He had expected to find pearls in Britain,and he may have found a few for anything I know;but,at all events,he found delicious oysters,and I am sure he found tough Britons-of whom,I dare say,he made the same complaint as Napoleon Bonaparte the great French General did,eighteen hundred years afterwards,when he said they were such unreasonable fellows that they never knew when they were beaten.They never DID know,I believe,and never will.
Nearly a hundred years passed on,and all that time,there was peace in Britain.The Britons improved their towns and mode of life:became more civilised,travelled,and learnt a great deal from the Gauls and Romans.At last,the Roman Emperor,Claudius,sent AULUS PLAUTIUS,a skilful general,with a mighty force,to subdue the Island,and shortly afterwards arrived himself.They did little;and OSTORIUS SCAPULA,another general,came.Some of the British Chiefs of Tribes submitted.Others resolved to fight to the death.Of these brave men,the bravest was CARACTACUS,or CARADOC,who gave battle to the Romans,with his army,among the mountains of North Wales.'This day,'said he to his soldiers,'decides the fate of Britain!Your liberty,or your eternal slavery,dates from this hour.Remember your brave ancestors,who drove the great Caesar himself across the sea!'On hearing these words,his men,with a great shout,rushed upon the Romans.But the strong Roman swords and armour were too much for the weaker British weapons in close conflict.The Britons lost the day.The wife and daughter of the brave CARACTACUS were taken prisoners;his brothers delivered themselves up;he himself was betrayed into the hands of the Romans by his false and base stepmother:and they carried him,and all his family,in triumph to Rome.
But a great man will be great in misfortune,great in prison,great in chains.His noble air,and dignified endurance of distress,so touched the Roman people who thronged the streets to see him,that he and his family were restored to freedom.No one knows whether his great heart broke,and he died in Rome,or whether he ever returned to his own dear country.English oaks have grown up from acorns,and withered away,when they were hundreds of years old-and other oaks have sprung up in their places,and died too,very aged-since the rest of the history of the brave CARACTACUS was forgotten.
Still,the Britons WOULD NOT yield.They rose again and again,and died by thousands,sword in hand.They rose,on every possible occasion.SUETONIUS,another Roman general,came,and stormed the Island of Anglesey (then called MONA),which was supposed to be sacred,and he burnt the Druids in their own wicker cages,by their own fires.But,even while he was in Britain,with his victorious troops,the BRITONS rose.Because BOADICEA,a British queen,the widow of the King of the Norfolk and Suffolk people,resisted the plundering of her property by the Romans who were settled in England,she was scourged,by order of CATUS a Roman officer;and her two daughters were shamefully insulted in her presence,and her husband's relations were made slaves.To avenge this injury,the Britons rose,with all their might and rage.They drove CATUS into Gaul;they laid the Roman possessions waste;they forced the Romans out of London,then a poor little town,but a trading place;they hanged,burnt,crucified,and slew by the sword,seventy thousand Romans in a few days.SUETONIUS strengthened his army,and advanced to give them battle.They strengthened their army,and desperately attacked his,on the field where it was strongly posted.Before the first charge of the Britons was made,BOADICEA,in a war-chariot,with her fair hair streaming in the wind,and her injured daughters lying at her feet,drove among the troops,and cried to them for vengeance on their oppressors,the licentious Romans.The Britons fought to the last;but they were vanquished with great slaughter,and the unhappy queen took poison.
Still,the spirit of the Britons was not broken.When SUETONIUS left the country,they fell upon his troops,and retook the Island of Anglesey.AGRICOLA came,fifteen or twenty years afterwards,and retook it once more,and devoted seven years to subduing the country,especially that part of it which is now called SCOTLAND;