This raises the vexed question of whether there was a ‘ruler of Britain’ in the late fifth/early sixth centuries. The Saxons had a vague concept of overlordship, embodied by the great kings, the Bretwaldas. Later kings were apparently acknowledged as Bretwaldas, and the tradition was passed on that late fifth-century Aelle and mid-sixth-century Caelin had been as well. Was this a relic of the concept of ‘diocesan’ rule? If there could be only one Great King/Bretwalda in the island at any one time, is it not possible that the long gap between Aelle and Caelin might have been filled by a British overlord?
There is ample evidence that Britons before and after the Arthurian period could conceive of a great king of Britain. Gildas hints, and all subsequent writers infer, that Vortigern was ‘the ruler of all Britain’. The epithet Insularis Draco, as we have seen, could mean rule across the whole island. Nennius, too, conceived of Ambrosius and Mailcunus as being great kings of Britain.
We cannot detect such a figure from direct evidence, but diocese-wide authority, based on the Vicarius (Roman governor) or an imposed high kingship on the Bretwalda analogy would make the British resistance more understandable. Having a single strategic direction would have been a great boon to the British. This seems a pretty clear reading of Gildas’s kings, public and private persons keeping to their station, which implies subordination to a legitimate authority.
We have to say that, if any sort of diocesan ruler did exist, capable of moving Arthur’s forces around the island to cooperate with the kings of the Britons, then he has left no independent trace in tradition, legend or history. Some, doubtless prominent, members of the Badon generation did sink without trace. The children of Ambrosius were real, their own children were contemporaries of Gildas. Yet no trace of them survives in any later source, however legendary. However, the disappearance of the man who coordinated the second generation of the British resistance from history really defies belief. In other words, if such a man existed, it would be inconceivable that he was not Arthur.
We do have one other pre-eminent ruler of the period with whom a comparison can be made – Vortigern. Was Vortigern the tyrant of Britain? It is not clear if Gildas imagined Britain still having a central authority by this time. The kings of the civil wars replace one another, for example, rather than ruling in hostility over smaller kingdoms. By the time of the fight-back, Britain does have multiple kings who ‘suum quique ordinem servarunt’ – ‘kept to their own ranks’. At what point in the transition between diocesan rule and multiple kingdoms did Vortigern come?
The settlement patterns show provinces acting separately. The implication is that Vortigern is more than a civitas king. If he is not the ruler of the whole diocese, then he must rule Maxima Caesariensis, the province of the fifth-century settlements. This would give him some interest in stemming the seaborne raids of Picts and Scots on his coast. The two provinces called Britannia, however, would be those most vulnerable to these attacks, but do not have Saxon settlements.
Historia Brittonum associates Vortigern with the western province. If this is true, the only explanation of their long range of authority is that either Vortigern or the council have authority over the whole of Britain. The Province of Maxima Caesariensis had to be coerced or persuaded into accepting Saxon settlement by rulers concerned with or coming from Britannia Prima or Secunda. The diocesan framework is the only one which makes sense of all the information. Even if the Historia evidence of a western Vortigern is not accepted, Gildas supports the concept too. The Saxons, in his account, are settled in the eastern part of the Island. That their employers are in the west is made explicit when the mercenaries do not receive their due supplies. They do not just turn on cities such as London, around which their settlements can be detected by archaeology. They raged from sea to sea, that is into the western provinces, to seek redress.
An alternative is that the tyrant and council have nothing to do with existing structures, a high-kingship, a rule by force of some kind. This is unlikely, as the idea of settling the Saxons seems a purely Roman concept, clearly not understood by later writers, who can only see it as mindless folly, perhaps prompted by lust. Gildas used the technical vocabulary of the Roman Foederati/Laeti system to describe the deals and disputes with the Germanic settlers.
The clear implication is that Vortigern and the council represent, at the very least, provincial or more likely diocesan-level authority. We can speculate therefore that it is at this level that both the Saxon takeover and the British resistance take place.
