians who provided the hard support in Rome's prolonged quest for dominance over all of Britain. Modern historians cast a thick pall of skepticism over almost every aspect of the Battle of Mons Graupius, claiming that Calgacus's speech, Calgacus himself, and the battle as a whole are products of Tacitus's overactive imagination, inventions that are attributed to him. occurred to the historian to create a convincing story that glorified his father-in-law.

Still, if events happened as Tacitus claims, then after Mons Graupius the Roman Empire could truly claim to be the sole master of all of Britain, from its southern tip to its northernmost tip. However, this dominance would prove incredibly fleeting. In 85 AD, Vespasian was dead and Domitian was now cloaked in the Imperial Purple. The new Emperor's relationship with Agricola was noticeably colder than that of his predecessor. Tacitus claims that Domitian, whose campaigns in Germany had at best achieved minor and modest victories, was jealous of Agricola's great military triumphs. This is a little difficult to take at face value since, as mentioned above, Tacitus is not impartial.

Still, for some reason, a year after his triumph at Mons Graupius, Gnaeus Julius Agricola was recalled from Britain and never again held civil or military office. Almost immediately after his departure, all of his land gains dissolved like grains of sand. On the Danube frontier, Rome was engaged in a long and exhausting war against Decebalus, the king of Dacia, while also facing the emerging threat of the Germanic Marcomannic, Quacian and Swabian confederations. To address the dire need for additional manpower on that front, Legio II Adriutix was withdrawn from Britain and returned to the continent. With one of their four legions gone, a total of 25% of their total occupation manpower, the Roman authorities in Britain no longer had the ability to preserve their gains in the north.

By the end of the 1st century AD, all forts built during Agricola's rule had been abandoned and destroyed. Over the next few decades, the Caledones and their client tribes increasingly became a persistent thorn in the side of the Romano-British regime, as ferocious war bands regularly advanced south into occupied territory, plundering the countryside. , seizing imported Mediterranean treasures and valuable captives, and dragging them back to their inaccessible highland hillforts. Agricola may have singed his mustache at Mons Graupius, but by no means had the northern tribes been domesticated. Indeed, they had become a force that regularly endangered Roman security, but was too remote for the overstretched Empire to fully subdue.

In 122, the Emperor Hadrian, a man whose geopolitical philosophy for the Empire revolved around limes or “boundaries,” took the situation in northern Britain to its logical conclusion. A conclusion that can still be observed today by modern hikers exploring the trails of Cumbria and Northumberland. At 135 kilometers long and stretching from coast to coast, historians have long debated the true reasons behind the monumental engineering feat that was the construction of Hadrian's Wall. Perhaps its sole purpose was to hinder Pictish incursions into Roman territory, perhaps it also served as an ancient parallel to the Berlin Wall, a barrier that prevented the conquered tribes of Britain from colluding with their unconquered brethren further north.

Perhaps it was an 84-mile-long propaganda statement intended to deter barbarians beyond any amusing matter through sheer shock and awe. Whatever the case, Hadrian's Wall was a premonition. Although future Roman emperors would attempt to pick up where Agricola left off, the Imperial Eagle would never manage to secure any kind of long-term control over the wild, untamed north of Britain. The Caledonians were not invincible, and Rome probably could have subdued them with enough time, effort, and blood. However, the far north of Britain was too far from the imperial heartland to govern effectively. Claudius had been pushing it by conquering southern Britain, much of which, as we saw before, remained, at best, poorlycontrolled.

In the case of the Picts, it was better to simply build a giant wall to keep them completely out of the civilized world. That's not to say that future emperors wouldn't try to conquer the north anyway. For centuries, the painted warriors beyond the wall were a thorn in the side of Empires. It turns out that Hadrian's Wall only slowed them down, rather than stopping them completely. Raids remained a constant problem and the Picts sometimes helped the tribes south of the wall in their constant rebellions. During the reign of Antoninus Pius, the Romans responded to this by invading Pictish territory once again and erecting the Antonine Wall.

But this was abandoned a decade later and the Romans retreated to Hadrian's old frontier. In 210 AD, Emperor Septimius Severus attempted to tame the Picts, resulting in a brutal campaign in which their highland enemies played a frustrating game of guerrilla warfare. Here, the Roman writer Cassius Dio claims that they inflicted 50,000 Roman deaths from attrition alone. Severus later died of illness at Eboracum, and his son Caracalla forged a peace with the natives, forcing the Romans to retreat once again to Hadrian's line. The Picts were not the only late ancient Celts who were free from Roman rule. We will now take a short detour to Ireland, home to a subculture of the Celts known as the Gaels.

