Welcome back fellow history buffs! We’ve reached the point in The Retreat to Avalon in which Arthur has finished moving his army across the sea to Letavia (Brittany) and the war in Gaul is about to begin. King Arthur’s European campaign is really the key behind the theory, wonderfully explained by Geoffrey Ashe, that provides the strongest evidence that Arthur was a historical person from whom the legends developed. Yet, there’s a large gulf between King Arthur’s legendary wars in Europe, and the historical events that point to the real Arthur.
As I’ve noted before, most of the Arthurian legend that people are familiar with comes from later medieval French fan-fiction that is only loosely based on older Welsh and Breton legends. And that fan fiction was first inspired by The History of the Kings of Britain (referred to by its Latin initials, HRB ) by Geoffrey of Monmouth.
King Arthur’s European Campaign According to Geoffrey
According to the HRB, King Arthur defeats the Saxons, Picts and Scots (Irish), conquering all of Britain, Ireland, the Orkney Islands and even Iceland (which was uninhabited in the 5th century, so not much of a flex). He then adds Norway and Dacia (he probably meant Denmark) to his empire. Next he sets his sights on Gaul (France), which was under the control of the Roman empire. Arthur battles the Roman tribune Frollo and before long has added all of Gaul to his empire.
Five years later, a Roman general sends a letter to Arthur, excoriating him for taking Roman lands and failing to pay tribute Rome is owed and threatening to resolve the dispute with the sword. Arthur and his council declare war, and trounce the Romans at Soissons. Arthur is getting ready to cross the Alps on his way to Rome when word comes that, back home, Modred has usurped the crown and married Guinevere. Arthur returns to Britain, and that is the end of King Arthur’s European campaign.
Geoffrey of Monmouth is often accused of fabricating the HRB wholesale, but he claimed to be translating an ancient book in the Briton language. There is some evidence he had access to written records now lost, and he quite likely relied on oral tradition, which can maintain histories better than you’d think. He surely had access to other sources we still have, such as by Gildas, Nennius, Goeznovius, Bede, and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles.
What’s the truth?
Geoffrey of Monmouth does follow some history, however loosely and incorrectly, so the trick is to figure out what is mistaken, what is misinterpreted, or what he simply made up to fill in the gaps. It’s unlikely he’d make up details that are at odds with records he would’ve had access to. So those may be instances where he had other sources he chose to use.
An interesting thing about this part of the HRB is that we get a clue to the true dates of Arthur’s activities. Geoffrey doesn’t use dates in the HRB, and probably wasn’t entirely sure of them, as dating in the early medieval era was very unreliable. The calendar and year system we use today wasn’t adopted until more than four centuries after Geoffrey. The only time we can be reasonably sure of dates is when the writer includes details of events or people that we have better information about, which helps triangulate a time frame.
Many assume Arthur’s existence was around the mid-sixth century. However, if there was any involvement of the Romans, it would have to have been before 476, because the Western Roman Empire had essentially lost Gaul to the Visigoths, Burgundians, and Franks by this time. In fact, the Kingdom of Soissons was the last part of Gaul to be considered technically “Roman”, even though it was de facto independent.
It is interesting, therefore, that Geoffrey has the climactic battle between Arthur and the Romans occur at Soissons. Perhaps there was a dim, 600 year old folk memory of the connection between the ruler of the kingdom, Syagrius, and his connection to Arthur and this battle?
More importantly, Geoffrey says that the Roman emperor when Arthur invades Gaul is Leo. Only two emperors were named Leo. Leo I and his grandson, Leo II. Leo II was co-emperor for less than a year, and only seven years old when he died in 474. So Leo I would be the only reasonable choice for any events with Arthur. And Leo I was emperor from 457 to 474. Solidly within the fifth century.
Trust me, this is going somewhere.
So any battle involving the Romans with Leo as emperor has to happen between 457 and 474. And it just so happens that there was a major battle involving a British king, in Gaul, within that time.