We posited that Gildas and Nennius mean that the distinguishing feature of the Saxon revolt against Vortigern was that Saxons, perhaps with Hengist as Magister Militum, took over the diocesan government. This is supported by the Gallic Chronicles of 452 and 511. Their reports of Saxon rule in Britain are usually considered as derived from the intensive Saxon settlement in the areas nearest to Gaul. This ignores the fact that travel between Gaul and Britain was not limited to the ‘ferry crossings’ of the Pas de Calais. If Britons could turn up in Armorica and Mediterranean goods in Tintagel, there is ample reason to suppose a Gallic chronicler would hear news from outside the occupied zone.
What the chroniclers actually wrote is that in c. 441 ‘The Britains [the British Provinces] . . . yielded to the power of the Saxons’; ‘The Britains . . . were reduced into the power of the Saxons’ (Snyder 1998). It seems clear that the rule of the provinces has been taken over, not that thousands of Saxons have flooded into the Kent and Sussex coast.
If some form of higher authority, above that of the civitates kings, existed in the Badon generation, it is quite possible it continued to Gildas’s time. We are told that, just as when the Saxons first arrived, this generation has a Pharaoh. Gildas says his generation’s Pharaoh is heading for disaster, driven on by his reckless horsemen, the tyrants of Britannia Prima. Historia Brittonum shares the view that Arthur’s torch has been passed on. It is Outigirn who leads the fight against the Saxons in Mailcunus’s day.
Historia Brittonum supports the view that the Saxon fighters’ power or authority is different in nature from that of the kings. Vortimer leads the first fight, although his father is the main king. Arthur is, as we have seen, given a title implying military power against that of the reges he commands. Outigirn exists alongside Mailcunus, the great king of the Britons. Gildas’s version, in which Maglocunus is Insularis Draco while at the same time being in the retinue of Pharaoh, harmonises with this.
Thus, Dark’s analysis of the civitates origins of the sub-Roman kingdoms fits perfectly with the model of the Arthurian period we have deduced from Gildas and from Nennius and its supporting material. Furthermore, the civitates/ kingdoms model necessarily implies, even in Gildas’s geographically limited picture, that some sort of legitimate higher authority must have existed in the Badon generation. This would be established by the Roman Ambrosius Aurelianus, and utilised by Arthur in the Badon generation, characterised by the united kings and lesser Britons keeping to their stations. We know that Gildas must view this higher authority as legitimate as he is not tarred with the name of tyrant or Pharaoh – which in turn implies that it is a return to the official Roman structures, rather than the imposed hegemony which characterised the earlier tyrants.
Historia Brittonum has exactly the same picture, both explicitly with the Dux Bellorum, Arthur, existing at the same time as the kings of the Britons, and implicitly in the battle-list and its origins, which spread his activities across the civitates and even the provinces.
King Arthur?
The combination of sources so far has yielded several plausible roles for Arthur, the victor of Badon Hill. He could be a sub-king of Ercing, of lesser rank to the main kings, but giving him access to his own warband and lands. This would make sense of his South Welsh connections. He equally could be the over-king of one of the civitates, Trinovantes, Dubonni, Durotriges or Brigantes, which did not yield lasting British dynasties. All these are in the war-zone and could provide us with a ‘King Arthur
’. He could even be a great king, with power over several British kings, as medieval legends imagined him.
Other analysis has suggested that Arthur was a military figure, perhaps even of non-British origin, employed as Magister Militum by a dominant civitas king or, much more likely, by a coordinating authority such as a successor provincial or diocesan ruler. His power would therefore be different in origin to that of the civitas kings. That may, however, create a false impression of the extent of his power. Dark Age experience shows that the controller of the soldiers could soon become the power behind the throne, or even the one sitting on it. There was usually only a thin line between what constituted a Magister Militum and the ‘ruler of a kingdom’.
