Edward Foord

“ I will do my duty to Rome and Cæsar!’ With a cheer every man on his ship followed. All down the line men sprang recklessly overboard, and singly and in groups began to wade up the shingly beach; and all along the shore, in gallant response, the Britons drove their chariots forward to the attack. There was a furious struggle among the breakers, and for some time the men of Kent held the strand; but when the steady Roman veterans began to close up into regular bodies, with boats full of archers covering their flanks, the Britons gave way. ”

“ The emigrants could not march by land, like the Goths and Franks, in great masses, which could bear down resistance by sheer weight of numbers and courage. They had to transfer themselves over hundreds of miles of sea in more or less frail open craft, at the mercy of every gale; yet in the course of a century the name of Angle had vanished from the Continent, and become peculiar to Britain. ”

“ The last hope for the independence of the Danes of England lay in a Viking fleet which had just appeared on the East Anglian coast. Its crews landed, rallied the broken levies of their kinsmen, and, in conjunction with them, besieged Maldon. Before they could complete their cordon, a strong body of English troops, probably part of the victors of Tempsford and Colchester, entered the burh, and the combined force made a sortie, repulsed the besiegers, and, by a vigorous pursuit, completely broke them. ”

“ The men of Cambria were thrown on the defensive by the great force directed against them. Caradoc manœuvred among the mountains, harassed the Roman line of march, cut off detachments, but was at last brought to bay in A.D. 50. All that could be suggested to counterbalance the superiority of the Romans in everything but mere numbers he did. He posted his army behind a roaring mountain torrent, with both flanks protected by craggy heights, and his centre covered by ‘sangars’ of piled stones. The wild warriors of Wales swore by their gods to conquer or die. ”

“ The invasion of William the Lion, in 1174, was made ostensibly to aid the rebellious sons of Henry II. against their father. William’s true object was, no doubt, to recover the border counties. Perhaps no invasion of England has ever appeared so threatening, and proved so completely ‘the fleeting shadow of a dream.’ William’s army was large—perhaps the largest that a Scots king had hitherto gathered—but he could not control his wild followers. ”

“ The fighting men were cut down in thousands, women and children involved in the hideous massacre. The Druids were slaughtered at their rites, or tossed upon their own flaming pyres. The sanctuaries were destroyed, the sacred groves cut down, and Paulinus might hope that he had dealt a decisive blow, when jaded messengers dashed into camp with the stunning tidings that all Roman Britain was in a flame of revolt. ”

“ Between the cavalry attacks the bowmen poured in their volleys, shooting with a high trajectory so that the arrows were not wasted on the shield-wall, but made havoc in the heart of the dense mass. The device had terrible success. The picked warriors of England fell fast before the pitiless rain to which they could not reply. For the most part they could but suffer. Once or twice it seems that small bodies tried to charge out; now and again desperate warriors sprang forth to contend hand-to-hand with the Norman knights, but they only hastened their end. ”

“ Aethelflæd stormed Derby after a furious resistance, while Guthrum in vain attacked Bedford and Wiggingamere, and had to retreat on Tempsford, only to be assailed there by an English army of burh-ware from all the eastern fortresses. ‘They beset the burh and fought against it until they broke into it, and slew the King and Earl Toglos, and Earl Manna his son, and his brother, and all them that were therein, and would defend themselves, and they took the others and all that was therein.’ Eadward followed up the victory with energy. ”

“ The English seamen manœuvred for the wind, and, having gained it, bore down on their encumbered foes. The result was an overwhelming victory. Robert de Courtenay, the leader of the reinforcements, was taken prisoner. So, too, was the Monk, who, having been in the English service, was immediately beheaded. Many knights were slain, others drowned themselves in despair, and only fifteen ships escaped. The victory had decisive results. Louis at once made peace, submitting to the Pope’s legate, and abandoning all hopes of the English crown. Hubert de Burgh became the darling of England. ”

“ The passing from the scene of the strangely unsubstantial and shadowy figure of the sainted Eadward ‘the Confessor’ was the signal for the bursting of the storm that was to overwhelm Anglo-Saxon England. For the last thirteen years of his reign the country had been practically governed by his great minister, Harold Godwineson, Earl of Wessex. Harold’s character has suffered much at the hands of Norman chroniclers; there is no real reason to think that he was morally worse than most men of his age. ”

“ Sir John Graham in vain charged with a body of horsemen in the endeavour to ride down the bowmen. He and his band were all shot down. Seeing the disorder among their adversaries, the English army came on to a counter-attack, with the sacred banners waving in their van. The Scots’ right, striving vainly to form in order amid the hedges and obstacles, was charged by the men-at-arms, broken and driven back in utter rout, with the loss of its leader; the Steward’s division was forced away, and cut off from the King, and the whole English force closed upon the centre. ”

“ After Hadrian, in what Florus jokingly termed the great Emperor’s ‘walking about Britain,’ had reorganized the island, and established the famous military frontier, Britain settled down to a more or less eventful existence as a Roman province. The unfortunate results of the enterprise, into which Claudius had perhaps been led partly against his will, soon began to be apparent, even if to all thinking men they were not plain as early as the reign of Hadrian. ”

“ The men of Kent were too unprepared to attempt to oppose the landing, but they harassed the flanks of the army as it marched for the Thames along the old, old track that Cæsar had traversed a century before. This time the British guerrilla tactics had slight effect; there was ample cavalry to feel ahead, and ample light infantry to guard the flanks. We hear no more of the stunning and disordering surges of chariotry among the Roman battalions—indeed, there is some reason to believe that, with the introduction and breeding of larger horses fit for riding, it was already in a state of decline. ”

