In 406–7 three usurper emperors were proclaimed by what remained of the army in Britain and the last of these, Constantine III, seems to have been a capable soldier. In December 406 a severe winter froze the Rhine and allowed hordes of barbarians to cross. Vandals, Alans and Sueves poured into northern Gaul and Constantine realized that he had to act. Creating an expeditionary force out of the army in Britain, he crossed the Channel and, linking with imperial forces on the continent, he defeated the barbarian armies and regained northern Gaul. However Britain had virtually no garrison left and from the time of Constantine’s campaign imperial control of Britannia ceased, and was never re-established.
Severance was made formal in a letter from the Emperor Honorius to the cities of Britain in 410 when he advised them to look to their own defences.⁹⁰ This was most likely a response to an appeal for help but it is probable that with the breakdown of central government (why else, was Honorius writing to the cities?) and the removal of imperial protection, Britannia broke into factions. The contemporary historian Zosimus records something more aggressive, close to rebellion:
The barbarians across the Rhine attacked everywhere with all their power, and brought the inhabitants of Britain and some of the nations of Gaul to the point of revolting from Roman rule and living on their own, no longer obedient to Roman laws. The Brittons took up arms and, braving danger for their own independence, freed their cities from the barbarians threatening them; and all Armorica and the other provinces of Gaul copied the British example and freed themselves in the same way, expelling their Roman governors and establishing their own administration as best they could.
To some in Britannia there was no reason to think Honorius’s letter a final act. The province had been Roman for close on 400 years and there had been periods of difficulty and hiatus before. But the completeness of Roman withdrawal is underlined by the fact that the emperor wrote to the cities of Britain, and not to the Dux Britanniarum or to either of the Comes. Most probably he could not since the substance of these commands no longer existed. All the soldiers had gone.
When the Roman imperium ceased, the new P-Celtic kingdoms of the north emerged quickly and with vigour. Based on the old territory of the dissident Brigantes, the area ruled by Coel Hen formed itself in Yorkshire and across the Pennines to Lancashire. Immortalized as Old King Cole, he enjoyed great prestige and was installed near the top of most northern genealogies.⁹¹ His name was Roman in its derivation, either Coelestius or Coelius and since his kingdom is largely coincident with that assigned by the Notitia Dignitatum to the Dux Britanniarum, Cole Hen may de facto have been the last to hold any semblance of that office. On his death the lands of Coel split into three P-Celtic kingdoms with Elmet lasting into the seventh century.
In the south little of a political nature seems to have happened at first. Routine raiding took place but it is not until 425 that some sense of an independent Britain emerged. A man called Vortigern, not a personal name as most historians assert but a P-Celtic title still in currency in Q-Celtic as Mhor Tighearna or ‘great leader’, appeared as a ruler of some sort in south-eastern Britain. He did not style himself Dux or even Imperator but rather took a British title and, taken together with Zosimus’s report of rebellion and expulsion, it is reasonable to see the Vortigern as leader of a British party.
The eighth-century English monk Bede⁹² begins his history in 449 with the Vortigern’s invitation of a group of Anglo-Saxons led by Hengist and Hrosa to England and particularly to Kent where for mercenary services rendered, he allowed them to settle on the Isle of Thanet (a P-Celtic name meaning ‘the shining island’) in the Thames estuary. Because Bede was writing a winner’s history of England which he dedicated to his patron the Angle King of Northumbria, he was interested in the origins of the Anglo-Saxon conquest of Britannia and he lit upon the first organized settlement of warriors who came to stay and fight for a living rather than simply plunder and return home across the North Sea. Allowing for his Anglo-Saxon bias, Bede is generally accurate and scrupulous in what he says. For that reason most historians accept his version and focus on the fortunes of Hengist, Hrosa and their descendants’ conquest of the south. Consequently they often miss something that Bede repeats several times and something that was at the centre of the Vortigern’s concerns. He brought the Saxon mercenaries to the south-east because the seaborne attacks of the Picts were becoming intolerable and after the Roman evacuation he had no troops to put into the field against them. And more, there had been no tradition of arms in the south for centuries.⁹³ Roman law forbad the bearing of weapons and in part the letters to and from Honorius were a clear legal statement that those old prohibitions could no longer obtain. But what should be emphasized here is that it was the Picts, the Miathi and others who were seen as the most powerful threat to Britannia. So dangerous that the Vortigern was willing to permit Anglo-Saxons to settle in order to protect the riches of the south. For much of the fifth century Britannia’s enemies descended upon it from the north, not from across the North Sea.
