Dan Snow's History Hit - Was Caesar's invasion of Britain a disaster?

Episode Date: July 30, 2026

Today, we trace Julius Caesar’s dramatic invasions into Britain - two bold expeditions that tested Rome’s reach at the very edge of the known world. Ships were battered by storms, soldiers struggled with unfamiliar tides, and British warriors offered fierce resistance. Caesar never secured a lasting conquest of the island - so what drove him to try? Military necessity, retribution or a calculated move in his rivalry with figures like Pompey?Joining us is historian and author Simon Elliott to unpack the politics, ambition and spectacle behind these campaigns, and to explore how these risky ventures helped shape the larger-than-life reputation that still defines Caesar today.Produced by James Hickmann and edited by Dougal Patmore.We need your help! Let us know what you want from Dan Snow's History Hit by filling in our anonymous survey here: https://forms.gle/PvgayWLkWGjYT4St6Dan Snow's History Hit is now available on YouTube! Check it out at: https://www.youtube.com/@DSHHPodcastSign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe.We'd love to hear your feedback - you can take part in our podcast survey here: https://insights.historyhit.com/history-hit-podcast-always-on.You can also email the podcast directly at [e-mail]. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Sign up to join us in historic locations around the world and explore the past. Just visit history hit.com slash subscribe. When Julius Caesar, arguably the greatest warlord in history, set his sights on a misty island at the very edge of the known world, he had no way of knowing what waited for him, beyond those towering white cliffs of Dover. It was a mysterious island that his contemporaries called Britannia. In this episode, we're going to follow Caesar on those two military expeditions across the English Channel. We'll see how rough seas and shifting tides and very very important.

determined British opposition nearly destroyed the first invasion, and how determination and clever logistics and cavalry skirmishes and a bold strike across the Thames helped to make the second. For Caesar, Britannia was less a new province to conquer than it was a political performance. It was a chance to show that even this territory beyond the edge of the known world should tremble, should bend the knee before the might of Rome. And in fact, it showed that the people of Rome should bend the knee to him. Joining us is Simon Elliott, Dr. Simon Elliott, bestselling historian, archaeologist author, broadcast a great friend of history hit, an expert on all things Rome. We're going to talk Caesar across the seas. Enjoy.

P-minus 10. The atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. God save the king. No black white unity till there is first from black unity. one another at a gate. And lift off, and the shuttle has cleared the power. Simon, thanks going back on the podcast. Absolute pleasure. What are these mysterious islands?

Britain and Ireland. They're beyond the ocean. What do the Greek and Romans, before Caesar ever sets foot in it? What do they know about this place? The reality is, Dan, I think the Romans knew very little about Britain. So from their perspective, it's a fantastical place. You're looking at something that's akin to Mordor

or something similar to that in Lord of the Rings. or anywhere in Game of Thrones. It's basically a place of difference of which they knew little. But they do know there's valuable stuff there. They do, but it's important to contextualise why Caesar's invasions are so important, which will come to. Caesar's invasions are so important because they put Britain properly onto the Roman map. Before that, the Romans knew that their exports onto the continent

are various metals, agricultural produce, sort of arable, wool, Hunting dogs, interestingly, and also very interestingly, Britain in the pre-Roman period is a great place to go and get slaves. So that means that most of the major tribal groupings and confederations in Britain are fighting each other all the time. Okay, and then merchants from the Roman world, from the Mediterranean, can arrive at the beach and trade, pick up these slaves, pick up this tin, copper, hunting dogs, and then they take them back to the Roman.

So merchants were doing trade before the Roman legions ever set foot. Absolutely, and I actually think you'd probably find that actually merchants were embedded, within sort of later on age Britain. I think actually the trade side of thing was something that Romans had got covered, but what they didn't really know is any detail about the place. So it really, really was a place of difference

and a place of fantasy. Julius Caesar, people have heard him. People can go back and check out that excellent YouTube we made about Julius Caesar being the greatest Roman commander, question mark, you think he was? Julius Caesar conquers what is now France and Belgium.