The Gaels have so far assumed a secondary role in our video, isolated as they were on their remote island, far from the concerns of the classical Greco-Roman writers. In general, the Romans showed little interest in the Gaelic land, which they called Hibernia. Although, when Agricola was invading the Caledonians, he also made preparations to launch an invasion across the Irish Sea, but these probably never materialized. Like northern Britain, Ireland was too remote to be worth conquering. Being a land of savage forests, deadly swamps, and warring, belligerent tribes, it wasn't exactly prime real estate anyway. That said, the island was not completely isolated from the ancient world.

It was a common destination for British tribes fleeing Roman rule, and the discovery of Roman artefacts in the area has led modern archaeologists to believe that regular trade probably occurred across the Irish Sea. The Gaels could also be quite pestiferous, one of their tribes, the Scots, were basically sea pirates who regularly raided the western coast of Britain. And yet, despite some trade links and a sprinkling of maritime war crimes, the Irish Gaels would not take center stage in the history of the Celts until after the departure of the Romans from Britain. Following the abandonment of the Antonine Wall, the era of Roman territorial conquests in Britain had come to an end.

Thereafter, the borders of the Imperial Province of Brittany would remain more or less unchanged until the final departure of the Legions in 410 AD. Therefore, we will now temporarily step away from our broad narrative of war and geopolitics and look more intimately at what daily life was like for the British Celts living under imperial rule. By 150 AD, large tracts of land in Britain had been reshaped according to the Romanitas ideal. Under imperial auspices, the island reached a level of urbanization never before seen. Population centers such as Camulodunum, Eboracum and, of course, Londinium offered all the amenities one would expect from a Roman city.

In these bustling commercial centers, townspeople enjoyed clean water brought in from local aqueducts and advanced sewage systems. Austere temples met the spiritual needs of the people, public baths kept them vital, while forums and basilicas served as the epicenter of public life. Along gridded streets, the wealthiest urbanites lived in houses decorated with frescoes, mosaics, and courtyards with gardens. Beyond the city walls, a 2,000-mile system of paved roads served as arteries linking Brittany's cities to its breadbasket. For aristocratic elites, life in the interior was as comfortable as in the cities. Throughout the countryside, especially in the tamed southeast, wealthy landowners dominated vast tracts of fertile farmland in Latin-style villas ranging from modest farmhouses to enormous palatial estates that transplanted the sun-drenched grandeur of the Mediterranean to the idyllic hills. of the English countryside.

Many of these villas were equipped with the same comforts and conveniences as urban homes, such as an advanced central heating system. As elsewhere in the Empire, Roman Britain was no stranger to spectacle. In amphitheaters outside cities across the province, rabid crowds cheered dueling gladiators, exotic performers, and beast tamers, bringing with them ferocious wild animals from the ends of the known world. Indeed, under the rule of the Augustans, Britain was more globally interconnected than ever. Britain had never been an isolated land; Its tribal elites had developed economic and cultural connections along the Atlantic coast long before the arrival of Rome.

But it was one thing to be part of an Iron Age exchange network and another to be part of a huge tricontinental Empire. In the second century AD. C., a Roman-Celtic aristocrat in Britain shared the same citizenship as a Berber in Mauretania, a Greek in Byzantium and a Coptic in Egypt and had easy access to the products of those distant places. The Roman province of Brittany was a cosmopolitan land, and during Roman rule, many civilians and military personnel from Italy, Asia Minor, Africa, and beyond moved there. In general, however, the majority of people who enjoyed its theaters and baths and prayed in its temples were not foreign immigrants but rather Romanized Celtic natives, direct descendants of the kings, queens, and tribal elites of the island's indigenous population.

In fact, society in Roman Britain was founded on a solid Celtic foundation. The Romans had not razed the previous human landscape, but had co-opted it and built on it. Many Romano-British civitas were built directly on top of pre-existing tribal hillforts and served as the administrative capital of a native tribe. For example, Isurium Brigantum, near present-day Aldborough, served as the capital of the Brigantes tribe, while Calleva Atrebatum, on the site of present-day Silchester, was the capital of the Atrebates tribe. Many of the rural villas were also owned by Romanized Celtic elites. In fact, it is widely believed that Fishborough Palace, the largest and most opulent Roman villa yet discovered in England, was originally built for Togidubnus, a king of the British Regni tribe who served as one of Rome's native client rulers.

