The first amphibious assault in history?

In 55 BC, after several jolly years of massacring various Gallic and Germanic tribes, Julius Caesar found himself along Gaul’s Channel coast and within range of a tempting and lucrative target: Britain. The conquest of such a distant and reputedly wealthy island would bring great glory to Caesar, and thus he prepared a small amphibious expedition of about 2 legions (VII and X) to reconnoiter Britain in preparation for a larger invasion in the future. Caesar’s own narrative of this campaign describes one of the earliest amphibious assaults in history, in that the landing had to overcome opposition on the beach itself:

The natives, on realizing his intention, had sent forward their cavalry and a number of the chariots which they are accustomed to use in warfare; the rest of their troops followed close behind and were ready to oppose the landing. The Romans were faced with very grave difficulties. The size of the ships made it impossible to run them aground except in fairly deep water; and soldiers, unfamiliar with the ground, with their hands full, and weighed down by the heavy burden of their arms, had at the same time to jump down from the ships, get a footing in the waves, and fight the enemy, who, standing on dry land or advancing only a short way into the water, fought with all their limbs unencumbered and on perfectly familiar ground, boldly hurling javelin and galloping their horses, which were trained to this kind of work. These perils frightened our soldiers, who were quite unaccustomed to battles of this kind, with the result that they did not show the same alacrity and enthusiasm as they usually did in battles on dry land.

This imagery reminds me of Omaha Beach, with heavily laden U.S. soldiers having to wade under fire through 200 yards of neck-deep water before because the landing craft dropped their ramps too far offshore.

Caesar also describes how he used warships as fire support platforms to cover the infantry trying to fight their way ashore:

Seeing this, Caesar ordered the warships – which were swifter and easier to handle than the transports, and likely to impress the natives more by their unfamiliar appearance – to be removed a short distance from the others and then to be rowed hard and run ashore on the enemy’s right flank, from which position slings, bows, and artillery could be used by men on deck to drive them back. This maneuver was highly successful. Scared by the strange shape of the warships, the motion of the oars, and the unfamiliar machines, the natives halted and then retreated a little.

With the infantry struggling to capture a beachhead in the face of determined opposition, Caesar ordered some of his reserves from the transports onto more maneuverable vessels that could rapidly exploit weaknesses in the enemy’s defensive line. This ultimately won the day for Caesar.

Both sides fought hard. But as the Romans could not keep their ranks or get a firm foothold or follow their proper standards, and men from different ships fell in under the first standard they came across, great confusion resulted. The enemy knew all the shallows, and when they saw from the beach small parties of soldiers disembarking one by one, they galloped up and attacked them at a disadvantage, surrounding them with superior numbers, while others would throw javelins at the right flank of a whole group. Caesar therefore ordered the warships’ boats and the scouting vessels to be loaded with troops, so that he could send help to any point where he saw the men in difficulties. As soon as the soldiers has got a footing on the beach and had waited for all their comrades to join them, they charged the enemy and put them to flight, but could not pursue very far, because the cavalry had not been able to hold their course and make the island.

What I find remarkable is the extent to which this operation, over 2,000 years ago, presaged the fundamentals of modern amphibious warfare – including mobile offshore fire support, the abandonment of failed lodgements and the exploitation of successful beachheads with waves of reserve infantry – albeit on a reduced scale.

Caesar would return to the continent not long after. He again invaded Britain in 54 BC with a much larger force and this landing was unopposed. However, Britain turned out to be much less wealthy than Caesar had thought, and garrisoning the island was far more trouble than it was worth. Again Caesar returned to the mainland to deal with restless tribes. Rome would not return to Britain for another century.

Extreme southeast Britain, with the approximate landing site highlighted in yellow, between Deal and Walmer Castle

The voice of Wylie, Clausewitz down under, and a Roman stab in the back

Some fun miscellany:

RADM J.C. Wylie is of some significance to this blog. Though I am familiar with his writings and career history, his death 18 years ago precludes anyone from learning more about the man himself. Thus my keen interest when I recently stumbled across a video of Wylie speaking before a USS Fletcher reunion in late 1992, just a few months before his death, in which he shares some humorous anecdotes about his service aboard the destroyer during World War II. The quality of the video could be better, but it shows that Wylie was lucid, eloquent and sharp all the way to the end of his life, and adds some personality to the theory of Power Control.

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LibriVox, which collects audio recordings of public domain works, has available the first four Books of On War, narrated in an Australian accent. Beware, however: the Howard-Paret translation is still owned by Princeton University Press, so the LibriVox audio is based on the nightmarish Graham translation.

Be sure to check out LibriVox’s catalog of other works. Plenty of stuff for the daily commute or jog.

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I have been reading Alistair Horne’s A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954 – 1962, the definitive history of the French-Algerian War. He introduces Part 2 of the book with the following letter, attributed to Marcus Flavinius, a Roman centurion of the Augusta Legion:

We had been told, on leaving our native soil, that we were going to defend the sacred rights conferred on us by so many of our citizens settled overseas, so many years of our presence, so many benefits brought by us to populations in need of our assistance and our civilization.

