44-77: The Romans Occupy

By 47 (within four years of the initial invasion), the Roman military had occupied Britain as far west as the Severn and Cornwall and as far north as the Trent, moving far beyond a punitive action against Belgic tributaries towards a full-scale occupation of the most productive part of the British Isles. However, the occupation was not untroubled and this was no 'blitzkrieg', as we will see. The process was accompanied by 'Romanisation', the tendency to adopt Roman cultural forms which had already begun in the Southern trading ports and tribes long before Aulus Plautius had landed his troops. The Romans had pursued a policy in Gaul of destroying Druidry and now extended the policy to Britain, essentially doing to the Britons what the Soviets attempted in Eastern Europe - the elimination of the nearest equivalent to an educated pre-regime middle class, one that seemed to see the Roman threat as a profound cultural challenge and so stiffen local spines for ideological resistance. The elimination of this class, notably the invasion of their stronghold in Anglesey, was portrayed by the Romans as a civilising act. The enemy were presented as bloody sacrificers of human beings - an image rekindled for us in popular culture today by the 'Wicker Man'. The aristocrats were tolerated if they became Romanised but otherwise they would be extirpated by force if charm and self interest had failed.

In 48, the Decangi of North Wales were subdued by Ostorius Scapula, who succeeded Aulus Plautius as Governor of Britain, and this helped split the Southern British Tribes from the Northern. The military policy was the standard brutal one of razing hill fort strongholds to the ground and generally massacring their inhabitants. This is not to say that British resistance did not continue for a while yet regardless of Roman ruthlessness. The Romans, having forced Caratacus out of Eastern Britain, founded their own Camulodonum (later Colchester), the first Roman town and arguably the first town in Britain, where Celtic Camulodonum once stood, and made it their capital. Londinium (London) was founded a year later and Verulamium the year after that. Caratacus had maintained the tribal confederation based in Celtic Camulodonum for a while but had then moved his base of operations to Wales, adopting guerrilla tactics, the only way to deal with the application of direct Roman military power if you could not inspire a levee en masse as Boudicca was to do later.

Defeated in battle in 50 at a still unknown location, Caratacus fled to the Brigantes, another confederation of tribes, in North Yorkshire. There, the Brigantian Chief Venutius, married to Cartimandua, prepared for a war of resistance. The story is worthy of a soap opera. His Queen Cartimandua seems to have found a new lover and a struggle for power had ensued. Cartimandua was inclined to the Roman cause (we are finding here a common pattern of internal tribal rivalries being expressed in terms of resistance or acceptance of Roman rule much as France was divided after 1940). Venutius seems to have taken up the cause of resistance more as a result of his wife's position than because he started out in a liberatory frame of mind. The upshot was that Cartimandua simply handed Caratacus over to the Romans. He was carted off to Rome as a prisoner where he was pardoned by Claudius, no doubt to ease the process by which the Southern British aristocracy would come to terms with Roman rule.

This pardon appeared to settle the matter of Roman control of Southern Britain for the while but the occupation was not all plain sailing. By the time of the fourth Governor, Quintus Veranius [57-58], orders had been given to go further and conquer the whole island. Although he died within a year, Quintus Veranius appears to have done a great deal to create the conditions for the conquest of Wales, a process continued by his successor against fierce resistance, notably by the Silures in South-Eastern Wales who were not subdued until the 70s. The point when war in this area was replaced with occupation might be set as the founding of Isca (Caerleon) in 75. Wales took a long time to deal with partly because initial campaigning had to be brought to a halt as troops were recalled to deal with a significant revolt in Eastern Britain.

The East British revolt of Queen Boudicca of the Iceni, in alliance with the Trinovantes (60-62AD) meant the sack of the new towns Camulodonum, Verulamium and Londinium with many thousands of death in each but she was eventually defeated in a battle at an unknown site near Watling Street. Boudicca committed suicide by poison. The slaughter had made the Emperor Nero consider withdrawing from Britain altogether but the victory, which demonstrated Roman military superiority against very much greater numbers, drove Rome to push even harder to suppress dissent and romanise the province. The Brigantes, now under Venutius, then became resistant to Rome. This was really little more than a family spat in which Venutius managed to throw out Cartimandua in 69 (interestingly, at the end of the chaotic year of the Four Emperors in Rome when perhaps some British aristocrats started to wobble over the viability of the Roman project). She promptly appealed to the Romans for assistance in winning back her throne. Whether they restored her or not, the Romans decided to deal with Venutius in battle, which they won of course, but the Brigantes themselves were not subdued for some years.

