rongly fortified
places all over the country. Now, from their conquerors, the
Britons learnt many useful arts, to read and to write, to build
houses and to make roads; but at the same time, they unlearnt some
of their own virtues and, among others, how to think and act for
themselves. For the Romans never allowed a Briton any real part in
the government of his own country, and if he wished to become a
soldier, he was sent away from Britain to serve with a legion
stationed in some far-distant part of the empire. Thus it came
about that when, in the fifth century, the Romans withdrew from
Britain to defend Rome itself from invading hordes of savages, the
unhappy Britons had forgotten how to govern and how to defend
themselves, and fell an easy prey to the many enemies waiting to
pounce on their defenceless country. Picts from Scotland invaded
the north, and Scots from Ireland plundered the west; worst of all,
the heathen Angles and Saxons, pouring across the seas from their
homes in the Elbe country, wasted the land with fire and sword.
Many of the Britons were slain; those who escaped sought refuge in
the mountainous parts of the west from Cornwall to the Firth of
Clyde. There, forgetting, to some extent, their quarrels, they took
the name of the Cymry, which means the "Brethren," though the
English, unable to understand their language, spoke of them
contemptuously as the "Welsh," or the "Strangers."

For a long time the struggle went on between the two races, and
nowhere mere fiercely than in the south-west, where the invaders set
up the Kingdom of Wessex; but at last there arose among the Britons a
great chieftain called Arthur. The old histories speak of him as
"Emperor," and he seems to have been obeyed by all the Britons;
perhaps, therefore, he had succeeded to the position of the Roman
official known as the Comes Britanniae, whose duty it was to hasten to
the aid of the local governors in defending any part of Britain where
danger threatened. At all events, under his leadership, the oppressed
people defeated the Saxons in a desperate fight at Mons Badonicus,
perhaps the little place in Dorsetshire known as Badbury, or, it may
be, Bath itself, which is still called Badon by the Welsh. After that
victory, history has little to say about Arthur. The stories tell that
he was killed in a great battle in the west; but, nowadays, the wisest
historians think it more probable that he met his death in a conflict
near the R