I have specifically avoided phrasing these as contradictory alternatives. Alcock used the analogy of Wellington and Arthur, arguing that Wellington and Waterloo are so strongly linked that the commander’s name would be assumed in any reference to his victory. We might say that, if detailed knowledge were lost, it would be difficult to judge Wellington’s status. We could find sources to show he was an Irish soldier, an Indian general, an English duke, a Spanish grandee, a British field marshal and the prime minister of the United Kingdom. The reality is that these are not conflicting possibilities but changing roles during a successful military and political career.
There is no reason why Arthur should not have been a non-royal, perhaps non-British, military figure who came to rule a British kingdom or sub-kingdom while also being the Magister Militum for civil authorities. One would expect that, even if a successful Dark Age general started in subordinate or non-royal role, victory would pretty soon be translated into civil power. The Historia’s battle-list might read as a progression showing how Dux Arthur, fighting with the kings of the Britons, comes to a final victory when he alone now has the power to turn back the Saxons.
Arthur the Warrior
If Arthur was primarily a warrior and warleader, what sort of wars did he fight? Discussion has been clouded by a fixation on Arthur as a leader of heavy cavalry, often no more than an attempt to preserve the image of medieval ‘knights’. Battle sites in forests, river mouths, hills, castles and cities all look unlikely ones for such a force. Gildas and Nennius give sparse information, but the warlike Gododdin provides, unsurprisingly, ample material. Supporting explanation is supplied by the early Welsh poems in the Black Book of Carmarthen. These may date back at least to the era of Annales Cambriae, and they work in much the same poetic idiom as Y Gododdin.
Gildas’s vocabulary is drawn extensively from the Latin Bible and from Vergil, and may not always be appropriate to his own time. He says the Romans left Britain, stripping the island of all its armed soldiers and military supplies. The remaining Britons were ignorant of all ways of warfare. After twice coming to their aid, the Romans advised them to arm themselves with the ensis (a general word for sword), the hasta (a spear that could also be thrown) and the pelta (a light skirmisher’s shield). These contrast with the gladii (short stabbing swords) and scuta (large rectangular shields) used in earlier times (DEB 6). They also left ‘exemplaria instituendorum armorum’, which could be training manuals or less specific instructions on how to use them. The ensis and the hasta evidently took on. The tyrant Constantine is twice described as using them and they were the weapons Maglocunus employed against his uncle’s forces.
Horsemen are referred to again briefly, when Cuneglassus is called a rider, or horseman, of many. He is also described as a ‘charioteer’. Gildas may have meant that he rode a chariot into battle, as he goes on to say that Cuneglassus fought with weapons peculiar to himself. On the other hand, there is no reason to suppose a military context, as we learn from Gildas that some Britons travel on horseback or in vehicles and so consider themselves superior to other men. Gildas writes evocatively of cavalry warfare as practised by the Roman rescue force, yet does not say they passed on the technique when they left (DEB 17).
The military organisation of the Britons is only touched on. Revealingly, the companions of the kings are called ‘soldiers in the same company’, suggesting a military atmosphere at court. The only formation mentioned is the generic ‘battle-line’. Fighting men are called soldiers, and they fight for booty or reward.
Historia Brittonum has little to offer on warfare. The Roman army includes soldiers and horses, and is controlled by duces. Miles (soldier) is a word used for warriors in all armies, including the Saxons and Arthur himself. However, exercitus (army) is only used for anti-Saxon forces. There is no suggestion that armour is worn. The Severn Bore, for instance, is said to be able to over-whelm armies, with their ‘clothes’ and horses.
In contrast, Y Gododdin is fertile with military details. The weapons used are again the sword and the spear. Spears are the more common, as supported by archaeology. They are long and yellow, usually of ash wood. Spearheads are ‘square-pointed’, presumably in section. Their sockets are dark blue metal, though their tips are only ever red – with blood. They can be used for cutting and tearing or thrusting and pushing. They are also thrown. Swords are bright blue, shining, sharpened and used for swift, slashing blows.
