Imperial Governor, page 27
So, on the easy assumption that matters went exactly as I intended, I would sooner in this battle for Anglesey pass to the outcome, decided long ago, applauded for a short space and then forgotten. But I write history, not propaganda; and the ugly moments when success poised on an edge finer than the sharpest sword must be honestly told.
The operation, in broad outline, went more or less as I planned. Ballistae and catapults threw a preliminary bombardment on enemy positions and then covered our assault. The range was long, particularly for catapults; hence the erection of platforms at low water mark which advanced the engines seventy paces and more towards their targets.
The infantry crossed in three flights following closely one on the other. In the first flight were 1st Frisiavones who were towed on short ropes attached to the leading barges, and 6th Thracians and 1st Morini. Forty barges carried the three cohorts. Their task was to thrust the enemy from the shoreline, secure a foothold on the beach and cover disembarkation of the second flight.
The second and third flights, of sixty barges apiece, bore thirty-six hundred men of XIV Legion. With twenty-five paces between barges each flight stretched seven hundred paces from wing to wing. The enemy, crowded on his rounded peninsula, disposed a much longer line but because of the headland’s narrow arc was forced to refuse his flanks and, short of plunging into the sea, could not envelop ours.
Against an enemy, therefore, whose numbers I had no means of estimating I launched a frontal attack of five thousand men of whom thirty-six hundred were legionaries. This slender force held the Britons until two thousand cavalry concealed at the farther narrows forded or swam the shallows and stormed the enemy’s right flank and rear.
Left on the mainland were fourteen hundred of XIV Legion, the veterans’ milliary cohort of XX Legion and fifteen hundred auxiliary infantry. The barges, recrossing after shedding the first three flights, picked up these men, legions first, and brought them to the enemy shore to support their comrades.
The Thracian and Vardullian mounted element and legionary horsemen did not cross: they remained on the beaches and paraded in single line to simulate a strong cavalry force lest the enemy should start looking elsewhere for our cavalry.
The fortress garrison—two cohorts of XX Legion and 1st Britannic milliary cohort—took no part in the operations.
So much for the skeleton of my design, which I must now clothe with the flesh of description.
6
The artillery engines were set at maximum elevation. At the first discharge all four catapult darts ploughed harmless furrows in the sea and plunged into the far shallows like flying fish returning to their element. The four ballista boulders, over-ranged, crashed into woods beyond the beach.
A pause followed. Artillerymen scrambled around the complicated timbers of their ponderous weapons and racked the throwing-arms, creaking against the resistance of twisted ropes, to loading positions, and heaved rocks into the slings. They altered traverse, turning the ballistae by stout bars slotted into rollers. Catapult crews racked back the power-ropes, like bowstrings of gigantic bows, to breaking tension, placed heavy iron darts in delivery grooves, chocked the engine to gain more elevation and waited with hands on release levers. Decurions eased or tautened the racks to make final range adjustments and listened intently to the thrumming vibration of the power-ropes. Aim cannot be accurate unless both ropes of an engine are in tune: hence, as Vitruvius said, a capable artilleryman must have a good ear for music.
From the enemy shore rose an angry hum and the defiant blare of warhoms. An artillery trumpet yelped sharply; the stopbeams jarred and shuddered. A second volley whirled into the air.
This was better. The ballista shots sailed lazily to the peak of their high trajectory and descended with malevolent precision on the crowded beach. Only one dart fell short; by miraculous efforts the crews of three catapults had found the extra distance needed.
The range was registered. Two sharp notes from the artillery trumpeter signalled independent rapid shooting. Massive timbers shuddered under incessant shock of discharge; darts whipped over the water; boulders seemed almost to touch the stormclouds before plunging inexorably on their victims.
From the mainland it was difficult to assess the material damage although, from previous experience, one could picture the havoc created by our missiles. Ballista stones, the size of a wine-cask and weight of a man, want no better target than infantry so closely massed that they cannot avoid being hit. Nothing could be more unpleasant for the Britons than watching these brutal projectiles hurtling towards them and landing in an explosion of flying sand and spurting flesh. Catapult darts, on the other hand, struck unawares: flat trajectory and high velocity made them practically invisible until the yard-long bolts transfixed bodies as a cook spits quails.
