Britain’s Last Frontier

by Alistair Moffat

  In order to make themselves seem bigger and more fearsome, warriors stiffened and spiked up their hair with limewash. This made it a ghostly greyish-white colour and, together with a body covered with tattoos, the effect must indeed have been terrifying. Many men were said by Roman and Greek writers to have fought naked. While there is some evidence that this could mean completely naked, the sense of nudity in Latin and Greek was not quite so absolute, and it could mean that they wore a torc and a helmet. At any rate, compared to the well-protected legionaries and auxiliaries, the mass of the Celtic army at Mons Graupius wore no armour and may have fought bare-chested. Their tattoos were likely to have been seen as magical and powerful – and they should be visible to the gods and their comrades in arms.

  The kings of the Caledonian kindreds had reasons other than its prominence for choosing a battleground at Bennachie. At the foot of the mountain, on either side of where the Gadie Burn runs and on the banks of the River Urie, the terrain was reasonably flat. When war bands came to the muster, many kings and aristocrats arrived with their chariots and they would need good ground to manoeuvre in battle. Pulled by two ponies (their tails would have been docked so that they did not foul the wheels or the beam and their manes will have been plaited to make sure the reins and harness did not snag), these small wooden carts were driven by a charioteer who crouched low at the front. Behind him stood a warrior, bracing himself on the flexible wicker floor as the solid wheels bounced over rough ground. The Romans were mightily impressed by the skills and agility of charioteers and when Julius Caesar faced British armies on his expeditions of 55 BC and 54 BC, this was what he saw, and wrote about in his De Bello Gallico:

  This is their method of fighting from chariots. First they drive around in all directions and throw missiles and cause confusion in the ranks through fear of their horses and the din of their wheels; and when they have worked their way in between the cavalry squadrons, they jump down from the chariots and fight on foot. Meanwhile, the charioteers gradually withdraw from the fighting and position their chariots so that, if they are hard pressed by a host of enemies, they have an escape route to their own side. Thus they provide the mobility of cavalry and the stability of infantry in battle; and by daily practice and training they accomplish so much that, even on the steepest slopes, they can easily continue at full gallop, control and turn swiftly, and run along the beam, stand on the yoke, and from there quickly get back in the chariot.

  Agricola and his men saw many chariots at Mons Graupius but they had an added refinement. Tacitus described them as ‘covini’. Fixed to the ends of their axles were scythes which spun viciously when the ponies galloped. Deadly and terrifying to infantry the covini may have been but, on rough, tussocky and boggy ground, they could easily foul and capsize, sending their occupants flying.

  At Deskford, near the Moray Firth coast, a carnyx was found. A long J-shaped war trumpet with a boar’s open-mouthed head at one end and a mouthpiece at the other, it could be played to imitate animal noises and in particular the snorts and squeals of a charging boar. Others may have been used to mimic the cawing of ravens, the whinnying of horses, the roar of bulls or whatever calls and snorts the totem animal of a kindred might have made. Roman commentators thought carnyxes terrifying in battle. Perhaps they were used at the muster below Bennachie to announce the arrival of different kindreds.

  The choice of a sacred site such as East Aquhorthies was not only based on its fame. Such a vast army must have expected victory and the booty that came with it. Caesar explains:

  [T]hey vow to Mars the booty that they hope to take and after a victory they sacrifice the captives, both animal and human, and collect the rest of the spoils in one place. Among many of the tribes great piles can be seen on consecrated ground. It is almost unknown for anyone, in defiance of religious law, to conceal his booty at home or to remove anything placed there. Such a crime is punishable by a terrible death under torture.