Yeah. An astonishing campaign of conquest. Yeah. incredibly bloody, incredibly brutal, but incredibly effective. And is that what then, well, he stands at Calais and he looks across and thinks, what's that place? I mean, is that basically what happens? So firstly, Dan, that's a really, really important point. Caesar's two incursions to Britain in 55 and 54 are not isolated events.

They're both part of his wider Gallic conquest. So let's contextualize what's going off here. Caesar's been consul, 59 BC, he gets given the governorship of the province of Sysalpine Gaul, which is northern Italy, north of the River Po, where Gallic people are living, but by that point, not the enemies of Rome. He also gets... It's been conquered. He also gets given control of transalpine Gaul, which are the Roman territories north and west of the Alps.

That includes Narbenensis, which is the Roman province, which runs along the Mediterranean coast. So, for example, Marseys in the moment. So southern, what we call southern France, so Cesar is in charge of this important, So a chunk of territory from northern Italy right the way across southern France. Yes, but randomly, he also gets given the governorship of Illyricum, which is Dalmatia, which is a bit random, but think about what's happening at the times. It's 59 BC, so this is the beginning of the first trium writ with Krasas and Pompeii. So they divided up their own world between these three super-rich warlords.

Absolutely, yeah. And the key thing there is, they agree that they wouldn't oppose each other's legislation in the Senate. So you have a degree of political peace descending between the optimalities. In this case, Pompey and Krasas, these are. the pro-senatorial reactionaries. Sort of aristocratic. Absolutely, yeah. And then Caesar, who is popular, so he's more of a radical.

Man of the people, self-starved. But Caesar, Caesar is driven by two things all the time throughout his entire life. The lust for glory is got a sense of destiny which drives him, I think. Very related. But also, he's very avaricious. So he's after wealth. His family are senatorial, but they're not that rich. His father died young.

So he's always after wealth. And so it gets given the governorship of Southern Gore, basically, and the north of Italy. And what could go wrong? This is a man driven by a lust for wealth and power. Yeah. It's a unique story. And straight away, he doesn't muck about. You've never had this one before.

Okay, go. This is one of the most brutal examples of it. So he doesn't muck about. In 58 BC, he invades Gaul. And he doesn't just invade Gaul. He's looking for an opportunity. Just by himself. The Senate doesn't go, you must invade Gaul.

He just... Absolutely. So, he's been given four leagues. He wants to keep them busy. So he fights in 58 BC, the Helveti, who are a transalpine Gallic Confederation. And then he travels over the Rhine, north and east, and he fights the Germanic Suebi. And he's not just fighting small tribal groupings. He's fighting hundreds of thousands of people, but he's winning.

So now he's got a taste for this. And all the time, by the way, is writing back to Roman's narrative saying, look what I've done, I've done this, I've done that. Julie Caesar, I've said it before, Dan, the greatest PR man in the ancient world. Everything we know about him, he wrote. Genius. And then you're going to 57 BC, and then he targets the most dangerous of the Gaul's

who are in Gallia, Belgica, to the north. So this is in the Rhine Delta and in Belgium and in northern France. And he fights some really difficult campaigns there. He almost loses the Battle of the Sabbaths, but he's ultimately successful. 56 BC is then on the Channel Coast. So he's fighting the Veneti, and the Veneti are the main maritime nation in Gaul.

He's just on a massive tear across where. And he keeps going and going and going. Basically, this is a man. He's got a taste for it, right? He's getting glory back in Rome because he's winning, and also he's actually accruing wealth as he's doing it. And you can get a sense of the character of Julius sees when he's fighting the Veneti,

because he fights a maritime battle against them when he wins. Then he invites the Veneti's main elders from their council to come and meet him and have a peace agreement, and he murders them all, right? Very Roman, very gritty, very gritty. And that brings us to 55 BC. So he's defeated the Veneti. There are a couple of confederations still on the coast which haven't submitted yet.

But, you know, he wants a bit more glory and he just looks across the channel and there's Britain. And he thinks right. I can take Roman arms to places which to most Romans would be a sort of fantasy land. I think there are three real reasons why Caesar decides. The risk involved here is high level. This is a land of which the Romans know little, apart from the trade. They certainly don't know the people, as we're about to find out. you're crossing not mere nostrum in the Mediterranean, you're crossing the English Channel.

