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 CHAPTER II.

MILITARY HISTORY OF NAVAL AFFAIRS TO 1066.

N the course of his reduction of Gaul, Cæsar encountered few more determined and troublesome opponents than the Veneti, a people living in and around what is now the town of Vannes, about thirty miles to the north of the estuary of the River Loire. The Veneti were formidable, not only because they were good fighting men, but also because they were a maritime folk, well supplied with shipping. Moreover, their fleet was reinforced to a strength of two hundred and twenty sail by a contingent from Britain. Thus, for the first time did Britain and Rome face one another, and the result was ominous. The vessels of the allies seem, upon the whole, to have been more powerful, and much loftier than the vessels which Cæsar had hastily constructed in the Loire for the purpose of dealing with the enemy, and had the Romans fought merely with their ordinary weapons, they might possibly have been defeated. The Venetan