Although the Vortigern was an important figure, he was not central. He did not guide British strategy, he was not the focus of British power. That lay in the north with the armies of the Cymry. A remarkable series of events that took place around 425 showed the military planners of the Gododdin directing efforts to preserve the integrity of Britannia.
Hardened by generations of campaigning, led toy Macsen on his European adventure, able to take and hold territory right up to the mountain borders of Pictland, the Gododdin and their P-Celtic neighbours were the only coherent philo-Roman fighting force of any real substance in Britannia after 410. They did not depend on mercenary help, they knew their enemies and in 425 they took responsibility for security far from their own kingdoms. History has failed to take sufficient notice of them because their fate was not at first bound up with the Anglo-Saxons and they were not active in the south-east. And no historian wrote about them. Much of their tradition became entangled with the heroic literature of Dark Ages Wales and disconnected from its true origins in the kingdoms of the mighty between the Roman walls.
When Macsen removed the Twentieth Legion from Chester and much of Britannia’s Welsh garrison in 383, he left a gap in the province’s defences which was exploited by the Q-Celtic tribes of Ireland. The Scots, as they should properly be called, invaded and settled the coast from Anglesey down to Pembroke. Some time around 425 the Gododdin acted decisively to prevent Wales falling into the hands of the Scots. The eighth-century monk Nennius includes this document: ‘Cunedag, ancestor of Mailcunus, came with his eight sons from the north, from the district called Manau Guotodin, CXLVI years before Mailcunus reigned, and expelled the Irish … With enormous slaughter, so that they never came back to live there again.’⁹⁴
Like the Vortigern, Cunedda is not a personal name but rather a P-Celtic military term meaning ‘good leader’. All memory of this extraordinary man is condensed into the modern spelling of his title, the popular Christian name: Kenneth. In the Welsh documents the British rank attached to Macsen is also conferred on Cunedda to make him, somewhat tautologously, Cunedda Guledig or Good Leader and General. This implies posthumous promotion by people who had forgotten the original meaning of the first name. But it may also betray a trace of ancient propaganda. Even in 425 perception was important and the notion of a man whose whole personal identity is overtaken by his function and reputation cannot have been unhelpful in the progress of his campaigns. It is always more impressive to hear news of the advance of the army of the Great Leader, the General, than simply to be told that it was led by someone called Kenneth. The title Guledig was beginning to bear significance in post-Roman Britain.
The Welsh genealogies have much to say about Gunedda.⁹⁵ Fragments of hard information are repeated often enough to be trusted. He was the son of Aeternus and the grandson of Paternus Pesrut, the Roman officer with the red cloak set in authority over the southern Gododdin.⁹⁶ This is vital continuity. It seems li
kely that Cunedda was a title given to this soldier. Both his father and grandfather had traditional Roman names with nomen and cognomen in the correct order. Also the genealogies name one of his sons as Caraticus and a grandson as Marianus.⁹⁷ Unlike the Vortigern Cunedda did not lead an anti-Roman faction which preferred British titles, he was a third-generation professional Roman soldier who led an army of P-Celtic speakers who addressed him in their own language.
Nennius originates Cunedda from Manau-Guotodin which may be a conflation of two territories into one linked entity, rather like the way in which different countries like Austria and Hungary were linked in the phrase Austro-Hungarian Empire. In addition it may also be a reference to a campaign against the Picts in Manau.⁹⁸ The Gododdin successfully maintained their northern redoubt around Stirling for many generations and Cunedda will have learned his battle craft in the hardest school possible, against the Picts, the scourge of Britain, those whom the might of imperial Rome could not subdue. Too much cannot be made of this. Bede constantly refers to the fifth-century depredations of these tribes and for that period the Gododdin and Strathclyde lived cheek by jowl with them, more than surviving, as Cunedda showed. That can only have been possible because the traditions of Trimontium thrived, the cavalry skills and tactics of such as the Sarmatians were learned, because Paternus Pesrut developed a military structure that was flexible and deadly, and because, in sum, the P-Celtic kingdoms of the north had become, after centuries of grinding conflict with the Picts, the toughest and furthest-reaching fighting machine in fifth-century Britain. Cunedda’s expedition to Wales shows that.
