In AD410, Emperor Honorius recalled the last of the Legions from Britain to the defence of Rome. With barbarians battering the frontiers across the empire, Britannia was now on her own. In the absence of central control, across the former province governance now reverted largely to the urban civitas, and in many cases to a more ancient model, based on the pre Roman tribal regions. In much of the land the Christian population, led by the more cultured elite, clung to the notion of a civilised existence in the face of manifest threats. Many self interested tribal leaders established their own rule, and internecine conflict was rife. The tribal cultures of the Durotriges, the Dobunni, the Brigantes, the Iceni, the Parisi, the Siluri, the Cantici and the Dumnoni returned alongside more recent Roman ways. The Romano British, as this new culture began to think of itself, struggled to find the cohesion needed to form a nation. The absence of an overall leader among the quarrelsome factions meant that clear objectives could never be established. Meanwhile, the bakers and weavers, the farmers and traders, the bankers and merchants, formerly safe from outside influences by the Legions of Rome, had lost both the resolve and the skill they would now need to defend themselves.
From the lands beyond Hadrian’s Wall, the tribes of the Picts increased their raiding and pillaging, while from Ireland came warbands to plague the western coastlines. Along the eastern shore, seaborne Germanic pirates continued to raid as they had done during the last years of Roman rule. Here and there, groups of Britons fought to stop the incursions, but without the military organisation of Rome they were hard pressed even to contain the threats. All cries for help to Rome went unanswered. At last, in AD424, a leader whom the Britons called Vortigern came to rule over the southern Britons, and although not all the kings and warlords in the land would bow to him, all those in the lands over which he reigned recognised him as their lord. A period of relative peace followed during which prosperity began to return. Vortigern even managed to export grain surpluses to feed the hard pressed Roman armies on the continent. Then in the year AD437, Pictish warriors broke through Hadrian’s Wall and plundered a large area of the north, driving the Britons before them. The kings of the Parisi and the Brigantes turned to Vortigern for help, but despite a victory over the Picts, they continued to raid, causing much death and destruction. The following year they again broke through the defences of the north, this time defeating both the Brigantes and an army sent by Vortigern. Only the onset of winter prevented the Picts from this time laying waste to the south as well, but by the time they were gone, wholesale slaughter and destruction had visited the Brigantes and the Parisi.
At his wits end, Vortigern turned for help to a group of people who lived among the British. Since its earliest days, the Roman Empire had sought to recruit soldiers from among the nations it had conquered, and then to employ them in provinces distant from their homelands. In Britain, many Germanic Foderati, mercenaries, had been stationed alongside the Roman Army. Most had now been withdrawn along with the Legions they supported, but a few remained, both as mercenaries and settlers. Whilst it was true their kinsmen were still sporadically raiding along the eastern coastline, the threat compared to that of the Picts seemed small. These people came from across the North Sea, from the lands at the mouth of the Rhine and the Danish peninsula. These were people whom Rome had never conquered, whose ferocity and skill in combat made them natural warriors and caused the Romans to seek them out as paid soldiers. They were the Angles, the Saxons and the Jutes.
Vortigern approached the leaders of the settlers in the area north of London and asked if a war leader and an army could be hired to defend against the Picts. Within a few weeks an answer came back. Yes, it could. He was a Jute named Hengist. Vortigern agreed that if Hengist would provide security against the Picts, then the island of Thanet should be forever his peoples to settle, together with what food and keep the army needed. Hengist agreed, and the following spring of AD439, arrived with a small army of picked warriors amounting to some 300 men. Together with the mercenaries already there, Hengist and his brother Horsa, commanded an army of around 1000 men. Vortigern was unimpressed. He asked Hengist if this was his army and Hengist replied, in his language, that it was. Feeling he had been duped, Vortigern looked again to his own poor army to stop the Picts when they returned. Hengist was not thinking of waiting. Less then a fortnight after his arrival, he set off up the eastern coastline with three ships of warriors. They raided Pictish settlements on the Forth, returning with prisoners, women and plunder. Vortigern was aghast. Surely now the Picts would return for vengeance. Yet he was persuaded to listen to a testament from one of the Pictish prisoners, who spoke of the fearsome slaughter visited on their people by the Saxon warriors. Vortigern decided that perhaps he had been right after all.
He hadn’t to wait for long. Less than six weeks later, messengers arrived from the Parisi to say the Picts had crossed the wall once again and were headed south. Nothing lay in their way. Vortigern mobilised his army and notified Hengist that he was required. Then the army of the Britons set off northward to meet the Picts, the Saxons following close behind. After several days, the Briton army came face to face with the enemy just to the south of the old Roman fort on the river Don. Vortigerns general, a man named Ambrosius, watched as the Picts took up position on the opposite side of the valley. There were at least 4000 of them, fierce, well armed and apparently fearless. The Britons had not given them any reason to feel fear. Presently, the Saxons arrived and took up position in front of the British battle line. Ambrosius approached Hengist. His own plan had been to await the Picts and defend, being his best chance of victory. He knew the Picts were superior fighters to his own men. But what did Hengist plan to do? Hengist gave his answer. Without waiting for the Britons, his men charged straight at the Picts. 1000 men against 4000. The Picts were taken aback. They prepared to meet the charge, but some were clearly unnerved. The Saxons clashed squarely with the Pictish line and hell broke loose as the Britons stood transfixed. Many of the Saxon warriors were armed with spears, but some were armed with short swords or battleaxes. Against the Picts poorly disciplined line, the Saxons tore huge gaps in their ranks and many of them began to flee. Seeing this, the Britons charged also, but by this time the result was not in doubt. The Picts turned and ran, hotly pursued by the Saxons who continued to hunt and cut down stragglers for hours afterwards. Within less than an hour, the battle itself was over and the contest became little more than a killing chase. By nightfall, the Picts had been dispersed over a wide area, having suffered a catastrophic defeat.
