46
INVASION OF BRITAIN.
acts of his life. His own account shews his guilt. He nego-
tiated with them, and required their leaders to appear before
him. When they came honestly and without suspicion, he
treated them as prisoners, and attacked the people while they
were without their leaders. His excuse is detestable. This
base act was afterwards discussed in the senate at Rome ;
and Cato is said to have proposed that Caesar should be
delivered up to the barbarians, to atone for his violation of
the laws of nations4; but the motion led, of course, to no
result.
Another expedition was undertaken against the Veneti, a
seafaring people about the mouth of the Loire, for which
Caesar had a fleet built in that river. This war, like all his
Gallic wars, was carried on with great cruelty, and the Veneti
were conquered. Soon after his fraudulent treatment of the
Usipetes and Tenchteri, he undertook his first invasion of
Britain, which had long been known under this name. The
Phoenicians of Gades traded with Britain on account of its tin
mines in Cornwall, which are the only ones in Europe, with
some insignificant exceptions in the Harz mountains and the
Saxon part of the Erzgebirge.5 Britain was believed to be a
perfectly inaccessible country, though, besides the Phoenicians
of Gades, the Veneti also carried on a considerable commerce
with the Britons.6 The tin trade was also carried on either
entirely by sea, by way of Gades, or by land, by way of Nar-
bonne and Nantes. None of the inland and northern parts of
Britain, however, were ever visited. It flattered the fancy of
Cacsar to subdue this country which no enemy had yet set his
foot within. Much booty he could not expect, and the tin
district was in a very distant part of the country. Kent and
Sussex which he entered were then exceedingly poor, and had
neither gold nor silver, whereas the Gauls possessed great
quantities of the former metal. The success of his undertaking
4 Plutarch, Caesar, 22; Appian, De liebus Gall. 18.
6 Tin occurs elsewhere only in the East Indies, in the peninsula of Malacca
and the island of Banca. All the tin which the ancients used seems to have
come from Britain, for there is nothing to suggest that they received it from
India. It was used for the purpose of alloying copper, the use of calamine for
the same purpose being a later discovery. IIow ancient the art of founding bronze
must have been, may be inferred from its being mentioned in the description of
the temple of Solomon and the tabernacle ; and this art presupposes the use of
tin.—N. 6 Caesar, De Bell. Gall. iii. 8.
INVASION O≡, BRITAIN.
47
was very insignificant, and he neaιly lost his fleet. The ships
were badly built, and the Romans were unacquainted with the
nature of that part of the ocean where, especially in the British
channel, the tides are so strong. Caesar, however, landed in
Britain, defeated the half-naked and badly armed barbarians,
and accepted their apparent submission, in order to be able to
return to Gaul. He afterwards made a second attempt, but
with little better success than the first time, though in the
second invasion he penetrated beyond the river Thames, pro-
bably somewhere above London, in the neighbourhood of
Windsor; but, having received some hostages, he returned to
Gaul, and no sooner had he quitted the island than the sub-
mission of the Britons ceased.
Caesar twice crossed the Rhine in our neighbourhood [Bonn],
once against the Sigambri, and a second time against the
Suevi, but neither of these expeditions yielded any advanta-
geous results, a thing which is not to be wondered at; but
it is very surprising that it was possible for a Roman army to
penetrate into those wild countries, where a forest extended,
without interruption, from the banks of the Rhine to the in-
terior of Poland. The Westerwald is really the Western part
of that immense forest, and was for a time the southern fron-
tier between the Germans and Celts. It cannot have been
booty, but only ambition, that tempted Caesar to make con-
quests on the east of the Rhine.
While Caesar was in Britain, the oppression and licentious-
ness of the soldiers caused the great insurrection of the
Eburones under Ambiorix, which was at first completely suc-
cessful. The Eburones destroyed one whole Roman legion,
under L. Titurius, while another under the command of
Q. Cicero was brought into great danger ; and would probably
have been annihilated had not Caesar returned from his some-
what Quixotic expedition to Britain. The Aquitanians3 on
the other hand, were subdued by M. Crassus. Caesar was thus
master of all Gaul when he entered on the seventh year of his
proconsulship; but a great insurrection now broke out among
tribes which had before been the friends of the Romans. It
was headed by Vercingetorix. The description of this war
is in the highest degree worth reading, on account of the
horrors which attended it; the fury and immense exertions
with which the stru∏∙<>rle was carried on on both sides, and
OO 7