3 | Julius Caesar Invades Britain (The Second Time) | The One With The Sort Of Victory - A Pillock's Guide To British History

Following his first invasion in 55 BC, which he bollocksed up, would Julius’ second invasion in 54 BC go any better? Sort of, yeah. Both he and the Britons have a better showing this time. Transcript – Julius Has A Second Go At Britain | The One With The Sort Of Victory   If you remember our earlier episode, Julius Caesar turned up and attacked some of the tribes in South East England in 55. He won, but it was a bit of a farce. Julius obviously knew this and decided to have another go as soon as possible in 54 BC. And to be fair to old Julius, he acknowledged the things he had messed up in and had a go at doing them better. The first example of that would be the number of men he decided to take. As we mentioned before, the 55 BC attempt may have been a bit of expedition, rather than a proper invasion. This time, it looked like he meant it. Instead of the mere 10,000 men from 55 BC, the 54 go involved 25,000 men. He has also learnt his lesson regarding those cool chariots the Britons used so well. We are told that he took half the Roman cavalry in Gaul with him, and historians have worked out this would be about 2,000 of them. Presumably, that would be able to neutralise those pesky charioteers as well as making it harder for the Britons to run off and regroup when the Romans were winning a battle. We have tried getting our head around the size of this invading army. Is 25,000 loads for the ancient world? Is it loads for little ol’ Britain? Well first off the total Roman Army was massive. About 60 years later, around the turn of the millennium, there were 125,000 legionnaires. The whole army was about 250,000 when you include the auxiliaries. Auxiliaries being soldiers who were not Roman citizens, like Germanic tribesmen for example. Of the 250,000, 30,000 of them were cavalry. So we can guess that Julius was using a fair bit of what the Romans had to play with, but not a ridiculous amount. You are looking at around 10%ish, although that assumes there weren’t too many changes over 60 years. But what about a bit of modern context. Well, the population of the whole of Britain at the time was about 1.5 million. Given our population is about 60 million now, an army proportional to our modern population would be an invasion of 1,000,000 soldiers. Considering that the initial invasion would likely just have the Romans come up against the tribes of Southern England, it does start to look like overkill. Whether you think it was overkill or not, it showed an intent. This was no small expedition to have a recce over the channel. Julius was going over there to mess some folk up. Julius’ other lesson learnt, other than just when it comes to soldiers less is not always more and horse are good for chasing stuff, was, if you are going to cross the channel, you need the right sort of ships. Not only did he build 600 new ships, but they were more suited to landing on the coast of Britain than the last years. He stole the design from the Veneti, who he had beaten in 55, and mass produced them like only a Roman could. So he was better prepared, but you will also remember an issue he had with his current provinces kicking up a fuss and delaying him. Well, it happened again, although not as bad this time. This time the issue was round Illyricum, one of his provinces. The Germanic tribes were again gearing up for having a crack at Roman lands. Even once that was fixed, Caesar had more trouble back in Gaul. This must have been particularly frustrating as a fair chunk of the soldiers of Gaul were about to leave. In fact, this whole jaunt seemed incredibly risky. The Gallic kerfuffle came from the Treveri Tribe. Julius called a council, which the tribal leaders were to attend. The Treveri didn’t fancy it, so Julius had to show them who was boss. It wasn’t just the Treveri Julius has to worry about.