So the Romans call it Oceanus, so it's not their sea. It's a very dangerous ocean to cross. Yeah, tides, currents, shocking weather. Which the Romans didn't understand at all, as we'll see. And it's also quite late in the campaigning season that he chooses to do it as well. So there's a huge amount of risk. I have to say, Julius Caesar is very, very cany for most of his career as a political and military leader. This is his worst campaign in 55 BC.

and it's one that he could easily have lost it could have cost him his life as we'll see. Because he could have been, apart from anything else. He could just been cut off in what is now Kent for months on end. Well, he almost was. Right, okay, well, come on to that. Okay, perfect.

But the reasons why, Dan, he chooses to come across our number one, wealth. So he knows that there's all these various goods there that he can make money from. Number two, glory. So he knows that this will be so astonishing that no one will believe it in Rome if he managed to do this.

And number three is because where of all the refugees been going from the conquered Gaelic nations, have been going to Britain. So it's become a thorn in his side where all these people are egging on the Britain. Go on, go on and get seeds. Because the people of what is now Northern France and Belgium

have got kinship with the people of Britain, what's same language, religion, all that sort of stuff. They're tribes with the same name. So they've got the Parisei in East Yorkshire, they've got the Parisay in Gaul. Got the Atrebatis in the Thames Valley, got the Atrobatis in Gaul.

You've got the Belgay in Gaul. These are people who've got kinships between each other. So they're the... three reasons why Caesar makes this astonishing decision to do what I call an armed incursion to Britain. Okay. So he's done an armed incursion to part, he's gone across the Rhine, fought some campaigns, and then withdrawn. So it's not unusual for him to sort of go in, smash some people up, check out the line of the land and then come back. That's his plan. Absolutely. He's also built a big bridge when he crossed the line as well. So showing his expertise as an engineer as well.

But now he's looking across the channel. Does you have to build a fleet? In actual, fact, he orders ships to be sent to him from the Mediterranean. Wow, they go all the way around. So these ships aren't particularly suitable for operating in Channel Waters, which has an impact later on. Okay, so he succeeds where Philip of Spain fails in 1588 and gets a fleet round from Iberia right the way around to the coast of northern France. Where are we talking, roughly speaking?

What about Boulogne? Boulogne, okay. And he embarks. He does. So he's got 80 ships for his... legions, who are the legions, he's only taking two this time. He's probably got by this point in the middle of his Gallic campaigns, he's probably got about eight legions, but he only takes two. That's seven, and his own pet legion, the 10th legion. And then he's also got some cavalry,

who are Gallic mercenary carriers to come with him as well. So he's got 80 ships for the foot troops, and he's got 18 ships for the cavalry. And they set sail around midnight on the given day late in the campaigning season. But before that, there's an issue. even before the sale there's an issue, because he's not done his reconnaissance properly. Very unlike Caesar, very unlike Caesar. So firstly, he talks to the local Veneti nobles, the ones who he didn't murder, to say, can you tell us anything about Britain? And guess what?

They say, not really. Can we go home now, please? And then he sends one of his leading legates, who's a very good land general, who's got no expertise at all at sea, with one galley to scout the coast of the southeast of Britain. and he spends four days looking at all the various landing places and he alights on the worst landing place you could think of landing an army,

the beaches below the white cliffs of Dover. Which is the easiest defendable place in northwestern Europe probably. So that's where Caesar's going to. And then thirdly, he sends an Atrobatian king from Gaul called Comias who's got people in the Thames Valley who are also Atrobatis,

so he thinks that the Britons will know them to try and broker a peaceful landing. Of course, as soon as he lands, he gets arrested, doesn't appear again for the rest of the campaign. So it's all gone wrong. But Caesar still does it anyway. He throws his Hail Mary. So the ship sail across...

He does sail into the unknown, doesn't he? Totally. This is proper, proper tolkien our Game of Thrones. They arrive off the coast, or the whitechrist of Dover, and guess what? The native Britons all know what's happening because they've captured communists.

