Conscience of the King

by Alfred Duggan

  We had peace for two years, which was longer than I had expected, since the Romans should have been attempting to throw us right out of Britain. But the King of Dumnonia had died suddenly, and the complicated civil war that ensued absorbed all the energy of the Roman Kingdoms.

  At the Yule feast of the year 518 I heard definitely that Artorius and all his followers had taken service under the King of the Otadini, north of the old Roman Wall; that meant that the Romans were content with what they had already done in the south, and that the remnant of my territory was secure. But my informant also passed on a rumour that the new King of the Dumnonians intended to find plunder and occupation for his comitatus by an incursion into the German farms by the Sea of Vectis.

  I was on the whole quite pleased with the news. I was going to be sixty-eight that year, and I could no longer personally use my sword in the front rank of the battle, but I wanted to lead one more campaign before I handed over my power to Cynric; I enjoy the excitement of planning a war, I was quite confident that we would not be beaten, and I hoped to win a victory of such importance that I could take the royal title without making myself ridiculous in my own eyes. I was determined not to lead another invasion; the Romans had been gradually pressed back, with plenty of opportunities for the faint-hearted to accept slavery or emigrate to Gaul, and those who still maintained their independence in the west were very prickly people, better left alone. But if they invaded us we should have the inspiration of fighting in defence of our families, and they would be weakened by the natural desire of all warriors to avoid death until they have spent their newly-taken plunder.

  I had hardly any real professional warriors in my following. The not very numerous survivors of Mount Badon had mostly moved on to more warlike leaders when they found that I had accepted my defeat, and even those who were content with my leadership had soon discovered that I had no gold left after that disastrous campaign. All I had now was a guard of ten men, since a war-leader needs a sentry and a hangman always in attendance. There was also a great mass of peasant farmers, slow-moving spearmen, who did not enjoy fighting and were not very good at it, but who could be counted on to resist any one they saw destroying their crops. It would be a strange sort of campaign, where for the first time the Germans might be inferior as warriors to their opponents. I would be defending my country with armed peasants against professional comrades. I had to think myself back to the old days when I helped to guard the Regni against the fathers of my present followers.

  I would never have reached the position I now hold if it had not been for my excellent Roman education. Not that my school masters taught me very much about warfare, for they were men of peace, and anyway the Roman army has been rather under a cloud for the last hundred years. But they did teach me to think. They were always posing dilemmas, chiefly in the realm of law and theology, but still dilemmas that I had to think myself out of without relying on precedent. A barbarian has an inherited bag of tricks, often very useful tricks that make him formidable in war; but when he is faced with a new situation all he can do is draw his sword and shout his war cry. I sat down like a Roman and puzzled my brains for the best way to meet the coming invasion.

  With Cynric and a few elderly farmers I wandered all over my country in the early spring. Of course, none of my men understood even the idea of a map, but it is astonishing how an illiterate man can carry things in his head; soon we could discuss together the lay-out of the country as though we had been born in it, and our fathers before us.

  The Dumnonians would naturally invade from the west by marching along the coast. Their object was to damage the crops as much as possible, in the hope that our farmers would find it did not pay to till the soil in that neighbourhood; our best farms were in the south, actually along the shore of the sea, and it was here that they would do most harm. But there was one slight disadvantage in using this line of approach; the invaders would be marching across the grain of the country, instead of following the line of a river valley. Southern Britain is not mountainous and our farmers had thinned the forests, so that nowhere was the land physically impassable to an army, but the rivers themselves might check the invasion. Many little streams run south into the Sea of Vectis, and the tide comes far up them twice a day; sometimes they are fordable, and sometimes too deep to cross. Naturally there is a road along the coast, made in the days of the great Emperors. However, even the Emperors did not bother to build stone bridges over these tidal streams; they contented themselves with paved fords, easy to cross at low tide, and impassable at high water.

  Briefly, my plan was to divide the hostile army, by attacking while it was crossing a ford, and delaying the rear till the water rose and cut it off from the van. It is not the sort of trick one would expect from barbarians not native to the land, and the Dumnonians would not be on their guard against that sort of thing. Cynric and my other counsellors agreed that the plan was worth trying, and by May I had stationed reliable men at each ford, charged with calculating at what hours the stream would be impassable each day in the future. It is a thing that all fishermen have to understand; simple men, who do not bother their heads as to the reason for this strange ebb and flow, do it better than educated philosophers.

  This was an ambitious piece of tactics, that needed more absolute obedience and a more carefully planned time-table than was generally within the scope of a barbarian army; luckily my troops were slow and patient farmers, who are easier to command than the fiery heroes of the war-band. I went very carefully over the ground and found a place that just suited my purpose. Here the old Roman way ran along the coast, and a paved ford, wide enough for six men abreast, had been built on the actual bar of the river-mouth, while upstream wide bogs lay on both banks and made it very difficult to cross away from the road. I brought my captains to this place, and plotted on the actual ground exactly what each contingent was supposed to do when the enemy came.