The Celtic religion also endured the arrival of the Latin lord. The Romans hated the Druidic order and violently repressed it due to its practice of human sacrifice and the political influence it wielded. Aside from that, the Romans were quite tolerant of foreign cults. During imperial rule, many local British deities took new, Romanized forms and were equated with similar gods in the Olympian Pantheon. The most famous example of this is Sulis, a life-giving Celtic mother goddess worshiped at a sacred hot spring in Somerset. The Romans equated her with her goddess of wisdom, Minerva, resulting in the Romano-British worshiping the hybrid goddess Sulis-Minerva, a deity with both Celtic and Latin aspects.

The Roman bathhouse built over her sacred springs also served as a temple for her worship. It is often said that language is the soul of a culture and if so, then the soul of the British Celts remained alive and well during Roman rule. Of course, Latin managed to gain a foothold on the island as elsewhere in the Empire, but it was adopted only by people who could afford a formal education and therefore did not spread beyond the cities and social elites. Even then, Romano-British aristocrats were probably bilingual, reserving Latin for use in legal, governmental, and commercial matters, while speaking British in intimate family circles.

In the countryside, Brythonic remained the only language of the peasantry, for whom Roman rule had little or no cultural impact. In fact, before the conquest, 90% of the Celts had been subsistence farmers; Afterwards, this figure did not change. Under Roman rule, peasants lived in the same tribal villages as their ancestors, spoke the same Celtic languages, and grew the same crops. For the Iceni cooper or the Brigantine shepherd, it must have made little difference whether they paid a portion of their work to a torc-wearing chief in a hillfort or to a toga-wearing governor in a village. This was particularly true in the relatively untamed western mountainous region of the island, which was like a time capsule of a bygone era.

Here, life continued practically the same as before the Roman conquest. The people continued to live in almost exactly the same way as their Iron Age ancestors had, and their Celtic religion, language, art, and oral tradition remained more or less unchanged from before the Legions entered their realm. land. The second century AD. C. were the halcyon days of Roman rule in Britain, but over the next two hundred years, as the Empire came under increasing pressure from threats both internal and external, its ability to maintain stable control over its northernmost island province became increasingly larger. dimmer. At its maximum territorial extent, the Roman Empire was so large that any new conquest of land would put intense pressure on the state apparatus.

As the Empire shifted its geopolitical policy from external expansion to internal defense, it became increasingly mired in threats, both internal and external. In 235 AD, Emperor Severus Alexander was assassinated and for the next fifty years, a period known as the Crisis of the Third Century, anarchy reigned. The Empire collapsed into endemic civil wars as multiple would-be usurpers fought for power, while the plague reaped a bloody harvest in every province, the Germanic tribes from across the Rhine and Danube emigrated en masse to imperial territory, and the biggest rival dangerous from Rome, Sassanid Persia pounced hungrily on its weakened archenemy like a lioness on a wounded antelope.

In the 260s, internal turmoil reached its peak and the Empire disintegrated, forming two breakaway states: the Palmyrene Empire in the East and the Gallic Empire in the West, of which Brittania was a central territory. Thus, for a brief period, Britain fell outside the control of Rome and came under the command of a rebellious Emperor who acted in defiance of the central regime. This didn't last long. Around 274 AD, the Herculean Emperor Aurelian, “restorer of the world,” defied the odds and put everything back together. From then on, Brittany was once again embraced in the bosom of mother Rome.

However, in 286 AD. C., the province was again separated from the heart of Italy when a Roman naval commander, Carausius, rebelled, seized Britain and declared himself emperor of the island. This too was short-lived. In the year 296 AD. C., Constantius, the Caesar of the West, had brought Britain back into the imperial fold. Both British breakaway states enjoyed only a fleeting existence but were nonetheless symptoms of an overstretched Empire whose hold on Albion was becoming increasingly insecure. Throughout these tumultuous decades, outside opportunists looking inward took advantage of the uncertain political and military situation, and raiders invaded the province with increasing frequency.

From the north, the Painted Picts and their tribal allies easily surrounded a thinly garrisoned Hadrian's Wall. From the west came the sea-faring Gaelic pirates of the Irish Scottii tribe. From the east, a new threat emerged: a diverse coalition of Germanic tribal peoples from the North Sea coast, whom history remembers as the Saxons, a name familiar to anyone even vaguely familiar with the history of early medieval England. . For now, however, they were simple fair weather pirates. In an attempt to mitigate the threat of Saxon privateers, a chain of forts was built along the eastern coast of Brittany, led by a Roman military officer known as come littoris Saxonici per Britanniam, or "Count of the Saxon Coast." .

