Hello today we're going to talk about druids, we don't know much about druids
but we do have some information left to us by third parties who wrote about
encounters with them and one of those encounters was a battle where druids
used magic against their foe. So welcome to druids and the art of war. Welcome to
Crecganford. So back in AD 60 Suetonius Paulinus was the governor of the Romans
in Britain and things weren't going particularly great I mean the Romans had
just managed to invade Britain properly, I was trying to take control but
obviously there were people rebelling and while the groups rebelling were the
religious groups, the Druids, and the Druids had a particular bolt-hole, a particular
place where they all went, considered a safe place, and that was a place called
Anglesey which is in Northwest Wales. I'll show you on a map. The Romans called
Anglesey Mona Inusla, and what the Romans thought was a good idea and
what Paulinus thought it was a good idea that they should go to Mona Insula and wipe
out the druids. One of the things we do know about druids comes from Tacitus Tacitus
was a roman who documented the Roman conquest of Europe and Britain, and he
worked in a in a way called "interpretio Romana"
which is a way of comparing things to as they were in the Roman Way of life so
where there was a god if in a pagan god in Britain if it looked or acted or
was like a god from the Roman Empire he would talk about that Roman god rather
than the pagan god and that's quite important because Romans treated gods
from other tribes and areas in exactly the same way as they treated their gods
they thought they had the same power the same authority and his rather quite
willing to bring them into their Pantheon's but more about that later
that's an important point because when Romans came across pagan gods they had
to treat them with respect so one of the things Tacitus wrote about was a battle
with druids and I'll read that now they said only about a minute long and then
after that we'll actually pull that apart and tell the story how it actually
probably happened because it involves a magic and druids and rituals and an
awesomely scary sight so this is what Tacitus said; on the shore stood the opposing
army with its dense array of armed warriors while between the ranks dashed
women in black attire like the Furies with hair dishevelled waving brands all around
the Druids lifted up their hands to heaven and pouring forth dreadful
implications which scared our soldiers by the unfamiliar sight so that as if their
limbs were paralyzed they stood motionless and exposed to
wounds then urged by their generals appeals and mutual encouragement not to
quail before a group of frenzied women they bore the standards onwards smote
down all resistance and wrapped the foe in the flames of his own brands, a force
was next set over the conquered and their groves devoted to inhuman
superstitions were destroyed they deemed it indeed a duty to cover their altars
with the blood of captives and to consult their deities through human
entrails so Tacitus his account clearly states
that the Roman army pretty much cut down the Druids and so the battle that
happened would involve a lot of magic from the druid point of view because
this was the Druids stronghold so when the Romans came off their boats
and waited to shore they would have just seen hundreds of druids all praying all
reaching for the sky and they've had no idea what was going on and it would have
been quite a scary sight for the Roman army who probably rarely encountered such a
force they're used to encountering soldiers armed but these would have just
been druids, praying, and between them they had these Furies as they called
them, dressed in black, holding flaming torches, running in between them,
screaming, looking wild, it would have been a real sight to behold and
something that obviously awestruck the Romans and they needed an incentive of
Paulinus and then their generals to keep pushing and forward but then they just
hacked down these Furies holding the flames because they weren't armed
they just slaughtered them and then went up onto the beach and slaughtered the
druids who weren't armed it would have been an easy victory, but then they would
have realized something and this is hinted in the text talking about held
the Druids burned in the flames of their own making well that may well mean that
the druids actually built a pyre, a funeral pyre, on the beach and was
standing on it they were expecting to die those prayers they were saying were
probably prayers of human sacrifice of ritual of human sacrifice to help defeat
the Romans and those Furies probably get that power when the woods were defeated
and now some of them that were left over and they would have burned and the Roman
soldiers would have realized at that point they had taken part in a druid
human sacrifice they were part of that sacrifice part of that druid religion
and effect for that moment and that probably would have scared them a hell
of a lot so after those druids were defeated they went on and destroyed the
groves on the Isle of Anglesey and they went back again later sometime later and
actually defeated again although they actually swam across the sea where they
came up so surprising them and then destroyed
the last of the Druids so after the battle the Romans would have been quite
scared I think lots of the soldiers would have had worries in their head
about witchcraft and magic and spells and what had they done and they had
sacrificed humans in a ritual and that probably played on their mind for a bit
humans would have probably circulated about Rome collapsing or soldiers dying
for no reasons or people becoming ill or plagues and then what actually happened
was that a woman by the name of Boudica then started in that fires in the other
side of England and so fantastic is his words we can see a magical battle
occurred from the druids on to the Romans a battle that the druids probably
thought they had won by being sacrificed then burnt but unfortunately their magic
wasn't strong enough to defeat the Romans and the Romans stayed in Britain
for several hundred years. Anyway I hope you enjoyed that story it's a little
subjective but looking through the words you know I could believe something like
that actually happened. Stay safe, stay well and this was Crecganford.
Take care