Shields are as common as spears and are used in conjunction with them. The most frequent word for them, sgwyd/ysgwyd, is derived from the Latin scutum, but these are not rectangular. Other words used are cylchwy and rhodawg/rhodawr (circular and round shield). They are light and broad and generally white, though some are decorated with gold. Although they make a noise like thunder when struck, they are not very strong. If described, they are always ‘shattered’, ‘splintered’ or ‘not solid’. Even spears can shatter rather than pierce them. A reasonable explanation is that they lacked a strengthening metal rim. In this, they correspond to the pelta mentioned by Gildas, which in the late Roman army were edged with leather.
The warriors of the Gododdin are armoured. Their armour is dark blue or iron. It takes the form of the llurig, derived from the Latin lorica, in this period a shirt of bronze or iron scales or mail. Probably the latter is intended as one warrior is specifically ‘mail clad’. Limb armour and helmets are not mentioned.
The warriors fight on foot and on horseback. Their horses are fleet, slender and long-legged. The horsemen fight ‘in dark blue armour, with shields, spear shafts held aloft with sharp points, shining loricae and swords’. Spears are held or thrown from moving horses. One warrior uses strokes, then spears, from his slender bay horse. A saddle is mentioned, which must have helped keep them steady. They are heavy cavalry, making close-order charges against formed bodies. They charge swiftly against enemy spears, trampling on arms and weapons. They tear through the armies with surging fury. Blood flows up to the thighs of the riders. The infantry fight in close ranks, with ‘the best men in the forefront’, ‘the chosen warriors in the front rank’. The mass of men is called a ‘stronghold of shields’, a ‘wall of battle’, a ‘stockade’ or ‘battle-pen’. It stands steadfast. Spears point out from it as, when two forces meet, there is a pressure of spears and a clash of spears. Spears are shattered at the start of battle. The poet refers frequently to the noise of battle. Aside from the thunder of struck shields, there is uproar and fury. Warriors laugh and sing a song of war. They shout a battle cry and ‘after the cry of jubilation there was silence’. After the battle, they give no quarter in pursuit of the Saxons, whom they cut down like rushes. They collect booty.
The engagement in which the Gododdin fell is conventionally described as 300 men against 100,000. These extreme figures are found only in the later verses, not in those likely to derive from the sixth century. Usually in the poem where sizes of groups and armies are given, they are smaller than a thousand men. The command structure of the Gododdin is not made clear. They seem to be divided into three sections, but we cannot tell who was in overall command.
The Black Book of Carmarthen poems, Gereint, Pa gur, Stanzas on Graves, provide a correlation with the previous sources. Spears are made of ash wood, with sharpened blue points. They may be thrown. Swo
rds are used and in Gereint son of Erbin edges of blades are in contact. Shields are employed. In Pa gur, as in Y Gododdin, they are shattered and fragmentary. However, the only mentions of armour are in the Stanzas on Graves, where some of the dead were formerly armoured horsemen. One of Gereint’s warriors has blood on his head and is presumably not wearing a helmet.
In the poems, horsemen wield spears in battle. Even when they lack armour, they are used in a heavy cavalry role. Horses gory in battle charge against resisting forces. A poet sees the spurs of men who would not flinch from dread of the spears. The horses are magnificent swift racers, usually white in colour, though sometimes this is caused by sweat. In the Stanzas on Graves there is a reference to warhorses being specially bred. Guaurthur of the Gododdin bred horses as well, possibly for military use.
Gereint’s battle begins with a shout after which there is a terrible resistance, a terrible impulsion and a fearful return. Many armies begin their battles with a distinctive shout, and this may be what is implied by the poets. The fifth-century Life of St Germanus tells how the saint organised a British army to oppose the Picts and the Scots. Following Germanus’s lead, the army gives a shout of ‘Alleluia’ which frightens the attackers away before battle is joined. This may be the first example of the British ‘battle-shout’.
Forces are led by a ‘regulator of hosts’, ‘one who marshalled the armies’, ‘the conductor of the toil’. In Gereint this figure is Arthur, which exactly parallels Nennius’ description of him as ‘Dux Bellorum’ (warleader, or leader of the campaigns). Pa gur gives the figures of 600 and 900 men for the size of the forces.
The Reign of Arthur Page 17