They're all lined up. You can imagine the sort of air-fix, sort of ancient Britons in the chariots and with all the foot troops and everything, all lined up going up and down, going to go down and a while. It's a horror show. Seas you go, oh, that's not going to work, is it?

And can I interrupt you? Because I find this so interesting. This is the first time that someone has written down their experience of being in Britain that we have preserved. It's the first invasion that we know about Britain. And it is the only invasion in British history

and there have been dozens that is opposed on the beach. So saving Private Ryan style where guys are on the beach waiting for that invasion force. Usually people just land, march in, land you, Henry the 7th or William the Conquer

So this is an opposed invasion. It's very rare. It's one of the most difficult military battles to fight an opposed invasion because there are so many variables involved that he can't control. So Caesar does wisely now determine that I'm not going to land in Dover. So basically it's like the wacky races. He hop-foot-set along the coast going north, and he gets to that wide expanse of beaches from the Wantsom Channel

where Richborough is today down through Sandwich and Walmer and Deal. They're the beaches where he starts landing his troops, but the Britons have arrived as well. So that's why you have this really, really, risky battle taking place. There's a battle on the beach, basically. On the beach. And the Romans don't have invasion barges, et cetera.

There's people jumping out of galleys, et cetera. So if you look at the strategy that Caesar used for the battle, it was an effective one in that he got galleys with ballister either end of the invasion beaches, firing and etc. But it still wasn't working. And a lot of the Roman troops didn't want to come. Roman troops historically didn't want to come to Britain. You go later, Caligula had to give up an invasion of Britain

because his legions refused. You go to Claudius with a successful invasion in AD 43. One of his freed men, Narcissus, had to shame the legionaries into boarding the ships. So the Romans didn't really want to do it. But here, there's an even more extreme example, because a lot of the Roman legionaries refuse to leave the ships. And allegedly, Caesar tells us it takes the Aquilifer carrying the legionary Aquila standard, the eagle of the 10th Legion, to jump into the shallows and say, follow me, I'm willing to fight for my emperor and the glory of Rome, quote unquote.

And they'll pile in, and there's a battle, and it goes one way and the other, one way and the other, and eventually the Romans win. Fighting in the shallows. In the shallows, wearing Lorica Hamata chain mail with coolest helmets on, with this huge scootum body shield, etc. If you go under, you're going under, right? And you're not coming back. So this is a really risky battle, but the Romans eventually win. What does the seas have to work? What do these legions look like?

Dan, I think the Roman legionary of this period, the Caesarean period, is the elite warrior of the ancient world. His legions are 6,000 men. And they are legions which have been founded in this form by the great general and popularist leader Marius. So about a few decades before. About a few decades before, yeah. But when Marius reformed the legions,

he reformed all the legions. So instead of having various troops, some of spears, some of the pillars, some of the pillars, doing this, that and the other, every single legionary now in those 6,000 is exactly, exactly the same. Okay, they're armed with two pilums and a gladys Hispaniasis. So javelin, pillums jab for throwing.

It's a leadway to jabbling, yeah. It's an armour-piercing javeling. Armour piercing. Short, stabbing sword. Absolutely, yeah. Brutely efficient. Remember the Roman fencing technique is all about stabbing, as you rightly say. So you've got your scutum shield.

There's big famous shields that we're familiar with. And then your legionary is carrying his gladius on his right-hand side. So when he draws it, he takes the blow from the opponent, and then he can kill him straight away because his thorax is exposed. So you're not doing all the fancy sword fighting. It's butchery. It's an industrial scale killing machine. 6,000 men.

And those 6,000 men as well, and they've got their helmets and the chain mail, etc. as well. These 6,000 men are all engineers, trained engineers, and within the 6,000, 1,200 have a speciality as well. So there could be stonemasons, there could be tarn makers, they could be Fletcher's making arrows and everything.

So this 6,000 men in the Legion can do everything. itself. It doesn't need a supply train. Oh, all the sort of cross people that went along with it. So they've actually internalized that in the Legion. Absolutely. It's astonishing. Well, remember the Roman Legion of this period all the way through into the empire, towards the end of the empire, at the end of everyday's marching enemy territory,

they build a marching camp, which is a single or double six meter wide, six meter deep ditch. You've been marching, Dan, for six hours. Yes. And then you spend three hours building your marching camp. And then you make a thread. Every night. Every night. every night.

