Crassus Frugi said: `The enemy's left flank is guarded by the Heron King and their right by the Hawthorn Queen. That's their boast, according to prisoners.'
`Who's this Heron King?' I asked.
`The Lord of the Marshes. He's a cousin, in their mythology, of the Goddess of Battle. She appears in the disguise of a raven and perches on the spear-heads. Then she drives the conquered into the marshes, and her cousin the Heron King eats, them up. The Hawthorn Queen is a virgin who dresses in white in the spring and helps soldiers in battle by defending their stockades with her thorns: you see, they fell thorn-trees and pile them in a row with the thorns outwards, making the trunks fast together. That's a fearful obstacle to get through. But the Hawthorn Queen holds that right flank of theirs without any artificial felling of trees. Our scouts are positive that the whole wood is in such a fearful tangle that it's no use trying to get through at any point there.'
Aulus said: `Yes, Caesar, I am afraid that we must make up our minds to that frontal attack.'
`Posides,' I suddenly called, `were you ever a soldier.?' -
`Never, Caesar.'
`That makes two of us, thank God. Now suppose I undertake to do the impossible and get our cavalryr through on the enemy's right flank, past this impenetrable tangle of thorns, can you undertake to get the Guards round on their left through that impassable bog?'
Posides answered: `You have given me the easier flank, Caesar. There is, as it happens, a track through the marshes. One would have to go along it in single file, but there is a track. I met a man in London yesterday, a travelling Spanish oculist, who goes about the country curing the people of marsh-ophthalmia. He's in the Camp now, and he says he knows that marsh well, and the track - which he always uses to avoid the tollgate on the hill. Since Cymbeline's death they have been levying no fixed toll, but a traveller must pay according to the amount of money he has in his saddlebags, and this oculist got tired of being skinned. In the early mornings there's, nearly always a mist on the marsh and he takes the path and slips round unobserved. He says that it's easy to follow once you are on it. It comes out half a mile beyond the ridge, at the edge of a pine copse. The Britons are likely to have a guard posted at that end - Caractacus is a careful general - but I think now that I can undertake to dislodge them and get as many men across the marsh as care to follow me.'
He explained his ruse, which I approved, though many of the generals raised their eyebrows at it; and then I explained my plan for forcing the other flank, which was really very simple. An important fact had been overlooked in the general concentration of interest on the diamond formation; the fact that Indian elephants are capable of bursting through the densest undergrowth imaginable and are daunted by no briars or thorns. However, in order not to tell the story twice, I shall say no more about the council of war and what was decided at it. I shall proceed to the battle, which took place at Brentwood on the seventh of September, date that had long been memorable to me as the day on which my brother Germanicus had defeated Hermann at the Weser: if he had lived he would still have been only fifty-eight years old, which was no older than Aulus.
We marched out from London along the Colchester road. Our vanguard was kept busy by British skirmishers, but no serious resistance was offered until we reached Romford, a village about seven miles from Brentwood, where we found the ford across the River Rom strongly defended. The enemy held us up there for a whole morning, at the cost to themselves of 200 killed and 100 prisoners. We lost only fifty, but two of these were captains and one a battalion commander, so in a sense the Britons got the best of the exchange. That afternoon we sighted Brentwood Ridge and encamped for the night this side of the brook, which we used as a defensive barrier.
I took the auspices. Auspices are always taken before battle by giving the sacred chickens lumps of pulse- cake and watching how they eat it. If they have no appetite the battle is already as good as lost. The best possible omen is when the chickens, as soon as the cage-door is opened by the chicken-priest, rush out without any cry or beating of wings and eat so greedily that big bits drop from their mouths. If the sound of these striking the ground can be distinctly heard it prophesies the total defeat of the enemy. And, sure enough, this best possible omen was granted. The chicken-priest did not show himself to the birds, but standing with me behind the cage suddenly slid the door back at the very moment that I threw the cake before them. Out they rushed, without so much as a cackle, and fairly tore at the cake, throwing lumps about in a way which absolutely delighted us all, it was so reckless.'
