In 55 BC, Britain was an island on the edge of the known world, a mysterious land of warring tribes and rich mineral wealth. It had no idea what was coming. Across the channel, Rome had fixed its gaze upon it, and the man leading the invasion force was Julius Caesar, one of the greatest military commanders in history. He was about to face the challenge of a lifetime.
For nearly a million years, humans had lived on the island. Over time, they had settled into farming communities and built mighty structures like hill forts. By the first century BC, Britain was at the height of its Iron Age, a patchwork of tribal kingdoms that fought each other, formed alliances, and traded across the channel with Europe. Rome, already one of the most powerful republics the world had ever seen, had seized control of much of Europe.
And one of its most ambitious sons was getting closer. Caesar had been subduing the tribes of Gaul, roughly modern-day France, growing more confident in his ability to crush insurrections. But it was only when he reached northern Gaul that the mysterious island across the sea began to draw his attention. Traders spoke of it, and Caesar started to gather all the information he could.
He began to think, perhaps, that it was time to have a look for himself. For the Romans, Britain was about as remote as it got. Sailing across the channel was a terrifying prospect. They called it Oceanus, a treacherous, unpredictable stretch of water with strong currents that remain dangerous even today.
Before setting off, Caesar sent a scout to look for possible landing spots and gathered as many traders as he could to learn about the island. They told him virtually nothing, and the feeling was that this was deliberate. They wanted to protect Britain from Roman influence. Caesar assembled a fleet on the French coast and sent ahead an envoy named Commius, the leader of a Belgic tribe friendly to Rome.
He hoped Commius could convince the British tribes to submit without a fight. But the plan began to go wrong almost immediately. Caesar’s cavalry set off from a different port and missed the tide, failing to rendezvous with him in the channel. He pressed on anyway.
When he reached the cliffs of Dover, he found hostile tribesmen waiting, making it clear they intended to fight. His agent Commius had been captured. The Britons were in no mood to welcome him. The fact that Caesar had assumed the cliff-lined coast was a good landing point showed just how poor his information was.
But this was also the moment when he showed his brilliance. He looked over the side of his galley, searching for his cavalry. No sign of them. Hostile forces lined the shore.
He spoke to his subordinate commanders, and they came up with a plan. They were going to go for it. They moved along the coastline, looking for a place to land. The exact spot is unknown, but the evidence points to somewhere north of Deal in Kent.
The Britons were already there waiting for them. According to the account, this was the Romans’ most difficult invasion because it came against a defended shoreline. The British nobles rode up and down in their chariots, shouting insults and throwing javelins. Foot warriors shook their spears and shields, ready for the Romans to land.
They were part of a martial culture, and this was a matter of pride. They were going to show they were the main men, the ones who would kick the Romans back into the sea. There was a moment when the assault paused, when it could have turned either way. Caesar himself described what happened.
The soldiers hesitated, chiefly because the sea was so deep. Then the man who carried the eagle of the Tenth Legion appealed to the gods and shouted, “Jump down, soldiers, unless you want to betray our eagle to the enemy. I at least shall have done my duty to the republic and to my commander. ” He flung himself from the ship and carried the eagle toward the enemy.
The men urged each other not to allow such a disgrace, and they jumped down into the water. The battle was on. The eagle held deep religious significance for the legion. There was only one, and it was entrusted to the senior standard-bearer.
The Tenth Legion was Caesar’s special legion, so this was a truly momentous act. Caesar was telling his readers how perilous the invasion was, and how the bravery of his soldiers, led by him, had carried the day. Caesar himself was a great warrior as well as a general. The Romans played to their strengths.
They deployed galleys on either side of the beach, firing ballistas, slings, and arrows at the Britons while the legionaries fought their way ashore. The Britons tried to isolate small groups and overwhelm them, but Roman discipline eventually won through. It took the entire day, but by nightfall, Caesar had done it. His troops were on British soil.