So you're building huge ditches, you're building a bank with the earth from the ditch, you're building a palisade on top of it, and then you're laying out a fort, temporary fort, in exactly the same form as you have in a Roman Stainbelt fort,

every single night. And you can do that because every Legionary is an engineer. Every Legionary is carrying two holes. Yeah, they carry the stakes with them. So you just go, there you go, dun, right, let's go. In addition, to carrying all their kit.

So, I mean, I often talk of Roman legioners has been like sort of a middleweight, Olympic weightlifter, all square and all, muscle because they're carrying everything and they're doing all the building themselves. Then it's upsticks and then off to the next one. Absolutely, yeah, days March, three hours building a marching camp. It's great for archaeologists though, because we can do a dot-to-dot tracing where all these

campaigns took place, especially if you go to modern school. It's not amazing that you can still see them in the landscape and some of them might have only be used for one night. Absolutely. Extraordinary. Absolutely. And that's why, if you look at, say, the native Britain's fighting against Caesar in certainly 55, they find it so difficult to.

to engage with the Romans in set-piece battle. Because if you've got 30,000 legionaries with your five legions, that's going to be devastating. If you try and attack them at night, they're in a marching camp. You're not going to get into it because you've got no siege equipment. So that's devastating as well. Providing seize against his logistics right and gets a little bit of look on his side, which he does, then is almost unstoppable.

Once he mounts the 54 campaign, which he does properly. We're going to come on to those in a second. But quickly on the British, would I be right in thinking, if they're fighting in less disciplined fashion, they are relying on sort of longer-edged weapons, a little bit more heroic way of fighting. Looks fancy, but it means you need more space between. So these legionaries packed in.

They're always going to be an advantage. You can get more men per metre on that front line. Absolutely. And also the Romans themselves can form various formations as well, so they can form a cohenus, so a wedge formation. And if you have a multiple coenus, it's almost like sort of a buzz saw, isn't it? It's going straight through your opponents.

Bang, stab. bang, stab, bang, industrial scale, killing machine, you can't stop me, everyone's dead. Ooh! Sorry, Dan. You listen to Dan Snow's history hit. The best is yet to come. Stick with us. So the Romans establish themselves, they get a bridgehead, at which point, because you're in the channel and because it's late summer, which can be quite hard to differentiate from winter, storm smashes the fleet. The first thing Caesar does

is the thing that every Roman military leader does when they're in enemy territory he builds a marching camp and that's for the two legions, right? So that's 12,000 men, that's a big marching camp. Ditches, stockade, a safe base. Dan, I reckon you're talking about a double ditch.

I think we're double ditching. I think we're double ditching. I think we've got cowtrops in there as well. I think we've got steaks. Caltrops, these little spiky things that can get into horses hooves. Absolutely, yeah. then I think you've got the bank with a palisade on top for 12,000 men, so it's big.

And do you think that might be where Roman Richborough is today if people have been down there? More or less. More or less. Yeah. I think so. But then, as you absolutely rightly say, a storm comes in, and he's not actually put his ships into a protected anchorage, which is nearby in the Wantsom Channel, by the way, and they're on the beach, and a lot of his ships get badly damaged. So he knows from that point that he's going to be restricted to what he can do, but also something else has happened as well, his cavalry haven't arrived. Ah. Because they missed the tide and they continue to miss the tide.

So I don't know who's actually in charge of those ships. And I bet they didn't last long when Caesar got back. So Caesar is left with far too few boats and also he's got no ability to scout ahead or to pursue a broken enemy. So he's very limited in what he can do. So he sends the Seventh Legion out to go and forage and then he sent the 10th Legion to the beach to repair the ships. But of course the Britons are watching.