“ The available troops consisted of a weak Scottish regiment and some seamen at Sheerness, under Admiral Sir Edward Spragge. The fortifications were unfinished and unarmed. The ships were not manned, and, to complete the disgrace, the seamen refused point-blank to fight for the king who had starved and robbed them. There is an even darker side to the gloomy picture. The oncoming Dutch fleet was full of English and Scottish seamen, who preferred the good treatment and regular pay of the States to that of their discredited king. The dockyard hands—starving, unpaid, and mutinous—deserted en masse. ”

“ No time was given for the broken foe to recover. Late as was the season, Eadward kept the field; from every county the land-fyrd and burh-ware marched in hot haste to reinforce or relieve the army in Essex. Northampton, Huntingdon, and Cambridge surrendered, and with them all East Anglia. ”

“ Meanwhile the Jacobite rising in Scotland had come to an ignominious end. Though the claimant himself had appeared among his followers, the army, demoralized by dissension and poor leading, was melting fast away, and James soon left for the Continent. He was himself apparently the most estimable of the Stuarts—brave, regular in his life, and not devoid of ability, but he was not a man to inspire devotion. His son, Charles Edward, was of a different type, and, besides considerable capacity, possessed all the fascination of his ancestress, Mary. ”

“ Such of the crews as succeeded in landing were massacred either by Irish kernes or English soldiers. Leyva perished near Dunluce. Some sixty ships only struggled through to the Biscayan ports. In some there was no water for fourteen days, and the wine was nearly out. The half-dead crews were often unable to work the ships, and they drifted helplessly into such harbours as lay in their aimless course. Recalde and Oquendo came home only to die exhausted and broken-hearted, and the roll of death was swelled by thousands who had survived England’s artillery and the Atlantic storms. ”

“ The demoralized Scottish force was in a very dangerous position. Some miles behind them were the Esk and the dangerous bogs of Solway Moss. Their van was charged by a detachment of English cavalry and thrown into disorder, and then the whole army, as it seems, began to retreat in a huddled mass to the Esk. In vain the nobles present endeavoured to rally their followers, and dismounted to set them an example. ‘In a shake all the way,’ the demoralized Scots crowded back towards the only point of passage across the Esk, a narrow ford near the hill of Arthuret. ”

“ The English could not understand it. Twice God had intervened to save the foe! The Armada was able to bear out from the shoals and steer a course to the northward in deep water.
So ended the great struggle. On the surface the Armada had suffered little; its numbers were not greatly diminished. But in fact nearly all its fighting ships were so mangled that they could hardly hope to survive a severe gale. They were mere floating dens of misery, full of men wounded, sick, and worn out. The loss of life at Gravelines can only be conjectured. The Spaniards admitted 1,400 killed and wounded. ”

“ The respite could not be a long one—the Northmen of the ninth and tenth centuries were the most perjured of mankind—but Alfred might be trusted to turn the interval in the fighting to the best advantage.
The position of England at the end of 871 could scarcely have been worse. The results of the lack of national unity were terribly apparent. Northumbria and East Anglia had practically disappeared from the roll of English kingdoms; Mercia was tottering. Only Wessex had succeeded in retaining its independence, and was still ready to fight fiercely for liberty. ”

“ The invaders at first only plundered, until an apparently chance incident opened the way to permanent settlement. For a time the tide of conquest and occupation was checked by the series of brilliant victories gained by Ambrosius and Arthur, but the civil broils of the Britons prevented any permanent success over the continually multiplying enemy; and with the advent of two really great leaders on the side of the invaders, the older inhabitants found themselves hopelessly penned up in the barren regions of the west. Thenceforth Britain was Britain no longer, but Angle-land—England. ”

“ Looking at the battle after this length of time, it is clear that William only gained the day by desperate exertions, and that more than once success hung in the balance. Had the English army possessed a proportion of archers the day would have been Harold’s. It has been pointed out that not even a great fleet saved England from an attack by an invader prepared to take the risk of destruction. But it should be remembered that Harold’s flotilla was not a properly organized force, and cannot be compared to a modern fleet able to keep the sea for several months at a time. ”

“ Before the walls of Alnwick they saw a small body of about a hundred horsemen engaged in exercising and tilting. They can hardly have expected that they would be so rash as to charge their own superior numbers. Yet so it was. Practically the whole of the tilting band were taken, and the astonishment of the victors may be imagined when they found that they had captured the King of Scots. The Scottish army melted away across the Border. The King paid dearly for his recklessness. He was forced to become Henry’s vassal, and so remained until the death of the Angevin king. ”

“ In England the Mercian supremacy had come to an end, and had been succeeded by that of Ecgberht of Wessex. The opportunity appeared to have come, and the Danes, backed by adventurers from all Scandinavia, began a series of terrible ravages in Western Europe. First, as with the English attacks on Britain, there were isolated plundering descents; then larger and better organized expeditions; finally, great hosts migrating for purposes of settlement.
Such terms as ‘great’ must here be taken in a relative sense. Scandinavia is to-day the most thinly-peopled region of Europe ”

“ Courage Spaniards have never lacked. Pinnaces were sent to warn the fleet, and the devoted flagship and her consorts swung round to face the enemy. In front, and nearest to Sidonia, the ever famous Revenge, flying Drake’s flag, was bearing down upon him, closely followed by three galleons of the Royal Navy, and for miles behind them the great English fleet was setting all sail and streaming to the attack. ”