Here's a short introduction to one of the most interesting - but least-known - episodes in British history. In the late third century AD, Britain declared independence from the Roman empire. It organised its own government and issued its own coins - the best Roman coinage, incidentally, since the days of Nero. It controlled a mighty fleet in the Channel and even maintained something of an empire in northern Gaul. Most amazing of all, this rebel British Empire lasted for an entire decade before - inevitably - being crushed by imperial forces.
And, just to ensure that the episode influenced even greater historical events, the man who crushed the rebellion, thereby securing his own political future, was Constantius Chlorus, the Caesar of the western empire. Constantius was the father of Constantine. This is why Constantine was first declared emperor in York - the family had maintained its hold over Britain and the troops stationed there.
The rebellion probably began in late 286 under the mysterious Carausius, the central figure of the whole episode. Carausius was a sailor from Menapia, the coast of what is now the Low Countries, so you can add him to the long list of Famous Belgians. He is traditionally called a pilot but seems in fact to have held the lowlier post of helmsman. After working in the navy he seems to have joined the army and distinguished himself in the campaigns against the "Bagaudae". No-one really knows who they were - some rebellious group in the area, perhaps. It has been suggested that he rose to become head of the Classis Britannica - the Channel fleet - but there is no evidence for this, and in any case this fleet had been greatly reduced in size during the third century.
What did happen, apparently in 286, was that Maximian, who had just been given the rule of the western half of the empire by the emperor Diocletian, gave Carausius the job of sorting out the Saxon pirates who were sailing down the Gaulish coast and plundering it. Carausius was put in charge of a significant fleet in the Channel. Unfortunately, he seems to have committed a number of irregularities: it was said that he only fought the pirates after they had already sailed to Gaul and plundered it, in order to seize more treasure off them, which he then kept and used to pay his own troops. When news of this reached Maximian, he furiously ordered Carausius to be executed. And when news of that reached Carausius, he promptly declared independence from Rome and crossed the Channel to London.
Now Britain had been declining somewhat over the previous half-century, but not nearly as much as the western empire in general. The "Crisis of the Third Century" had almost destroyed the Roman empire. The Germanic barbarians had been unifying and crossing the Rhine, just as the Sassanids had come to power in Persia and launched a series of successful invasions of Roman territory. Plus there had been terrible plagues and so on. This had all caused appalling inflation throughout the empire: coins were not worth the metal they were made of, and many wealthy people had simply invested all their money in land. Trade broke down as people farmed their own land for food rather than import anything over the dangerous roads, and people simply bartered for goods rather than use the worthless coins. The armies were stretched to breaking point to deal with the various external threats, and some regions concluded that they could no longer rely on central government to protect them. A considerable chunk of northern Gaul and Germania actually broke away from imperial control entirely, with its own government at Triers. This "Gallic Empire" lasted from AD 260 to 274 until it was finally reconquered.
Britain had escaped most of this, although the third century wasn't a great time for the island. The cities seem to have declined somewhat, with the forum at Londinium (the biggest Roman building north of the Alps) being partly demolished and partly turned into a metalworks. And the troops - who were almost entirely stationed in the northern half, known as Britannia Inferior - were reduced. It seems that many Britons were not very happy about seeing their men sent off to fight enemies across the empire, and were not much happier about having to pay for all this warfare either. Evidently, many of them concluded that Britain was better off without all these Continentals interfering. They therefore welcomed Carausius with open arms when he arrived in 286. Admittedly he was a Continental too, but you had to start somewhere.
In fact very little is known about the circumstances of the rebellion. Was Carausius a charismatic opportunist, who saw a chance to escape execution? Had he been planning it for years? Was he actually just a puppet of a bunch of merchants who wanted to do something about the economy? No-one knows. The fact remains, though, that Carausius seems to have had no problems whatsoever establishing his authority over Britain, and also over parts of the Gaulish coast. His territory apparently extended all the way to the border with the Picts; he repaired parts of Hadrian's Wall and seems to have been on good terms with the Picts. The troops in Britain - who were all British - seem to have been loyal to Carausius, although the three legions that were stationed there probably had only 1,000 men each. We are told that, when his rebellion began, many barbarian troops and even an entire legion stationed on the continent also defected to him. He apparently began minting coins almost immediately at Rouen.
