Around AD 43 in the small port of Bologne in Gaul (modern day France) a major event was taking place. A fleet of Roman warships, laden with more than forty thousand troops, was preparing to attack Britain.

The Romans were a highly advanced, powerful race from Italy, with a well-trained and organised army. They had already conquered most of Europe and North Africa. They wished to conquer Britain to expand the Roman Empire and to find more natural resources, which they needed to supply the growing population of the Empire and its large army. This was not the first time the Romans had invaded Britain. Twice in the past Julius Caesar’s armies had attacked the south coast, although these incursions had had little effect on the Celtic people of the north. After the Romans landed in a place called Richborough, near Dover, their forces spread through England.

 

It was fairly easy for them to subdue the Britons as they had superior weapons and were better trained. The Britons led individual charges in battle, often using chariots to come to the field of battle, then leaping down from them to fight on foot. The Romans, by comparison, fought in formation to encircle the enemy and attack from all sides.

 

They made use of catapults to pound the hilltop fortresses into submission. These organised, co-ordinated tactics meant that by the time Governor Agricola landed to take command in AD 78 most of what is now England had been conquered. Agricola was arguably the most successful Governor of Britain, conquering Wales and North England in his first year. In AD 80 he attacked what is now Scotland, moving quickly through the Lowlands. Since the Celtic tribes would not join arms, there was no British force capable of defeating the Romans. It is said that the Votadini and Damnonii tribes accepted Roman rule but the Selgovae and Novantae, who resisted, were crushed and forced to submit. Now Agricola’s only objective was to conquer the Highlands!

Agricola’s Invasion of the North.

In AD 83 Agricola crossed the Highland line, into a dangerous land where it is alleged the people had found unity operating as one great tribe in adversity against the Romans. Agricola’s great army moved slowly in three divisions, alert for ambush from the native settlers. However, it was not aware of tribesmen watching from the foothills and woodlands, noticing the weakness of one legion - the Hispana. The Hispana, or the Ninth division of Agricola’s great army, was well under strength with half the legion in service in Germany.

The Caledonii (the North Scottish tribes) struck suddenly in the night, almost overwhelming the Hispana at Camp Victoria before being driven off by another division commanded by Agricola himself. With their lines of communication stretched and the chill of a Highland winter already in the air, the Romans returned south.

In AD 84 Agricola, in his seventh year of being governor, embarked on what was to be his last military campaign. Following the same route as he had the previous year he pushed north, making use of his fleet to raid the eastern coastline and to bring supplies for the army.

Traces can still be found of the huge marching camps constructed by the soldiers as they made their way north until Agricola’s army was only fifty miles away from the mouth of the Great Glen (a mountainous area near Loch Ness). It was now time for the Caledonii to face the might of the Roman Empire or be imprisoned in their own mountains.

Only one man stood in the way of the Romans and their desire to control the whole of Britain. His name was Calgacus. The Roman historian, Tacitus, records that he spoke in the following vein to the thirty thousand Celts, who were called to battle,

‘We, the most distant dwellers upon the earth, the last of the free, have been shielded until now by our remoteness and by the obscurity which has shrouded our name. Now, the farthest bounds of Britain lie open to our enemies. There are no more nations beyond us – only waves, and rocks, and the Romans. Pillagers of the world, they have exhausted the land by their indiscriminate plunder. East and west alike have failed to satisfy them. To robbery, butchery and rapine, they give the lying name "government". They create a desert and call it peace. Which will you choose – to follow me into battle, or to submit to taxation, labour in the mines and all the other tribulations of slavery? Whether you are to endure these forever or take a quick revenge, this battle must decide.’

The Battle of Mons Graupius

Although it is not known exactly where Mons Graupius was fought, it is believed to be around present day Fochabers, eight or so miles from where the Romans pitched camp at Muiryfold. Agricola knew from his scouts that a large army had been gathered and so he advanced with his troops already in battle array as was traditional when the Romans feared they might come under attack.

The Romans built a defensive square camp, each side half a mile in length, so that the soldiers could rest until the battle but soon the two armies were facing each other. The undisciplined Caledonii fought as warriors, unwilling to listen to orders. In their war chariots, at the blast of the war horn they hurled themselves at the Romans with all their might but the Roman auxiliaries held their ground. Meanwhile the cavalry charged the Celts when their chariot attack weakened.

Behind the Roman auxiliaries still waited the Legions, crack troops in plate armour, ready to stab and thrust with their short bladed swords, while protected by the unbreakable wall of shields in the formation.

As the Caledonii were driven off the field by the might of the Roman Army it seemed at last as if all Britain had been brought under the control of the Romans.

The Recall of Agricola and the Retreat of the Romans

In the winter of AD 84 probably the greatest blunder in the history of Roman Britain took place. Agricola was recalled to Rome.

In the years that followed many Roman soldiers were withdrawn from Britain to serve in other parts of the Empire while a new generation of Caledonians was growing up. Those who had been boys at Mons Graupius became ready to avenge their defeat. Within twenty years the Romans’ northern forts had been destroyed and they had been forced back to the position they had held when Agricola had first come to Britain. The frontier ran from the Solway in the west to the Tyne in the east. The new Emperor, Hadrian, decided that occupying Scotland was not worth the effort or expense.

Hadrian’s Wall

In AD 118 Pompeius Falco was appointed Governor of Britain and within a year work had begun on what was to be a tremendous feat of engineering. Tribesmen from the borderlands watched with interest and concern as a huge work force, protected by patrols of heavily armed soldiers who kept guard, began to construct a massive wall.

Stone quarries were opened, lime pits dug, well shafts sunk and new works roads laid, by a work force possibly numbering twenty thousand, to enable the work to be carried out. Mile upon mile of foundation stones was laid, with a deep, wide ditch on either side. At frequent intervals they built towers and mile castles, camps and forts all connected by one great rampart of stone, more than six metres high and three metres broad. (Insert map p.48)

The completed Hadrian’s Wall stretched over seventy miles from coast to coast, to keep out the Selgovae, the Novantae and the Caledonii. Sentries in the watchtowers would spot would-be invaders and alert the nearest soldiers who would resist the attack initially until signal towers could relay the alarm to bring reinforcements with all speed along the road which ran behind the wall. Soon a cavalry force would be able to sweep out of the gates to engage the enemy in he field. Within one hour of an alert, two thousand trained infantrymen and cavalry could confront attackers along any point of the wall.

The frontier was at last secure, the most strongly defended in all the Roman Empire.

Twenty years later Hadrian was succeeded by Antoninus Pius and the new Emperor brought his own ideas. Soon two legions pushed up northwards just as Agricola had done sixty years before. However, they were stopped at Strathmore, where they built a smaller wall, known as the Antonine Wall, to keep the Northern Caledonians from raiding the Roman camps in South Scotland. The frontier had moved north yet again.

Built on a four metre wide foundation of rough stone held in place between two lines of dressed kerbing, it was constructed in blocks of turf laid like bricks instead of stone. Nineteen forts built at two-mile intervals connected the rampart and in front there was a gaping ditch more than twelve metres wide and four deep.

The Antonine Wall was not to last though. It was abandoned a mere twenty years after its construction due to repeated and fierce attacks. For many years afterwards there was an uneasy peace between the Romans and the northern Celts. The Celts stayed in their barren mountains and the Romans behind their wall of stone. By the time the Romans left Britain nearly four hundred years after they had arrived, Romanised Britons lived to the south of Hadrian’s Wall.

The Romans never settled in Scotland, although they had tried to conquer it. By the time they left about AD 410 only their empty forts and crumbling roads remained as a monument to their time in Scotland.