Before he went south, there is evidence that Cunedda campaigned in Manau. A late poem remembers: ‘Splendid he was in battle, with his nine hundred horse, Cunedda … the Lion … the son of Aeternus.⁹⁹ This is followed by two lines whose literal meaning is obscure but which say fairly clearly that he fought against enemies in the north-east of England. By the early fifth century Anglian pirates had attacked the Northumbrian coast, later setting up bases on Lindisfarne and at Bamburgh. It may be that raiders had ventured up the Tweed or the Tyne and Cunedda mobilized his cavalry to deal with them, using either Yeavering or another horse fort on the Tweed.
When he marshalled his war-band to ride south to Wales, Cunedda’s cavalry was given a P-Celtic name. The Gosgordd is obscure now and applied only to the ceremonies of the annual Eistedfodd where the bardic retinue is so named. But some of its ancient sense still sticks to a Q-Celtic word casgairan which means ‘the slayers’ or ‘the conquerors’.¹⁰⁰ In Welsh heroic poetry the Gosgordd consisted of 300 horsemen, a direct borrowing from Roman models where an ala of cavalry attached to a legion was of exactly the same size.¹⁰¹
There is also mention in the poems of ‘Gosgordd Mur’ or ‘the Cavalry of the Wall’, meaning the Roman wall, more likely Antonine than Hadrian given the Gododdin’s occupation of Manau. This is described as a large force and as in the lines celebrating Cunedda’s prowess, it may have been as many as 900 or three alae.
Taking account of the need for spare mounts, the Gosgordd Mur may have been a thousand strong. Cavalry only campaigns when the grass grows and a force of that size would have required much logistical management, and, for the times, a huge commitment of resources in men and materials which must have depleted the power of the P-Celtic kingdoms. So why did they do it?
Some historian’s believe that a central post-imperial power, based in London or the south-east, perhaps the Vortigern, ordered the Men of the North to send a force to rescue Wales from the Scots. There is no evidence or tradition for this and in any case it is extremely unlikely. Even in their pomp the Romans could not deal with the tribes of the north, and what is on record is the Vortigern’s lack of military clout. He needed to import Saxon mercenaries to put substance behind his rule. Moreover Wales is more quickly and more easily reinforced from England than Scotland. It is nearer and much easier geographical going than the long ride over the Cheviots and down the Lancashire coast to Chester and then along the north Welsh coast to the Lleyn peninsula. The fact is that even if the Vortigern represented some sort of pan-British authority and even if he wanted to drive the Scots out of Wales, he simply did not have the military means to do it. He depended on ultimately unreliable Saxon mercenaries who were famously ferocious fighters but they were almost all foot Soldiers, with poor body armour and little or no equipment of the sort needed for a long march and a long campaign far from base. And more to the point, if the Vortigern did hot have forces of the quality of the P-Celtic kingdoms, why should they pay the slightest bit of attention to him or the south-east and its problems? In an age where miliary hitting power was virtually all that mattered, the notion of a weakened leader dictating strategy to a superior force based 400 miles to the north makes no sort of sense at all. Cunedda went to Wales because he and the military planners of the Gododdin made a decision to do so. That historical fact by itself makes the north the centre of British power after Rome.
Cunedda’s campaign must have been a tremendous exercise needing much forethought and precise execution. Given the experience and training of his grandfather and father, he probably travelled south on Roman roads and to overnight safely he would have used old cavalry forts such as the Ribchester base of the Sarmatians and certainly the great legionary fortress at Chester. These places could cope with large numbers of men and horses, had water supplies and defences which were serviceable even as late as 425. The expedition is more reminiscent of the statecraft of the immediate Roman past than the small-scale, relatively primitive sort of warfare of Dark Ages Britain.
