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The Breton and British Celts, Ch.1
Some more information on the wonderful and proud land of the Bretons, and the Britons.
From the desk of -- Skyelander@Scotlandmail.com
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*(C)opyright 1998/99 RMG *
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** Chapter One **
*İopright 1998/99 RMG - All Rights Reserved for use by author only.
Violations of the copyright law will be prosecuted with prejudice.*
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Brittany, also known as French Bretagne ; Breton-Briez, is an ancient province of the duchy of France, compromising the country known as Armorica until the influx of the Briton Celts of Britain. For those not familiar with the different Celts in Britain in the ancient days, there were the ancient race of the Irish in Ireland; the Picts in the north of Scotland (also called collectively "Caledonians" by the Romans); the Silures or ancient Welsh; the Scots in Dalriada (around 500 AD) from the Irish; the Britons of Strathclyde -- a race of Celtic people strongly related to the Welsh both in customs and in the form of Celtic language; and at least a dozen different south and central British Celtic tribes that were, for the most part, thoroughly Romanised. Gaelic Celtic and Brythonic Celtic are the main types of Celtic language ; but that is truthfully an oversimplification, as their were so many forms of Celtic languages.
When the Romans left Britain, and the Angles and Saxons, already present, they were brought in as reinforcement troops and paid by the Roman legions; the Angles and Saxons slowly merged forming a people we now call the Anglo-Saxons. They were a Germanic, war-like group of people who aggressively sought more and more land for themselves throughout the whole of the British mainland. Their constant wars against the native Celtic peoples forced the Scots to war on them and the Britons to seek haven in a new land, across the channel in an area of northwest France, now known as Brittany. (From the name Britons).
It consists of the northwestern peninsula of France, nearly corresponding to the modern departments of Finistere, Cotes-du-Nord, Morbihan, Ille-et-Vilaine and Loire-Antlantique.
The historical evolution of Brittany has been mainly determined by its remoteness. The region has twice been a shelter for the Celts. The earliest inhabitants of whom there is record were Celtic tribes, possible intermingled with the remnants of an earlier race whose monuments are menhirs, dolems and cromlechs (most numerous at Carna, Morbihan). Conquered by Julius Caesar in 56 B.C, Armorica took part in the unsuccessful rising against him in (see Vercingetorix - Main menu) 52-51 B.C. It was only superficially Romanised.
In my search of information relating to the Celts of Brittany, I have come across some very interesting articles on the ancient Celts from 3000 B.C. to the end of the 1st century A.D. It may be an entire series of essays for me down the road, (if I ever get caught up), and if anyone is interested in this topic, please let me know via email.
I found this information, of Breton resistance to the armies of Rome, in an old book of my grandfathers, "The Oldest Unknown Race" by C.Thomas McAlistair, 1892. In this old tome I found this fascinating history of Bretons fighting the Romans under Caesar.
Throughout Caesar's campaigns in Gaul, Diviciacus, cheiftain of the Aedui, was constantly at Caesar's side, urging his Celtic confederates to submit peacefully to Roman domination. As the Roman war machine rolled on, more and more Gallic warriors joined its legions. So far, in his march through Gaul, Caesar had had good excuses for his aggression the invitations of the Aedui, the attacks of the Belgae. But in 57 B.C he sent a detachment under the command of a subordinate to the lands of the Atlantic coast. Their subsequent reduction of this peaceful area was unprovoked and patently revealed Caesar's intention to conquer the whole of Gaul. The next year, recovering from the shock of Roman occupation, the Celts of Brittany, led by the Veneti tribe, took up arms. The Veneti were a maritime power, deriving much wealth from their shipping of British tin from Cornwall to Gallic traders. Their strongholds stood on headlands or islands in tidal estuaries which were cut off from the land for most of the time by the sea.
As the Romans approached the Atlantic coast, the Veneti and Breton forces strengthened their fleet and gathered fellow tribesman, including many warriors from Britain. Caesar was secure in his excuse this time: the quelling of a tribe who had already submitted and the punishment of a terrorist kidnapping of Roman envoys. He again employed the assistance of the friendly Celts who supplied him with Gallic ships built along the Loire. With his land forces he tried to capture the Breton strongholds. Using all the ingenuity of Roman Seigecraft, he had hugh dykes constructed to the island fortresses of the Celts. But no sooner had these been completed then the defenders simply evacuated into awaiting ships and moved to another fortress. The lack of natural harbours and rough ocean weather made Roman assaults by sea difficult.
The considerable advantage of knowing the local seaways lay very much with the Veneti. But, as elsewhere, these was no shortage of Celts ready to assist the Romans.
Local Gauls presented the Romans with a rapidly-built fleet which cannot have been very different from that of the Veneti.
"They have flat bottoms", wrote Caesar of the Gallic ships, "which enables them to sail in shallow coastal water. Their high bows and sterns protect them from heavy seas and violent storms, as do their strong hulls made entirely from oak. The cross-timbers -- beams a foot wide -- are secured with iron nails as thick as a man's thumb. Their anchors are secured with chains not ropes, while their sails are made of raw hide or thin leather, so as to stand up to the violent Altantic winds."
These are Caesar's words of the description of the Bretons Gallic warships. Is this where the Vikings, to come 6 centuries later, got their incredible ideas for the longships? Perhaps we will never know, but the description of the Gallic ships is uncannily similar in form, if not construction.
