CHAPTER 17
THE BATTLE OF MONS GRAMPIUS.
AGRICOLA was aware that a storm was gathering on the north hills.
Intelligence had been communicated to him that embassies were passing betwixt tribe and tribe, that chieftains formerly at feud were now knit together in bonds of amity, that thirty thousand armed men were now available, and still recruits were pouring into the native camp, that a combination of the states had been formed, blessed by the priests, and that the Caledonians, their fierce and warlike enthusiasm roused to the highest pitch, were prepared to stake all on a supreme effort for freedom.
This cloud in the north, which was growing bigger every hour, made the Roman commander not a little uneasy. He had now been seven years in Britain, but the Roman arms had been unable to advance beyond the line of the Forth. For five years they had remained stationary. The legions had passed the summer in skirmishes, reaping the inglorious trophies of villages burned, and their habitants slaughtered. The tempests of the northern sky had furnished them with an excuse for resting in camp during winter, and refreshing themselves after the toils of the summer campaign. Agricola saw that he could no longer make the war an affair of skirmishes. He must attempt operations on a larger scale. He must strike a blow for the subjugation of the whole of Caledonia, otherwise he should find him well overpowered by numbers and be driven out of the country. f93
Accordingly, forming his army into three divisions, and commanding his fleet to cruise on the coast, and strike terror by devastating the parts within its reach, he began his march to the north. He traversed the territory lying betwixt the Forth and the Tay, without, so far as appears, seeing the enemy or meeting opposition. As the legions climbed creiff
Hill- for it lay upon their route- they had their first view of the valley of the Tay. As they beheld the strath running far to the north, with the Tay issuing from the bosom of the distant Grampians, much as the Tiber appears to do from the Sabines to one looking from the Capitol at Rome, the soldiers burst out in the exclamation, so often attributed to them since, “Ecce Tiberim! “ For the valley of the Tay, in its general arrangements of city, river, and mountains, is the valley of the Tiber over again- but without its
sky. There is this one other point of difference betwixt the two. The Tay rolls along in a crystal clearness, which the Tiber, as it issues from Eturian fountain, and sweeps onward through the Clitumnus vale with “yellow wave,” might well envy.
Beyond the Tay, stretching almost from side to side of Scotland, is the
“Great Strath,” bounded on the south by the Sidlaws- soft as Apennine- and walled in on the north by the lofty Grampians. Across this plain lay the march of the legions. The Romans might a second time have exclaimed,
“Ecce Campaniam,” for the region they were now traversing, the modern Strathmore, in the vastness of its open bosom, and the magnificence of its mountain boundary, may not unworthily be compared with the great champaign around the eternal city- another Campania, but without its”
Rome,” and also without that rich garniture of Patrician villa and olive- grove which clothed the Italian plain in the days of the Romans.
Somewhere on the northern boundary of this great Strath, where the level ground merges with the hills, at a place which Tacitus designates “Molls Grampius,” the Caledonians had assembled their forces, and there waited for Agricola in the resolution of offering him battle. The historian does not identify the locality where this first great Scottish battle was fought, beyond placing it at the foot of the Grampian chain. It has been the subject of many conjectures since. The long line of country, extending from the Tar to the shores of the German Ocean, has been anxiously but fruitlessly searched, if Imply a spot could be found that fulfills all the conditions of the famous “Mons.” Some have found this battlefield, as they believed, at Ardoch, on the north slope of the Ochils, near Dunblane. Their reason for fixing on a spot so far from the Grampian chain is that at Ardoch there occurs the most perfect example of a Roman camp that is to be seen in all Scotland: an excellent reason for concluding that the Romans were here, but no proof that here they engaged the Caledonians. Besides, the stay of a night, or even of a few nights, would hardly have resulted in the
construction of entrenchments, which, after eighteen centuries, would be found so complete and beautiful as are the Roman remains at Ardoch.
Others have found the site of this famous battle on the plain betwixt Meigle and Dunkeld, near the foot of the mountains. Others place the Mons
Grampius of the historian far to the eastward at Fettercairn above
Laurencekirk. There the Grampians swell up into lofty rolling masses, and by a long descent merge into the plain. The supporters of this view rest it mainly on the statement of the historian, that the battle was fought in the
sight of the ships. This, however, is rather the inference of historians than the statement of Tacitus, who only says that the fleet kept pace with the advance of the army. The ships could not have been in sight at either of the first two mentioned places, unless, indeed, the fleet had sailed up the Tay.
