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
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Dickens, Charles – A Child’s History of England
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.