Carausius' coins were far, far better than the wretched Gallic Empire mintings which had been the main currency in the region over the past few decades. They were made of decent bronze and silver and celebrated his own status as Emperor of Britannia. He had at least five mints, operating from various locations, and his coinage spread across northern Gaul too. In fact, Carausius' reign is known almost exclusively from his coins. The only historical records are two panegyrics addressed to his victorious enemies - not very reliable sources.
For, of course, Carausius had enemies. You don't just seize two valuable provinces of the Roman empire and hope no-one notices. Maximian probably burst a blood vessel when he heard what had happened. But the move to take back the territory proceeded very slowly. The Germanic barbarians were still the greatest threat in the region, and Maximian could not devote all the resources to Carausius that he needed to. Some two or three years after the rebellion, he had succeeded in reconquering all the territory on the mainland, reducing Carausius' empire to just Britain. Having done this, he then had to build a fleet for the invasion of the island. The Classis Britannica - the Channel fleet stationed at Boulogne and Dover - had been greatly reduced in the decades before the rebellion, which was why there had been this pirate threat in the first place. And of course Carausius had presumably taken all the ships he could at the start of the revolt anyway. Maximian therefore had to build a new fleet. When it was ready, in 289, he filled the ships with troops and set sail.
The invasion was a total failure. We don't know what happened, since the later panegyric to Maximian - unsurprisingly - doesn't dwell on it. The implication was that the entire fleet succumbed to the English weather; it is perhaps more probable that they were simply defeated by Carausius' own fleet. For the British emperor had not only kept his ships from 286 but had been building many more, since he recognised that this was the key to protecting the island. Plus, of course, he was a highly experienced sailor and naval commander.
In the wake of this disaster, Maximian retreated and Carausius seems to have reconquered his territory in northern Gaul. In particular, he captured Boulogne and began fortifying it. Even more coins were issued, including a famous set depicting "Carausius and his brothers" - a bust of Carausius together with Diocletian and Maximian, as if the three of them were co-rulers of a single empire.
That bit of propaganda didn't convince anyone. In 292, the task of crushing the British rebellion was given to Maximian's Caesar, Constantius Chlorus. The following year, Constantius arrived at Boulogne with unexpected speed and laid siege to the city. He had no fleet to blockade the harbour, so his troops constructed a dam across it. The siege lasted for several months. The day after the city capitulated, the tide destroyed Constantius' dam.
At around this time, Carausius was murdered. It is not known when or how this happened; traditionally it has been supposed that it was a reaction to his failure to hold on to Boulogne, but it may have happened before the city fell. He was succeeded by his chief financial minister, Allectus, who is traditionally supposed to have actually killed him. Even less is known about Allectus than about Carausius. It was said that Allectus had hoped that killing Carausius would put him in a strong bargaining position with the empire, and that perhaps he might be considered Britain's legitimate ruler as a result. Fat chance!
Allectus issued lots of coins too, from at least two mints; they are better made but less imaginative than Carausius'. He did invent a completely new denomination, though, the quinarius. He also seems to have begun a massive building project in London, at the southwest corner of the walled city. Here, in 294, wooden foundations were driven into the banks of the Thames to support an enormous stone structure above - perhaps a palace or new administrative complex.
Allectus' building project was never completed. Constantius Chlorus spent the next couple of years building up an enormous invasion fleet in the reconquered Gaulish coastline. In 295 or 296, the fleet was divided into two and crossed the Channel. Constantius commanded the half which sailed from Boulogne, while the praetorian prefect Julius Asclepiodotus sailed from the mouth of the Seine. Asclepiodotus slipped past the Isle of Wight, hidden by fog, and landed on the south coast of Britain. He destroyed his ships and marched his army towards London. Allectus, who was apparently garrisoned somewhere on the coast, was caught by surprise. Unable to muster all his troops, he met Asclepiodotus in battle at an unknown location and was killed. Asclepiodotus marched on to London, where he met Constantius, who had presumably landed at an unknown location. The rebellion was over and Britain was swiftly incorporated back into the empire.
