Caesar spent but twenty-eight days in his German expedition.  In ten he built his admirable bridge across the Rhine; in eighteen he performed all he proposed by entering that country.  When the Germans saw the barrier of their river so easily overcome, and Nature herself, as it were, submitted to the yoke, they were struck with astonishment, and never after ventured to oppose the Romans in the field.  The most obnoxious of the German countries were ravaged, the strong awed, the weak taken into protection.  Thus an alliance being formed, always the first step of the Roman policy, and not only a pretence, but a means, being thereby acquired of entering the country upon any future occasion, he marched back through Gaul to execute a design of much the same nature and extent in Britain.

[Sidenote:  B.C. 55.]

The inhabitants of that island, who were divided into a great number of petty nations, under a very coarse and disorderly frame of government, did not find it easy to plan any effectual measures for their defence.  In order, however, to gain time in this exigency, they sent ambassadors to Caesar with terms of submission.  Caesar could not colorably reject their offers.  But as their submission rather clashed than coincided with his real designs, he still persisted in his resolution of passing over into Britain; and accordingly embarked with the infantry of two legions at the port of Itium.[5] His landing was obstinately disputed by the natives, and brought on a very hot and doubtful engagement.  But the superior dispositions of so accomplished a commander, the resources of the Roman discipline, and the effect of the military engines on the unpractised minds of a barbarous people prevailed at length over the best resistance which could be made by rude numbers and mere bravery.  The place where the Romans first entered this island was somewhere near Deal, and the time fifty-five years before the birth of Christ.

The Britons, who defended their country with so much resolution in the engagement, immediately after it lost all their spirit.  They had laid no regular plan, for their defence.  Upon their first failure they seamed to have no resources left.  On the slightest loss they betook themselves to treaty and submission; upon the least appearance in their favor they were as ready to resume their arms, without any regard to their former engagements:  a conduct which demonstrates that our British ancestors had no regular polity with a standing coercive power.  The ambassadors which they sent to Caesar laid all the blame of a war carried on by great armies upon the rashness of their young men, and they declared that the ruling people had no share in these hostilities.  This is exactly the excuse which the savages of America, who have no regular government, make at this day upon the like occasions; but it would be a strange apology from one of the modern states of Europe that had employed armies against another.  Caesar reprimanded them