It is said that this was the only successful contested landing in British history. The Romans’ success came down to their equipment and training. The legionary carried a short stabbing sword, a fearsome weapon against an enemy who used a long slashing blade. A long sword had to be raised and brought down, exposing the torso.
In that brief moment, a fast thrust from a stabbing sword would do the job. Behind the shield, which was like a little fence, the soldier could strike out and do all the damage. The Romans were taught to go for the face and body, to twist and pull. Before they even got to the sword, the javelin, called the pilum, did a lot of damage.
It didn’t matter how much armor you wore. If you stood in a line and hundreds or thousands of people ran at you screaming and waving their swords, they would knock you off your feet. The javelin volleys were meant to stop that charge, to bring down the front and second ranks, so those behind would trip and fall and the momentum would collapse. The Romans didn’t just stand there either.
They moved forward and closed quickly, reducing the enemy’s thinking time. Soldiers could pass their pila forward from three rows back, allowing multiple volleys. Even if a pilum didn’t hit anyone, it stuck in the ground, and the enemy would trip over it, causing chaos. The shield was a formidable barrier.
Some Iron Age warriors, with enormous bravery, would throw themselves onto the shields to try to pull them down, throwing away their lives just to get past that wall. But the weapons and the discipline won the day. Thanks to their equipment and the bravery of the Roman soldiers, they had won their first battle against the Britons. But from that point forward, things did not get easier.
Caesar had no cavalry, as they had missed the tide and never made it to shore because of the weather. That was a critical weakness. He needed cavalry for two reasons: to scout the enemy’s location and to forage for food. He had brought no rations, planning to live off the land.
When he sent troops out to scout, they were soon attacked. Caesar realized the game was up and decided to head back to Gaul. His invasion was a failure. But even in defeat, he kept a clear head.
He took the time to study the shore, and he was certain that before he departed, he knew he would be coming back the next year, and he knew exactly where he would land. In 54 BC, Caesar left Gaul at sunset. The currents surprised him, and when day broke, he found he had been carried further up the channel than he anticipated. He looked over his left shoulder, and there was Britain.
He told his men to pull on the oars and took his invasion fleet toward the beaches. This time, he had ships specially built for the purpose, purpose-built landing craft. The British tribes looked out and saw a force far too large to deal with. He had brought 800 ships.
Instead of two legions, he had brought five, along with cavalry. This was going to be a completely different campaign. The vast fleet landed unopposed, and once ashore, the Romans made camp. Until recently, there had been no evidence for this invasion, but that had changed with one of the most important archaeological discoveries in years.
A marching camp had been found, built during Caesar’s second campaign. It was discovered during rescue archaeology when a road was being built, a standard practice in the UK. But what they found was anything but standard. They discovered a beach invasion marching camp, a temporary major fortification meant to last only a few days.
Because they were so temporary, they were hard to find, but the remains here had all the hallmarks of a Roman camp. The thing you looked for were the ditches, defining the almost playing-card-shaped perimeter. In the base of one of the ditches, they found a Roman spear point. They also found human bones.
The bones showed evidence of trauma that had not healed, meaning the people had died of their wounds. They had been thrown into the bottom of a ditch without any formal burial. If they had been Roman soldiers, they would have been buried properly. So these were likely British warriors, perhaps prisoners who had been executed or tortured for information, or killed trying to break into the camp.
The location was incredibly defensible because of the Wantsum Channel, a waterway that stretched through the low ground. Effectively, the camp sat on an island cut off from mainland Kent. This was evidence that Caesar had learned from his earlier invasion. You could not attack this camp with chariots because you would have to cross a huge stretch of water.
In the past 2,000 years, the coastline had changed radically. The area we now call the Isle of Thanet was once a true island, and the camp had stood on a small promontory in the south of it. Standing there, it was strange to think that Caesar had walked the same ground. He was a thorough soldier with the common touch.
His soldiers believed in him. By the time he reached Britain, they had followed him through many victories and many tight circumstances in Gaul. He was a brilliant general, a very good leader of men, and he learned on the job. For the British tribes that would face him, they did not realize that standing there in 54 BC was a real panther of the human species.
