o glory cannot be claimed for the invaders. The
deed was an impossible one; let that be their excuse. To destroy a whole
nation by the sword exceeds human power, and there is no example of it.
We know, besides, that in this case the task would have been an
especially hard one, for the population of Britain, even at the time of
Caesar, was dense: _hominum infinita multitudo_, he says in his
Commentaries. The invaders, on the other hand, found themselves in
presence of an intelligent, laborious, assimilable race, trained by the
Romans to usefulness. The first of these facts precludes the hypothesis
of a general massacre; and the second the hypothesis of a total
expulsion, or of such extinction as threatens the inassimilable native
of Australia.

In reality, all the documents which have come down to us, and all the
verifications made on the ground, contradict the theory of an
annihilation of the Celtic race. To begin with, we can imagine no
systematic destruction after the introduction of Christianity among the
Anglo-Saxons, which took place at the end of the sixth century. Then,
the chroniclers speak of a general massacre of the inhabitants, in
connection with two places only: Chester and Anderida.[34] We can
ascertain even to-day that in one of these cases the destruction
certainly was complete, since this last town was never rebuilt, and only
its site is known. That the chroniclers should make a special mention of
the two massacres proves these cases were exceptional. To argue from the
destruction of Anderida to the slaughter of the entire race would be as
little reasonable as to imagine that the whole of the Gallo-Romans were
annihilated because the ruins of a Gallo-Roman city, with a theatre
seating seven thousand people have been discovered in a spot uninhabited
to-day, near Sanxay in Poictou. Excavations recently made in England
have shown, in a great number of cemeteries, even in the region termed
_Littus Saxonicum_, where the Germanic population was densest, Britons
and Saxons sleeping side by side, and nothing could better point to
their having lived also side by side. Had a wholesale massacre taken
place, the victims would have had no sepulchres, or at all events they
would not have had them amongst those of the slayers.

In addition to this, it is only by the preservation of the
pre-established race that the change in manners and customs, and the
rapid development of the Anglo-Saxons can be explained. These ro