The History of England, Volume I eBook

[MN The Britons.] The abject Britons. regarded this present of liberty as fatal to them; and were in no condition to put in practice the prudent counsel given them by the Romans to arm in their own defence.  Unaccustomed both to the perils of war and to the cares of civil government, they found themselves incapable of forming or executing any measures for resisting the incursions of the barbarians.  Gratian also and Constantine, two Romans who had a little before assumed the purple in Britain, had carried over to the continent the flower of the British youth; and having perished in their unsuccessful attempts on the imperial throne, had despoiled the island of those who, in this desperate extremity, were best able to defend it.  The Picts and Scots, finding that the Romans had finally relinquished Britain, now regarded the whole as their prey, and attacked the northern wall with redoubled forces.  The Britons already subdued by their own fears, found the ramparts but a weak defence for them; and deserting their station, left the country entirely open to the inroads of the barbarous enemy.  The invaders carried devastation and ruin along with them; and exerted to the utmost their native ferocity, which was not mitigated by the helpless condition and submissive behaviour of the inhabitants [t].  The unhappy Britons had a third time recourse to Rome, which had declared its resolution for ever to abandon them.  Aetius, the patrician, sustained at that time, by his valour and magnanimity, the tottering ruins of the empire, and revived for a moment, among the degenerate Romans, the spirit as well as discipline of their ancestors.  The British ambassador carried to him the letter of their countrymen, which was inscribed, the groans of the Britons.  The tenor of the epistle was suitable to its superscription.  The barbarians, say they, on the one hand, chase us into the sea; the sea, on the other, throws us back upon the barbarians; and we have only the hard choice left us, of perishing by the sword or by the Waves [u].  But Aetius, pressed by the arms of Attila, the most terrible enemy that ever assailed the empire, had no leisure to attend to the complaints of allies, whom generosity alone could induce him to assist [v].  The Britons thus rejected were reduced to despair, deserted their habitations, abandoned tillage, and flying for protection to the forests and mountains, suffered equally from hunger and from the enemy.  The barbarians themselves began to feel the pressure of famine in a country which they had ravaged; and being harassed by the dispersed Britons, who had not dared to resist them in a body, they retreated with their spoils into their own country [w]. [FN [t] Gildas.  Bede, lib. 1.  Ann.  Beverl. p. 45. [u] Gildas.  Bede, lib. 1. cap. 13.  Malmesbury, lib.

1. cap. 1.  Ann.  Beverl. p. 45. [v] Chron.  Sax. p. 11 edit. 1692. [w] Ann.  Beverl. p. 45.]