The Phœnician origin of Britons, Scots & Anglo-Saxons : discovered by Phœnician & Sumerian inscriptions in Britain, by preroman Briton coins & a mass of new history : with over one hundred illustrations and maps

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FOUNDING OF LONDON ABOUT 1100 B.C. 409

only and difficult ford, which, on good evidence, is placed at Brent-ford opposite Kew, despite the desperate resistance of his enemy who had planted sharp stakes in the river and along the bank, Cassivellaunus, despairing of success in a pitched battle with Czsar’s invincible legions, significantly resorted to the same tactics as ascribed to Brutus in Epirus, when attacked by the overwhelming forces of Pandrasus. He disbanded the greater part of his army, and for guerrilla war withdrew the people and their cattle into the recesses of the impenetrable woods, to which he retired himself with a small contingent—Czsar says he retained “ only about four thousand charioteers’’—with which he harassed the detached foraging parties of the enemy and cut off stragglers, causing Czsar to admit that “ Cassivellaunus engaged our cavalry to their great peril and by the terror which he thus inspired prevented them from moving far afield.’’2 :

But on this sudden disappearance of Cassivellaunus’ main force at Brentford, the Tri-Novantes, Czsar tells us, were the first Britons to come to his camp (presumably at Brentford) and offer submission and beg protection for Mandubracius against Cassivellaunus. Cesar demanded from them forty hostages for their good faith and corn for his army, and he notes, “ They promptly obeyed these commands, sending the hostages to the number required and also the grain - whereupon the Tri-Novantes were granted protection and immunity from all injury on the part of the legions.” Thereupon the confederated tribes, and even part of Cassivellaunus’ own tribe of Cassis, following the lead of the Tri-Novantes, deserted from Cassivellaunus and submitted to Cesar, presumably won over by the latter through the agency of Mandubracius and by Commius, another exiled Gaulish Briton prince, who also was accompanying Cesar and utilized by him to communicate with the Britons, obviously for the notorious Roman policy of weakening their antagonists by dividing them — Divide et impera.”

Having thus isolated the heroic Cassivellaunus from his confederated Briton chiefs, Cesar promptly puisued him to his stronghold at Verulam —-which was almost due north of Brentford and by a’good road, in great part the old “ Watling Street, which by its name betrays its Gothic Briton origin‘—and there forced him to surrender, and he eagerly patched up a peace with him, as we learn from the contemporary letters of Cicero, stipulating that Cassivellaunus would not invade the land of the TriNovantes, and he immediately hastened back to Gaul to quell the serious insurrections there, and disheartened, as the contemporary Roman writers relate, at the final failure of his attempt to conquer Britain. In his hurried pursuit of Cassivellaunus from Brentford to Verulam and his precipitate retreat to the port of his re-embarlkation, in a campaign which lasted only a few weeks, it is clear that Cesar did not enter the capital city of the Tri-Novantes (Tri-Novantum or ‘‘ London ") at all, especially as he was debarred from so doing by his promise to prevent his legions from injuring or molesting in any way the Tri-Novantes, who had so largely contributed to the defeat of Cassivellaunus.

Czesar’s account of these events is generally confirmed by the indigenous

_ + One of the lowest, or the very lowest, fords over the Thames was formerly at Brentford, and it was “ difficult,” on account of its depth and the tides. Mr. M. Sharpe found from the Thames Conservancy that a line of stakes, of which some still remain “* for about 400 yards below Isleworth Ferry,” extended 45 years ago for about a mile up the river from “‘ Old England,” opposite the mouth of the Brent, and that “no other ancient stakes have been discovered in the lower river during dredging operations ” (Bregant-forde and the Hanweal, 1904, 1, 22-7). The name “ Brentford " itself, however, did not refer to this ford over the Thames, but to the small ford over the Brent at its junction with the Thames. And Brentford is about due south of Verulam by a good road, in part the “ Watling’ Road.

?D.B.G., 5, 8, 71b,, 5, 8.

“A writer of the fourteenth century says Watling Street crossed the Thames to the <west of Westminster. See H.A.B., 705.