About the year 470 near Déols, France, there was a great battle between the Visigoths, a Germanic tribe that had taken over control of Spain and most of Gaul, and someone the Romans referred to as the “King of the Britons”. They referred to this king as “Riothamus”, which happens to be a Latinized form of the Brittonic for “Highest King”. Some argue that Riothamus is simply a name, but it seems much more likely to be either a title, or a regnal name. It is possible that Arthur, after subduing foreign threats in Britain, was made a sort of high king in the same manner that saw Vortigern assume that role after the end of the Roman occupation.
We know of Riothamus from two sources: One, Jordanes, was a bureaucrat in 6th Century Constantinople. He wrote a history called Origins and Deeds of the Goths. In this, he relates how the Western Roman emperor, Anthemius, allied with Riothamus to campaign in Gaul against Euric, king of the Visigoths. The second is from the Roman politician, Sidonius Apollinaris. We have two letters he wrote. One, to Riothamus, in which Sidonius asks Riothamus to investigate a report of his soldiers secretly enticing away slaves belonging to a farmer. The other is to a friend named Vincentius, in which he discusses the treason of Arvandus, the Praetorian Prefect of Gaul. Arvandus had been caught sending a letter to Euric, urging him not to make peace with Anthemius, and to attack the Britons who were north of the Loire River (Brittany). (I have a short story about this event I’ll send you for free if you ask.)
Wrapping Up King Arthur’s European Campaign
Though the details are thin, we know that a king of the Britons existed in 470. We can be fairly certain that it was a king of Britons and not Bretons because Riothamus is said to have come to the city of Bourges, France, with 12,000 soldiers, “by way of ocean”. Travel by sea would hardly have been necessary or expedient for a ruler based in Brittany. Nor was Brittany, in this time, populated and organized enough to have mounted any significant military force that could have opposed Euric in a “long fight”. Brittany would, however, have been a likely staging area for Arthur’s troops and supplies from Britain.
We also know that Riothamus and Euric engaged in a long battle near Déols, and that Riothamus was expecting support from Roman troops that did not arrive. Riothamus was routed and Jordanes reports that he retreated eastward toward allied Burgundian territory. Follow the likely line of the retreat, and you soon come to an ancient town near a holy sanctuary and salt spring called Avallon.
With that bomb drop, we’ll wrap up King Arthur’s European Campaign. Next up we’ll go into more detail on the war in Gaul as I describe it in The Retreat to Avalon, the first book in the historical fiction series, The Arthurian Age. There will be some minor spoilers if you haven’t read the book, so I hope you pick one up soon. Please let me know what you think!
A time for the breaking and making of nations, well expressed in the book. The possibly true archetype for so many novels dealing with anarchy and rulers’ attempts to impose order by not always savory methods. It reminds me of the book Conan the Conqueror although these could be real people. Salutary to remember the Italian author whomI forget “when there is war, the poor man’s thatch burns”, roundhouses do so particularly well.
Given that something of the like happened then an Arthur character could have been the High King but this needs squaring with the idea of Arthur as a Warband Leader who fought for and tried to get a common purpose from the British petty kings and Tyrants.
Good points. I think the way to square the idea is to look at Vortigern, who was leading Britons in some form soon after the end of the Roman occupation, and the phrase from the History of the Britons that says, “Then Arthur along with the kings of Britain fought against them in those days, but Arthur himself was the military commander.”
So, this implies that there is a council/alliance of multiple British kings who put Arthur in charge. Another key point is the phrase “in those days”. The passage refers to the era of Arthur fighting against the Saxons, apparently referring to the 12 battles. It does not go into any particular detail of his career after those battles, until the Strife of Camlann. I think it’s reasonable to consider that Arthur may have been given the same role previously held by Vortigern, as sort of a 1st among equals, or high king among the British kings, in the years following the 12 battles. He probably wouldn’t even have needed to be a king of any sort prior to that.