by Farley Mowat
By the first century B.C. the situation in Britain seems to have become more or less stabilized. But a new disruption was threatening from across the Channel. The same people who had dispossessed the tribes of the Alban Hills were moving west.
Rome’s legions were on the march.
CHAPTER SIX
ARMORICA
ONE DECEMBER NIGHT IN 1942 I FOUND MYSELF in charge of a platoon of weary infantrymen taking part in a battle exercise near Oban in western Scotland. Laden like beasts, we had scrambled for six hours through morasses of saturated bog, up and down ankle-turning scree slopes, in and out of icy streams and tarns, always under a deluge of frigid rain mingled with gusts of sleet.
Shortly after midnight we scaled a ridge which might, or might not, have been our intended objective. I was by no means sure. One thing was certain: we had gone about as far as we could go. So we “went to ground,” and I reported back by radio that we had reached the objective.
“Just where the hell are you? You’ve been gone long enough!” The static-distorted voice was that of my company commander.
“Two sections sited forward on the ridge, sir,” I replied evasively. “Platoon headquarters established in a—” I peered at a damp map in my flashlight’s dim glow “—in a Pict house under the crest.”
The earphones crackled. “God Almighty, Mowat! I hope to hell you got permission before you moved in! I’ve had enough goddamn trouble already with civilian claims for damages. Bleeding Scots don’t seem to know there’s a war on!”
“Not to worry, sir. There’ll be no complaints from this lot.”
I could be reasonably sure of that. The Pict House marked on my disintegrating map was no more than a depression in a sea of boulders—one that had not been occupied by anyone or anything except stray sheep since time immemorial.
What my company commander did not know was that Pict Houses are peppered all across the ordinance survey maps of Scotland. The name clings to hundreds of otherwise unidentifiable ruins, mounds, or depressions which were thought to have had a human origin. Or maybe, in the case of the Little People of Scotland, a non-human one.
For countless generations the name has been synonymous with the mysterious—not just amongst ordinary Scots, but amongst scholars too. An actual Pictish presence in Scotland during the first millennium A.D. is confirmed by Roman and other sources; yet almost nothing seems to have been certainly established about the origins of a people who neither spoke nor wrote any known language and whose intricately carved, but inscrutable, symbol stones, found all across Scotland, confound historians to this day.
Who were the Picts? Where did they come from? Questions seemingly without answers.
My December-night brush with Picts remained buried in the back of my mind for several decades. However, after I began seeking the identity of the shadowy figures who had preceded the Norse across the North Atlantic, the Picts emerged from memory. It seemed possible that they might hold part of the answer to my quest.
The maritime districts of west-central Gaul, especially Normandy, Brittany, and Poitou, constituted the Armorica of classical times. In the second century B.C., these regions, which included the highlands of Colline de Normandie and the Breton peninsula, were home to more than a dozen tribes sharing ancestry with the Aquitainians and Basques to the southward, and with British Albans across the Channel. Their ancient cultural connections are memorialized by an astounding array of megalithic constructs, including the remains of ten thousand standing stones at Carnac on the south coast of Brittany; a fantastic assemblage of dolmens, burial chambers, and tumuli in Galicia in the western Pyrénées; the titanic ruins of Stonehenge; and the massive stone structures of western Main Island in Orkney.
The Armoricans of classical times were prosperous traders and skilled navigators whose shipping dominated the Bay of Biscay, the English Channel, and portions of the North Sea. They carried cargo between the Mediterranean and northwestern Europe in big seaworthy ships. These vessels, combined with virtually impregnable island fortresses, made the Armoricans almost invincible. Almost. They had been successfully repelling the Celts for generations, if not centuries, when, in 57 B.C., Julius Caesar arrived on the scene intent on conquering western Europe and Gaul in particular.
Initially the Armoricans welcomed the Romans as allies against a common, Celtic enemy. When Publius Crassus, one of Caesar’s generals, marched the 7th Legion into their territories on a pretended reconnaissance mission, they received the Romans in friendly fashion. Even when Crassus demanded hostages for good behaviour, the Armoricans acquiesced.