  As the Caledonian kindreds converged on the Graupian Mountain, they were being watched. Mounted Roman scouts, known as ‘exploratores’, skirted their columns, perhaps even captured stragglers, and relayed what information they had gleaned back to Agricola and his commanders. How big was the Caledonian army? Did they have cavalry, archers, chariots? Whatever the nature of the opposing forces, it seemed that they and not the Romans had chosen their ground. Tacitus noted that the Graupian Mountain ‘had already been occupied by the enemy’. And, even though the warriors of the kindreds had stationed themselves on the slopes at the foot of the great amphitheatre that is Bennachie, it seemed that, at last, Agricola had his chance – a pitched battle where determination and discipline would triumph.

  The sequence of events is implied rather than documented by Tacitus and archaeological finds suggest that the Roman army approached the battlefield from the south-east, marching up the valley of the meandering River Don. At Kintore, the remains of a camp have been found, one large enough to enclose Agricola’s vast army. When modern engineers planned a new dual carriageway in 2000 that would drive through part of the site, rescue archaeologists worked quickly. To their surprise, they found the stone bases of 120 field ovens. These strongly suggested something more substantial than an overnight marching camp so perhaps the fortifications were dug as a base where Agricola could wait for the Caledonian muster that his scouts had been reporting. If the Classis Britannica was lying off the mouth of the Dee in what is now Aberdeen harbour, then barges packed with supplies could have been towed up the river to feed the camp at Kintore.

  In fact, the army of the kindreds massed further north and Agricola was forced to break camp and march eight miles to battle. The Caledonians who had stormed the camp of the IX Legion the year before had seen a Roman army moving through the countryside but, for the war bands from the north, it was a new and awesome sight.

  Rome and the Woods

  In the Dark Ages, the Great Wood of Caledon occasionally turned up in sources. The historical Merlin was said to have gone mad after defeat in a particularly gory battle and fled into the Great Wood where he lived a hermitical life. Something like it appears to have existed when Agricola’s legions marched north in the 80s AD. After the attack on the camp of the IX Legion, Tacitus wrote that the Caledonians retreated and disappeared into the forest. Impenetrable, dangerous and dark, the forest was an image full of menace in a Roman imagination. Terrible things had happened to legions in forests. In 391 BC, Celtic war bands had crossed the Apennines and destroyed a Roman army in the Ciminian Forest on the southern borders of Tuscany. Afterwards the Senate forbad consuls or generals from leading soldiers into the woods. In AD 9, much worse befell the young Empire. A huge Roman army, comprised of the XVII, XVIII and XIX legions, marched into the Teutoburg Forest. Attacked by the hordes of the barbarian general, Arminius (the original Herman the German), the Romans were annihilated and Varus, their hapless commander, was forced to commit suicide. His corpse was decapitated and his head much prized as a trophy. So great was the humiliation that the Emperor Augustus tore his clothes, refused to cut his hair and went about in rags for months. And the three lost legions were never reformed. Agricola only just managed to avoid a similar disaster on the fringes of the Highland Line.

  Following standard military practice, Agricola will have set squadrons of cavalry in front of the column, sweeping the intended line of advance, watching for ambush. There may have been as many as 2,000 troopers riding in the vanguard and on the flanks of the main body of infantry. Then came the battle-hardened Batavians and Tungrians, the regiments of auxiliaries from the lands of the Rhine delta led by their own tribal aristocrats. Behind them rode Agricola and his tribunes, surrounded by a mounted bodyguard. They led the crack troops, the legionaries – detachments of the XX Valeria Victrix, the IX Hispana and the II Augusta. Their burnished armour glinting in the sun, their standard bearers lifting the insignia high, their hobnailed sandals making the low, rumbling thunder of thousands of men on the march, the Roman army was a belly-ho
llowing sight.