The castles were called Saxon Coast seems pretty obvious, considering who they were built to defend against. However, as likely as these structures were built to fight the Saxons, it is very likely that they were also manned by Saxons. In the 4th century AD, the imperial army became increasingly dependent on the foederati:mercenaries recruited from friendly Germanic tribes on the peripheries of empires. The Saxons were not a politically monolithic or even a monocultural people, so it is highly likely that while some West Germanic warbands roamed the British coast as vandals and plunderers, others occupied their coastal fortresses as defenders on the imperial payroll.

Either way, over the next two centuries, Britain became increasingly known to regional Saxon warlords as a place to which an ambitious man could venture to seek his fortune, either as a raider or as a hired mercenary. Although foreign invasions, barbarian migrations, financial problems and constant civil wars put immense strain on its military power, the Imperial Court remained determined to ensure the security of Brittany, which remained one of its economically most powerful provinces. productive. In 305, Constantius, now senior emperor of the Western Provinces, returned to the island he had restored to imperial rule ten years earlier to campaign against the Picts, whose incursions into Romano-British territory were becoming increasingly destructive.

Constantius won a crushing victory over the fierce Celtic warriors of the pasture. However, during the campaign, Augustus suddenly fell ill and died in York the following summer. Immediately after Constantius's death, the Yorkist legions declared his son, Constantine, emperor. Arguably the most capable and successful emperor of late antiquity, Constantine's reign began where his father's ended: on the misty shores of Brittany. Continuing where Pops had left off, the young Caesar drove the Picts back beyond the wall and the Saxon pirates across the sea. The reign of Constantine, aptly nicknamed "The Great", represented a revival of Roman authority over Britain and a return to peace and prosperity for the Romano-British citizenry.

Furthermore, following the promulgation of the Edict of Milan in 313, his reign also presided over the rapid popularization of a certain monotheistic religion imported from the sands of the Levantine coast. Ultimately, however, Constantine the Great's rule proved to be no more than a brief respite in the slow decline of Roman rule over Britain. After his death, barely a generation passed without some sort of attempted usurpation or revolt. As civil war became the de facto method by which imperial succession was determined, Britain became a launching pad for several would-be emperors, who would seize the island's military garrisons to wage war against their political rivals in the imperial heartland, leaving the province vulnerable to barbarian raids.

In 350 AD, Constantus, the son of Constantine the Great, was overthrown and murdered by the usurper Magnus Magnentius, a man who may have been of British Celtic descent. Magnentius then drained Brittania of his legions to wage war against Constantine's other son, Constantius II. His climactic confrontation at the Battle of Mursa Major was one of the bloodiest battles in Roman history. Magnentius was eventually defeated, but the losses on both sides were so great that, according to the Roman historian Zosimus, Rome was left so vulnerable that it was no longer able to repel barbarian raids. In the case of Britain, he was right.

After Magnentius, Roman Britain remained tantalizingly rich in portable wealth and dangerously short of professional soldiers to defend it. Furthermore, devastating civil wars are not necessarily healthy for the financial stability of an Empire relative to its ability to pay its troops, so the soldiers who remained in the Province were probably not compensated for their services. All these factors accumulated like a pile of dry firewood under a cauldron of disaster, and in the year 367 AD. C. the match was lit. That fateful year, the skeletal crew garrisoned at Hadrian's Wall, having been snubbed too many paychecks, mutinied and opened their gates, allowing Pictish marauders to flood into Roman territory en masse.

At the same time, the Saxons of Germania and the Irish Scots crashed into the eastern and western coasts of the island in full force, easily bypassing the coastal defenses that had been built to keep them out. The Roman historian Ammianus Marcellinus called this invasion the conspiratio barbarica, or the Great Barbarian Conspiracy. Since Brittania was invaded from Ireland, Scotland and northern Germany at exactly the same time that the largest garrison of Roman soldiers on the island rebelled, it is easy to understand why dismayed Roman observers considered this to be coordination, not coincidence. Southern Britain was completely invaded and anarchy was the order of the day.

Villas were plundered, cities were plundered, and the Romanized civilian population was subjected to massacres and enslavement. Among the plunderers were not only barbarian raiders, but also runaway slaves and abandoned Roman soldiers, who were happy to jump on the bandwagon of anarchy to enrich themselves from the loot. For most of the year, Britannia was basically just "The Purge." Only in the spring of 368 was a certain Flavius ​​Theodosius, father of the future emperor Theodosius the Great, able to deploy a relief force to the island. Fortunately for Rome, the barbarian invaders had not come to conquer land, but simply to enrich themselves with slaves, livestock, and portable wealth.

So, by the time Theodosius the Elder made landfall, what had once been a highly coordinated invasion force had become a group of small bands of raiders, their baggage trains loaded with loot. This made it easier for Roman reinforcements to clear the island little by little. By the end of the year, the barbarians had been forced to return to their home countries; the mutineers had been executed; Hadrian's Wall had been recaptured and order had returned to Brittany. The crisis had been averted and a province that seemed on the verge of being lost had been returned to Roman control.