Vortigern was delirious. The Pictish army had been smashed and driven back across the wall. Whilst the Briton Army returned home, the Saxon warband pursued the Picts north, and even into their own territory. Stories came back of the terrible destruction wrought by the Saxons, though no one stopped to think at the time that this might one day be the fate of the Britons. Vortigern made good his promise and ceded to the mainly Jutish army the island of Thanet in the Thames estuary. Hengist asked Vortigern that if a thousand men could defeat the Picts, what could be achieved with more? Vortigern agreed, and Hengist at once sent to the Rhine for more people. In reality, he sent word of the victory obtained, of the goodness of the land and the weakness of the Britons. All through that summer and autumn more Angles, Saxons and Jutes arrived to settle the island of Thanet, building homes and preparing the land for tilling the following spring. Despite the fact that some even began to settle the coast above the Thames estuary without agreement all seemed well in the world.
At around about this time, Ambrosius’s wife gave birth to a child whom he christened Artorious Aurelius. Ambrosius was impressed by the child’s strength and intelligence and thought that only good should come of him. Meanwhile, Vortigern was becoming complacent. Feeling safe in his power now that the Picts were defeated, he took to ruinous bouts of drinking and womanising. One of the women he became besotted with was Rowena, the daughter of Hengist. Hengist, being at heart a barbarian, saw in this only a way to make himself more powerful. Being so inflamed with her beauty, Vortigern now became “as would the devil in his soul”, for he was a Christian and Rowena a pagan child of a barbarian. Wishing it not to appear as his own idea for the sake of his position, he enquired of a devious Hengist if he could think of a way that the girl could be made his own. Hengist consulted with Horsa and the elders among the Saxons of what he should ask for in return for the girl. Unanimously, they all agreed that in consideration of the king’s request that he should ask for all the land that the Britons did call Cient, and the Saxons Cantware, or Kent. Vortigern, drunk on Rowena’s beauty, readily agreed, and the girl was duly delivered unto him. Unfortunately, Vortigern in his haste to have the maiden, forgot to inform the King of Cient, Guoyran, that his kingdom had been given away. In turn, this bought about much bad feeling among the British Nobility for Vortigern, so much so that his own son Vortimer became mistrustful of the high king.
The winter passed off without incident, and in the spring of 440, the Angles and Saxons again went campaigning against the Picts. Again they had the victory and Vortigern was happy with his new ally. Many more Jutes and Angles from northern Germany and Denmark began to arrive in Kent, and further north Angles also began to settle the coastline above Lindum, or what is now Lincoln. With the Saxon army in the north now swelled to many thousands, Vortimer began to become anxious, especially as many more migrant peoples from Germany were arriving in Kent also. Vortigern would hear none of it, pleased only that he could now pass his womanising ways in peace. 440AD came and went, and the spring of 441 arrived. The Saxon army campaigned again in the north, but that year the rain fell heavily all summer and the crops in Britain failed badly. Many thousands of Angles and Jutes had now settled Kent, while more still had established settlements north of the Humber river, which the settlers were referring to as Diera. In the winter of that year, Hengist approached Vortigern and asked why the food and supplies that were part of their agreement were falling behind. Vortigern, beginning now to be concerned himself, explained that the harvest had been bad, The Britons were having difficulty in feeding themselves. And besides, the numbers of Hengist’s people had grown to more than which he could feed. Hengist, feeling now surer of his power, replied that unless the Britons kept their part of the bargain, he would take the food himself.
And so it came to pass in the year AD442 that the Saxon revolt erupted. Once the winter had passed, the Germanic warbands sacked all the Briton settlements still remaining in Kent, driving the Britons across the weald, sacking and burning London and the coastal regions east of Chelmsford and Colchester. In the north a similar story unfolded, Lincoln, Ebercum (York) and the Humber estuary were all raided and burnt. The Angles wreaked slaughter on the hapless British, and an army sent by Vortigern to engage them was destroyed north of London. Vortigern fled west, not just to escape the raiding army, but also his own noblemen bent on revenge for his treatment of Guoyran. It was too late for poor Guoyran though, caught and slaughtered by the rampaging Jutes as he tried to escape Kent. In the churches of the Christian south it appeared to the Britons that a monstrous calamity was befalling them. God had deserted them. They had never come across such savagery before and the people were all but defenceless. Many thousands fled west towards the kingdoms of the Durotriges and the Dobunni, tribes that had not joined Vortigerns axis of power and were as yet relatively safe from the horde. As winter fell and the Angles and Saxons retired back to Kent and the eastern seaboard settlements, a fiery glow hung in the sky above Britain.
