The event was such as might have been expected. Paulinus, having chosen a situation favorable to the smallness of his numbers, and encouraged his troops not to dread a multitude whose weight was dangerous only to themselves, piercing into the midst of that disorderly crowd, after a blind and furious resistance, obtained a complete victory. Eighty thousand Britons fell in this battle.
[Sidenote: A.D. 61] Paulinus improved the terror this slaughter had produced by the unparalleled severities which he exercised. This method would probably have succeeded to subdue, but at the same time to depopulate the nation, if such loud complaints had not been made at Rome of the legate's cruelty as procured his recall.
Three successive legates carried on the affairs of Britain during the latter part of Nero's reign, and during the troubles occasioned by the disputed succession. But they were all of an inactive character. The victory obtained by Paulinus had disabled the Britons from any new attempt. Content, therefore, with recovering the Roman province, these generals compounded, as it were, with the enemy for the rest of the island. They caressed the troops; they indulged them in their licentiousness; and not being of a character to repress the seditions that continually arose, they submitted to preserve their ease and some shadow of authority by sacrificing the most material parts of it. And thus they continued, soldiers and commanders, by a sort of compact, in a common neglect of all duty on the frontiers of the Empire, in the face of a bold and incensed enemy.
But when Vespasian arrived to the head of affairs, he caused the vigor of his government to be felt in Britain, as he had done in all the other parts of the Empire. He was not afraid to receive great services. His legates, Cerealis and Frontinus, reduced the Silures and Brigantes,--one the most warlike, the other the most numerous people in the island. But its final reduction and perfect settlement were reserved for Julius Agricola, a man by whom, it was a happiness for the Britons to be conquered. He was endued with all those bold and popular virtues which would have given him the first place in the times of the free Republic; and he joined to them all that reserve and moderation which enabled him to fill great offices with safety, and made him a good subject under a jealous despotism.