When Caesar's fleet was ready, he confronted the Veneti in the Loire estuary. As the boats crashed into each other, legionaires and their Gallic allies watched the battle from the cliff-tops. The Romans in the boats -- all land soilders -- were at a loss as to how to tackle the Veneti Gallic seamen. They improvised with scythes attached to long poles and used them to cut the Celtic rigging. With their sails fluttering uselessly and apparently no oars to assist them, the Celtic Bretons and their British Celtic allies, soon lost control. Several Roman boats then locked onto individual Celtic ships and boarded them.
The Celtic sailors were overwhelmed by the armoured Romans and the fleet of the Veneti broke up. A fall in the wind prevented many from escaping and the majority of the Gallic Celtic force was captured. This seems a particularly miserable defeat for the Celts. A fleet of expert seamen shattered by landlubber Romans making do with scyths. Caesar's account doesn't ring true. It seems more likely, as the case had been before, that the fighting on the Roman side was conducted wholly by Gallic Auxiliaries used to shipping and hired by the Romans. Whatever the actual details, this Breton defeat of 56 B.C was a crushing one for the Atlantic Gauls. Caesar had many of his prisoners executed and the rest sold as slaves to his legionaires and allied Celtic tribes.
After the withdrawl of the Romans in the 5th and 6th centuries there was a considerable immigration of Celts from Britain (the Britons most notably), who took refuge among their continental kinsman from the Angle and Saxon invasion. Till then the rural population had been mostly pagan (as was most of Britain); but from that point onward, for 300 years Breton history and tradition are largely occupied with of the records and legends of the Celtic missionaries from Britain and Ireland, who gradually converted the whole country and gave their names to towns and villages (e.g., St. Malo, St. Brieuc, St.Tugdual and St. Pol-de-Leon).
The 5th and 6th Century, the Britons, Bretons and Anglo-Saxons
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The Anglo-Saxons wars in Britain were part of a broader conflict across north-west Europe. In France, the Romano-Gauls (Roman and Celtic Gauls allies) had long protected the coasts of Brittany against Saxon pirates with their river-mouth forts. During the fifth century, the Romano-Gallic warlords were joined by British immigrants. These were the cream of Romano-British aristocracy from Cornwall: some fleeing before Irish (Scots) raiders, others hoping for closer associations with Imperial Roman culture. Allied sometimes with the Franks of France, it was this Romano-Gallo-British amalgam -- the BRETONS -- who fought most ferociously against the Saxons of the North Sea and the Goths settled in Central France, and then, in later centuries, when the Franks had established themselves as a separate kingdom, it was the Bretons who maintained Brittany as an independent Celtic state against the Merovingian and Carolingian dynasties.
Celtic Brittany was divided into a number of smaller lordships, upon which the Merovingians and the first Carolingians tried without great success to impose their authority. The line of the Carolingians would go on to produce the most important of all early medieval rulers -- Charlemagne. But the Celtic Bretons, as tough and proud as their British and Irish counterparts, would continue to resist the powerful emerging Frankish Kingdoms.
In the sixth century, Gregory of Tours records their damaging raids on the cities of Nantes and Rennes. Two hundred years later, the Bretons were still resisting and Charlemagne had to devote an entire campaign to their conquest. Even then this proved fragile and during his reign they were in constant rebellion.
Back in the fifth century, the security of the Bretons depended on the efforts of independent Romano-Gallic warlords like Ecdicius. With only his private income to fund him and no assistance from other magnates, Ecdicuis gathered together a small force of horse-warriors. He then set about ambushing the local plundering expeditions of the Goths of central France. So hard did the Gallic horsemen harass the Goth raiders that, according to the account of Sidonius, the bandits had no time to retrieve threir dead. Instead the raiders (Goths) preferred to cut the heads off their comrades so that at least the Gallic Ecdicius would not know how many Goths he had slain by the hairstyles of corpses. When this private band of man-hunters relieved the town of Clermont from the Goth bandits, Ecdicius was received rapturously by the townspeople.
The Emergence of a Celtic legend : Arthur
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These Gallic Guerilla actions took place around 471 A.D. and may well have been inspired by stories of the successful resistance of the Britons in Britain, led by Ambrosius Aurelianus. Ten years earlier, Ambrosius had commanded a similar task force of horse-warriors against the Saxons in Britain. Raised from the Romano-Celtic estates of the West Country and Wales, these swift-moving, professional, largely aristocratic horsemen hammered the Saxons in a series of confrontations. The Celtic warriors called each other Combrogi -- "fellow countrymen", a word probably derived from the Latin "cives". It is the origin of "Cymry" and "Cumbri", names still used by the Welsh and North-west British to denote their Celtic separateness from the Germanic English. For a hundred years, the British Celts and Saxons fought their border wars. At sometime during the conflict Ambrosius died. He was replaced by an equally competent warlord, a major Romano-British Celtic land-owner and expert leader of horsemen: Arthur.
Chapter Two of this essay, The Breton and British Celts, will resume shortly, with a look at the legendary Arthur. He may well have been real it appears, and he was Celtic.
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Author/Medieval Historian:
Robert Gunn, HWA
* (C)opyright 1997-99, RMG * All Rights Reserved *
* No portion may be reproduced without prior written consent of the author *
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