  In late July the invasion started. The Dumnonians had about four thousand well-armed men, besides a great crowd of unarmed peasants to carry their plunder. Their main body marched east along the coast road, while detachments scoured the country to the north. I had sent our women and children to shelter behind the fortifications of Venta, which was a very unpopular move; the Germans quite genuinely fear to be shut up in old Roman cities, partly because they know they are not good at the constant vigilance needed to defend the walls, but even more because they think that the ghosts of the previous inhabitants will be able to do them harm. I had a reputation as a very wise war-leader, especially careful of the lives of my followers, but even so a number of stupid men refused to expose their families to these supernatural dangers, and made them hide in the woods; as though there were not dead men buried under every tree in Britain. The Dumnonians caught enough of these superstitious people to encourage them to persevere in their plan of campaign, and it had the added advantage of showing to the survivors that I knew better than they did. My stolid farmers retreated before the enemy’s advance in accordance with the agreed plan, even when they saw Roman raiding parties carrying the heads of their wives. These agricultural Germans are very attached to the idea of having a wife and family, but they are remarkably free from any silly devotion to the individual woman who shares their bed; they knew that if we led the Romans into a trap there would be plenty of girls in Germany to console the widowers.

  In the thick country by the coast it was easy to get a close look at the invading army. I myself had a very good pony, and with a well-armed bodyguard it was safe for me to hover in front of their advance guard and inspect them thoroughly; I was now too old to get away on my feet in an emergency. It appeared that the new King of Dumnonia cherished old-fashioned views on military affairs, as was natural in one who hoped to revive the sway of Rome; he seemed to have a comitatus of five hundred mailed swordsmen, and a main body of rather more than two thousand spearmen of the lower class; these were equipped with leather tunics and caps, and seemed to have some idea of the old legionar
y drill. I peered at them very carefully, remembering how formidable had been the drilled troops of Count Ambrosius, but they did not march as though their training had become second nature, and a great many of them did not carry swords. I thought their King had made a mistake. Spearmen without swords are no use against the savage close-quarter fighting of the Saxons, and he would have been more formidable if he had brought fewer men and those better armed.

  The Dumnonians killed every human being they could catch. In my young days an able-bodied Saxon slave was a valuable possession, but Britain is now such a distressful country that a slave can run away over the border whenever he wants to; it brought home to me the appalling decline in civilization that has taken place in my lifetime, for without slaves to do the rough work no man is really free.

  Towards the end of August the Dumnonians approached the right ford from the right direction, the west. We had been waiting a very long time, but in the end things fell out just as I had planned. They halted for the night about three miles away, and in the morning resumed their march along the road. High water was about midday, and they evidently intended to ford the stream before they halted for dinner. I placed my army in position among the dense thickets by the mouth of the little river.

  The invaders had been in our country for nearly two months, and I had taken care that parties of our scouts should always be close to their vanguard. Now they had grown careless after eight weeks without a fight, and although they knew that there were Germans in the nearby woods, they did not realize it was our whole army. Two hours before high tide their van was on the eastern bank, and the main body was beginning to wade the stream, which was up to their thighs and increasing every minute. I was lying under a bush about three hundred yards away, with a keen-eyed young comrade beside me, since I cannot see as clearly as I did forty years ago. Half the comitatus, with their King on his pony, came first, with the other half of their best men presumably in the rearguard; the common foot formed a long line in the middle.

  When the first of the common foot had reached the bank I blew my war-horn, and my men rose up and charged whooping towards the ford. I had discussed with Cynric and the captains exactly where we should place our ambush, and we had decided against having more than one hiding-place; in consequence I had only eight hundred men, to cut the enemy column and hold the ford until high water; but Cynric with two thousand more a mile away would march towards us when he heard the noise of battle.

  Two lusty young men pulled me along by the arms; I have always been against the use of standards in a really fierce fight, for good men get killed saving them for sentimental reasons, but I thought that, just this once, I would myself act as a living banner for my army. We pushed back the Roman line until a solid wedge of our men formed up with their backs to the ford. The sea was immediately to the south, and no enemy could come at us from that side; but on three sides we were beset by superior numbers. It was a very awkward position for the first half-hour, and I wondered whether we could hold out until the tide was full; however, it was impossible to run away, and in a predicament like that the Saxon usually fights his best. I stayed in the very middle of our square, and never had a Roman within reach, though I drew my sword to make it look as though I was fighting like a hero; in the distance I could hear my son advancing with the rest of our forces. Soon the rising waters gave us protection, and the fighting became easier. Standing where I was, protected by a devoted bodyguard but seeing everything that went on, I became very interested in the battle; in a sense it was the first battle I had seen, for when you are fighting yourself you cannot watch more than your immediate opponents.

  At first the Dumnonians did not realize exactly what we planned to do; as the tide rose they recognized the danger, and I saw their King rallying his comrades to cut a way through while the ford was still passable. They very nearly succeeded; one warrior killed the guard who stood in front of me and aimed a blow at my shield; I took it squarely, though it beat me to my knees (the last blow that I have ever taken in battle), and then young Wulf, who stood beside me, threw himself at the man’s ankles and pulled him to the ground. Then Cynric with our main body broke the line of spearmen, and a wedge of his best comrades linked up with our battered square; the ordered ranks split up into little groups fighting without coherence, and the enemy began to flee towards the woods.