While Crassus was thus infiltrating Armorican territory, Caesar’s legions were busy elsewhere with sword and spear, smashing the Belgae north of the Seine and driving Germano-Celtic tribes out of northeastern Gaul. By the end of 57, Caesar had crushed most of the Celtic tribes in central and southeastern France.
Crassus had not been idle. Applying the principle of divide and conquer, he had maintained friendly relations with the Armoricans north of the Loire (especially with the powerful Veneti tribe), while he dealt with those south of the Loire, including the large and wealthy state of the Picts (Pictones in Caesar’s Commentaries). History does not tell us how he accomplished his purpose, only that he succeeded in “pacifying” the Pictones. Later events suggest he did this by seizing their ports and shipping while the Picts were treating him and his troops as allies.
This left the Armoricans north of the Loire still to be dealt with. Having seen what had happened to their kinsfolk to the south, they were not about to fall victims to the same ploy. So Crassus devised a different gambit.
During the winter of 57–56 he sent military missions to the northern Armorican states, demanding tribute. The Armoricans were outraged. This was no way to treat allies! Not only did they refuse but, as Crassus had doubtless anticipated, they seized the Roman emissaries, vowing to hold them until their own hostages were released.
Caesar now had what he considered to be a legitimate excuse for attacking the Armoricans.
To this end, he constructed a fleet of warships on the Loire, then, having instructed Crassus to keep the Pictones quiet, and to prevent the Aquitainians from sending help to their northern neighbours, he led his army into Brittany.
The campaign went badly. The Romans had great difficulty dealing with Armorican coastal redoubts. If and when they did threaten to capture one, the defenders simply embarked their people, possessions, and supplies, and sailed off to another stronghold.
Caesar had no choice but to try his luck at sea. The vessels that had been built for him on the Loire were mostly galleys: light and low, equipped with rams and grappling hooks, and powered by oars. Most Armorican vessels, on the other hand, were merchant ships. They are described in the Commentaries as being of great size, oak built, strong and high as citadels, fastened with iron nails as thick as a man’s thumb, and equipped with dressed leather sails that could withstand the worst Atlantic gales. They were fit to go almost anywhere, and indeed made regular voyages to Britain, south to Spain, and north into the Baltic.
Given open water and a breeze of wind, they had little to fear from Roman galleys. But Caesar surprised the Armorican fleet harboured in the shoal-strewn and confined waters of Morbihan Bay in Veneti territory. To make matters worse, what little wind there was dropped out, leaving the Armorican ships becalmed and unable to manoeuvre. In this state they were mobbed by scores of galleys, and boarded. Although the battle lasted eight hours, it ended with the capture of most of the Armorican fleet. “By this victory,” the Commentaries tell us, “the war with the Veneti and the whole of the sea coast was finished.”
Not quite finished. To drive the lesson home, Caesar had the entire Veneti senate murdered. Captured Armorican sailors and soldiers were slaughtered out of hand, except for the young and comely, who were sold into slavery.
Caesar had now effectively completed his conquest of Gaul and had imposed upon it the pax Romana . . . but not all his victims were
ready to resign themselves to defeat and servitude.
In 52 B.C. a Celt named Vercingetorix, chief of the Arverni tribe, raised what soon became a country-wide rebellion. Having learned the hard way that they could not trust the Romans, the Armoricans now chose to throw in their lot with their one-time Celtic enemies in a war of liberation against Rome.
The rebels had a number of initial successes; then they began to lose. Vercingetorix was captured and sent to Rome in chains. Thereafter, Caesar’s legions destroyed the Celtic forces piecemeal.
By 51, little resistance remained, except in the country of the Picts, where most of the Armorican land force had concentrated. Although their cause was as good as lost, they chose not to surrender—perhaps because they were all too well aware of the fate awaiting them if they did. As the Romans closed in from all sides, they fought on. Then, late in the summer of 51, the legions surprised what remained of the Armorican army as it was attempting to withdraw across the Loire into the high country of Brittany. According to the Commentaries, the Romans “slew as long as their horses had strength to pursue and their hands to strike. So more than twelve thousand armed men and men who had thrown down their arms were slain.”
