invariably fought under sail, and manoeuvred so skilfully that
boarding was impossible. In the end, after several unsuccessful
skirmishes, Caesar armed his marines with long billhooks, instructing
them to strike at the halyards of the Gallic vessels as they swept
past. (These must have been fastened outboard.) The device succeeded.
One after another, in a great battle off Quiberon, of which the Roman
land force were spectators, the huge leathern mainsails dropped on
to the decks, doubtless "covering the ship as with a pall," as in the
like misfortune to the Elizabethan _Revenge_ in her heroic defence
against the Spanish fleet, and hopelessly crippling the vessel,
whether for sailing or rowing. The Romans were at last able to board,
and the whole Venetian fleet fell into their hands. The strongholds
on the coast were now stormed, and the entire population either
slaughtered or sold into slavery, as an object lesson to the rest of
the confederacy of the fate in store for those who dared to stand out
against the Genius of Rome.

B. 4.--Caesar had now got a very pretty excuse for extending his
operations to Britain, and, as his object was to pose at Rome as "a
Maker of Empire," he eagerly grasped at the chance. Something of a
handle, moreover, was afforded him by yet another connection between
the two sides of the Channel. Many people were still alive who
remembered the days when Divitiacus, King of the Suessiones (at
Soissons), had been the great potentate of Northern Gaul. In Caesar's
time this glory was of the past, and the Suessiones had sunk to
a minor position amongst the Gallic clans. But within the last
half-century the sway of their monarch had been acknowledged not only
over great part of Gaul, but in Britain also. Caesar's words, indeed,
would almost seem to point to the island as a whole having been in
some sense under him: _Etiam Britanniae imperium obtinuit_.[72]