Chapter I - Ancient England and the Romans

by Charles Dickens

　　If you look at a Map of the World, you will see, in the left-handupper corner of the Eastern Hemisphere, two Islands lying in thesea. They are England and Scotland, and Ireland. England andScotland form the greater part of these Islands. Ireland is thenext in size. The little neighbouring islands, which are so smallupon the Map as to be mere dots, are chiefly little bits ofScotland, - broken off, I dare say, in the course of a great lengthof time, by the power of the restless water.

　　In the old days, a long, long while ago, before Our Saviour wasborn on earth and lay asleep in a manger, these Islands were in thesame place, and the stormy sea roared round them, just as it roarsnow. But the sea was not alive, then, with great ships and bravesailors, sailing to and from all parts of the world. It was verylonely. The Islands lay solitary, in the great expanse of water.The foaming waves dashed against their cliffs, and the bleak windsblew over their forests; but the winds and waves brought noadventurers to land upon the Islands, and the savage Islanders knewnothing of the rest of the world, and the rest of the world knewnothing of them.

　　It is supposed that the Phoenicians, who were an ancient people,famous for carrying on trade, came in ships to these Islands, andfound that they produced tin and lead; both very useful things, asyou know, and both produced to this very hour upon the sea-coast.The most celebrated tin mines in Cornwall are, still, close to thesea. One of them, which I have seen, is so close to it that it ishollowed out underneath the ocean; and the miners say, that instormy weather, when they are at work down in that deep place, theycan hear the noise of the waves thundering above their heads. So,the Phoenicians, coasting about the Islands, would come, withoutmuch difficulty, to where the tin and lead were.

　　The Phoenicians traded with the Islanders for these metals, andgave the Islanders some other useful things in exchange. TheIslanders were, at first, poor savages, going almost naked, or onlydressed in the rough skins of beasts, and staining their bodies, asother savages do, with coloured earths and the juices of plants.But the Phoenicians, sailing over to the opposite coasts of Franceand Belgium, and saying to the people there, 'We have been to thosewhite cliffs across the water, which you can see in fine weather,and from that country, which is called Britain, we bring this tinand lead,' tempted some of the French and Belgians to come overalso. These people settled themselves on the south coast ofEngland, which is now called Kent; and, although they were a roughpeople too, they taught the savage Britons some useful arts, andimproved that part of the Islands. It is probable that otherpeople came over from Spain to Ireland, and settled there.

　　Thus, by little and little, strangers became mixed with theIslanders, and the savage Britons grew into a wild, bold people;almost savage, still, especially in the interior of the countryaway from the sea where the foreign settlers seldom went; buthardy, brave, and strong.

　　The whole country was covered with forests, and swamps. Thegreater part of it was very misty and cold. There were no roads,no bridges, no streets, no houses that you would think deserving ofthe name. A town was nothing but a collection of straw-coveredhuts, hidden in a thick wood, with a ditch all round, and a lowwall, made of mud, or the trunks of trees placed one upon another.The people planted little or no corn, but lived upon the flesh oftheir flocks and cattle. They made no coins, but used metal ringsfor money. They were clever in basket-work, as savage people oftenare; and they could make a coarse kind of cloth, and some very badearthenware. But in building fortresses they were much moreclever.

　　They made boats of basket-work, covered with the skins of animals,but seldom, if ever, ventured far from the shore. They madeswords, of copper mixed with tin; but, these swords were of anawkward shape, and so soft that a heavy blow would bend one. Theymade light shields, short pointed daggers, and spears - which theyjerked back after they had thrown them at an enemy, by a long stripof leather fastened to the stem. The butt-end was a rattle, tofrighten an enemy's horse. The ancient Britons, being divided intoas many as thirty or forty tribes, each commanded by its own littleking, were constantly fighting with one another, as savage peopleusually do; and they always fought with these weapons.