The first British Empire seems to have been almost forgotten. When I was at school, at least, all children learned about Boudicca, but no-one ever learns about Carausius, even though his rebellion was much more successful and far more important. Presumably this is partly because so surprisingly little is known of the episode: what I have written here is pretty much it. Carausius and Constantine Chlorus were remembered in British folklore for centuries (Allectus faded into the background very quickly), transformed into Cornish dukes and similar oddities. But they were gradually forgotten. Carausius captured the imagination of some eighteenth-century historians, who saw in him a romantic hero: the bluff, charismatic sailor, who built the first real British navy, even before Alfred the Great. For a while, it was even believed that he co-ruled with an empress, Oriuna. Unfortunately, it turned out that the name "Oriuna", which was known from a single coin, was actually the word "Fortuna" badly stamped.
I have been able to find only two vaguely recent and useful books on the rebellion:
Casey, Patrick Carausius and Allectus: the British usurpers New Haven: Yale University Press 1995
This book summarises pretty much everything that is known of the whole episode in a readable form. Most of the information above is taken from this book.
Williams, Hugh Carausius: a consideration of the historical, archaeological and numismatic aspects of his reign Oxford: Archaeopress 2004
This book is a much more technical examination of the coins, and it largely ignores Allectus.
The best website I found on this is here. It is worth pointing out, though, that some of what this author writes is rather contentious. In particular, his interpretations of the markings RSR and INPCDA are controversial. Hugh Williams, in the book cited above, notes that the interpretation of INPCDA as a reference to Virgil is likely to be correct, but also that such a thing appearing on coins issued to British soldiers by a Belgian sailor is intrinsically highly unlikely. The medals on which these inscriptions appear are of unknown provenance (one was found by a young boy looking through his grandfather's boxes in 1931, and the other, bizarrely, on a stall in Portobello Road in 1971) so they could well be fakes. Casey, for his part, argues that RSR (which also appears on coins made at one of Carausius' mints) stands for Rationalis Summarum Rationum or Rationalis Summae Rei, the name of an imperial administrative post. He has no interpretation for INPCDA.
And, just to ensure that the episode influenced even greater historical events, the man who crushed the rebellion, thereby securing his own political future, was Constantius Chlorus, the Caesar of the western empire. Constantius was the father of Constantine. This is why Constantine was first declared emperor in York - the family had maintained its hold over Britain and the troops stationed there.
The rebellion probably began in late 286 under the mysterious Carausius, the central figure of the whole episode. Carausius was a sailor from Menapia, the coast of what is now the Low Countries, so you can add him to the long list of Famous Belgians. He is traditionally called a pilot but seems in fact to have held the lowlier post of helmsman. After working in the navy he seems to have joined the army and distinguished himself in the campaigns against the "Bagaudae". No-one really knows who they were - some rebellious group in the area, perhaps. It has been suggested that he rose to become head of the Classis Britannica - the Channel fleet - but there is no evidence for this, and in any case this fleet had been greatly reduced in size during the third century.
What did happen, apparently in 286, was that Maximian, who had just been given the rule of the western half of the empire by the emperor Diocletian, gave Carausius the job of sorting out the Saxon pirates who were sailing down the Gaulish coast and plundering it. Carausius was put in charge of a significant fleet in the Channel. Unfortunately, he seems to have committed a number of irregularities: it was said that he only fought the pirates after they had already sailed to Gaul and plundered it, in order to seize more treasure off them, which he then kept and used to pay his own troops. When news of this reached Maximian, he furiously ordered Carausius to be executed. And when news of that reached Carausius, he promptly declared independence from Rome and crossed the Channel to London.