Caesar led his army inland, and it was not long before they faced a battle at a defended British stronghold. It is believed that battle took place at Bigbury Hill Fort, just west of Canterbury, overlooking the River Stour. A hill fort like this would have controlled movement, trade, and taxation. It might have been a traditional meeting place, a strong point in the landscape.
An earthwork known as the cross-ridge dyke cut off the spur of land, with a ditch, a bank, and probably a palisade on top. Hill forts like Bigbury were built all over Britain during the Iron Age as part of the conflict between warring tribes, but now they were being put to use against the Romans. All the authorities suggested that Bigbury must have been the location of Caesar’s attack, because no other candidate quite fit. It matched his description of the topography, the distance, and the night march his army made from the landing point.
He told of a river and what was found there. Caesar’s scouts had located the fort, and he marched by night to surprise the tribesmen. He moved with a very large force. While some of his 2,000 cavalry protected the bridgehead, he marched with 1,700 cavalry and four legions to plant Roman authority on Kent and Britain.
He gave a description of the battle. The Britons, according to Caesar, did not hold for long. The Romans formed a tortoise shell with their shields, front ranks holding shields up, those behind covering the top, and forced their way onto the enemy. There had been much searching for evidence of the battle, but none had been found.
Battlefields were very difficult to locate archaeologically. However, recent digital laser technology had revealed an unnatural slope on the southeast side of the hill fort, heading straight up to the earthworks. It was a sensational discovery, a feature that could be the earth ramp built by Caesar in 54 BC, visible 2,000 years later. Roman engineering was a key part of their military success.
The artillery they used was fearsome. A ballista was a stone thrower, and there were 60 of them per legion. They could be mounted on ships and used at sea or during a beach landing. The power came from bundles of rope twisted in opposite directions, made from sinew and horsehair.
The catapult fired a one-meter-long bolt. When demonstrated, the tension in the machine was palpable. You would not want to receive one of those bolts in the face. Fired into the massed ranks of an enemy, it would hit something.
It was truly terrifying. Not only were the Britons facing fearsome technology, they were also dangerously divided. Britain was controlled by many warring tribes. But faced with the threat of Rome, many of them had come together under the leadership of the Catuvellauni, a tribe based around modern-day Hertfordshire.
After the defeat at Bigbury, Caesar made a beeline for the Catuvellauni headquarters. That meant crossing a great river he called the Tamesis, which we know today as the Thames. In 54 BC, it was shallower, and there was a natural crossing point where one could wade the river at low tide. It was not easy.
His men were neck-deep in the water, and the far shore was defended with sharpened stakes. But they were not going to stop Caesar. Once he was across, he made straight for the king, Cassivellaunus, to defeat him and subdue the Britons. The final stand of the Britons did not amount to much.
In his account, Caesar devoted just a few words to the battle. The enemy, having remained only a short time, did not sustain the attack of our soldiers and hurried away. There is no certainty about where he met Cassivellaunus, but what is certain is that Caesar’s impressive display had convinced the Britons that the fight was over. They agreed to pay tribute to Rome and gave him hostages.
But Caesar did not linger. He headed straight back to his fleet and returned to Gaul before the weather closed in. He would never set foot in Britain again. For him, the job was done.
Britain was now within the compass of Roman influence, and the map of the known world had been extended. Back in Gaul, he continued for a couple more years, subduing the tribes there before returning to Rome in triumph. He had done more than any general in Roman history before him. This triumph boosted his meteoric political rise, culminating in him becoming dictator of Rome.
From a British perspective, they had been bloodied by a panther that had come into their land. But once he had gone, things returned to a degree of normality. Trade between Britain and Rome increased, which benefited many of the southern tribes. But for the vast majority of Britons, Caesar’s invasion made no difference at all to their lives.
And in fact, things would carry on that way for nearly a hundred years before Rome truly came to Britain with the intention of conquering the island.
