Caesar's First Brush With the British Celts
By Mike J. Bond

Caesar paid Britain a visit in August 55 B.C.E., and life as the Celts knew it would never be the same again. Caesar was in Gaul, but found that the Celts from Britain were helping their friends across the Channel with troops and supplies. This was quite unacceptable to Caesar and was one of the reasons for his foray into Britain.
More importantly, however, conquering Britain would bring him tremendous prestige at home. His unbounded ambition was to rule all of Rome, and victory against the Celts would help him no end.
The third reason was that if he wanted to rule Rome, he'd need an enormous amount of money. From the rumours that had tickled his ears, such wealth was to be found in the interior of Britain.
August was late in the season for campaigning, and Caesar was in a hurry. He set off with two legions, Legio XII and Legio X. He knew he needed cavalry, but there seems to have been so much confusion loading the horses, that he gave orders for them to come when they were ready.
He'd been advised that the best place to land was Dover, or Dubris as he knew it. He found it to be an excellent spot, except for one thing. The cliffs and hills were massed with Celtic warriors and any attempt at landing would be met with a forest of javelins, and he knew perfectly well that he'd probably sustain unacceptable casualties.
Caesar sailed slowly around the coast for another 7 miles, eventually landing at Walmer, two miles due south of Deal. The Celts followed him all the way. This landing spot was a lot better than Dover in one sense. The problem was that the ships were unable to come any closer than about 200 yards to the shore. This meant that the soldiers were forced to wade onto the beach.
They came under sling and javelin fire, which threw them into temporary distraction, but Caesar brought his slings, archers and ballistae to bear on the Celts. The ballistae were particularly fearsome weapons. They were like huge crossbows, and fired a great iron bolt. All this threw the Celts into confusion and gave the soldiers a chance to land and to form up in battle detail. Once they were organised, they advanced on the Celts with typical Roman discipline and put the Celts to flight.
To begin with, the soldiers were decidedly nervous of these big, naked men covered in blue paint, or woad as it was named. The Celts, for their part, weren't used to fighting a battle against such well organized and disciplined troops, and they were thrown into confusion. The Roman cavalry had yet to arrive, and Caesar was unable to chase the Celts down as he would have liked.
Some days later, a gale blew up and prevented the cavalry from landing at all. Legio XII went foraging as soon as the gale was over and cut corn. This, thought the Celts, was a fine time to attack. They did so with cavalry and chariots, and the Legion barely held on. Fortunately for them, Caesar came up with a relief column and the Celts were put to flight.
Individually, they were magnificent warriors, but they completely lacked cohesion. As we've already seen, when the Roman troops landed and eventually formed up in full battle array, the Celts were thrown into panicked chaos.
However, the Celts were well aware that Caesar had only a limited number of troops and that he'd lost his cavalry. Caesar was only too aware of his position, though, and a few days later, he slipped away in the middle of the night, making an uneventful crossing to Gaul.
So ended what was, in fact, Caesar's reconnaissance in force. It was never meant to be an invasion. That would be for another day