Gaul was now become a savaged and a ravaged land, having endured massive bloodshed, enormous physical devastation, and the dislocation of many of its peoples. Rome had conquered, in the name of civilization, and Caesar was free to enjoy his triumphs.
As for the Armoricans, they were free to choose between being slaughtered, sold into foreign slavery, or reduced to servitude to retired legionnaires and immigrants from Roman client states. It was Rome’s intention, and the Armoricans’ fate, that they should disappear.
Recorded history is almost devoid of any further mention of them. They appear to have vanished from the face of the earth. But, as we need frequently to remind ourselves, history is generally written by the victors and, as such, can be exceedingly misleading, when it does not deliberately lie. In the case of the Armoricans, I believe the truth is that they survived—in part at least. What follows is my reconstruction of the missing pages of their story.
Late in the summer and on into autumn of the ill-fated year 51 B.C., scores and perhaps hundreds of vessels of all sizes put out from the great sweep of coast lying between the Seine and the Garonne. They were filled to the gunwales with livestock, material possessions, and people turning to the sea in order to avoid destruction upon the land.
The Armoricans still retained control of the offshore islands. These included the Channel Islands (Jersey, Guernsey, Alderney, and Sark); Ushant, off the tip of the Breton peninsula; and others along the shores of the Bay of Biscay. Unfortunately, none was large enough, or sufficiently beyond Roman reach, to serve as a long-term sanctuary.
Nevertheless, the islands could, and did, afford temporary refuge. Their harbours were soon jammed with shipping; their meadows overrun with cattle; their houses and sheds bulging with people; and their hillsides patched with tent villages. They had become staging places for an exodus to distant shores.
But what distant shores could offer a new home? To the south, the Roman legions ruled. The lands to the north and east of Romanoccupied Gaul belonged to bellicose Celtic and Germanic tribes who were no friends to the Armoricans.
The refugees’ best hope for sanctuary lay across the English Channel.
In earlier times they might have emigrated to southern Britain and settled amongst a related people with whom they had visited and traded for centuries. But by now most of Britain south of the Cheviot Hills, together with all or most of Ireland, was in Celtic hands. And the short-lived marriage of convenience between Celts and Armoricans had ended with the completion of Caesar’s conquest of Gaul.
Furthermore, a massive new Celtic exodus led by a particularly fearsome Belgic tribe, the Atrebates, was streaming across narrow Dover Strait into southern England, itself trying to escape extermination at the hands of the Romans. The arrival of the Atrebates in Britain touched off fierce clashes with earlier Celtic invaders. Any Armoricans foolhardy enough to have sought refuge in southern Britain at this time would have been scorched between raging fires.
There remained one place still out of reach either of Rome or of the Celts, where Armoricans might hope to receive, if not a warm welcome, at least a non-hostile reception. This was the surviving bastion of old Alba in the north. Its inhabitants were of the same ancient physical and linguistic stock as the Armoricans. And not only did they share many cultural traits; they also shared a common enemy, the Celts.
So north Alba became the destination of the exiled Armoricans. To reach it they faced a long voyage in heavily laden ships sailing along mostly hostile coasts. Good sailing weather was of paramount importance; and the best came in summer. There was also the need to arrive in the new land with time in hand to settle in before the onset of the northern winter. Since the summer of 51 was already nearly spent, the departure of the refugees from the islands was postponed until the following year.
The intervening months were spent refitting ships and stocking them with food for people and fodder for cattle. During the autumn of 51, scout vessels reconnoitred Britain’s coasts for places where landings might safely be made and supplies of food and water renewed. Swift ships bearing leading men of the several Armorican tribes were dispatched to apprise the northern Albans of what was happening and to negotiate a friendly reception.