Cunedda changed the history of Wales. He came with his cavalrymen not only to expel the Scots from the coastal regions but also to settle and stay. He founded a dynasty which endured for eight centuries only ending with the defeat of Llewellyn the Great by Edward I in 1282/3. Cunedda left his name on Gwynedd, and his son Caraticus on Cardigan or better Ceredigion and his grandson Marianus is remembered in Merioneth. An Irish tribe, the Deisi, seem to have clung on to Pembroke but the victory in the north was emphatic. Tradition pointed to the ruined and deserted huts of the Irish for generations after Cunedda’s victory.¹⁰² More telling, the expedition is the only example of a lasting British victory; the Scots were expelled from Wales and did not return. Elsewhere and for the rest of the century the story is one of containment and then, later, of ultimate defeat.
The P-Celtic kingdoms sent Cunedda’s expedition to rescue Wales because they could afford to spare the manpower to do it and because opportunities for the ambitions of the Good Leader and his troopers were limited by the Picts in the north and powerful P-Celtic neighbours in Strathclyde and Rheged. Macsen was able to persuade the cavalry of the four kingdoms to follow him to Europe for the same reason. That speaks of great strength in the north, but also something of the sense of themselves that the Cymry had by 425. Cunedda led an army of the citizens to help his fellow countrymen in extremis. In that period there had been raids on Britain from several quarters but no one had yet settled as the Scots did in west Wales. When the south needed the help of the Kingdoms of the Mighty at the end of the fifth century, they rode down the Roman roads to fight for them.
The transplantation of such a large number of Gododdin warriors to Wales began the transmission of the traditions of the P-Celtic kingdoms of southern Scotland.¹⁰³ Cunedda’s men brought their stories and sowed them where they settled. Soon they grew away from Scotland and places that meant nothing in Wales were soon discarded and replaced with names that listeners knew. Even talk of ‘the north’ or ‘Yr Hen Ogledd’, the Old North, came to mean north Wales to some bards rather than southern Scotland. Dynasts like Cunedda’s sons and grandsons cared more about the legitimization of their power in a new place rather than the geographical accuracy of the stories extolling their prowess. It is easy to see how the Old North was forgotten. And when the Welsh language died in Scotland, perhaps in the 1300s, there was no one left to remember. The only Welsh speakers
lived in Wales and it is a natural assumption that stories told in Welsh must have happened there.
Cunedda was succeeded by a man with a Roman name, Germanianus, styled ‘son of Coel Hen’.¹⁰⁴ He ruled over the southern Gododdin from Yeavering and another fortress on the River Tweed which will become very important to this narrative. His name implies some connection with barbarian mercenaries. There is a tradition of settlement by a small group of German warriors on or near Hadrian’s Wall – the place-name Dumfries, meaning ‘the Fortress of the Frisians’, is only the most striking example of this legacy – and as a prefect, Germanianus would not have hesitated to employ federate troops to protect the area he controlled.¹⁰⁵ Perhaps the great expedition to Wales had left a strategic gap.
The weakness of the south, which Cunedda’s expedition underlined, is made pointed in a story first recorded by the Gaulish monk Constantius in the middle of the fifth century. He wrote a life of St Germanus, an early Bishop of Auxerre who visited Britain in 429 with Bishop Lupus of Troyes.¹⁰⁶ They had received a papal commission to deal with the growth of the Pelagian heresy in the former province. The British Catholic bishops had appealed to Pope Celestinus for help. The ideas of Pelagius were popular among the British aristocracy, partly because he was a P-Celt and possibly from Strathclyde. He had visited Rome some time around 400 and been appalled at the corruption and the laxity of moral standards in the city. He preached that strenuous personal efforts were needed to avoid sinful ways and find the road to individual salvation. It seems an unexceptionable view to us now but St Augustine was appalled by this insistence on the effectiveness of free will, and St Jerome became even more incensed and called Pelagius ‘a fat hound weighed down by Scottish porridge’. The heretic was excommunicated twice, but despite such vociferous official disapproval his ideas found widespread favour among his countrymen. The Vortigern was probably a Pelagian, his beliefs making him a natural leader of a British, anti-Roman party.
Arthur and the Lost Kingdoms Page 17