Now Britain had been declining somewhat over the previous half-century, but not nearly as much as the western empire in general. The "Crisis of the Third Century" had almost destroyed the Roman empire. The Germanic barbarians had been unifying and crossing the Rhine, just as the Sassanids had come to power in Persia and launched a series of successful invasions of Roman territory. Plus there had been terrible plagues and so on. This had all caused appalling inflation throughout the empire: coins were not worth the metal they were made of, and many wealthy people had simply invested all their money in land. Trade broke down as people farmed their own land for food rather than import anything over the dangerous roads, and people simply bartered for goods rather than use the worthless coins. The armies were stretched to breaking point to deal with the various external threats, and some regions concluded that they could no longer rely on central government to protect them. A considerable chunk of northern Gaul and Germania actually broke away from imperial control entirely, with its own government at Triers. This "Gallic Empire" lasted from AD 260 to 274 until it was finally reconquered.
Britain had escaped most of this, although the third century wasn't a great time for the island. The cities seem to have declined somewhat, with the forum at Londinium (the biggest Roman building north of the Alps) being partly demolished and partly turned into a metalworks. And the troops - who were almost entirely stationed in the northern half, known as Britannia Inferior - were reduced. It seems that many Britons were not very happy about seeing their men sent off to fight enemies across the empire, and were not much happier about having to pay for all this warfare either. Evidently, many of them concluded that Britain was better off without all these Continentals interfering. They therefore welcomed Carausius with open arms when he arrived in 286. Admittedly he was a Continental too, but you had to start somewhere.
In fact very little is known about the circumstances of the rebellion. Was Carausius a charismatic opportunist, who saw a chance to escape execution? Had he been planning it for years? Was he actually just a puppet of a bunch of merchants who wanted to do something about the economy? No-one knows. The fact remains, though, that Carausius seems to have had no problems whatsoever establishing his authority over Britain, and also over parts of the Gaulish coast. His territory apparently extended all the way to the border with the Picts; he repaired parts of Hadrian's Wall and seems to have been on good terms with the Picts. The troops in Britain - who were all British - seem to have been loyal to Carausius, although the three legions that were stationed there probably had only 1,000 men each. We are told that, when his rebellion began, many barbarian troops and even an entire legion stationed on the continent also defected to him. He apparently began minting coins almost immediately at Rouen.
Carausius' coins were far, far better than the wretched Gallic Empire mintings which had been the main currency in the region over the past few decades. They were made of decent bronze and silver and celebrated his own status as Emperor of Britannia. He had at least five mints, operating from various locations, and his coinage spread across northern Gaul too. In fact, Carausius' reign is known almost exclusively from his coins. The only historical records are two panegyrics addressed to his victorious enemies - not very reliable sources.
For, of course, Carausius had enemies. You don't just seize two valuable provinces of the Roman empire and hope no-one notices. Maximian probably burst a blood vessel when he heard what had happened. But the move to take back the territory proceeded very slowly. The Germanic barbarians were still the greatest threat in the region, and Maximian could not devote all the resources to Carausius that he needed to. Some two or three years after the rebellion, he had succeeded in reconquering all the territory on the mainland, reducing Carausius' empire to just Britain. Having done this, he then had to build a fleet for the invasion of the island. The Classis Britannica - the Channel fleet stationed at Boulogne and Dover - had been greatly reduced in the decades before the rebellion, which was why there had been this pirate threat in the first place. And of course Carausius had presumably taken all the ships he could at the start of the revolt anyway. Maximian therefore had to build a new fleet. When it was ready, in 289, he filled the ships with troops and set sail.
The invasion was a total failure. We don't know what happened, since the later panegyric to Maximian - unsurprisingly - doesn't dwell on it. The implication was that the entire fleet succumbed to the English weather; it is perhaps more probable that they were simply defeated by Carausius' own fleet. For the British emperor had not only kept his ships from 286 but had been building many more, since he recognised that this was the key to protecting the island. Plus, of course, he was a highly experienced sailor and naval commander.
In the wake of this disaster, Maximian retreated and Carausius seems to have reconquered his territory in northern Gaul. In particular, he captured Boulogne and began fortifying it. Even more coins were issued, including a famous set depicting "Carausius and his brothers" - a bust of Carausius together with Diocletian and Maximian, as if the three of them were co-rulers of a single empire.
