 Gaelic Wars and the Druids. Welcome to the show everyone and if you would be so kind to spare a moment to simply thumbs up our video now that you are here, please do so. And subscribe to the Lost History channel if you are yet to do so. Your support is greatly appreciated during the sickening shadow banning of our channel that has been in effect for well over a year now. The fact that we are still here against such inequality shows how determined we are to reach our subscribers and beat the odds so without any further delay on with the show. Between the years 58 and 51 BC the Gaelic War erupted and this would see the mighty figure which is Julius Caesar first emerge as a great military invader after an earlier career as an impoverished populist politician funnily enough. The mighty conflict which began with an attempt to preserve stability on the borders of the Roman province of Translopin Gaul, a land which began in southern France, but it soon turned into a war of conquest. Only after putting down three major Gaelic revolts the last of the most famous could Caesar claim to have quelled the anger of ancient Western Europe including Britain. Perhaps the most unusual feature of the Gaelic War is that in Caesar's commentaries on the war we have a first hand detail of the war written at a time by the most important figure that would emerge from the war. Wait till you hear this. The first hand account of Caesar's involvement in this military conflict inevitably gives us something of a one-sided view of the war and although Caesar often reports openly his opponent's point of view and even seems willing to accept that his powerful enemies often had honorable motives. It is also worth remembering that Caesar's officers and many of his men were literate. Caesar's commentaries will not have been the only source of information on the course of the war available to Rome and so any blatant distortions of events would have been disgraceful. Any course of lie or falsehood would surely be called out by such public affairs involving so many men so Caesar's work was aimed at his contemporaries and so would have had to have been convincing to them in order for his respect to be gained. He is not writing a movie, he is detailing historical events. He is charged with this great trust and any betrayal of this would be a mortal sin. Historical accounts of the Druids are derived from the commentario de Bello Gallico written around 50 years before Christ by Julius Caesar that describes the Gaelic Wars from a first hand perspective, a stunning proclamation of events that were widely regarded to be accurate overviews of Caesar's remembrance of events. He begins by portraying the Druids as high ranking priests performing sacrifices to the gods and respected lore keepers with the legal and political authority to advise the leaders of the Gaelic nations. His fascination and description would eventually lead to future Roman invasions of the Druid stronghold in ancient Britain but we'll get back to that part a little bit later on in the show. The mighty seemingly all-powerful Druids were also described by Diodorus Seculus and Pliny the Elder in fabulous detail and the common belief is that the center of Druid study being suggested to have taken place in present-day Britain, the ancient stronghold of the mint of the north and refuge for Western Europeans of the day. When the Romans began their invasion with occupation of what is now France and Switzerland, the various Druidic orders were suppressed by the emperors of the Roman Legion and the Druids of Anglicy in Wales were eventually exterminated 60 years after the birth of Christ by Rome to break the religious authority that the Druids held across Britain. By the 18th century there was a revival in the Romanticism connected to Britain's past, with the Druids being associated incorrectly through a pseudo-historical context with many Neolithic and Mesolithic monuments. This Romanticism led to the eccentric one-time sheriff of Yorkshire, William Danby, to commission the construction of a 100-foot-long folly in the early 1800s called the Druids Temple in his estates near the family seat of Swinton Park on a hill above Pot Beck in Yorkshire, England. The temple was designed to mimic some of the characteristics of Stonehenge with monoliths and trilathons to form two circles of Vesica Piscia, with the first circle centered on a monolith depicting a phallic symbol. The rest of the temple consisted of an anti-chamber, a circular chamber, and a proposed tomb structure. Nearby the temple is also a column of stones suggested to symbolize either a pagan deity or the 12 signs of the zodiac. In more recent years the temple was at the center of a political row in the House of Lords where Baroness Mashem of Ilton sensationally cited incidents of worship associated to the devil and the occult, proposing that the public should be restricted from accessing the site. Druidism can be described as a Shamanic religion or Shamanic religion as it relied on a