  As the kindreds watched their enemy approach, perhaps clashing their weapons in defiance, the legionaries then did something remarkable. When they halted and began to dig a marching camp at Durno, near the handy water supply from the River Urie, it was, in the words of the historian Josephus, as though ‘a town was produced in a moment’. In the Jewish War of AD 66–74, Josephus had been amazed by Roman military efficiency. After surveyors had selected and pegged out a site, it was cleared of scrub and roughly levelled and then the ditch and rampart more precisely marked out. Defended by an armed screen of infantry and cavalry, soldiers took a dolabra from their packs and began to dig a ditch. Working very quickly – for this was a moment of weakness and the enemy will have been in plain sight – they used these axe-shaped mattocks to cut turf which was placed on the inside of an ever-deepening ditch to form a foundation for a rampart. When the V-shaped ditch had reached a regulation depth and the upcast had been tamped down on the turf base, stakes were driven in and, as Josephus says again, ‘quicker than thought, thanks to the great number and skill of the workers’, a marching camp rose magically out of the landscape.

  At Durno, the long perimeter was adapted to the fall of the ground and shaped into a kinked rectangle. Straight rows of leather tents were pitched, defended gateways made and, in the centre, Agricola’s headquarters was set up. Now, the armies faced each other, no more than a mile or two apart. Battle would have to be joined without delay. At least 40,000 men and horses simply could not subsist for long in such a small area. But was there contact between the generals, an agreement to fight, an offer of terms? It seems very likely but impossible to know for certain.

  Following classical convention, Tacitus put speeches in the mouths of each commander before battle. Naturally they say a great deal more about the attitudes of a Roman aristocrat, albeit a relative liberal, than they could about the host massed at the foot of Bennachie. In any case, there are several passages clearly borrowed from other sources, most of them histories of campaigns in other parts of the empire. Calgacus was the name of the Caledonian general, described by Tacitus as ‘one outstanding among their many leaders for his valour and nobility’, and means, simply, the Swordsman. Most likely a soldiers’ nickname, something like ‘skilled with a sword’, the name is not particularly helpful. In any event how many of the host of 30,000 warriors could have heard such a speech? Perhaps Calgacus rode back and forth along the ranks in a chariot, exhorting his countrymen to victory.

  Meanwhile, Agricola probably addressed his troops behind the ramparts of the camp at Durno, perhaps exhorting them from an elevated position on horseback. In his retirement the old general may have reminisced with his son-in-law, Tacitus, about what he said on that fateful day but it cannot have resembled what appeared in the account of the battle. As written, Agricola’s speech is an elegantly constructed example of classical rhetoric designed to be read rather than said. At the moment of greatest tension and apprehension, with adrenalin flowing, few generals wax lyrical. As the Roman historian Plutarch acidly remarked, ‘[N]o one talks such nonsense when there is steel at hand.’ But the speech is important in another sense – for what it has to say about geography. Several phrases allude to the location of the battle being in the far north of Scotland and the long march through forests and across estuaries to reach what would be the climax and turning point of years of campaigning. ‘The furthest point of Britain is no longer a matter of report or rumour,’ claimed Agricola, ‘for we hold it with camps and with arms. Britain has been discovered and subjugated.’

  The 30,000 warriors mustered on the slopes of the great bowl of Bennachie will have considered such an assertion presumptuous – at best. The few hours that were to follow would be more eloquent than any general’s speech. Once Agricola had concluded his exhortations, history began to move and events unfold. Tacitus takes up the story:

  Even while Agricola was still speaking, the eagerness of the soldiers was apparent and a tremendous outburst of enthusiasm greeted the end of his speech. At once they ran to take up their arms. While they were inspired and eager to charge, he deployed them in battle-line. Of the auxiliaries, he put the infantry, which numbered eight thousand, in the centre, with the three thousand cavalry spread out on the flanks. The legions were stationed in front of the rampart: victory in a battle where no Roman blood was shed would be a tremendous honour; if the auxiliaries were driven back, the legions were a reserve.

  The Britons’ line was posted on the heights, both to make a show and to intimidate: their front ranks were on the flat ground, the remainder were packed together on the slopes of the hill, rising up as it were in tiers. The charioteers filled the middle of the plain, making a din as they rode back and forth.