This is no simple picture of military might sweeping all before it in a few quick campaigns but something more like dogged attrition in which brute legionary force was used alongside diplomatic intrigue and probably bribery, with setbacks, to bring the valuable province into the Roman fold. The very fact that the murder of the citizens of the three first colonial towns of Britain led to considerations of withdrawal suggests that Rome was not always sure of its ground and that the benefits of its minerals and agricultural production could be offset by the huge cost of maintaining order over a rag-bag of squabbling tribes. Nevertheless, by the time that Gnaeus Julius Agricola became Governor in Britain in 77, some sense of order had returned, Rome was on its way to final uncontested occupation of South Britain and consideration could be given to conquering the North.

1-44AD: The Romans Invade

As the new millennium opens, the Romans are yet to invade but the South Britons continue internal manouevring as if their world would survive regardless of intentions in Rome. Addedomarus, Chief of the Trinovantes, is succeeded by Dubnovelaunus while Tasciovanus, Chief of the Catuvellauni, is succeeeded by Cunobeline (Shakespeare's Cymbeline). The latter captured Camulodunum in or around AD9. From there, he ruled over the bulk of the Belgae in the South East as an independent tributary of Rome. He or one of his sons, Adminius, then went on to expel Eppillus from Kent in AD20. Cunobeline, the nearest thing that South Britain has had to a unifying force, dies some time before AD43 and is succeeded by two sons, Togodumbnus and Caratacus.

Lexden Tumulus (Colchester [Camulodunum], said to be the burial place of Chief Addedomarus of the Trinovantes (For Source - see Note 1)

This dynasty is the proximate cause of the invasion. There is a ridiculous performance in 41AD when the deranged Caligula accepts the homage of Adminius, forced into exile from Kent by his father for reasons unknown, as the homage of all Britain and has his legions collect sea shells on a Gallic beach (although the source of the story, Suetonius, is not exactly reliable and is prone to propaganda at the expense of unpopular Emperors). However Caligula (in fact, the Emperor Gaius) was soon ousted in a military and court coup that same year. He is replaced with his uncle Claudius. Caratacus, with exquisitely poor timing, misread the situation in Rome as one of weakness. This was, after all, only three decades after the crushing Roman defeat in the Teutoberg Forest (AD9) which had seemed to encourage barbarian state builders to misinterpret the situation then and for some time to come.

Caratacus decided to depose Verica, Chief of the Atrebates, and a significant Roman ally. Claudius and his circle must have seen this as a provocation at a time when Rome needed to assert its authority after the failures of Caligula. Claudius ordered a full-scale invasion by Aulus Plautius in AD43. Cunobeline had got away with ousting the Trinovantes, also a Roman ally, in AD9 in the wake of the Teutoberg disaster but he had been swift to rebuild relations with Rome and become a tributary. It is possible that Caratacus thought he could perform the same trick a quarter of a century later and so establish his position as Chief of Chiefs. What he clearly did not understand was that political conditions in Rome now demanded decisive action to ensure the legitimacy of the new Emperor. The fact that eleven tribal chiefs immediately allied with Rome when the legions landed suggests that a very large number of British aristocrats considered a Catuvellauni Capo di Tutti Capi to be more oppressive than the foreign invaders and believed that the Romans would probably guarantee their 'rights'.

Those committed to resistance undertook a major wave of hill fort refortification. No doubt those not committed to resistance also thought it advisable to review their defences in what might become general mayhem as tribe fell on tribe because of their differing allegiances. Under Aulus Plautius, Vespasian (later to become not only Emperor but eventual conqueror of the Jews in the Great Jewish War of AD66-60) undertook a year of campaigning, systematically reducing the hillforts of a stretch of country from Hampshire through to Cornwall. Some 20 oppida were taken. The General eventually arrived at Isca Dumnoniorum (Exter) having secured the vital line of South Coast ports essential to securing trade. Many of these assaults appear to have been captured in the archaeological record.

The response of the defending Britons was to create a grand confederacy of the Catuvellauni, Trinovantes and Cantiaci, moving their headquarters to the more defensible Camulodunum from Verulamium (St. Albans). This proved to be a 'last stand' around which the Romans simply flowed.

Broch of Mousa (Source:See Note 2 )

Although the significant political struggle is taking place in the South, iron age culture continued to flourish in North Britain. Although the Broch of Mousa in Shetland dates from around a century before these events, it is the best preserved of the 571 or so identified broch structures in the far north of Scotland that were being built not only in the first century BC but in the first century AD. One might assume that instability had become endemic across the island but archaeologists seem to be increasingly dismissive of the idea that these structures were merely or even primarily defensive.

Note

[1] Source: http://www.megalithic.co.uk/article.php?sid=4687 (Thorgrim)
[2] Source: http://www.walkshetland.com/mousa-circular.php