Attacotti

The Great Conspiracy is a term given to a yearlong war that occurs in Roman Britain in 367-368, near the end of the Roman occupation of the island.

The historian Ammianus Marcellinus describes it as a barbarica conspiratio that capitalized on a depleted military force in the province brought about by Magnentius' losses of the Battle of Mursa Major after his unsuccessful bid to become emperor.

It is difficult to ascertain the exact chronology of what happened during the conspiracy because the main source—Ammanianus—appears to have been in Antioch when it happened, meaning his information is second hand and thus is confused.

Also other sources of conspiracy are inconsistent with Ammianus.

Therefore, there are several different views of what happened.

Emperor Valentinian I is campaigning against the Alamanni at the time and unable to respond personally.

A series of commanders to act in his stead are chosen but swiftly recalled.

The first is Severus, the emperor's comes domesticorum, soon recalled and replaced by Jovinus, the magister equitum.

Jovinus then writes back to Valentinian requesting reinforcements.

The Emperor recalls Jovinus—mostly likely to take part in a campaign along the Rhine, which is a higher priority—then sends out Count Theodosius.

In any case, the barbarians—Picts, Scoti, Attacotti, Saxons, and Franks—have by the end of the year been driven back to their homelands; the mutineers have been executed; Hadrian's Wall is retaken and order returns to the diocese.

Theodosius returns to Rome a hero, and is made senior military advisor to Valentinian I, replacing Jovinus.

His son will become emperor a decade later.

The Romans are able to end much of the chaos, though raids by all of the peoples listed above do continue.

An account of the tumultuous situation in Britain between 364 and 369 is provided by the historian Ammianus, who describes a corrupt and treasonous administration, native British troops (the Areani) in collaboration with the barbarians, and a Roman military whose troops had deserted and joined in the general banditry.

The situation is a consequence of the failed imperial power-grab by Magnentius a decade earlier, followed by the bloody and arbitrary purge conducted by Paulus Catena in an attempt to root out potential sympathizers of Magnentius in Britain, and aggravated by the political machinations of the Roman administrator Valentinus.

Ammianus describes the marauders—Atacotti, Scotti, Picts, Saxons, Roman military deserters, and the indigenous Britons themselves—as bands moving from place to place in search of loot.

The Roman garrison on Hadrian's Wall rebels in the winter of 367, and allows Picts from Caledonia to enter Britannia.

Simultaneously, Attacotti, Scotti from Hibernia, and Saxons from Germania, land in coordinated and pre-arranged waves on the island's midwestern and southeastern borders, respectively.

Franks and Saxons also land in northern Gaul.

These warbands manage to overwhelm nearly all of the loyal Roman outposts and settlements.

The entire western and northern areas of Britannia are overwhelmed, the cities sacked and the civilian Romano-British murdered, raped, or enslaved.

Nectaridus, the Count of the Saxon Shore, is killed and the dux britanniarum, Fullofaudes, is either besieged or captured, the remaining loyal army units staying garrisoned inside southeastern cities.

The areani or local agents whom the Romans pay to provide intelligence on barbarian movements seem to have betrayed their paymasters for bribes, making the attacks completely unexpected.

Deserting soldiers and escaped slaves roam the countryside and turn to robbery to support themselves.

Although the chaos is widespread and initially concerted, the aims of the rebels are simply personal enrichment and they work as small bands rather than larger armies.

Emperor Valentinian, campaigning against the Alamanni at the time, is unable to respond personally.

A series of commanders to act in his stead are chosen but swiftly recalled.

The first was Severus, the emperor's comes domesticorum, soon replaced by Jovinus, the magister equitum; rumors of disasters dog them, however, and almost fifteen months before a capable replacement is sent.

Considerable reorganization is undertaken in Britain, including the creation of a new province named Valentia, probably to better address the state of the far north.

Count Theodosius strengthens the defenses of the towns with external towers designed to mount artillery.

Claudian suggests that naval activity took place in northern Britain.

It is possible that Theodosius mounted punitive expeditions against the barbarians and extracted terms from them.

Certainly, the Notitia Dignitatum later records four units of Attacotti serving Rome on the continent.

The Areani were removed from duty and the frontiers refortified with cooperation from border tribes such as the Votadini, marking the career of men such as Padarn Beisrudd (which literally translates as Paternus of the Scarlet Robe), who will serve from 389-39 as a native British governor.

One traditional interpretation identifies Padarn as a Roman (or Romano-British) official of reasonably high rank who had been placed in command of Votadini troops stationed in Clackmannanshire in the 380s or earlier by the Emperor Magnus Maximus.

Alternatively, he may have been a frontier chieftain in the same region who was granted Roman military rank, a practice attested elsewhere along the empire's borders at the time.

Roman Britain had seen increasing attacks in the fourth century from the Saxons in the east and the Irish in the west.

A series of forts had been built, starting around 280, to defend the coasts, but these preparations were not enough when a general assault of Saxons, Irish and ‘Attacotti', combined with apparent dissension in the garrison on Hadrian's Wall, had left Roman Britain prostrate in 367.

This crisis, sometimes called the Great Conspiracy, had been settled by Count Theodosius with a string of military and civil reforms.

Maximus, after raising the standard of revolt in Segontium in 383 and crossing the Channel, had held much of the western empire, and fought a successful campaign against the Picts and Scots around 384.

His continental exploits required troops from Britain, and it appears that forts at Chester and elsewhere had been abandoned at this period, triggering raids and settlement in north Wales by the Irish.

The appearance of hostile ‘Attacotti’ in Roman sources in the 360s corresponds chronologically with various tribal and dynastic migrations from southern Ireland and subsequent Irish settlement in Western Britain in the fourth century, in some instances possibly with Roman sanction.

Later Irish and Welsh traditions concerning these population movements preserved the names of certain tributary Irish groups, which seem to have been displaced by the expansion of the Eóganachta, the group of septs which have come to dominate Munster in the later fourth century.

Prosperity continues in Roman Britain, but the withdrawals of troops by Maximus has weakened security.