I found it impossible to pick out any details of the enemy’s battle order or to see whether they were arranged in organized companies. They crammed the opposite shore from waterline to woods; and the whole mass, in the fluidity of constant movement, shimmered like a desert mirage. Only around those mysterious fires, where the natives stood immobile as rocks in an angry sea, was there any appearance of discipline and control.
I waited patiently for our artillery pounding to take effect. For a long time, apart from a louder clamour and sudden surges and eddies of movement, the Ordovices showed no inclination to yield their ground. Then we heard horns blowing long, imperious blasts; and gradually the throng started to withdraw from the water, retreating step by step into the woods. Soon the foreshore was deserted except for a litter of bodies and those unmoving blocks surrounding the fires. Our missiles kicked harmless sand-sprays from the beaches. The engine-crews cursed, furiously handled rack and lever and increased the range.
This was the moment. A sharp order lifted the trumpets; the battle-call’s ravening music slit the air like winged daggers. Oars bit water; boats lurched and gathered way.
These were no sleek war-galleys manned by seasoned rowers. The clumsy, overloaded wooden boxes gave perverse obedience to a false stroke and obstinately resisted efforts to correct their vagaries. Some turned broadside or collided in a flurry of splintered oars and frantic oaths; others lagged inert and ponderous like waterlogged hulks; a few incontinently filled and sank. The first flights, in ragged dressing fit to break a centurion’s heart, crawled with agonizing slowness across the narrows. Still our missiles hurtled overhead, and still, save for those rigid groups by the fires, the beach in front was blessedly empty.
To this day my dreams remember the long-drawn strain of that crossing. I stood in the bows, hemmed by armoured bodies, afraid to stir for fear of unbalancing the boat, striving to control my legs’ indisciplined trembling. Only the helmsman’s time-chant and creaking oars disturbed the stillness. The barges, like a brood of gigantic water-beetles, crept over an ice-calm sea.
The wet, churned sand of the landing-beaches grew distinct—a wrack of dead men and abandoned weapons and embedded boulders and a catapult dart pinning a body whose limbs still moved feebly. And higher up, where sand gave place to pebbles, the smoke of those strange pyres climbed spear-straight to the clouds.
Our artillery sent a final volley crashing into the silent woods. I had told the centurion to keep shooting for as long as he could without endangering our own troops. We were still a hundred paces from our objective. I felt he was over-cautious.
Fifty paces. The stillness shattered like broken glass. Warhorns bellowed and a screaming multitude erupted from the trees, swarming over rocks, pebbles, shingle, pouring like molten lava to the sea. The scene trembled like an earth-shock in the roar of thirty thousand voices.
Twenty paces. The Frisiavones left their tow-ropes and swam ahead, gained footing in the shallows and plucked weapons. In the barges men gripped sword and spear and poised for the leap ashore. Arrows whipped; shields lifted.
All at once events cascaded and telescoped and extinguished thought.
The universe exploded in a tremendous thunderclap that slammed eardrums like a sledgehammer. Blue-white flame split the sky in flash after flash. Reason staggered beneath the onslaught. Sanity reeled and instinct commanded the body to hide, cower, seek safety in earth’s deep bowels from the Gods’ insensate fury. For the space of ten heartbeats we stood paralysed and the barges drifted gently to shore.
‘Mars defend us! Look yonder!’ Agricola’s voice was cracked, unrecognizable. He pointed a shaking hand.
Furies with flaring torches, hair streaming wild, mouths agape in soundless shrieks, eyes wide and glittering, raced upon our shrinking auxiliaries in the shallows. The pyres beyond leapt high and triumphant; they were roaring furnaces in which nameless horrors writhed. Bearded men, black-robed, raised hands and faces in passionate supplication to the raging sky. Nightmare had broken the bounds of sleep.
My throat was desert and my bowels water. I trembled like any credulous barbarian while thunder rumbled and died and the balance tilted against a Roman army. Then an arrow flicked past my ear.