But if the action took place toward the eastern extremity of the Grampian chain, the German Sea would be on the right flank of the Roman army, and ships moored off the shore would be quite in sight. Agricola had given orders for the fleet to sail along the coast northwards, keeping equal pace with the progress of his troops oil land, to give, if need were, mutual succour. After the battle the army fell back, as we shall see, on its line of fortresses, but the ships held on their way to the north, and entering the Pentland Firth, sailed westward into the Atlantic. The discovery that followed belongs to peace rather than to war. “By Agricola’s order,” says Tacitus, “the Roman fleet sailed round the northern point, and made the first certain discovery that Britain was an island. The cluster of isles called the Orcades, till then wholly unknown, was in this expedition added to the Roman empire. Thule, which had lain concealed ht the gloom of winter, and a depth of eternal snows, was also seen by our navigators.” f94 Every hour the tide of war was rolling nearer to the foot of the great mountains. From the tops of their frontier hills the Caledonians looked down on the great strath at their feet, and watched the progress of the armed host across it. Goodlier sight, even one more terrible, had never before greeted their eyes. They had seen their clans go forth to battle, armed with the simple weapons which their limited knowledge of art had taught them to fabricate. But here was war in all the panoply and pomp with which Rome, in the noon of her power, was accustomed to carry it on. Here were her cohorts, marshaled under their ensigns and eagles, clad in panoply of mail, the gleam of their brazen shields lighting up the moors through which their track lay with an unusual but terrible splendor. To the Caledonians how inscrutable the motive which had brought these men from a country whose plains poured out corm and whose hills were purple with the grape, to the very ends of the earth, to a land of nakedness and hunger, where no glory was to be won by conquest, and no profit was to be reaped from possession! But whatever the motives or hopes of’ the invaders, to the Caledonian, his brown moors and naked hills were dear, and he was prepared to defend them to the last drop of his blood. The signal is given from the hill- top that the enemy is near. It flashes quickly along the whole
Grampian chain, from where Ben More lifts its giant head in the west, to where the range sinks into the German Sea on the east.
The summons finds the warrior tribes not unprepared. From the shore of dark lake, from the recesses of deep glen, from moor and wood, the sons of the mountain hurry forth to meet and measure swords with the invaders of their native land. Gathering in marshaled ranks on the plain, their great hills towering behind them, they stand face to face with the lemons of Rome. The chief takes his place at the head of his tribe. For lacking
control, and left to itself, the wild valor of the mountains, like the tempests that gather and burst on their summits, would have dashed itself against the mail- clad phalanxes, and been annihilated. The supreme command of the confederate Caledonian tribes was assumed by a leader whom history has handed down to us by the name of Galgacus. The pen of Tacitus has ascribed to him the glory of valor and the virtue of patriotism. A stout and patriotic heart he must in very deed have possessed, to stand up at the head of his half- naked warriors against the conquerors of the world, and do battle for the dark mountains and heathery straths in his rear, and which were all that was now left him of his once free native land. This first of Scottish heroes- the pioneer of the Wallace and the Bruce of an after- age- appears for a moment, and passes almost entirely out of view. We hear little of him after the battle in which lie lost victory but not honor.
The Caledonian army was thirty thousand strong. So does Tacitus say, repeating, probably, the rough guess of his father- in- law Agricola. The Romans were twenty- six thousand; and their number would be known to a man. Numerically the two hosts were not very unequally matched; but in point of discipline, and especially of equipments, the overwhelming superiority lay with the Romans; and when one thought of the vast disparity between the two armies in this respect, it was not difficult to forecast the nature of the tidings which would fly fast and far through glen and strath at the close of the day. Meanwhile, the muster for battle goes on with spirit. The Caledonians will go back to their hills as victors, or they will die on the moor on which they stand.
There is an open space betwixt the two armies, and the Caledonians take advantage of it, before battle is joined, to show off their war chariots in presence of the Romans. It is an early and eastern mode of fighting, which one hardly expects to find practiced in Agricola’s day, at the foot of the Grampians. Yet so it was. The Caledonians fight after the same fashion as
the heroes before Troy. They fight as did the five kings of Syria when they crossed Mount Hermon in their war chariots, and assembled by the waters of Merom, to do battle with Joshua. The country is rough: probably there are no roads: but the nature of the surface has been taken into account in the construction of these cars. The wheel is a disk of metal, it is fixed on a revolving axle- tree, and the seat is placed between the two wheels. The machine, skillfully handled, could be driven with great rapidity over uneven ground with but small risk of being upset. The chariots flashed to and fro in the open ground in presence of the armies, the chief acting as charioteer, and the combatants seated in the car. To see their sharp, naked scythes projecting from the axle and glittering in the sun, one could imagine with a shudder the red furrow they would plough in the packed ranks of battle, driven swiftly over the field. But in actual fight these war chariots lost much of their terrors. A thrust of the sword or of the spear brought the steeds, to which they were yoked, to the ground, and the chariot with its apparatus of slaughter lay stranded on the battlefield. The Roman soldiers, it is probable, contemplated this exhibition with more of curiosity than of dismay. They had encountered these engines of destruction in eastern campaigns, and knew that they were not altogether so formidable as they looked.
It was the recognized duty of the historian in those days not to permit battle to be joined till first the leaders on both sides had, in fitting phrase, harangued their troops. Tacitus gives us the speeches delivered on this occasion by Agricola to the legions, and by Galgacus to the Caledonians.