That bit of propaganda didn't convince anyone. In 292, the task of crushing the British rebellion was given to Maximian's Caesar, Constantius Chlorus. The following year, Constantius arrived at Boulogne with unexpected speed and laid siege to the city. He had no fleet to blockade the harbour, so his troops constructed a dam across it. The siege lasted for several months. The day after the city capitulated, the tide destroyed Constantius' dam.
At around this time, Carausius was murdered. It is not known when or how this happened; traditionally it has been supposed that it was a reaction to his failure to hold on to Boulogne, but it may have happened before the city fell. He was succeeded by his chief financial minister, Allectus, who is traditionally supposed to have actually killed him. Even less is known about Allectus than about Carausius. It was said that Allectus had hoped that killing Carausius would put him in a strong bargaining position with the empire, and that perhaps he might be considered Britain's legitimate ruler as a result. Fat chance!
Allectus issued lots of coins too, from at least two mints; they are better made but less imaginative than Carausius'. He did invent a completely new denomination, though, the quinarius. He also seems to have begun a massive building project in London, at the southwest corner of the walled city. Here, in 294, wooden foundations were driven into the banks of the Thames to support an enormous stone structure above - perhaps a palace or new administrative complex.
Allectus' building project was never completed. Constantius Chlorus spent the next couple of years building up an enormous invasion fleet in the reconquered Gaulish coastline. In 295 or 296, the fleet was divided into two and crossed the Channel. Constantius commanded the half which sailed from Boulogne, while the praetorian prefect Julius Asclepiodotus sailed from the mouth of the Seine. Asclepiodotus slipped past the Isle of Wight, hidden by fog, and landed on the south coast of Britain. He destroyed his ships and marched his army towards London. Allectus, who was apparently garrisoned somewhere on the coast, was caught by surprise. Unable to muster all his troops, he met Asclepiodotus in battle at an unknown location and was killed. Asclepiodotus marched on to London, where he met Constantius, who had presumably landed at an unknown location. The rebellion was over and Britain was swiftly incorporated back into the empire.
The first British Empire seems to have been almost forgotten. When I was at school, at least, all children learned about Boudicca, but no-one ever learns about Carausius, even though his rebellion was much more successful and far more important. Presumably this is partly because so surprisingly little is known of the episode: what I have written here is pretty much it. Carausius and Constantine Chlorus were remembered in British folklore for centuries (Allectus faded into the background very quickly), transformed into Cornish dukes and similar oddities. But they were gradually forgotten. Carausius captured the imagination of some eighteenth-century historians, who saw in him a romantic hero: the bluff, charismatic sailor, who built the first real British navy, even before Alfred the Great. For a while, it was even believed that he co-ruled with an empress, Oriuna. Unfortunately, it turned out that the name "Oriuna", which was known from a single coin, was actually the word "Fortuna" badly stamped.
I have been able to find only two vaguely recent and useful books on the rebellion:
Casey, Patrick Carausius and Allectus: the British usurpers New Haven: Yale University Press 1995
This book summarises pretty much everything that is known of the whole episode in a readable form. Most of the information above is taken from this book.
Williams, Hugh Carausius: a consideration of the historical, archaeological and numismatic aspects of his reign Oxford: Archaeopress 2004
This book is a much more technical examination of the coins, and it largely ignores Allectus.
The best website I found on this is here. It is worth pointing out, though, that some of what this author writes is rather contentious. In particular, his interpretations of the markings RSR and INPCDA are controversial. Hugh Williams, in the book cited above, notes that the interpretation of INPCDA as a reference to Virgil is likely to be correct, but also that such a thing appearing on coins issued to British soldiers by a Belgian sailor is intrinsically highly unlikely. The medals on which these inscriptions appear are of unknown provenance (one was found by a young boy looking through his grandfather's boxes in 1931, and the other, bizarrely, on a stall in Portobello Road in 1971) so they could well be fakes. Casey, for his part, argues that RSR (which also appears on coins made at one of Carausius' mints) stands for Rationalis Summarum Rationum or Rationalis Summae Rei, the name of an imperial administrative post. He has no interpretation for INPCDA.