  Historians have wondered at Tacitus’s notion that it was a matter of honour to avoid the shedding of Roman legionary blood in battle. Certainly it was prudent to be careful with the lives of expensively trained and armed soldiers but most of the triumphs of the Republic and the Empire had been achieved by the legions. If this was indeed Agricola’s motive for placing the regiments of auxiliaries in the front rank, then it was unique. No other Roman general is recorded as having adopted a similar strategy.

  A much more likely reason was a sensible response to what Agricola could see on the flat ground below Bennachie. Hundreds of chariots with scythed wheels were racing back and forth. And chariots had caused problems in Gaul for Roman legionary infantry. Agricola placed his Batavians, Tungrians and his new Southern British recruits in the front rank because they knew how to deal with chariots. While legionary training focused on close-order fighting in tight formations, where men ground forward, stabbing, pushing, thrusting their shields in the faces of their enemies, the auxiliaries were more flexible. The best way of dealing with chariots was to open up the ranks, allow them to be driven through and then surround them. These warriors from the Rhine delta and Southern Britain had stood against the scything charge of chariots before and they knew how to neutralise them.

  More than that, the auxiliaries would have been unfazed by the din made by a Celtic host, the blaring of carnyxes, the clashing of swords and spears on shields and the calling out of challenges. As the Caledonian warriors worked themselves up into what was called the rage fit, the fury needed to drive a man to charge into his enemies, the Batavians, Tungrians and Britons will have stood their ground. They had seen and heard it before. And no man will have been tempted to break ranks and respond to the taunting of the charioteers. Single combat in the no-man’s-land between battle lines was not uncommon – an ancient tradition, it had endured long enough to pit King Robert the Bruce against Henry de Bohun at Bannockburn in 1314 – but it was not something Roman commanders would allow. Tacitus again: ‘At this point, Agricola was anxious, in view of the enemy’s superior numbers, that they might attack his front and flanks simultaneously, so he opened out his ranks. Although the line was going to be rather extended and many were urging him to bring up the legions, he was always ready to hope for the best and resolute in the face of difficulties. So he sent away his horse and took up his position on foot in front of the colours.’

  The last sentence sounds more like a literary flourish than the record of a real event. Roman generals rarely made the mistake of allowing themselves to sucked into the thick of the fighting. In an infantry battle, especially one fought at close quarters with bladed weapons, all that any soldier can usually see is what is directly in front of him – and that is someone who wanted to kill him. And above the shouting, the deafening noise of screaming war cries and screaming agonies, very little else can be heard. Communicating orders was a formidable problem. So that they could see how the battle was moving and could direct his forces to plug gaps, advance or retreat, generals had, literally, to be above the fray. Perhaps Agricola dismounted to make himself less of a target for missiles but the hint that he took his place in the van, in front of the colours so that he could defend them, is only at attempt by Tacitus to add physica
l courage to the list of his father-in-law’s many other virtues.

  From whatever vantage point he chose, the general realised immediately that he had an overriding difficulty, something he had to overcome if Rome was to triumph. The mass of the Caledonians had planted themselves on the slopes of Bennachie and were, therefore, in a very strong position. Infantry charging downhill will always have much greater momentum. And, even if many in the front ranks fall, the sheer impetus of those running behind them will almost always carry all before them. Not for no reason is the phrase ‘fighting an uphill battle’ used to describe adversity. In order to achieve a decisive victory, Agricola needed to bring the Caledonians down off Bennachie – and it seems that he disposed his forces in order to achieve that.

  Watching from the higher ground, Calgacus will have counted only 8,000 or so in the Batavian, Tungrian and British regiments and squadrons of around 3,000 cavalry close at hand. With 30,000 at his disposal, he must have felt that the odds were in his favour, even though he could not have failed to see the reserve of legionaries drawn up in front of the ramparts of the temporary camp at Durno. What he did not realise was that Agricola’s disposition of so few men at the battle front was an attempt to tempt Calgacus to charge downhill to secure a quick victory – but, crucially, also abandon his powerful position on the slopes and allow the Romans to do what they did best, to fight a pitched battle.