　　They were very fond of horses. The standard of Kent was thepicture of a white horse. They could break them in and manage themwonderfully well. Indeed, the horses (of which they had anabundance, though they were rather small) were so well taught inthose days, that they can scarcely be said to have improved since;though the men are so much wiser. They understood, and obeyed,every word of command; and would stand still by themselves, in allthe din and noise of battle, while their masters went to fight onfoot. The Britons could not have succeeded in their mostremarkable art, without the aid of these sensible and trustyanimals. The art I mean, is the construction and management ofwar-chariots or cars, for which they have ever been celebrated inhistory. Each of the best sort of these chariots, not quite breasthigh in front, and open at the back, contained one man to drive,and two or three others to fight - all standing up. The horses whodrew them were so well trained, that they would tear, at fullgallop, over the most stony ways, and even through the woods;dashing down their masters' enemies beneath their hoofs, andcutting them to pieces with the blades of swords, or scythes, whichwere fastened to the wheels, and stretched out beyond the car oneach side, for that cruel purpose. In a moment, while at fullspeed, the horses would stop, at the driver's command. The menwithin would leap out, deal blows about them with their swords likehail, leap on the horses, on the pole, spring back into thechariots anyhow; and, as soon as they were safe, the horses toreaway again.

　　The Britons had a strange and terrible religion, called theReligion of the Druids. It seems to have been brought over, invery early times indeed, from the opposite country of France,anciently called Gaul, and to have mixed up the worship of theSerpent, and of the Sun and Moon, with the worship of some of theHeathen Gods and Goddesses. Most of its ceremonies were keptsecret by the priests, the Druids, who pretended to be enchanters,and who carried magicians' wands, and wore, each of them, about hisneck, what he told the ignorant people was a Serpent's egg in agolden case. But it is certain that the Druidical ceremoniesincluded the sacrifice of human victims, the torture of somesuspected criminals, and, on particular occasions, even the burningalive, in immense wicker cages, of a number of men and animalstogether. The Druid Priests had some kind of veneration for theOak, and for the mistletoe - the same plant that we hang up inhouses at Christmas Time now - when its white berries grew upon theOak. They met together in dark woods, which they called SacredGroves; and there they instructed, in their mysterious arts, youngmen who came to them as pupils, and who sometimes stayed with themas long as twenty years.

　　These Druids built great Temples and altars, open to the sky,fragments of some of which are yet remaining. Stonehenge, onSalisbury Plain, in Wiltshire, is the most extraordinary of these.Three curious stones, called Kits Coty House, on Bluebell Hill,near Maidstone, in Kent, form another. We know, from examinationof the great blocks of which such buildings are made, that theycould not have been raised without the aid of some ingeniousmachines, which are common now, but which the ancient Britonscertainly did not use in making their own uncomfortable houses. Ishould not wonder if the Druids, and their pupils who stayed withthem twenty years, knowing more than the rest of the Britons, keptthe people out of sight while they made these buildings, and thenpretended that they built them by magic. Perhaps they had a handin the fortresses too; at all events, as they were very powerful,and very much believed in, and as they made and executed the laws,and paid no taxes, I don't wonder that they liked their trade.And, as they persuaded the people the more Druids there were, thebetter off the people would be, I don't wonder that there were agood many of them. But it is pleasant to think that there are noDruids, now, who go on in that way, and pretend to carryEnchanters' Wands and Serpents' Eggs - and of course there isnothing of the kind, anywhere.

　　Such was the improved condition of the ancient Britons, fifty-fiveyears before the birth of Our Saviour, when the Romans, under theirgreat General, Julius Caesar, were masters of all the rest of theknown world. Julius Caesar had then just conquered Gaul; andhearing, in Gaul, a good deal about the opposite Island with thewhite cliffs, and about the bravery of the Britons who inhabited it- some of whom had been fetched over to help the Gauls in the waragainst him - he resolved, as he was so near, to come and conquerBritain next.

　　So, Julius Caesar came sailing over to this Island of ours, witheighty vessels and twelve thousand men. And he came from theFrench coast between Calais and Boulogne, 'because thence was theshortest passage into Britain;' just for the same reason as oursteam-boats now take the same track, every day. He expected toconquer Britain easily: but it was not such easy work as hesupposed - for the bold Britons fought most bravely; and, what withnot having his horse-soldiers with him (for they had been drivenback by a storm), and what with having some of his vessels dashedto pieces by a high tide after they were drawn ashore, he ran greatrisk of being totally defeated. However, for once that the boldBritons beat him, he beat them twice; though not so soundly butthat he was very glad to accept their proposals of peace, and goaway.