That hard, unambiguous sound restored thought and perception. The Frisiavones had recoiled in frantic disorder upon the barges in which our men crouched stark and paralysed. The barges drifted on the dying ebb of their momentum. We were all but defeated where we stood.
I whirled about, struck my staring trumpeter in the chest and shouted, ‘Sound the charge! Sound and repeat!’ I tore the scarlet banner from my standard-bearer, hurled a furious ‘Follow!’ at the bodyguard and leaped into the sea.
The water was waist-deep and cold. I gained the beach in a stumbling run, faced the barges and brandished my standard.
‘Come on, you misbegotten cowards!’ I shrieked. ‘Thracians, Frisiavones, Morini, come! Do you leave me to fight alone? Are you afraid of priests and women?’
A foaming wildcat thrust her torch at my face. I dodged, struck deep in the belly and held her body as a shield against the gathering storm of spears and arrows. The bodyguard raced ashore, swords out. Centuries formed in line of battle at their standards, backs to the sea.
Somehow, in that pandemonium, the auxiliaries must have heard my entreaties. Horns whooped above my trumpeter’s lonely wail; auxiliaries cascaded from the barges and met the enemy at the waterline.
All this had taken no more than the time needed to loose a dozen arrows, and already a good deal had gone wrong. That stricken hesitation in the barges had allowed the tribesmen to reoccupy the beach, temporarily swept clear by our artillery, before the first flight was ashore. Only four bodyguard centuries, a mere three hundred men, were formed in six-deep battle-line twenty paces from the sea and were fighting like tigers against an overwhelming mob. Already their wings had given ground so that they formed a crescent whose flankers fought in water knee-deep. I stood behind this arc and watched savage fighting develop for four hundred paces on either flank, half in the sea, half out, as the auxiliaries struggled ashore. There was no beachhead for the second wave.
I turned seawards. The long line of barges with the tall shields was fifty yards offshore. In the centre XIV Legion’s golden eagle flaunted proudly. Vettius Valens stood alongside. I ran into the sea, cupping hands about my mouth.
‘Hold!’ I shouted. ‘Hold! Form line in the water!’
Valens heard and raised an arm. I saw him turn his head; a trumpet blared; orders passed from barge to barge. Oarblades steadied, bit and held. Legionaries pitched into the surf, waded forward and formed line with waves curling beneath their armpits. Valens, back to the shore, watched grimly while his half-submerged centuries dressed ranks as though on the parade ground of Wroxeter. Satisfied, he turned about, sounded the charge and waded slowly to shore.
My bodyguard, the finest soldiers in Britain, still held their ground; but the auxiliaries, after meeting the enemy hand to hand with no time to form line, had fared badly. The fighting swirled, broke and engulfed struggling groups of Morini and Frisiavones; while the Thracians, misliking close-quarter cut and thrust, scattered into the sea whence they scourged the Britons with arrows. XIV Legion marched into this ferment like reapers to a cornfield.
They halted briefly, once, when the water was knee-height, and hurled javelins. Then swords rasped from scabbards, horns sang high and the legion crashed into the enemy in a splutter of white foam.
They gained forty paces before they were held. This was enough for the third flight, close behind, to form line on dry ground. The veterans’ cohort stood quietly at the waterline in reserve; the rest doubled right and left to prolong the line or plug gaps wherever they found them.
Barges were already returning to the mainland to embark the second contingent. But I knew the day would be decided before they could arrive; five thousand Romans now battling on Anglesey must settle the issue. At this stage anything could happen. The tribesmen fought like wolves.
Slowly the half-mile battle-line hacked a passage up the beach. The ground they won was churned like a ploughed field and harboured a grotesque seawrack which jerked convulsively and bled and screamed. I followed the advance, step by step, until dry sand gritted underfoot and we passed high-water mark.
The enemy still fought fiercely and would not give. Time and again the bodyguard’s rear files sidestepped and moved up to replace the fallen; as the ranks advanced they left a heavy trail of dead and wounded legionaries. A short space from the woods, amid a welter of rocks and loose-piled pebbles, we were brought to a standstill. Britons stormed from the trees and smashed against our shields. The line wavered. Centurions leaped to the front, swearing like madmen and roaring encouragement. The first centurion in the veterans’ cohort flicked his gaze expertly from flank to flank, watching keenly for a break.