He does not state in what language the latter spake, or reported and interpreted his words to him, but nothing could be finer or more fitting than the speech of the barbarian leader to his soldiers. In terse, yet burning words, Galgacus denounces the ambition of Rome, and paints the
miserable condition of the nations enslaved to her yoke: a condition, he adds, which they, the noblest of all the Britons, had never beheld, much less undergone. f95 “There is now no nation beyond us,” continues the Caledonian leader, “nothing save the billows and the rocks, and the Romans, still more savage, whose tyranny you will in vain appease by submission and concession. The devastators of the earth, when the land has failed to suffice their universal ravages, they explore even the ocean. If an enemy be wealthy, they are covetous; if he be poor, they become
ambitious. Neither East nor West has contented them. Alone, of all men, they covet with equal rapacity the rich and the needy. Plunder, murder, and
robbery, under false pretenses they call ‘empire,’ and when they make a wilderness, they call it ‘peace.’” f96
Tacitus himself might have pronounced this oration in the Forum. He could not in terser phrase or in more burning words have denounced the crimes of an empire which, built in blood, was spreading effeminacy and serfdom over the earth. And had he ventured on so scathing a denunciation the nations, cast and west, would have clanked their chains in sympathetic response. But not a syllable of all this durst ,any one at that hour have uttered at Rome. If spoken but in a whisper, its echoes would speedily have reached the car of the gloomy Domitian in the Palatine, and before the sound of the last words had died away, the head of the speaker would have rolled on the floor of the Mamertine. Tacitus, therefore, puts the speech into the mouth of Galgacus, and thunders it forth to the world from the foot of the Grampians.
Agricola also addressed his soldiers. His speech was that of a general who contends for conquest alone. It is more remarkable for the topics which are left out than for those which the speaker introduces and dwells upon. It was hardly possible for the Roman soldier to feel the sentiment of patriotism. He fought not for country but for the world- for his empire embraced the world- and this object was far too vast and vague to awaken or sustain patriotism: and Agricola made no appeal to a feeling which he knew did not exist in his soldiers. The uppermost idea in the mind of a Roman, and the phrase that came readiest to his lips, was the greatness and glory of Rome. It was this that formed the key- note of Agricola’s address to his army. lie flatters their pride, by glancing back on the toils of their past marches, so patiently borne, and the glory of their many victories, so bravely won. He next turns to the battle about to be joined, and holds out the hope of victory by a consideration not very complimentary, one should think, to their courage, even that the bravest of the Caledonians were now in the grave, slain by the Roman sword, and that there remained only the feeble and the timid; one great day more, and the perils of the campaign would be ended, and the limits of the empire would be completed by the inclusion of the territory on the north of the hills at the foot of which they stood, and which was now almost the only portion of the habitable globe over which Rome did not sway her scepter. The speech, Tacitus adds, fired the soldiers, and they flew at once to arms. f97
The two armies were now drawn up in order of battle. Agricola formed his soldiers into two lines. The first consisted of auxiliary infantry, with three thousand horse disposed as wings. The second line was formed of the Roman legionaries, the flower of his army; for it was a maxim of the Romans in their wars to expose their foreign troops to the brunt of battle, and while lavish of the blood of the mercenary, to be sparing of that of the Roman soldier. It was a proud boast when a general could say that he had won a battle without the loss of so much as one native life. The main body of the Caledonian army was drawn up on the plain in front of the Romans.
The reserves were stationed on the heights behind, rising row on row, and overlooking the scene of action. They were to watch the progress of .the battle, and, at the critical moment, rush down and decide the fortune of the day.
At its commencement the battle was waged from a distance. The
Caledonians let fly showers of flint arrowheads, and the Romans replied by a discharge of their missiles, which, however, were less effective than the
“dense volleys” of the enemy. Galled by the shower of flints, the Romans were losing in the fight. When Agricola perceived that his men were giving way, he ordered three cohorts of Batavians and two of Tungrians to close with the foe and bring the encounter to the sword. The Caledonians met them, shouting their war- cry, but the change in the battle placed them at great disadvantage. They carried long swords, the downward stroke of which did terrible execution, but at close quarters the length of the weapon made it unserviceable. It got entangled and could not be easily raised to deal a second stroke, and having no point it was useless to thrust with. His little round shield, moreover, left great part of the body of the Caledonian exposed to the weapon of his adversary. What made the conditions of the fight more unfavorable for the Caledonian, was that the armor of the Roman legionary was admirably adapted for a hand to hand encounter. He always carried into battle a short, sharp sword; he covered his person with a large oblong shield, and when the Caledonian approached him with his long sword, the Roman received the weapon in its murderous descent on the rim of his brazen buckler, and before his adversary had time to repeat the blow, he had despatched him with his sharp dagger- like sword. From the moment that the fight became a close one, the chances were against the native army: for what availed the brawny hand of the Caledonian when the weapon that filled it was so ill adapted to its work. That was no equal combat in which half- armed and half- naked men contended with mailed