However, Theodosius's triumph over the barbarian hordes was ultimately only a delay of the inevitable, as in the following decades, the endemic problems that contributed to the weakening of imperial control over the island resumed in due course. . Born Spanish, Magnus Maximus was a Roman military officer who served under Theodosius the Elder during the purgation of Britain in 367. In 380 he returned to the island to campaign against the Picts and Irish Scots, becoming very popular with his troops. in the process. He probably already knows where this is going. In 383 AD, Magnus Maximus became the last in a line of imperial usurpers to launch his bid for power from the shores of Brittany.

To raise an army against Gratian, the reigning Western Roman Empire, the Pretender absorbed all the garrisons of the northern and western fortresses of Britain into his field army. These fortresses were never reoccupied, permanently ending the Roman military presence in what had traditionally been the least developed regions of the British province. The following year, Magnus Maximus defeated Gratian and became the greatest Augustus of the Western Empire. To replace the Imperial troops he had stripped from the British interior, Emperor Maximus transferred authority in those regions to local Roman-aligned native chiefs, entrusting them with the safeguarding of the western British highlands on behalf of the Empire.

This effectively gave self-government to the local Celtic Britons. In traditional folklore, this moment constitutes the genesis of medieval Wales. Many of the Welsh-speaking British kingdoms of the Middle Ages considered their royal dynasties to be directly descended from the native chieftains originally appointed by Magnus Maximus to defend the British frontier from Irish and Pictish invaders. Magnus Maximus occupied an honorable role in the royal genealogies of kingdoms such as Gwynedd, Powys, Gwent and Strathclyde, all of which endured into the early Middle Ages, for nearly a thousand years after Rome's final departure from the shores of Albion. In 388, the reign of Emperor Maximus came to an ignominious end after a civil war with the Eastern Emperor Theodosius.

In the following centuries, the safety of the Romano-British was increasingly endangered, with renewed Pictish, Irish and Saxon raids, devastating not only the confederated Roman tribal lands of the north and west, but also marauding with impunity in the urbanized south. -This one, which was still under direct imperial administration. Sometime around the year 396 AD. C., Stilicho, the de facto generalissimo of a declining Western Roman Empire, probably launched a naval campaign aimed at hindering these maritime incursions. This was a half measure, but it was all that could be done. Stilicho could launch a punitive expedition, but he could not spare troops to permanently garrison the island.

Theirs would be the last Roman campaign in Britain on record. In 401 AD, with the Visigoth king Alaric and the Ostrogoth king Radagaissus attacking the Eternal City itself, Rome was increasingly forced to withdraw even more soldiers from Britain to protect its Italian heartland. That year, Stilicho stripped the fortresses on the Saxon coast of his military personnel. Furthermore, Hadrian's Wall, which had been a fiery symbol of Roman rule over Britain, was depleted of troops for the last time. In the following years, the scope of raids on Romano-British territories increased. Niall of the Nine Hostages, a legendary High King of Ireland, was said to ravage the southern coast of Britain in 405 AD.

The last remaining troops in Roman Britain, a mere 6,000 men, were increasingly dissatisfied. They had been left to defend an island that had been stripped of its defenses and virtually forgotten by its imperial overlord, and had not been paid for several years. In 407 AD, they rebelled and named a military officer named Flavius ​​Claudius Constantine as emperor, who led them to the continent in an attempt to overthrow the reigning emperor Honorius and his commander-in-chief Stilicho. This insurrection was put down by one of Honorius' Gothic foederati. After this, there were no more Roman army personnel left in Britain. In 410 AD, Alaric and his Goths became the first foreign army to sack the Eternal City since Brennus and the Senones Gauls did so 800 years earlier.

In the depths of its agony, it was all the Western Empire could do to stay alive for a few more decades. Now that the Germanic invaders were invading Gaul, Hispania and Africa, what thought could Rome give to distant Britain? With no other recourse, the province was canceled for the last time and abandoned to fate. Thus, Roman rule over the island of Britain had officially and permanently ended, and for the first time in 400 years, all of Albion, for better or worse, was free. The centuries immediately following this departure are known as "Sub-Roman Britain". As the Romans carried with them the custom of keeping meticulous records, this era is largely shrouded in mystery.