combination of contact with the spirit world and holistic medicine to treat and sometimes cause illnesses. They were said to have induced insanity in people and been accurate fortune tellers with their knowledge of the earth and space said to have come from megalithic times of the great builders on earth, a past knowledge that they tried to preserve. There is a lot of mystery dripping from the actual history of the Druids as our knowledge is based on limited records of adversaries who may have had sinister motives against these priests and in fact these accounts do show us that a last stand took place. Druidism is thought to have been part of Celtic and Gaulish culture in Europe with the first classical reference to them in the 2nd century BC. Their practices were similar to those of priests today, connecting the people with the gods, but their role was also varied and wide ranging, playing many societal roles and filling any part. It seems they were the actors of their day with a great influence over all other orders. They were incredibly powerful and respected, able to banish people from society for breaking the sacred laws and even able to come between two opposing armies and prevent warfare. One of the earliest accounts of the Druids was of course Julius Caesar's account. He wrote it in Gaul where prestigious men were divided into Druids or nobles and it is from the Roman writers that historians have gained most of their knowledge of the mysterious Druids. They are demised but not too much of their existence, only that the Romans feared their abilities using unforeseen forces. Druids were polytheistic and had female gods and sacred figures, rather like the Greeks and Romans, but their nomadic, less civilized Druidic society gave the others a sense of superiority and this renders some of their accounts historically uncertain as they may be tainted with exaggerated examples of Druidic practices, but then again it may be so unbelievable today simply because it is a practice lost to history. Within this class of civilized earthlings, it is believed that there was subsections all with color coated robes. The eldest or one deemed to be the most wise among them was the Arch Druid and would wear gold robes while the ordinary would wear white and act as priests. The Romans had been present in the south of France since 120 years before the birth of Christ. When they had first defeated the Alabroges tribe and their new province was officially called Translipene Gaul to distinguish it from Sesslipene Gaul in northern Italy but was often simply called the Province. These two provinces were governed separately, but in 59 BC the governor of one province died unexpectedly. Julius Caesar, one of the consuls for 59 BC who had already secured Sesslipene Gaul as his province for the following five years, was also given Translipene Gaul. There he was. It was 59 years before Christ was born and Caesar was a middle age politician with no military reputation, but he was an intelligent popular politician with a vengeful mind who had used unorthodox methods to get two land bills passed during this time as consul before arranging to be given a five year command in his new province. His conservative opponents in Rome were probably glad to see him removed from the city for such a long time and had no reason to suspect that Caesar was about to reveal himself as one of the great military commanders in Roman history. The first major Gaelic revolt broke out on the maritime northwest coast and this area was dominated by the Venetai tribe which controlled the trade with ancient Britain. Today Venetai is known as Brittany in France's northwest most region. Two reasons have been given for the outbreak of their rebellion. General Crassus with the 7th Legion was sent to winter with the Andes tribe on the Atlantic coast because in the previous summer he had led a legion through the area taking hostages and recording the submission of the local tribes. Now as supplies ran short he had demanded resupplies. Caesar believed that this combined with a desire to win back their hostages led to the revolt while other ancient authors believed that the Venetai had discovered that Caesar was in fact planning to visit Britain and were worried that he might steal their vital trade. Whatever their true motive the Venetai revolt began when they arrested the two Roman representatives sent to request grain from these people and these rebels soon established camps which controlled most of the sea coast and a constant watch was established to deter and further Roman escalation. The rebels then very confidently but perhaps somewhat unwisely sent a rather optimistic common embassy to meet with the Roman general offering to swap hostages but the news of the seizure of the Roman representatives angered Caesar beyond negotiation. He would later use these arrests of the Roman representatives to justify his harsh treatment of the soon to be defeated Venetai. Caesar ordered the Roman general who met with the rebels