Free Caesar's Legion: The Epic Saga of Julius Caesar's Elite Tenth Legion and the Armies of Rome by Stephen Dando-Collins

legionaries soon lost contact with their individual standards as they tried to keep the Britons at bay. The legionary was taught early in his training that if he couldn’t find his own unit’s standard in battle, any standard would do in an emergency. But in obeying this ethic now the men of the landing force found confusion, not clarity, bunching here, leaving gaps there.
    Realizing that many of the men straggling ashore from each transport stood the risk of being isolated and wiped out, Caesar ordered the small boats of each larger vessel lowered. These were loaded with men who were then landed as ready-action squads wherever legionaries were in trouble.
    This tactic paid dividends as the reinforced maniples and cohorts were able to regroup in numbers behind their own standards, then drive the Britons back. As the natives began to turn and flee, Caesar cursed his missing cavalry. It was at this point in a battle that the cavalry arm usually followed up the infantry success and chased the enemy for miles. As it was, his legionaries were called back after half a mile or so rather than lose contact with their commanders on the beach.
    Just the same, the success of the Roman landing had a humbling effect on the tribesmen. As the landing force began digging in just inland of the beachhead, British envoys came to Caesar, bringing the captive Atrebates king Commius, Caesar’s ambassador, and his thirty-man cavalry escort, complete with their horses. The prisoners were all handed over unharmed, with Caesar warmly greeting the young king of the Atrebates. The British envoys now asked for peace. In return, Caesar demanded hostages. Some c05.qxd 12/5/01 4:55 PM Page 35
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    were handed over immediately, and others from tribes far and wide began to make their way to him.
    Four days after Caesar’s landing in Kent, the south wind picked up sufficiently for the cavalry to again set sail from Ambleteuse to join their commander in chief. But as the eighteen transports carrying the troopers and their horses slowly approached the Deal area and hove in sight of the Roman troops at the beachhead, a savage storm swept down from the north. Some of the transports were driven back to France, others were pushed down the English coast and forced to stand well out to sea during the night before making their way back to their starting point at Ambleteuse next day. None was sunk, but none reached Caesar either.
    The ships of the first convoy fared even worse in the storm. The warships were still drawn up on the sand where they had beached themselves on day one, while the transports lay at anchor off the beach. There was a full moon that night, accompanied by a king tide. Romans had never previously taken note of the fact that particularly high tides accompanied full moons on the Atlantic shore, and no precautions had been taken, with the result that the high tide swamped the warships. Meanwhile, the storm drove the ships at anchor ashore. Some were wrecked on the coast, and all the others sustained often serious damage. Come the morning not a single ship was usable.
    Now, all of a sudden, Caesar was cut off, without any long-term supplies or means of getting them from France, let alone transport for a speedy return to France for the winter as planned. Inspired by this, the British chieftains who’d been all for peace and fraternity a few days before put their heads together and decided to renew hostilities against the relatively small Roman force. As Caesar was to later learn, their plan was to starve the legionaries into submission, in the hope that their fate would discourage any future Roman forays onto British shores.
    While the men of the 10th Legion concentrated on salvaging the wrecked ships, Caesar sent the 7th Legion out into the fields, which were ripe with British wheat. The 7th Legion’s bold and successful commander of the past two years, young General Publius Crassus, had gone back to Rome over the winter