After the fall of Rome, Britain was the last stronghold of the Celts in Europe. But when the Empire retreated from the shores of Albion, it left the land very different from how it found it. In the south and east, a group of Christian and Romanized Britons clung to the memory of the emperors who had abandoned them long ago. In the north, the undefeated Picts and Gaels were now prepared to invade their acculturated cousins, eager to seize the riches left by the dead monster that was Rome. But as the last Celts of Europe prepared to fight each other, a new threat emerged from the east.

From the shores of the North Sea, hardened men approached the coast of Britain, Thunor's hammer hanging around their necks and a prayer to Woden on their lips. One thing we know is that even after centuries of Latin occupation, Celtic society was alive and well in Britain, enjoying a better fate than its continental cousins. From Cornwall to Forth-Clyde, Queen Boudicca's language survived as a variety of P-Celtic dialects broadly classified as "Common Brittonic". Meanwhile, the Q-Celtic language of Gaelic continued to thrive in Ireland. Finally, in the Scottish Highlands, the Picts shouted their war cries in words that were distantly related to the languages ​​of the south.

It is also likely that in more urbanized areas, a form of Latin was still in use as one of many remnants of Britain's recent imperial past. In fact, many Britons had become overly accustomed to Roman comforts and those habits persisted even after Rome left. But to what extent was sub-Roman Britain “Roman”? Robin Fleming, author of Britain after Rome, movingly describes this

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-imperial world: “In the year 420, there were still people in Britain who hadborn into a world shaped by the structure of the Empire, people whose early lives had been ordered by the material culture of Rome. There were those whose childhood dinners were served in pewter and glass, and middle-aged men who had grown up in heated villas.” Britain was once connected to a continent-spanning Empire whose infrastructure provided them with the luxuries of Italy, Egypt and Syria, allowing many Romanized Britons to enjoy aristocratic position in rural villages and wealthy cities.

But when Rome left, so did the means to make this way of life possible. Archaeological evidence suggests that in the 5th century, the old world order began to collapse rapidly, as ancient Roman cities were drastically reduced in size or became ghost towns, while most of the islands' villas were abandoned. . As the Romanitas declined, older Celtic traditions emerged from its corpse. Some Britons appear to have returned to the ancient Celtic forts, which had lain abandoned for centuries during Roman rule. This massive change in living standards probably affected the south and east the most. The transition was probably easier for the northern and western Britons, who had never been particularly Romanized.

It is also logical that the Picts and Gaels, who for the most part had always been outward-looking, hardly experienced any changes in their daily lives at this time. However, we must take into account the possibility that the Roman way of life did not disappear from Britain as quickly as previously thought. The archaeological record suggests that in the 5th century, traders from as far away as Byzantium and North Africa still braved the long journey, probably because of the islands' valuable tin deposits. It is therefore likely that, for a time, some Romano-British people used this limited foreign trade to maintain a pale imitation of Roman life.

Material culture was not the only aspect of Celtic society that underwent a metamorphosis. In centuries past, Roman Britain had been a land of many gods. Native Celtic deities were worshiped alongside Greco-Latin ones, while gods from the farthest reaches of the known world established mystery cults in Britain. Among them were Isis, an Egyptian goddess, and Mithras, an Iranian god who became popular among Roman-British soldiers. However, by far the most successful religion that the Romans introduced to Britain was that of the Levantine carpenter. Christianity arrived on the island as early as 200 AD. and, by the time Rome left Britain, it had become the dominant religion.

While the cross spread quickly throughout the British Isles, those who lived there never truly forgot its polytheistic roots. Even under the pressure of growing Christian fanaticism, pagan cults probably survived throughout the 5th century and beyond. It is even possible that some druid circles still practiced their occult rites in secluded groves, longing for the return of the old ways. Many Celts also incorporated the rituals of their ancestors into their new Christian lives. An example of this is found in Ireland, where the Spring Goddess Brigid was renamed the exalted Saint Brigid, patron saint of Ireland. Her festival coincides with Imbolc, a pagan festival celebrating the arrival of spring.

Other pagan rites also survived Christianization, such as the bonfires of Beltane and Samhain, where both the British and Gaelic peoples blurred the lines between themselves and the other world, known as Annwn or Tír na nÓg: the land where the fairies dwelt. After the departure of Rome, Britain became a mosaic of small kingdoms. Surprisingly, many of these kingdoms appear to have formed on pre-Roman tribal lines, as ancient Iron Age identities re-emerged. Most of these kingdoms are poorly represented in the historical record, but others, such as Powys, Dumnonia, Gwynedd and Strathclyde, are better attested as having endured well into the Middle Ages, unlike those that died out much earlier due to a certain wave of Germanic migrations.