The exodus began late in the spring of 50. Not all the refugees departed from the same ports or followed the same courses. Most of those fleeing from the south, including the Picts, took their departures from Ushant. In squadrons of varying size, sailing as weather and the state of preparedness allowed, they steered across the mouth of the Channel to the Scilly Islands, which had for close to a thousand years been the principal rendezvous for men from Mediterranean, west Iberian, and Biscayan ports trading with the British Isles.
This contingent intended to go west around England, sailing through St. George’s Channel into the Irish Sea, thence to the west coast of southern Scotland via the North Channel. Once in the North Channel the ships could anticipate friendly, or at least neutral, shores to starboard. However, the coast of Ireland was firmly in Celtic hands—as one flotilla of Pictish ships discovered for itself.
The Britons [Celts]... who, carried over into Britain, it is reported, from Armorica, possessed themselves of the southern parts. When [sometime after] they had made themselves masters of the greatest part of the island beginning in the south, Picts from Scythia [the Scillies], as is reported, putting to sea in a few large ships, were driven by wind beyond the shores of Britain, and arrived on the northeast coast of Ireland, where, finding the nation of the Scots [Irish Celts], they begged to be allowed to settle amongst them, but could not succeed in obtaining their request.1 The Scots answered that the island could not contain them both, but “we can give you good advice what to do: we know there is another island, not far from ours, to the east, which we often see at a distance when the days are clear. If you go there you will obtain a settlement.” . . . The Picts accordingly, sailing over into Britain, began to inhabit the northern part of that island.
So wrote the Venerable Bede. There are ambiguities in his account, which is hardly surprising considering that he lived and wrote several centuries after the event. What surely is surprising is that such a clear and unequivocal description of a major event in British history, and one, moreover, recorded by an authority of Bede’s stature, should have been consistently ignored or belittled by most professional historians. Possibly because it was at odds with the orthodox view of history, scholars have generally chosen to relegate it to the realm of mythology, thereby transforming the sole surviving account of the arrival of the Armoricans in northern Britain into nothing more than a piece of Irish embroidery. The Venerable Bede knew better, and so did the Picts from Gaul who became the Picts of Scotland.2
Fugitives from northern Armorica (the coastal tribes between Brittany and the mouth of the Seine,
including the Curiosolites, Redones, and Unelli) assembled at the Channel Islands, which had always been Armorican strongholds.
These people then sailed “east around,” keeping the British coast to port. Although this route was slightly longer, it offered a major advantage in that it led directly to the extensive and fertile coastal plains between the Firth of Forth and Moray Firth.
The eastbound contingent also consisted of a number of squadrons, each composed of a small enough number of vessels to be able to keep contact in bad weather. Sailing both by day and by night, and maintaining a good offing, they entered the North Sea. Even then they avoided closing with the land, for the great seaward bulge of Norfolk and Suffolk offered little shelter and, moreover, was firmly in Celtic hands.
Eventually they made their way to the Farne Islands some twenty miles south of the mouth of the Tweed. This may have been their final rendezvous before bringing the long voyage to an end.
The decision as to how to deal with the would-be Armorican immigrants posed a considerable dilemma to the northern Albans, who were faced with something of a Hobson’s choice. If they refused permission to land, they could expect to be invaded by several thousand desperate refugees. But how were they to absorb such a flood of new people in a land whose resources were already strained by influxes of Albans from the southern parts of Britain that had earlier been overrun by the Celts?
I suspect that the northern Albans attempted to make a virtue out of necessity. The Armoricans had a well-found fleet. If they could be settled on what currently amounted to border lands between Albans and Celts, they might serve Alba’s interests on land as well as at sea.
These border regions were in jeopardy. Pressure from the influx of Celtic refugees into southern Britain was now being felt along the frontiers of Alba. Probing Celts were already turning the fertile sweep of the Merse plain in the green valley of the Tweed into a no man’s land. Raiders were even probing northward into the guardian hills between the Tweed and the heartland Forth country. Realizing that the Tweed valley was in danger of being lost, I think the Albans “gave” it to the immigrant Armoricans to have and to hold... if they were able.
