Hadrian and the North South Divide
Britain is naturally divided by geography;
the south is generally warmer, more fertile, and closer to the continent than
the North. Southern England had tin, and
could control much of the trade in copper from the Irish Sea, so it was an
important component in Prehistoric Northern Europe. The North itself is divided
-- Scotland split between a highlands and lowlands.
The realpolitik in ancient times was how to
stop those in the north from taking materials from their more prosperous
southern neighbours. These North-South dynamics
were a recurrent theme of English history and both the North–South divide and
Scottish independence are live political issues even today.
In the ancient world, politics was often conducted through warfare, and power was expressed through military engineering. Engineers changed geography and the shape of the landscape; heaped things up and dug things away, build roads, water courses, bridges, towns, and forts. While what remains is stone, but most of the past was formed from earth, straw, and the key engineering component of the ancient world, wood.
Political Engineering
It was in wooden ships, built by Celtic
shipwrights in Gaul that the Romans, led by Julius Caesar, first arrived in Southern
England in 55-54 BC. We know this
because in Caesar’s account of his wars in Gaul we get an unprecedented insight
into both military engineering and the mechanics of the imperial machine.
I will use the word Celt here even though Caesar made clear he was dealing with the local aristocracy. In this context warfare was interaction between two ruling classes vying for ultimate control of land, its resources, and the people who worked it. ‘Romanization’ was a top down process.
Certainly, there was warfare, but this was
driven by diplomacy and a political narrative. The Celtic peoples had long
interacted with the Mediterranean world, and in many ways the Roman army was
shaped by early unsuccessful encounters with them. For all concerned, warfare
was a career and a business opportunity, so everybody knew the rules and what
to expect.
While Caesar did not stay, he established
the political relationships that got Rome a foothold using the actuality or
threat of a Roman intervention to destabilize existing regional politics. Once an area came within range of Rome’s
political and military interests, it’s leaders had two choices; cut a deal or
fight. All of this on top of the traditional political and military pressures from
other rivals beyond Roman control. Invariably,
this put the ruling elite between a rock a hard place. For perfectly honorable
reasons they might resist and then end up with a worse deal, although not as
bad if you make a deal and then broke it. Punitive sanctions went as far as genocide, or
you might have gotten away with enslavement.
Once you were a client of the Rome, her
army will ensure your security, in return for your assurance that it receive
the necessary supplies, principally wheat, but also other material assistance
and access to resources. This sort of ‘taxation’
did not need micromanagement -- a treaty was made with the local political
authority, so the Romans knew who to blame if obligations were not met. Beyond
this, engineering made the Roman army self-sufficient in managing its security.
Rome in the North
When the Romans returned in 43 AD they had
controlled the Atlantic Seaboard for ninety years, so Claudius was more
properly prepared for a long campaign; not just an army, but a navy also, since
control of the sea was key to taking and holding an Island.
When Agricola made the first significant
push into the north in the early 80s he had a naval presence on both coasts and
even thought about an expedition to Ireland.
Then, after the near disaster of the Boudicca revolt, the south was secured,
and Rome was on the offensive, initially in the west and then in the North. In
a typically aggressive series of campaigns Agricola punched his way north culminating
in a battle of Mons Graupius, where his auxiliary troops reportedly killed
about a third of a thirty thousand man highlander force.The year was 84 A.D. and it was a high water mark when the highlanders retreated
back into their glens in the mountains or the Islands in the West, and reverted
to an over the horizon threat. Rather
than pursuing them, the Romans chose to construct rough perimeter of timber forts
and watch towers blocking off enemy territory. An opportunity and the strategic
initiative had been lost due to external decisions and changes in military
priorities of the Empire.
At some point towards the end of the first century,
the Romans withdrew the majority of their forces from Scotland to the territory
of the Brigantes, who controlled Northern England. Their main base was set up
at York and occupied by the twentieth legion. The Brigantes had long been loyal
to Rome and provided a key buffer state for the Lands to the south. We also presume that some political relations
continued with former allies in Scotland, although everything between the campaigns
of Agricola and the building of the wall 40 years later is very sketchy.
At this point Hadrian arrives, possibly in
response to a revolt in the north involving the Brigantes, who may have been
triggered by the death of Trajan. Hadrian
brought fresh troops, and re-established a ‘frontier’ in the North of Brigantes
territory. After 80 years, the
Romans understood that most of what they valued was in the South, so the
north was no more than a security zone.
What I have written so far is traditional
scholarship, but I wish to change the story that emerges after looking at the ancient
engineering.
Hadrian’s North-South Divide
The Wall was a live frontier; so clearly nobody within
striking range of the Roman Army was going to be openly hostile, but beyond
them were still the people who were isolated. Whatever the political and military
circumstances that established the peace, splitting the country in two with a
physical barrier probably came as a surprise to those beyond it.
The Roman Army was unlikely to face infantry
in mass formation in open battle, and so the main threat probably came from
concentrations fast moving mounted troops.
A physical barrier forced them to dismount and fight on the Roman terms,
against gateways that allowed the Romans to counter attack and outflank their opponents.
Hadrian’s wall is a military engineering
solution to the North-South Divide. The
line of forts and observation points had proved ineffective, but the Wall
changes the geography.
How were the Romans able to spread
themselves out across an eighty mile construction project without protection?
In the first season the bulk of the troops
were engaged in creating a timber and earth wall with a ditch in front it which
protected the work parties behind it. Each
of the forts being built was staged with a temporary camp to house the garrison
and builders while work was on-going. Similarly, those guarding and building
the Wall required accommodations. As part of the process, a construction trench
was dug behind the wall for a road -- the spoil neatly piled to allow two wide
verges on either side of the planned metalled carriageway. The skilled workers were concentrated in
specialist groups working on the Wall starting in the East, while others started
work on milecastles and forts. Those digging
the trench and laying the foundation were not as skilled as the crews working
on the stone wall so their work was completed well ahead of time.
All appears to have gone well at first, but
at some point, work appears to have virtually stopped. It is likely that warfare
disrupted the construction process. Once the work was restarted again, the
quality and quantity of the building was scaled back, the plan to build the road
was abandoned, and extra forts were added.
So the wall was built in a war zone, as an
army installation and a fortified frontier to contain the threat that had not
been eliminated forty years earlier. Whatever the technical and in particular
logistic achievements, the Wall did not work, and Hadrian’s successor moved the
frontier North to Forth Isthmus, where forces could be concentrated on a
shorter frontier.
Little remains of the wall to study, after centuries
of robbing, and its systematic demolition by engineers in 1740’s in what turned out to
be the final action on the frontier. On 16 April 1746, the Battle of Culloden,
probably not that far from Mons Graupius, finally brought the highlands under
central control.
There has been very little investigation of the scant traces of that remain of the extensive temporary works or of the builders and forces that guarded them. In the archaeology of these timber and earth structures lies the real key to understanding how the Wall was constructed.
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