e wholesale and utter
destruction of cities, the desecration of churches, the massacre of
clergy and people. Nennius (as, for the sake of convenience, modern
writers mostly agree to call the unknown author of the 'Historia
Britonum') gives us legends of British incompetence and Saxon
treachery which doubtless represent the substantial features of the
break-up, and preserve, quite possibly, even some of the details. Bede
and the 'Anglo-Saxon Chronicle' assign actual dates to the various
events, but we have no means of testing their accuracy.

D. 2.--Broadly we know that the unhappy civilians, who were not only
without military experience, but had up to this moment been actually
forbidden to carry arms, naturally proved unable to face the ferocious
enemies who swarmed in upon them. They could neither hold the Wall
against the Picts nor the coast against the Saxons. It may well be
true that they chose a _Dux Britannorum_,[365] and that his name may
have been something like Vortigern, and that he (when a final appeal
for Roman aid proved vain)[366] may have taken into his pay (as
Carausius did) the crews of certain pirate "keels" [_chiulae_],[367]
and settled them in Thanet. The very names of their English captains,
"Hengist and Horsa," may not be so mythical as critics commonly
assume.[368] And the tale of the victory at Stamford, when the
spears of the Scottish invaders were cut to pieces by the
swords of the English mercenaries,[369] has a very true ring
about it. So has also the sequel, which tells how, when the inevitable
quarrel arose between employers and employed, the Saxon leader gave
the signal for the fray by suddenly shouting to his men, _Nimed eure
saxes_[370] (_i.e._ "Draw your knives!"), and massacred the hapless
Britons of Kent almost without resistance.

D. 3.--The date of this first English settlement is doubtful. Bede
fixes it as 449, which agrees with the order of events in Gildas, and
with the notice in Nennius that it was forty years after the end of
Roman rule in Britain [_transacto Romanorum in Britannia imperio_].
But Nennius also declares that this was in the fourth year of
Vortigern, and that his accession coincided with that of the nephew
and successor of Honorius, Valentinian III., son of Galla Placidia,
which would bring in the Saxons 428. It may perhaps be some very
slight confirmation of the later date, that Valentinian is the last
Emperor whose coins have been found in Britain.[371]

D.