We were able to verify that all this was true, and, because it was true, we did not hesitate to shed our quota of blood, to sacrifice our youth and our hopes. We regretted nothing, but whereas we over here are inspired by this frame of mind, I am told that in Rome factions and conspiracies are rife, that treachery flourishes, and that many people in their uncertainty and confusion lend a ready ear to the dire temptations of relinquishment … Make haste to reassure me, I beg you, and tell me that our fellow-citizens understand us, support us and protect us as we ourselves are protecting the glory of the Empire.

If it should be otherwise, if we should have to leave our bleached b0nes on these desert sands in vain, then beware of the anger of the Legions!

I have a very difficult time believing this authentic; the sentiments seem completely alien for a 1st century AD Roman centurion. In fact, Horne cites the source as Jean Lartéguy famous novel, The Centurions. I am unable to find any earlier reference to the letter, and it seems completely apocryphal. However, I would be fascinated to be proven wrong, if someone has information to the contrary.

Honor, Terror, and the Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire

Continuing my [hopefully short-lived] antiquarian bent,  I recently read Rome and the Enemy: Imperial Strategy in the Principate by Susan P. Mattern. Mattern examines the phenomenon of Roman imperialism by reconstructing their own frame of reference. She argues that, in general, the Romans did not view international relations and war in terms of “rational” objectives such as the military defense or economic security of the empire, but rather in terms of national honor. “Revolving around this idea of image or honor, Roman policy worked largely on the psychological (as opposed to strictly military or economic) plane.” (108-9)

The Romans … [did] not frame their analyses mainly in “rationalizing” economic or geopolitical terms; these motivations alone – the desire to achieve defensible frontiers, for example, or to balance the budget through lucrative conquests or to retain the tax revenue of a rebellious province – are inadequate to explain the intensity and brutality of the Roman effort in many cases. Instead, the Romans perceived their struggle for empire in very different terms: crucial were issues of psychology, the emotions of terror and awe that they hoped to produce in the enemy; and moral and status issues, such as the need to repress superbia [arrogance among the enemy], avenge iniruriae [violations of honor], and maintain the honor or decus of the empire. It was on these things that, as they believed, their security depended; it was for these that they fought. (194)

The Roman Army at War

Despite the prominence of the subject in the public imagination, the general reader has limited access to substantive information on the Roman army. The volumes available in bookstores are usually illustrated uniform and equipment guides, which are full of neat pictures and look great on a coffee table, but are otherwise worthless. Those seeking real information are forced to shell out the money for academic monographs.

Adrian Goldsworthy might be familiar to most people as a serial commentator on those ubiquitous cable “documentaries” about ancient Rome, but his credentials are solid as today’s foremost scholar of Roman military history. I recently finished what is probably his most important work, The Roman Army at War: 100 BC – 200 AD. Goldsworthy’s objective was to write a study of the Roman army as an actual fighting force in the context of its own time; not an anachronistic search for timeless “principles” of strategy and tactics or a social history focused on the daily routine of the soldiers. Thus, he consciously imitates the technique in John Keegan’s The Face of Battle.

The general fascination with the Roman army and the wealth of literature devoted to it makes it all the more surprising that no comprehensive study of its military performance has been attempted this century. Many books have devoted sections to the army’s tactics, organization, and weaponry, but have failed to discuss how the army actually fought. There has been a tendency to shy away from the waging of war. This is the ultimate function of all armies, including the Roman, a statement that is true even for a force only rarely engaged in actual fighting. (2)

Summarizing all the contents of the book would be futile, but here are some of the general points:

Lessons from Byzantium: Survival Amid Weakness and Eternal War

The word ‘Byzantine’ has come to denote political intrigue of treacherous complexity. Thus, it might be thought that a Byzantine grand strategy would be something to avoid like the plague; a nightmarish tangle of ill-conceived and contradictory policies that is guaranteed to produce catastrophe [sound familiar?]. In fact, the empire from which the term derives was one of the longest surviving empires in history. Surely they must have done something right.

Indeed, as Edward Luttwak argues in his new book, The Grand Strategy of the Byzantine Empire, Byzantine history provides an excellent example of a grand strategy that utilized all instruments of state power to maximum effect.

Strategy is an imperative for the poor and the weak. Compared to the united Roman Empire of centuries past, Byzantium was both. When it decided to wage war, the ancient Roman Empire was able to combine well-trained military forces raised from its huge manpower reserves with sheer warlike determination to literally grind its enemies into dust, often abandoning strategic and tactical subtlety to gain victory through simple attrition; a high-cost but low-risk strategy guaranteed to produce success for anyone able to foot the bill. Not so the Byzantine Empire, which suffered from a chronic shortage of combat-ready troops and a disadvantaged geography that left it surrounded by enemies, with no easily defensible frontiers or a secure “homeland” territory. And yet, the Byzantine Empire survived nearly a millennium longer than its Western ancestor. How? With a grand strategy attuned to its situation.