Far away to the left, behind the trees, cavalry trumpets howled like vengeful furies. Saturius and his horsemen were near. Now was the time for supreme effort. We won or lost this battle on the turn of the next few moments.
I waved to the first centurion. The veterans’ cohort doubled up the beach, split into century columns, thrust through gaps in the line and struck like battering-rams. Horns whooped madly: that quick, treble-rise call which huntsmen use at the kill. I drew sword and plunged through the shouting ranks, the scarlet standard whipping behind. The bodyguard saw, gathered and swooped like a breaking wave.
Then all was wild chaos. Mad-eyed cavalrymen rode among the tribesmen, slashing and spearing and yelling. The legion, like a wrestler breaking a stranglehold, heaved and exploded in meteors of slaughter-crazed men and flickering blades.
The battle was finished and the hunt was up.
7
I set foot on the twitching body and jerked my sword free. Leaning on the hilt, head down, I gasped mouthfuls of air. Agricola put an arm around my shoulders.
‘Paulinus, are you hurt?’ he cried.
I choked, spat and stood erect, chest heaving. ‘No, I am very well.’ I looked about. Tumult raged in the woods. Here, above the beach, was comparative quiet. Waves rustled gently to the shore. Horsemen galloped from the trees, wrenched about and disappeared. Wounded men, crawling and stumbling, dragged reddened trails towards the sea. From a thousand agonized throats came that wailing moan which is the familiar dirge of hard-won battlefields.
‘Get me a horse. Quick! And for yourself. And a mounted escort.’
Thunder rumbling overhead was drowned by the Strator Centurion’s voice driving bodyguard legionaries to the beach. ‘Rabble! Indisciplined scum!’ he raved. ‘Get back to the Legate’s standard. Call yourself a bodyguard!’ His swordflat whacked a legionary rump. ‘What business have you chasing natives?’ His staff whirled and struck. ‘Your job is to guard the general. Double! In square about the standard!’
The chastened men dressed ranks. The Strator saluted stiffly.
‘Awaiting orders, Legate. I shall give these scullions a month’s treble drills for deserting you.’
‘Let be, centurion. I set the example! Your men only carried it a little farther.’ I pointed to barges recrossing the straits. ‘Remain here and tell those troops to form on the beach and await orders. I shall go forward directly the tribune Julius Agricola returns.’
Agricola came with a troop of Pannonians and some led horses. We mounted and rode into the trees, a thickset woodland of numerous groves separated by patches of open grassland. In all directions, among the trees, across the open, Roman soldiers pursued and butchered.
The men were out of hand. I did not know what dangers lurked inland or whether the Ordovices had other forces in reserve: I must regain control at once. I flung up my hand and halted.
‘Sound the rally.’
The call rang insistently. Some soldiers in the glade where we stood turned heads and checked momentarily; then plunged on. A dozen fear-crazed Britons raced past. Instantly, like hounds unleashed, the legionaries swerved after them. The trumpets called. They might have been deaf.
‘What’s the matter with the men?’ I muttered. Vettius Valens and his staff, on commandeered horses, appeared from a tree-clump and cantered towards us.
‘Gather your cohorts, Legate,’ I said sharply. ‘Have they forgotten what signals mean?’
‘I have sent mounted tribunes to turn them,’ he said in a tired voice. ‘They are frenzied and beyond control. It will be difficult.’
‘Difficult? A strange word from the Legate of Gemina. Why is this?’
‘Come and see,’ Valens said simply.
He led the way to woods overlooking the beaches, into a grove whose close-set trunks and matted boughs clouded the daylight. Here the thundery air seemed yet more stagnant, the gloom oppressive and tangible. Dead leaves muffled our hoofbeats; the horses stepped carefully over twisted bodies.
Valens said, ‘There.’
A wooden platform, the size of an ordinary bed, stood in a slight clearing. The surface was a tattered mess of blood, bones and trailing entrails. Bloodstreaked eyeballs stared from heads jutting oddly between flayed legs and ripped stomachs.