  Naturally the common foot, who had no hope of posthumous fame, did their best to get away alive; but just as the battle broke the King of the Dumnonians was wounded in the leg by a dying Saxon, and when the King could not get away most of his comrades made up their minds to die with him. The other half of their army, on the opposite bank, shouted and made war-like gestures while the battle was still evenly balanced, though of course they could not come to the assistance of their fellows. As soon as they saw that their King was down, and that it was a Roman defeat, they fled westwards as fast as they could. We crossed the river when the tide permitted, and recovered a great deal of our own property, though we could not catch many fugitives. However, we marched in a body to the borders of our land, and challenged any foe to face us in arms; then I was carried back to Venta in a litter, for I was bruised all over, and the excitement had made me feverish.

  Such was the great victory of Cerdics-ford, a very famous fight and the subject of many well-known songs.

  7.

  519–531

  King of the West Saxons –

  The Happy Ending

  Our great victory called for a celebration on a really large scale, to make sure that it was properly remembered. It is at these victory feasts that the poets sing their epics, and thus they are made known to the warriors in the hall; no Saxon is educated unless he knows a great many songs about the famous deeds of his ancestors. My head was already so full of the Roman learning I had been taught as a boy that I found it very difficult to remember these poems, and I have always had to conceal the fact that the only one I know is the verse account of my ancestors back to Woden; but illiterate men remember everything that they hear sung, and Cynric knows an enormous selection.

  Since we had to give a victory feast that would inspire the poets, Cynric suggested that at last the time had come for me to assume the dignity of King. Henceforward the throne would be hereditary, in any of my descendants whom my men should invest with the honour; Cynric is my only son, so he must succeed me without danger of civil war, but if my family increases as it should the Cerdingas will in future have plenty of candidates to choose from. That, of course, means civil war, sooner or later; but then the Empire, when it was flourishing, saw civil wars nearly every time an Emperor died; every monarchy must face this peril, and as a matter of fact in a well-established state it does little harm, and ensures that a fool or a weakling does not hang on to power until he has injured his subjects.

  It was important that everything should be done in due order. The initiative was supposed to come from my followers, who would be so overcome by my greatness when they saw me sitting in my hall, feasting after I had led them to victory, that they would offer me hereditary honours. My dear Cynric arranged all this with the captains of the war-band; I would give them magnificent presents in return for their loyalty, so they were delighted to play their part. Any war chief can always get himself proclaimed King, if he values the title, unless he has a comrade unrelated to him by blood, who hopes one day to succeed to the leadership.

  There were the remains of a good basilica in Venta, which had once been the capital city of the tribe of the Belgae. Someone had set fire to it, and the roof had fallen in, but no one who has lived many years in Britain objects to being rained on at a banquet. There the feast was held, and I had got hold of some fermented honey, very potent, to mix with the beer. At the right time the captains raised the cry of ‘Long live our mighty Cerdic, King of the West Saxons,’ and everyone joined in the shout, without any grumbling that I could see. To give the occasion the sanction of religion my dear Cynric had fetched in an aged prophetess, a very holy and tire
some woman; she was not only frequently inspired by Seaxneat himself, the founder of the Saxon race, but also had the good sense never to threaten level-headed men who were not afraid of her; she reserved her curses for the superstitious, and on this occasion had agreed beforehand to do nothing more than wish me luck.

  She drank a good deal of fermented honey, and then danced on the table until she felt the god take possession of her. She put the prophecy into verse, as these holy people do, and in fact the convenience of scansion often dictates what they will say next; but the gist of it was that my descendants would reign over the West Saxons for more than two hundred years, that in a time of crisis they would defend all Britain from a dangerous invader, and that then they would rule the whole island, Germans, Celts, and Romans, for countless ages, until the great War of the Gods brings the world to an end. The interesting thing is that she seemed to believe it herself, and certainly no one has ever prophesied such good fortune to any other German King. I like sometimes to toy with the idea that she really could foretell the future, and that it may all come true.

  After that someone produced an old Roman shield, of the large square legionary kind, and Cynric thoughtfully put a cushion inside, for old age has made me thin and hard seats cause me great discomfort. My faithful followers took me outside where all the peasants could see me, and I was carried round on the shoulders of the chief captains. That is all the ceremony of enthronement that the Germans use; although they are very much guided by the advice of their priests in the affairs of daily life, they regard government as a wholly secular matter, and there is no religious rite of coronation.

  So at last, after more than forty years of striving and the commission of several rather discreditable murders, at the age of sixty-eight I found myself as independent as any man on earth. I was even more lucky than I deserved; for the method of life that I had been forced to plan for myself would normally have left me without a single friend that I could trust, but because Cynric chanced to be a very honourable man I knew that I could depend on my son. I don’t know how he had come by his sense of filial piety since I had killed my father and his mother had plotted to murder her husband; but I suppose there have to be a few honourable men on the earth at any one time, otherwise human life would come to a stop.