to respond by building a fleet and as soon as the weather was suitable left the Italian part of his province and rushed to join the army and sail for war. Although Caesar rather rushes over the details of this campaign it clearly lasted for some time for the Roman fleets were kept in port by storms for a great part of the summer and Caesar describes the Venetai ships in some detail and in a way that makes it clear that the Romans had suffered some setbacks at sea before the final battle. He also claimed to have captured a great number of towns a time consuming process that apparently required the construction of massive earthwork ramps to allow the Roman army to approach the town walls. Much to his frustration each time a town was about to fall the Venetai simply assembled their fleet empty to place and fell back possibly forcing Rome to wonder if they were being lured to a trap. According to Caesar the combined Gaelic fleet contained 220 fully equipped warships. The Romans were outnumbered by around two or three to one giving them somewhere between 70 and 110 ships. The Venetai ships were too strongly built to be rammed and too high sided for Roman missile weapons to be effective but the Romans did have effective weapons for the task in the form of sharp hooks on long poles that they used to cut the rigging of the enemy ships. After a number of ships had their rigging cut the rest of the fleet attempted to escape only to be trapped when the wind fell away. By the end of the day the Venetai fleet had been destroyed and the tribe was forced to surrender. Caesar was in a vengeful mood apparently angered by the Venetai's failure to respect the rights of Roman ambassadors negotiating for grain and the members of the Senate were all executed and the rest of the tribe was sold into slavery. While Caesar had been facing the Venetai two of his lieutenants were campaigning elsewhere in Gaul where they had won an easy victory over the tribes of Normandy who were tricked into attacking their camp while the tribes of Aquitaine were also defeated in a campaign that ended when the Romans attacked their camp. The fall of the Venetai at Brittany seized the Romans turned their attention to the center of the Druids, modern-day Britain. The Venetai warred with Rome to stop the Romans trading with ancient Britain and after they fell Rome did trade with the Britons and eventually turned their attention to invading Britain almost a hundred years after the campaign at Brittany and most scholars believe this was to secure the 10 mines at Cornwall to allow for the production of an alloy into weapons like swords and shields. They outlaw the Druids as a people who helped the Venetai against Caesar a hundred years earlier and banished them from Britain destroying all places of worship. Often the victims of the Druids which they sacrificed to their gods would be imprisoned in a wooden effigy of a wicker man and burned alive while performing sacred rituals. Another form of sacrifice was known as the threefold death where the victim would be subjected to near strangulation and virtual drowning before finally being stabbed to death. The Druids or priestly class were the only tribe members allowed to carry out these ceremonies. It was also believed that they could foretell the future and they were also responsible for the telling of the sacred myths whose legacy lives on today in traditional Celtic literature. The ancient priests who were so respected by everyone but the Romans rallied in their stronghold of the island of Mona off the mainland of northern Wales where they made a last stand against the conquering legions of Rome and attempted to defend themselves by using magical arts. Tacitus left a description of the battle of Mona which reads as follows. On the shores to the opposing army with this descent array of armed warriors between the ranks dashed women attired in black like the furies with their hair disheveled waving burning brands. All around them were Druids lifting up their hands to heaven and pouring forth dreadful implications. Our soldiers were so petrified by the unfamiliar sight that as if their limbs were paralyzed they stood motionless exposed to wounds. Until at last urged by their general not to quill before a troop of frenzied women they bore the standards onward. Smote down all resistance and wrap the foe in the flames of his own brands. After their victory at the battle of Mona many of the Druids were massacred. No quarter was given and the shrine and the sacred groves were destroyed. Most survivors fled to Ireland taking with them the 13 treasures of the islands of Britain to avoid disclosure and their ritual observances and magical arts went underground. The massacre and attack on Mona left the rest of the country open to attack which would see the Romans invade but only to be driven back down the British Isles by another group of ancient warriors the mighty Picks, Scotland. But what do you guys think about this anyway? Comment below and as always thank you.