‘Their mode of fighting with their chariots is this: firstly, they drive about in all directions, and throw their weapons, and generally break the ranks of the enemy with the very dread of their horses and the noise of their wheels; and when they have worked themselves in between the troops of horse, leap from their chariots and engage on foot. The charioteers in the mean time withdraw some little distance from the battle, and so place themselves with the chariots that, if their masters are overpowered by the number of the enemy, they may have a ready retreat to their own troops. Thus they display in battle the speed of horse, together with the firmness of infantry; and by daily practice and exercise attain to such expertness that they are accustomed, even on a declining and steep place, to check their horses at full speed, and manage and turn them in an instant and run along the pole, and stand on the yoke, and thence betake themselves with the greatest celerity to their chariots again.’[1] Thus they filled the middle of the field of battle with their tumult and wheeling and careering. The Britons appear to have been the only people in Europe who fought from chariots, a circumstance which affords the early British historian, Geoffrey of Monmouth, an argument to prove that they were of Trojan origin.
The immense number of horses they possessed may be judged from the fact, that Cassivelaunus, the British chief who was invested with the supreme command of the forces of the island, in order to oppose Caesar, after dismissing all his other troops, yet retained no fewer than 4000 war chariots about him. And their cavalry was
- ↑ Cæsar. Op. cit., lib. iv. cap. 33.