I had prepared what I considered a very suitable speech. It was somewhat reminiscent of Livy, but I felt that the historic importance of the occasion called for something in that style. It ran: -
Romans, let no tongue among you wag and no voice bellow vainly, praising the days of old as days of true gold, and belittling the present age, of whose glories we should be the doughty champions, as a graceless age of gilded plaster. The Greek heroes before Troy, of whom the august Homer sang, bore, if we are to believe his record, this verse perpetually upon their lips:
Be not over-modest, Romans. Hold your heads high. Puff out your chests. Ranged in battle before you to-day are men who as closely resemble your ancestors, as eagle, eagle, or wolf, wolf - a fierce, proud, nervous, unrefined race, wielding weapons that are long centuries out of date, driving chariot-ponies of an antique breed, employing pitiable battle tactics only worthy of the pages of epic poets, not organized in regiments but grouped in clans and households - as certain of defeat at your disciplined hands as the wild boar who lowers his head and charges the skilled huntsman armed with hunting-spear and net. To-morrow when the dead are counted and the long ranks of sullen prisoners march beneath the yoke, it will be a matter for laughter to you if you ever for a moment lost faith in the present, if your minds were ever dazzled by the historied glories of a remote past. No, comrades, the bodies of these primitive heroes will be tumbled by your swords upon the field of battle as roughly and indiscriminately as, just now, when I, your general, took the auspices, the holy fowl flung upon the soil from their avid bills the fragments of sanctified cake.
Some of you, I have heard, no doubt slothful rather than fearful or undutiful, hesitated when called upon to set out, upon this expedition, alleging as your excuse that the God Augustus had fixed the bounds of the Roman Empire for ever at the waters of the Rhine and the channel. If this were true, as I undertake to prove to you that it is not, then the God Augustus would be unworthy of our worship. The mission of Rome is to civilize the world - and where in the world would you find a race worthier of the benefits which we propose to confer upon it than the British race? The strange and pious task inlaid upon us of converting these fierce compeers of our ancestors into- dutiful sons of Rome, our illustrious City and Mother. What were the words that the God Augustus, wrote to my, grandmother, the Goddess Augusta? `Looking into the future I can see Britain becoming as civilized as Southern France is now. And I think that the islanders, who are racially akin to us, will become far better Romans than we shall ever succeed in making of the Germans.... And, one day (do not smile), British noblemen may well take their seats in the Roman Senate.'
You have already quitted yourselves bravely in this war. Twice you have inflicted a, resounding defeat on the enemy. You have slain King Togodumnus,, my enemy, and avenged his insults. This third time you cannot fail. Your forces, are more powerful than ever, your courage higher, your ranks more united. You, no less than the enemy, are defending your hearths and the sacred temples of your, Gods. The Roman soldier, whether his battlefield be the icy rocks of Caucasus, the burning sands of the desert beyond Atlas, the dank forests of Germany, or the grassy fields of Britain, is never unmindful of the lovely City which gives him his name, his valour, and his sense of duty.
I had composed several more paragraphs in this same lofty strains, but strangely enough not one word of the speech was delivered. When I' mounted the tribunal platform, and the captains shouted in unison: `Greetings, Caesar Augustus, Father of our Country, our Emperor!' and the soldiers took up the shout with roaring applause, I fairly broke down. My fine speech went altogether out of my head and I could only stretch out my hands to them, my eyes swimming with tears, and blurt out: `It's all right, lads: the chickens say that it's going to be all right, and we have prepared a grand surprise for them, and we're going to give them such a beating as they'll never forget so long as they live - I don't mean the chickens, I mean the British.' [Tremendous laughter, in which I thought it best to join, as if the joke had been intentional.]
`Stop laughing at me, lads,' I cried. `Don't you remember what happened to the little black boy in the Egyptian story who laughed at his father when he said the evening prayer by mistake for the morning one? The crocodile ate him; so you be careful. Well, I am getting to be an old man now, but this is the proudest moment of my life, and I wish my poor brother Germanicus were here to share it with me. Do, any of you remember my great brother? Not very many, perhaps, for he died twenty-four years ago. But you've all heard of him as the greatest general Rome has ever had. Tomorrow is the anniversary of his magnificent, defeat of Hermann, the. German