Our main primary source on the wars of this era comes from an early 6th century monk known as Gildas. His work, titled De Excidio et Conquestu Britaaniae, or “On the Ruin and Conquest of Great Britain,” tells a vivid story of chaos and invasion. De Excidio was not written by a trained historian, but by a devout Christian cleric writing a religious polemic. However, since Gildas's work is by far the most intact source from this era, historians still rely on the old monk's writings. His fifth-century account begins with a scene of immediate chaos: “As soon as the Romans left, the Picts and Scots appeared, like worms emerging in the midday heat. inspired with the same greed for blood.” At this time, the Picts and Scots were probably still predominantly pagan, which would explain why Gildas speaks of them so scathingly.

The monk's story continues when the Roman-Christian Britons, harassed by the incessant raids of their savage cousins, sent a plea to the declining Roman Empire. “The barbarians take us to the sea; The sea throws us on the barbarians: thus two modes of death await us: either they kill us or we drown.” Of course, the Romans, just decades away from the final collapse of their Empire, could offer no salvation. Gildas tells a visceral story. But his narrative of a Christian people victimized in the face of pagan barbarism was most likely biased. The Romano-British were probably as warlike as their Celtic cousins, and were all too willing to invade their neighbors, regardless of the culture, language, or faith they shared.

That said, there is some truth in the monks' account. The Gaelic peoples appear to have established colonial kingdoms on the west coast of Britain from the late 4th century onwards. In most of them, they seem to have merged with the culture of the local British peoples. But in the Kingdom of Dál Riata, founded by Ulster Scots warriors, they began a slow cultural assimilation of the local Picts. Consequently, the modern nation of Scotland derives its name from the Scotii tribe, and the Scottish Gaelic language still spoken in the country today is a remnant of those Irish roots.

However, it would not be the Picts or the Gaels who would change the rules of the game in sub-Roman Britain. What exactly defines an "Anglo-Saxon" is a heated historiographical debate, but generally speaking, they were a diverse amalgamation of tribes from the Scandinavian coast and northern Germany, composed primarily of Angles, Saxons, and Jutes. They were hardy warriors who spoke West Germanic languages ​​and worshiped a pagan pantheon similar to the one made famous centuries later by the Norse Vikings. Among academic circles, the “when,” “how,” and “why” of Germanic migrations are topics of intense debate. As we will remember, the presence of the Saxons on British shores dates back to long before the fall of Rome.

Maritime Saxon warbands had been intermittently attacking the eastern coast of the former Roman province for centuries and, as imperial control over Britain declined, it had become common practice for Roman or Romano-British officials to hire Saxon warriors. as paid mercenaries. According to Gildas, the weight of the Saxon tide falls on the historically dubious Romano-British king called Vortigern. His reign was tumultuous, facing hordes of marauding Pictish raiders, Vortigern was forced to turn to soldiers of fortune from abroad. Consequently, help came from the Germanic warriors of the North Sea. Gildas does not give many details about the exact identity of these foreign mercenaries, but another early medieval chronicler, the English monk Bede, states that they were led by two chiefs of the Jutes: Hengist and Horsa, whose names translate as "Stallion" and " Horse". ' in Old English.

Gildas colors us with his opinion on this hiring: “the British king and his advisors were so blinded that, as protection for their country, they sealed their fate by inviting wolves into the fold: the fierce and impious Saxons, a race hateful both to God like men." Tradition says that in 449, the brothers defeated the Picts and then quickly betrayed their Romano-British hosts, conquering a swath of southeastern Britain that would become the Kingdom of Kent. More Germanic immigrants would follow in the brothers' wake, and by 500, it seemed as if the western half of England was firmly in Angle, Saxon, or Jute hands.

These territories became known to the British Celts as "Lloegyr": the lost lands. It is likely that at this time some Britons living in the southwest of the islands began to go to sea fleeing the Germanic invaders. They settled on the Armorican Peninsula, being the first of several waves of settlers to arrive in the region. Thus, the peninsula became known as Brittany, in honor of the British who colonized it. Anecdotally, a region that had been Celtic-speaking in ancient times, but was later completely Latinized by the Roman Empire, was re-Celticized by British refugees centuries later and retains its Celtic language and identity to this day.

The Saxons had established themselves in Britain, but it seems that for a time the natives were able to keep them contained by winning a series of military victories, led, if legend is to be believed, by a certain Dux Bellorum called Arthur. Here lies the great mystery. Was Arthur a real historical figure? If he existed, he was not among the knights, wizards and castles of early medieval times, but among the lances and hillforts of sub-Roman Britain. The name first appears in a 6th-century compendium of Welsh poems known as Goddodin. Here, a British hero named Guaurdur was described as "Not Arthur, among equals in power of deeds." This line implies that Arthur was a well-known figure among the Celts of the 6th century and was considered the benchmark of heroism in his time.

