the City was left to
defend itself.

What sort of defence were the people likely to offer? For nearly four
hundred years they had lived at peace, free to grow rich and luxurious,
with mercenaries to fight for them. Between the taking of the City by
Boadicea and the departure of the Romans, a space of three hundred and
fifty years, the peace of the City was only disturbed by the lawlessness
of Allectus's mercenaries. Their attempt to sack the City was put down,
it is significant to note, not by the citizens but by the Roman soldiers
who entered the City in time. The citizens were mostly merchants: they
were Christians in name and in form of worship, they were superstitious,
they were luxurious, they were unwarlike. Many of them were not Britons
at all, but foreigners settled in the City for trade. Moreover, for it
is not true that the whole British people had grown unfit for war, a
revolt of the Roman legions in the year 407 drew a large number of the
young men into their ranks, and when Constantine the usurper took them
over into Gaul for the four years' fighting which followed, the country
was drained of its best fighting material. The City, then, contained a
large number of wealthy merchants, native and foreign; it also contained
a great many slaves who were occupied in the conduct of the trade, and
few, since the young men went away with Constantine, who could be relied
upon to fight.

One more point may be made out from history. Since London was a town
which then, as now, lived entirely by its trade and was the centre of
the export and import trade of the whole country, the merchants, as we
have seen, must have suffered most severely long before the Romans went
away. We are, therefore, in the year 410, facing a situation full of
menace. The Picts and Scots are overrunning the whole of the north, the
Saxons are harrying the east and the south-east, trade is dying, there
is little demand for imports, there are few exports, it is useless for
ships to wait cargoes which never arrive, it is useless for ships to
bring cargoes for which there is no demand.

[Illustration: REMAINS OF A VIKING SHIP, FROM A CAIRN AT GOKSTAD.

(_Now in the University at Christiania._)]

A declining city, a dying trade, enemies in all directions, an unwarlike
population. When the curtain falls upon the scene in the year 410 that
is what we see.

6. AFTER THE ROMANS.

PART II.

Consider, again, the position of London. It stood,