International a.k.a. Dunardry Heritage Association supports Clan MacTavish interests worldwide and includes both the Dunardry and Stratherrick Clan MacTavish sites.

MacTavish International a.k.a. Dunardry Heritage Association supports Clan MacTavish interests worldwide and includes both the Dunardry and Stratherrick Clan MacTavish sites.

The Celtic sailors were overwhelmed by the armoured Romans and the fleet of the Veneti broke up. A fall in the wind prevented many from escaping and the majority of the Gallic Celtic force was captured. This seems a particularly miserable defeat for the Celts. A fleet of expert seamen shattered by landlubber Romans making do with scyths. Caesar’s account doesn’t ring true. It seems more likely, as the cas had been before, that the fighting on the Roman side was conducted wholly by Gallic Auxiliaries used to shipping and hired by the Romans. Whatever the actual details, this Breton defeat of 56 B.C. Was a crushing one for the Atlantic Gauls. Caesar had many of his prisoners executed and the rest sold as slaves to his legionaires and allied Celtic tribes.

After the withdrawl of the Romans in the 5th and 6th centuries there was a considerable immigration of Celts from Britain (the Britons most notably), who took refuge among their continental kinsman from the Angle and Saxon invasion. Till the the rural population had been mostly pagan (as was most of Britain); but from that point onward, for 300 years Breton history and tradition are largely occupied with the records and legends of the Celtic missionaries from Britain and Ireland, who gradually converted the whole country and gave their names to towns and villages (e.g. St. Malo, St. Brieuc, St. Tudgual and St. Pol-de-Leon.)

The 5th and 6th Century, the Britons, Bretons and Anglo-Saxons
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The Anglo-Saxons wars in Britain were part of a broader conflict across north-west Europe. In France, the Romano-Gauls (Roman and Celtic Gauls allies) had long protected the coasts of Brittany against Saxon pirates with their river-mouth forts. During the fifth century, the Romano-Gallic warlords were joined by British immigrants. These were the cream of Romano-British aristocracy from Cornwall: some fleeing before Irish (Scots) raiders, others hoping for closer associations with Imperial Roman culture. Allied sometimes with the Franks of France, it was this Romano-Gallo-British amalgam -- the BRETONS -- who fought most ferociously against the Saxons of the North Sea and the Goths settled in Central France, and then, in later centuries, when the Franks had established themselves as a separate kingdom, it was the Bretons who maintained Brittany as an independent Celtic state against the Merovingian and Carolingian dynasties.

Celtic Brittany was divided into a number of smaller lordships, upon which the Merovingians and the first Carolingians tried without great success to impose their authority. The line of the Carolingians would go on to produce the most important of all early medieval rulers -- Charlemagne. But the Celtic Bretons, as tough and proud as their British and Irish counterparts, would continue to resist the powerful emerging Frankish Kingdoms.

In the sixth century, Gregory of Tours records their damaging raids on the cities of Nantes and Rennes. Two hundred years later, the Bretons were still resisting and Charlemagne had to devote an entire campaign to their conquest. Even then this proved fragile and during his reign they were in constant rebellion.

Back in the fifth century, the security of the Bretons depended on the efforts of independent Romano-Gallic warlords like Ecdicius. With only his private income to fund him and no assistance from other magnates, Ecdicuis gathered together a small force of horse-warriors. He then set about ambushing the local plundering expeditions of the Goths of central France.