And as soon as the 7th Legion go out and start foraging, they get ambushed. And Caesar has to physically showing great personal bravery, leave the 10th out, his own Pet Legion. And then they save the day, and the day is saved. And they go back to the marching camp. The Britons say, we'll sign a peace deal. A bit later they're turning it with a bigger army. Caesar puts both legions out, so the marching camp,

another set-piece battle takes place. The Romans win. Peace deals agreed, hostages. Caesar goes home. So the Romans win, but realize that they ain't going any further in land. No, because they can't because they've got no cavalry. And also a lot of the ships have been destroyed as well. Remember the way that the Romans campaign with the fleets.

They often campaign along the coast and always downriver systems because they can use the fleet to keep supplying them. So without the cavalry and the fleet, they just can't go very far at all. And you can make the case, this certainly isn't the way it's portrayed in the Lady Bird book of Julius Caesar and Roman Britain, but you can make the case that Caesar just fled back to Gaul with his tail between his legs. Yeah. Because his option would have been to overwinter in a marching campaign.

enemy territory. It's not going to work. No. Winter in England. So my point earlier, that is Caesar's worst campaign. And we take his word for it that he won that battle outside the walls of the camp. I mean, I guess they fought themselves to draw in a way because they can defeat the enemy in the field, but they're still surrounded by a bandit country. They still can't break out of this camp. We're almost certainly missing 90% of the narrative of the whole campaign. Caesar's certainly spinning every single thing that comes his way.

And there's a desperate amount of spinning taking place here, by the way, because effectively he lost. Yeah. There must have been some dark nights there. He's alone in this hostile foreign land, further from Rome than ever before, with uncertain route back to Europe and surrounded by enemies. And you can imagine the Legion who's in the camp saying, you know, what's wrong with the old man?

Yeah, it's going off the oil. As he lost his touch. As he lost his touch. And by the way, the interesting thing to remember here as well is, in terms of the Gallic conquest, we're in the middle of it. Right? So Gaul hasn't been conquered. He's still got a lot of his legions back in Gaul,

keeping the place locked down where he conquered it with other places to conquer. So if it begins unraveling in Britain, it could go all the way through into Gaul and the whole thing could unravel. And remember the last two years of the Gallic campaigns in 53 and 52, he's fighting revolts, right?

So it could all really badly unravel. Yeah, for all he knows, it's all going completely tits up on the continent. If the Brits do sign a deal and let Caesar go, disembark his troops and leave, that was a catastrophic mistake. Because getting on ships, on a beach with a determined enemy all around you,

is very, very difficult indeed. Absolutely right. And they paid the price. Because the following year. So be fair to Caesar, so he has this shocker, but to fare to Caesar, it comes about the following year. I mean, as you say, that's Caesar, isn't it?

To have that experience, I think, I'm going back. Dan, that's Roman. Yeah. Right. True grit, this trait that you will never give up. You'll always come back and win. You'll only agree to a piece on your own terms. That's very Roman. And if Caesar hadn't done that,

that would have broken the back of his reputation, I think, in Rome. So I think actually he's made a rod for his own back. He's got to go back to Britain. But this time, the other trait that the Romans have, of course, is learning from your mistakes, nicking other people's ideas. So this time he really does it well. So 54 BC.

Yeah. What's he do differently? Firstly, he takes 30,000 men. Holy Moses. Not 12,000 men. Okay. So if you look at the various narratives of the big Roman campaigning forces in Britain where this fits, Caesar 2, 30,000 men,

a grickler in Scotland, 30,000 men, a Claudian invasion, Daraulus Plautus in 8043, 40,000 men, severus in Scotland, 50,000 men. So it's in the top four. That's a huge force for a start. Secondly, he realizes one of his weaknesses. He's got his invasion beaches,

but one of his weaknesses was the ships. So he copies ship designs from the Veneti and actually builds proper landing ships, which can get the troops store properly. And build ships that are suitable for the, English Channel. And makes sure that he used to the right time of year as well. So he's actually in the campaigning season now, not towards the end of it.

And then they come over with the land of the same invasion beaches, but this time, the Britons don't oppose it because they realise the Roman force are too big. Okay, interesting. So they let him get ashore? Yeah. And you've got the whole summer ahead of you now. And then Caesar decides he's going to head inland immediately, and he keeps his whole force together.