Nennius, a Welsh monk writing in the 9th century, attributed twelve great battles to the semi-mythical warlord, the most triumphant occurring in the early 500s AD. at a place called Mynydd Baddon, generally considered to be modern Bath. Leading warriors from across the British Kingdoms, the legendary warlord defeated an army led by King Aelle of the South Saxons, thus breaking Germanic power in Britain and delaying their advance for an entire generation. That said, Nennius' accounts should be taken with a grain of salt, as there is very little evidence that anyone named Arthur fought in any of the battles mentioned.

Gildas, writing much closer to the period in question, attributes the British victory at Mynydd Badon not to Arthur, but to a Romanized commander named Ambrosius Aurelianus. That said, when the myths and folklore are stripped away, it appears that with or without Arthurs' help, the British were able to hold their own against the Anglo-Saxons, if only temporarily. A few decades after Mynnydd Baddon, the Anglo-Saxons had evidently recovered, with powerful kingdoms established deep in Lloegyr, straddling the borders of the unconquered Celtic lands. The Angles and Saxons who lived in these kingdoms were no longer transient invaders, but had lived in Britain for generations, working the same land as their fathers and grandfathers.

In short, they were there to stay. Thus, in the second half of the 6th century, the ancestors of the English began to advance westward once more, boldly marching into the lands of the men they called Wealas, foreigners. In 577 AD, King Ceawlin of the nascent Kingdom of Wessex faced three British kings: Conmail, Condidan and Farinmail, in a battle at Hinton Hill, near the modern township of Dyrham. The Saxons defeated the Celtic warriors and, as a result, Ceawlin was able to expand his territories to the Severn Estuary, severing the land connection between the British in Cornwall and Wales.

This invariably led to cultural drift between the newly separated Celtic territories, resulting in the Common Brittonic spoken in those regions evolving into separate Cornish and Welsh languages. A few decades after the triumph of Saxon Wessex, the Northern Angles began their own campaign. King Æthelfrith of Bernicia blazed a bloody trail of conquest deep into northern British kingdoms such as Rheged, Elmet and Goddodin, and crushed the Gaelic king Áedán mac Gabráin of Dál Riata at the Battle of Degsastan in 603 AD, establishing the Anglos as the most dominant people to the north. of the Humber. It should be noted that, in the land conquered by the Germanic peoples, the native Celtic culture was probably not completely eliminated.

The names of English kingdoms such as Bernicia and Kent have Celtic origins, and it is likely that some British blood ran in the veins of theirfirst kings Remains of brooches found in early Saxon graves have shown that the early Germanic settlers borrowed from the artistic traditions of the British. As for the British themselves, those who lived in Lloegyr were slowly assimilated into Anglo-Saxon culture over many generations. The line between Saxons and Celts was often blurrier than we think. However, there was still a border between the communities that spoke Old English and the communities that spoke British and Gaelic.

By the dawn of the 7th century, this border had more or less become entrenched and would not move dramatically for centuries. Whether to Roman or Germanic invaders, the Celts had lost much in the last thousand years. One can only wonder if a Welsh archer from the 6th century AD. C., looking across a dyke at a row of Saxon spears, he would have been remotely aware of the fact that the culture of his ancestors had spread across an entire continent, a culture now confined to the westernmost tip of Britain. The days of Gallic hordes marching into the heart of Greece or dueling Roman legions from Spain to Turkey are long gone.

But, despite how territorially diminished the Celts were, they did not remain quiet at night. As Late Antiquity moved into the Middle Ages, the stage was set for Europe's most enigmatic peoples to leave their mark on the medieval world. In the east, the ancestral home of the British people had fallen to the invading Saxons, but in the west, Arthur's heirs would challenge the rule of the nascent English people for centuries yet. Thus began the history of medieval Wales and its sister states in Cornwall, Brittany and Yr Hen Ogledd. Meanwhile, with Picts and Northumbrians baying at their doors, the Gaels of Dal Riata would write their own saga of blood and battle, ultimately giving rise to the Kingdom of Scotland.

Finally, across the Narrow Sea, Ireland would remain a relatively isolated land of internal chiefs. But in time, the outside world would come knocking at their door, in the form of Vikings, Normans, and more. In fact, the history of the Celts was not yet over and in our current series on the medieval Celts we talk about the history of medieval Wales. To see those videos and more, make sure you're subscribed and hit the bell button. Please consider liking, subscribing, commenting and sharing; It's a great help. Recently, we have started publishing weekly exclusive content for YouTube sponsors and members.

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