　　But, in the spring of the next year, he came back; this time, witheight hundred vessels and thirty thousand men. The British tribeschose, as their general-in-chief, a Briton, whom the Romans intheir Latin language called Cassivellaunus, but whose British nameis supposed to have been Caswallon. A brave general he was, andwell he and his soldiers fought the Roman army! So well, thatwhenever in that war the Roman soldiers saw a great cloud of dust,and heard the rattle of the rapid British chariots, they trembledin their hearts. Besides a number of smaller battles, there was abattle fought near Canterbury, in Kent; there was a battle foughtnear Chertsey, in Surrey; there was a battle fought near a marshylittle town in a wood, the capital of that part of Britain whichbelonged to Cassivellaunus, and which was probably near what is nowSaint Albans, in Hertfordshire. However, brave Cassivellaunus hadthe worst of it, on the whole; though he and his men always foughtlike lions. As the other British chiefs were jealous of him, andwere always quarrelling with him, and with one another, he gave up,and proposed peace. Julius Caesar was very glad to grant peaceeasily, and to go away again with all his remaining ships and men.He had expected to find pearls in Britain, and he may have found afew for anything I know; but, at all events, he found deliciousoysters, and I am sure he found tough Britons - of whom, I daresay, he made the same complaint as Napoleon Bonaparte the greatFrench General did, eighteen hundred years afterwards, when he saidthey were such unreasonable fellows that they never knew when theywere beaten. They never did know, I believe, and never will.

　　Nearly a hundred years passed on, and all that time, there waspeace in Britain. The Britons improved their towns and mode oflife: became more civilised, travelled, and learnt a great dealfrom the Gauls and Romans. At last, the Roman Emperor, Claudius,sent Aulus Plautius, a skilful general, with a mighty force, tosubdue the Island, and shortly afterwards arrived himself. Theydid little; and Ostorius Scapula, another general, came. Some ofthe British Chiefs of Tribes submitted. Others resolved to fightto the death. Of these brave men, the bravest was Caractacus, orCaradoc, who gave battle to the Romans, with his army, among themountains of North Wales. 'This day,' said he to his soldiers,'decides the fate of Britain! Your liberty, or your eternalslavery, dates from this hour. Remember your brave ancestors, whodrove the great Caesar himself across the sea!' On hearing thesewords, his men, with a great shout, rushed upon the Romans. Butthe strong Roman swords and armour were too much for the weakerBritish weapons in close conflict. The Britons lost the day. Thewife and daughter of the brave Caractacus were taken prisoners; hisbrothers delivered themselves up; he himself was betrayed into thehands of the Romans by his false and base stepmother: and theycarried him, and all his family, in triumph to Rome.

　　But a great man will be great in misfortune, great in prison, greatin chains. His noble air, and dignified endurance of distress, sotouched the Roman people who thronged the streets to see him, thathe and his family were restored to freedom. No one knows whetherhis great heart broke, and he died in Rome, or whether he everreturned to his own dear country. English oaks have grown up fromacorns, and withered away, when they were hundreds of years old -and other oaks have sprung up in their places, and died too, veryaged - since the rest of the history of the brave Caractacus wasforgotten.

　　Still, the Britons would not yield. They rose again and again, anddied by thousands, sword in hand. They rose, on every possibleoccasion. Suetonius, another Roman general, came, and stormed theIsland of Anglesey (then called Mona), which was supposed to besacred, and he burnt the Druids in their own wicker cages, by theirown fires. But, even while he was in Britain, with his victorioustroops, the Britons rose. Because Boadicea, a British queen, thewidow of the King of the Norfolk and Suffolk people, resisted theplundering of her property by the Romans who were settled inEngland, she was scourged, by order of Catus a Roman officer; andher two daughters were shamefully insulted in her presence, and herhusband's relations were made slaves. To avenge this injury, theBritons rose, with all their might and rage. They drove Catus intoGaul; they laid the Roman possessions waste; they forced the Romansout of London, then a poor little town, but a trading place; theyhanged, burnt, crucified, and slew by the sword, seventy thousandRomans in a few days. Suetonius strengthened his army, andadvanced to give them battle. They strengthened their army, anddesperately attacked his, on the field where it was stronglyposted. Before the first charge of the Britons was made, Boadicea,in a war-chariot, with her fair hair streaming in the wind, and herinjured daughters lying at her feet, drove among the troops, andcried to them for vengeance on their oppressors, the licentiousRomans. The Britons fought to the last; but they were vanquishedwith great slaughter, and the unhappy queen took poison.