Remember building a marching camp at the end of the day, and then moving on. Moves 20 kilometres. He fights his first battle near the River Stour, which is near Canterman. And here the Britons have actually only deployed chariots and light cavalry, the idea being to sort of slow the Romans down, but Caesar's own cavalry, who are Germans and Gauls, actually smashed straight through them. It's worth remembering people forget, actually, with these Germans and Gallic ally cavalry, that they're ferocious, they're headhunters.

So if you look at a lot of the tombstones of later Roman auxiliary cavalrymen in Britain, they're carrying a head or there's a headless courts near them, they're all, German or Gallic, but later in the Roman Empire. So it's a native thing being headhunters. So they smashed through and Caesar carries on, building marching camps. And then he comes to, very near to modern Canterbury, Bigbury Hillfort, which he has to besie. And he only uses the Seventh Legion. And they build a ramp up to the ramparts and they eventually get in there, butcher everybody, first phase of the invasion, job done. So he's being very methodical. He's got the tools. He's got the many needs, things going well.

If you've got 30,000 men and you keep them together, it doesn't matter how many troops the Britons can put in the field. These are the elite warriors of the ancient world, and they're going to eviscerate anything that comes in front of them. And I think the British know this as well. At this point, incidentally, it's worth reflecting who the Britons were. So the various confederations in the battle space we're talking about, the strategic battle space,

are the Kantiaki in modern Kent, the Trinivantes in eastern Essex, the largest of the confederations, the Catabaloni, who are across sort of the... the north of London through to the region of St. Orbanes, the Atrobatis in the Thames Valley, they're the main people. Then you might get people from the I-C-Ni-Northor coming in, or the Cori-L-Tauvi from the Midlands or from the Belga, from the South Coast. But broadly, we're talking about, I think, the Kantiaki, the Trinivanties, the Katha-Valani, and the Atrobatis.

And by this point, they have one leader. I think it's the leader of the Catabalani. Now, Caesar doesn't tell us who this individual is the leader of, but he does give us his his name, which is Cassavallonus. And Casavallonis is the leader of opposition. And so he tries to oppose the Romans in a set piece battle and it fails. He then flees across the Thames. And the set piece battle is on the Medway? Where is it? I think this set piece battle is near the Thames, actually. You do have the famous river crossing battle from the Claudian invasion, but this, I think, near the Thames. So on the south, they're marched up the South Bank of the Thames. Absolutely. And he failed. They've got their ships

supporting them, bringing supplies. the listers and everything. Absolutely as well. It's a whole lot. Providing fire support, right? And then they need to do another amphibious assault. So the question is,

where does Caesar choose to pursue the native Britons back across the Thames? And I think it's probably near New Tilbury. So I don't think it's anywhere near modern London. I think it's actually much further downriver.

I think it's near modern Tilbury. Gets them into Essex, and then that gets you pursuing the native Britons and eventually they go all the way through to their capital, which is thought to be what later became Roman,

very lamium, which is St. Orban's. And there's another siege, the Romans win, and this time Caesar has a proper victory. And eventually, the native Britons then sue for peace. And this is a much better piece for the Romans, because it involves tribute being paid and also a lot of hostages. And that tribute may well have continued to have been paid to the Romans all the way through to the reign of Claudius. So it's actually probably quite a big victory for Caesar. So he's got his, he's captured enemy bases, he has defeated them, he has got cash, he can go home. And he can tell everybody that he's done the job. I did a good job the first time, spin, spin, spin, spin, spin, spin, spin, spin, spin, spin,

but this time I've ready done the job and I've got the hostages and I've got the tribute to prove it. And you can send the hostages, what he sends them back to Rome, so everyone have to look at them. But then he goes back to Gaul and the Gallic walls continue. So that's the point I was making earlier about this is just an integral part of the Gallic Walls. Britain might be a fantastical place of difference, but nevertheless, The campaign is not a separate campaign. It's all part of his Gallic Wars campaigns. This is the first ancient text we have describing Britain.

