Caesar and his legions attempted to invade Britain twice as early as 55 BCE. One such landing site has been discovered in Kent.
Marble bas-relief by John Deare (1759-1798) illustrating the attempted invasion of England by Jules Cesar.
He came, he saw… he left… Iron weapons and Roman javelins, recently discovered in southern Britain, bear direct witness to Julius Caesar's attempts to conquer England. The Roman proconsul had indeed hoped twice, in 55 and 54 BC, to invade Brittany, the name which then designated the large island. But no archaeological evidence had so far come to light. Which has just been done fortuitously during road works carried out in Kent. These various iron weapons, Roman pilum type javelins and remains of pottery dating from the 1 st century BCE, were excavated at the site of Ebbsfleet, Pegwell Bay, which matches descriptions made by Julius Caesar himself according to Andrew Fitzpatrick, associate scholar at the School of Archeology and Ancient History from the University of Leicester.
In his Books IV and V of The Gallic Wars, Caesar indeed describes his two companies from a wide bay bordered by cliffs. He also mentions the presence of higher ground nearby, on which the inhabitants resisting this landing had gathered, which corresponds well to Pegwell Bay. Caesar also evokes the preparations for the construction of a camp, which corroborates the presence of a defensive ditch 5 m wide and more than two meters deep, with shapes identical to those of the Roman defenses unearthed on the continent. , as in Alesia (52 BC). For Professor Colin Haselgrove, responsible for this work, this ditch was part of a large 20 ha fort surrounded by palisades, erected to protect not only the soldiers from the attacks of the "barbarians", but also Caesar's fleet of 800 ships according to the texts.
Early traces of Caesar's Roman invasions of Britain at the site of Ebbsfleet, Thanet, Kent. ©University of Leicester
"These discoveries correspond to the year 54 BCE, the second attempt to invade England “, made a point of specifying to Sciences et Avenir Yann Le Bohec, historian specializing in Roman history. The previous year, Caesar had indeed carried out a reconnaissance to see what the great island looked like, which was known to him only by what the few merchants who returned from it brought back. A first visit which was brief but marked by a famous episode:the eagle carrier of the X th Legion, the most devoted to Caesar, had indeed thrown itself into the water in order to encourage the soldiers who hesitated to do so, the Bretons waiting for them firmly on the shore. Caesar had described his opponents thus:“All are dyed with pastel, which gives them an azure color and makes them look horrible in battle. They wear their hair long, and shave their whole body except the head and upper lip .
During the second incursion, it seems that Caesar and his troops reached as far as the Canterbury region, then the surroundings of London before returning to Gaul. A journey that makes some historians say that he would have failed to want to conquer Brittany, others believing on the contrary that it is a success since he would have wanted to lead only raids there. This in order to amass useful booty for his re-election in Rome. It was not until a century later that the Emperor Claudius succeeded in actually colonizing Britannia in 43 AD, with the help of five of the most powerful legions of Rome, the II Augusta, IX Hispania, VI Victrix, XVI Gemina and XX Valeria Victrix , or 40,000 men.
Why did Julius Caesar want to conquer "Brittany"?
The question was already divisive in antiquity! The historian Suetonius in the 1
st
century thus recounted that César had gone to Brittany because he liked pearls… and that there were plenty of them. "Which is completely wrong “, explains Yann Le Bohec, historian specializing in Roman history. “In a text I found, Cicero (106-43 BC) also wonders about the reasons that may have prompted the proconsul of Rome to go to Brittany , since this island is very poor, and even the slaves who come from it are worthless, because they can neither cook nor play musical instruments ". So ? For Yann Le Bohec, "he wanted to add this conquest to that of Germania and Gaul to get closer to the myth of Alexander the Great (IV
e
century BC. our era), then very present in the culture of Rome ". To want to equal Alexander was in a way to become a god. “He also wanted to do his Jupiter… smiles the historian. With a maritime expedition, Caesar especially wanted to demonstrate that he was a protege of Venus, (born of the Ocean, editor's note), goddess of whom he claimed to be the descendant and thus prove to Rome that he was protected from the gods ". However, the probable desire to gain access to the large and highly profitable tin mines in Wales cannot be discounted. "Be that as it may, let's not forget that Caesar was mainly waging war for the glory of Rome and his political career concludes Yann Le Bohec.
Find out more: The 2 th Caesar's campaign in England is described on p. 225 in Caesar Warlord, Strategy and Tactics of the Roman Republic , by Yann Le Bohec.