ed Salisbury, at
that time seated on a commanding eminence; and vanquished an army
which advanced to the relief of the city. In the subsequent battle of
Marlborough, [134] his British enemies displayed their military science.
Their troops were formed in three lines; each line consisted of three
distinct bodies, and the cavalry, the archers, and the pikemen, were
distributed according to the principles of Roman tactics. The Saxons
charged in one weighty column, boldly encountered with their shord
swords the long lances of the Britons, and maintained an equal conflict
till the approach of night. Two decisive victories, the death of three
British kings, and the reduction of Cirencester, Bath, and Gloucester,
established the fame and power of Ceaulin, the grandson of Cerdic, who
carried his victorious arms to the banks of the Severn.

[Footnote 134: At Beran-birig, or Barbury-castle, near Marlborough. The
Saxon chronicle assigns the name and date. Camden (Britannia, vol. i.
p. 128) ascertains the place; and Henry of Huntingdon (Scriptores
pest Bedam, p. 314) relates the circumstances of this battle. They are
probable and characteristic; and the historians of the twelfth century
might consult some materials that no longer exist.] After a war of a
hundred years, the independent Britons still occupied the whole
extent of the Western coast, from the wall of Antoninus to the extreme
promontory of Cornwall; and the principal cities of the inland country
still opposed the arms of the Barbarians. Resistance became more
languid, as the number and boldness of the assailants continually
increased. Winning their way by slow and painful efforts, the Saxons,
the Angles, and their various confederates, advanced from the North,
from the East, and from the South, till their victorious banners were
united in the centre of the island. Beyond the Severn the Britons still
asserted their national freedom, which survived the heptarchy, and even
the monarchy, of the Saxons. The bravest warriors, who preferred
exile to slavery, found a secure refuge in the mountains of Wales: the
reluctant submission of Cornwall was delayed for some ages; [135] and a
band of fugitives acquired a settlement in Gaul, by their own valor,
or the liberality of the Merovingian kings. [136] The Western angle
of Armorica acquired the new appellations of Cornwall, and the Lesser
Britain; and the vacant lands of the Osismii were filled by a strange
people, who, under the aut