What are some of the details that gives us about life? The Brits, don't tell me, he says they're always drunk all the time or something. No, he's got some, there are some salacious comments about the mating habits where a British woman would mate with 12 British men. There are some mentions of the British diets where he says they don't eat meat. they drink a lot of milk, that kind of thing. But in actual fact, I think Caesar's totally utterly focused on the military campaign here. And I think in actual fact, all the details that he gives you are actually the kind of details

that you would get in a political history of a military campaign. So we moved on now from the hearsay because now Britain is on the Roman map. He doesn't stay. They didn't leave a garrison? No, but I do think that the Romans leave behind small mercantile. settlements here and there. So I think actually Roman London, as an example, Lundinium, as it later became, I think that was founded as a mercantile settlement sometime after Caesar two, probably around Corn Hill. And they've got a deal with the locals saying, look, let these Romans trade here, otherwise we'll be back. Absolutely. And they're paying tribute. Yeah. You know, the native British

tribal leader is paying tribute to the Romans. And was this, because this is something I find really interested about the Roman world and the British imperial world as well. Sometimes it's not about the read on the map. It's actually about what's going on beyond those borders. You might march into what is now parts of Ukraine or the Caucasus, knock a few heads together, not establish our own province, but they become part of your kind of wider Roman worlds, right? And that's what's happening in Britain. It's a really interesting point there, actually, Dan, because the territory we've been talking about is in the southeast. So it'll be really intriguing to know what the impact of Caesar's incursions, especially if he's getting to St. Orban's has on the confederations and the

tribes further away, like the Breganties in the north, for example, or even further north into into the region of modern Scotland. And we literally don't know. And it's intriguing that when Claudius comes back for the invasion, which works in AD 43, he targets the southeast, he uses the same invasion beaches. And he basically recreates Caesar II with his own invasion, but stays. Why doesn't it be garrison start another Roman province like he'd done in Gaul? Is it, was it just a breach too far? Just too difficult. I think he may have been planning to come back later. So there's evidence of a very large marching camp on the Isle of Thanat. Which is on the Thames-estree, sort of North Kent, as you're heading in towards London.

It's a very odd place to put a marching camp because it's on the Isle of Thanat, which then was an island separated from mainland Britain by the Wantsom Channel. The theory there is that that might have been a major logistic space, which the Romans were planning to use, to support a longer stay. And it's just that Caesar chose to go home. But he may may have been planning to come back, but he didn't get the chance. And he extracted what he He was getting cash. He had some of general promises of obedience. He had what he needed for his Roman audience.

Dan, fame and money. Fortune and glory, kid. And then, well, France, as we now call it, Gould, was harder to conquer, as you said, there were rebellions. And then he gets involved in a massive battle for the whole future of the Roman world. He gets involved in a civil war in Italy itself and beyond. If you think about it, so he's dead in 44 BC.

So we're going to take it through to 52 BC when he's finally defeated versus Gettorix and won the Battle of Alicia or the siege of Alicia. So he's finally defeated any Gallic uprisings. And by the way, that campaign, the overall Gallic campaign was so brutal that the Romans found it much easier to incorporate Gaul into the Roman world than they did with Britain. So it took Caesar six years.

It took the Romans 40 years in Britain to establish a northern frontier on the soil warfare timeline. So that's how brutal Caesar's campaign was. I mean, we're told by the primary sources. He killed a million and he enslaved a million. That's probably in a population of about 8 million. So that's a quarter of the population, disappearing. So the Gallic world becomes part of the Roman world very, very, very

quickly. So that campaign is a big win. It's such a big win that, of course, all the political classes in Rome from the Optomarty side start turning against him. Ultimately he's faced with crossing the Rubicon River, which is near Ravenna on the north-eastern Adriatic coast and taking military

troops into the Roman peninsula, which is what begins the civil war round of battles, which ultimately sees him, the victor, the last man's standing before he's assassinated. dictator and then assassinated. So he's busy. He's busy.

You can't get back to Britain. Fame and money. That's what's all about. Fame and money. Well, thank you very much, Simon, for coming on the podcast and tell me all about that. Judy Caesar, Dan, one of my heroes. Yeah, I can tell. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Dan Snow's History Hit.

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