　　Still, the spirit of the Britons was not broken. When Suetoniusleft the country, they fell upon his troops, and retook the Islandof Anglesey. Agricola came, fifteen or twenty years afterwards,and retook it once more, and devoted seven years to subduing thecountry, especially that part of it which is now called Scotland;but, its people, the Caledonians, resisted him at every inch ofground. They fought the bloodiest battles with him; they killedtheir very wives and children, to prevent his making prisoners ofthem; they fell, fighting, in such great numbers that certain hillsin Scotland are yet supposed to be vast heaps of stones piled upabove their graves. Hadrian came, thirty years afterwards, andstill they resisted him. Severus came, nearly a hundred yearsafterwards, and they worried his great army like dogs, and rejoicedto see them die, by thousands, in the bogs and swamps. Caracalla,the son and successor of Severus, did the most to conquer them, fora time; but not by force of arms. He knew how little that woulddo. He yielded up a quantity of land to the Caledonians, and gavethe Britons the same privileges as the Romans possessed. There waspeace, after this, for seventy years.

　　Then new enemies arose. They were the Saxons, a fierce, sea-faringpeople from the countries to the North of the Rhine, the greatriver of Germany on the banks of which the best grapes grow to makethe German wine. They began to come, in pirate ships, to the sea-coast of Gaul and Britain, and to plunder them. They were repulsedby Carausius, a native either of Belgium or of Britain, who wasappointed by the Romans to the command, and under whom the Britonsfirst began to fight upon the sea. But, after this time, theyrenewed their ravages. A few years more, and the Scots (which wasthen the name for the people of Ireland), and the Picts, a northernpeople, began to make frequent plundering incursions into the Southof Britain. All these attacks were repeated, at intervals, duringtwo hundred years, and through a long succession of Roman Emperorsand chiefs; during all which length of time, the Britons roseagainst the Romans, over and over again. At last, in the days ofthe Roman Honorius, when the Roman power all over the world wasfast declining, and when Rome wanted all her soldiers at home, theRomans abandoned all hope of conquering Britain, and went away.And still, at last, as at first, the Britons rose against them, intheir old brave manner; for, a very little while before, they hadturned away the Roman magistrates, and declared themselves anindependent people.

　　Five hundred years had passed, since Julius Caesar's first invasionof the Island, when the Romans departed from it for ever. In thecourse of that time, although they had been the cause of terriblefighting and bloodshed, they had done much to improve the conditionof the Britons. They had made great military roads; they had builtforts; they had taught them how to dress, and arm themselves, muchbetter than they had ever known how to do before; they had refinedthe whole British way of living. Agricola had built a great wallof earth, more than seventy miles long, extending from Newcastle tobeyond Carlisle, for the purpose of keeping out the Picts andScots; Hadrian had strengthened it; Severus, finding it much inwant of repair, had built it afresh of stone.

　　Above all, it was in the Roman time, and by means of Roman ships,that the Christian Religion was first brought into Britain, and itspeople first taught the great lesson that, to be good in the sightof God, they must love their neighbours as themselves, and do untoothers as they would be done by. The Druids declared that it wasvery wicked to believe in any such thing, and cursed all the peoplewho did believe it, very heartily. But, when the people found thatthey were none the better for the blessings of the Druids, and nonethe worse for the curses of the Druids, but, that the sun shone andthe rain fell without consulting the Druids at all, they just beganto think that the Druids were mere men, and that it signified verylittle whether they cursed or blessed. After which, the pupils ofthe Druids fell off greatly in numbers, and the Druids took toother trades.

　　Thus I have come to the end of the Roman time in England. It isbut little that is known of those five hundred years; but someremains of them are still found. Often, when labourers are diggingup the ground, to make foundations for houses or churches, theylight on rusty money that once belonged to the Romans. Fragmentsof plates from which they ate, of goblets from which they drank,and of pavement on which they trod, are discovered among the earththat is broken by the plough, or the dust that is crumbled by thegardener's spade. Wells that the Romans sunk, still yield water;roads that the Romans made, form part of our highways. In some oldbattle-fields, British spear-heads and Roman armour have beenfound, mingled together in decay, as they fell in the thickpressure of the fight. Traces of Roman camps overgrown with grass,and of mounds that are the burial-places of heaps of Britons, areto be seen in almost all parts of the country. Across the bleakmoors of Northumberland, the wall of Severus, overrun with moss andweeds, still stretches, a strong ruin; and the shepherds and theirdogs lie sleeping on it in the summer weather. On Salisbury Plain,Stonehenge yet stands: a monument of the earlier time when theRoman name was unknown in Britain, and when the Druids, with theirbest magic wands, could not have written it in the sands of thewild sea-shore.