564 



BRITAIN. 



Britain. 



The En- 

 ton* revolt 

 asraiBM 

 the Ro- 



mans. 



Defeated 

 by Sueto- 

 nius. 



Suetonius 

 recnlled. 



A. t>. 70. 

 and 75. 



Success of 

 .Agricola 



In Suetonius' s absence, the states of the mainland, 

 oppressed by the msti'K able tyranny of their Ro- 

 man masters, conspired for vengeance and deliverance. 

 Prasutacgus, the late king of the Iceni, had left the 

 emperor joint heir with his daughters, in hopes of con- 

 ciliating his protection ; butthe Roman officers and sol- 

 diers plundered the unhappy survivors; and when his 

 widow Boadicea remonstrated, beat her with stripes, 

 and violated her daughters before her eyes. Her 

 whole kingdom was given up to plunder. The Tri- 

 nobantes * had been at the same time stript of their 

 lands, and driven from their houses. Those enraged 

 tribes broke in furiously upon the Roman colony at 

 Camolodunum, and after laying it in ashes, destroyed 

 all the infantry of the 9th legion. Suetonius, on his 

 return to London, was implored by them to remain, 

 and defend them against the insurgents; but he chose 

 to march in quest of the enemy, who entered the 

 place on his leaving it, and put all they found to the 

 sword. In London, Verulamium, and other places, 

 the carnage of the Romans and their confederates 

 was computed at 70,000. Flushed by these succes- 

 ses, and joined by fresh associates, the British heroine 

 gave battle to Suetonius ; and dressed in her royal 

 robes, with a spean in her hand, harangued her troops 

 as she drove along their ranks in a lofty chariot, where 

 her two unhappy daughters were seated at her feet. 

 Her forces have been described as innumerably great- 

 er than we can suppose the country to have support- 

 ed, or the Romans to have computed with certainty. 

 Suetonius, with 10,000 men, waited their tumultuary 

 attack in a position accessible only in front, and re- 

 pulsed it with the usual success of the Romans. The 

 Britons were entangled in their flight by waggons 

 loaded with their wives and children, to whom, the 

 Roman historian says, they brought to be witnesses 

 of their valour j but whom it is much more probable 

 they placed there for want of a better asylum. Af- 

 ter an immense slaughter of her army, the British 

 queen ended her miseries by taking poison 



Broken as the British spirit must have been by so 

 terrible a blow, it was kept alive, beyond its natural 

 strength, by the torture of oppression. Suetonius, 

 with all his abilities, was injudiciously vindictive. He 

 was recalled from his post by Nero ; and three suc- 

 cessive governors after him being men of indolent cha- 

 racters, the Britons enjoyed peace for a few yeara. 

 But under Vespasian, the Roman energies revived. 

 The Brigantes, with their warlike leader Venusius, 

 were overcome, and the Silures, in spite of their 

 mountainous country, and an obstinate resistance, 

 were subdued. These successes paved the way for 

 the entire subjugation of the island, under the ablest 

 and best of all the Roman governors Julius Agrico- 

 la, who knew how to retain, with the humane policy 

 of a statesman, what he had won by his bravery as a 

 soldier. In his first campaign, Agricola quelled the 

 Ordovici, -j- and completed the conquest of Anglesey, 

 from which Suetonius had been recalled by the dread- 

 ful insurrection of Boadicea. He accomplished this 

 latter enterprise even without the aid of ships, select- 

 ing the best swimmers from his army, who passed the 



narrowest part of the channel with their horses and 

 arms, but without baggage. In his second campaign, 

 he carried his arms to the north, and subdued nations 

 who never yet submitted to the Romans. Where- 

 ever he marched, he shewed clemency to the submis- 

 sive ; and to secure his conquests, built a chain of 

 fortresses from son to sea, in or near the tract where 

 Hadrian's rampart, and Severus's wall, were after- 

 wards erected. 



In his third campaign, he traversed the country of 

 the Caledonians (hitherto unknown,) as far as the 

 Tay, without meeting an enemy in the field. The 

 Caledonians expecting that ttieir invaders would re- 

 tire in winter, abstained from hostility; but when 

 winter set in, they were disappointed, for they found 

 the troops of Agricola settled in well-stored <UKI for- 

 tified quarters, in which they could neither surprise 

 nor besiege them. In the next year of his government, 

 Agricola built a line of forts between the friths of 

 Forth and Clyde; thus excluding, from all the valu- 

 able part of Britain, both the contagion of revolt, 

 and fro:n those barbarous inroads which might dis- 

 turb its peaceable inhabitants. In his fifth year, he 

 crossed the frith of Clyde ; and after some successful 

 skirmishes with the ancient natives of Caiuyre, Lorn, 

 Argyleshire, and Lochaber, had a distinct view of 

 the coasts of Ireland, and meditated a design, which 

 he never fulfilled, of adding that island to the Ro- 

 man empire. 



In the 6th year of his government, he set out on 

 the eastern coast of Caledonia with an army, and a 

 fleet so near it as to attend and support all its mo- 

 tioiis. He was opposed by an army ofjthe Caledonians, 

 who, in a night attack upon a portion of his army, 

 threw it into confusion, and having entered the camp 

 ef the 9th legion, would have put them to the slaugh- 

 ter, if Agricola had not come up with great celerity 

 to their aid, and driven the Caledonians to their woods 

 and morasses. 



Agricola retired, after this action, into winter 

 quarters, and left the Caledonians a short time to pre- 

 pare for the last struggle, in defence of their inde- 

 pendence. When he took the field the seventh time, 

 he found our ancestors encamped on the skirts of the 

 Grampian hills to the number of 30,000, under a war- 

 like leader, Galgacus. The Roman army was little 

 inferior in numbers. Tacitus has employed an elo- 

 quence and minuteness in describing this engagement, 

 which would suit a more equal contest. So inferior 

 were the armour and discipline of the Caledonians, 

 that 10,000 of them were slaughtered, while the Ro- 

 mans lost only 3-10 men. Their missile weapons 

 were, in fact, their only means of offence ; their long 

 broad swords being unfit for close action, and their 

 bodies defended by only small targets. After the 

 rout of their main body, a reserve of the Caledonians 

 attempted to take the Romans in flank, but a Roman 

 body, under Agricola in person ; foiled this attempt, 

 and the straggling bands of their whole army fled so 

 fast and so far from the scene of action, that next day 

 Agricoia's scouts could not discover an enemy or in- 

 habitant over the whole face of the country. A 



Britain 



His eipe 

 tionagab] 

 the Cilfcj 

 niaus, 

 A. 1). 80 



He is at 

 tacked , 

 nearly d 

 feated b 

 the Cale 

 donians, 

 A. D. 8i 



Total d( 

 feat of t 

 Calednu 

 ans undt 

 Galgacu 



The Trinobantes inhabited what is now Essex, Middlesex, and part of Surrey, 

 f The inhabitants of present North Wales. 



