David Hume - The History of England, Vol.I. Part A. ( Chap 1.3) lyrics

The Britons The abject Britons regarded this present of liberty as fatal to them; and were in no condition to put in practice the prudent counsel given them by the Romans, to arm in their own defence. Unaccustomed both to the perils of war and to the cares of civil government, they found themselves incapable of forming or executing any measures for resisting the incursions of the barbarians. Gratian also and Con The History of England, Vol.I. Part A. ( Chap 1.3)stantine, two Romans who had a little before a**umed the purple in Britain, had carried over to the continent the flower of the British youth; and having perished in their unsuccessful attempts on the imperial throne, had despoiled the island of those who, in this desperate extremity, were best able to defend it. The Picts and Scots, finding that the Romans had finally relinquished Britain, now regarded the whole as their prey, and attacked the northern wall with redoubled forces. The Britons, already subdued by their own fears, found the ramparts but a weak defence for them; and deserting their station, left the country entirely open to the inroads of the barbarous enemy. The invaders carried devastation and ruin along with them; and exerted to the utmost their native ferocity, which was not mitigated by the helpless condition and submissive behavior of the inhabitants.[*] [* Gildas, Bede, lib. i. Allured. Beverl. p. 45.] The unhappy Britons had a third time recourse to Rome, which had declared its resolution forever to abandon them. Ætius, the patrician, sustained at that time, by his valor and magnanimity, the tottering ruins of the empire, and revived for a moment among the degenerate Romans the spirit, as well as discipline, of their ancestors. The British amba**adors carried to him the letter of their countrymen, which was inscribed, "The groans of the Britons." The tenor of the epistle was suitable to its superscription. "The barbarians," say they, "on the one hand, chase us into the sea; the sea, on the other, throws us back upon the barbarians; and we have only the hard choice left us of perishing by the sword or by the waves."[*] [* Gildas, Bede, lib. i. cap. 13. William of Malmesbury, lib. i. cap. 1 Alured. Beverl. p. 45.] But Ætius, pressed by the arms of Attila, the most terrible enemy that ever a**ailed the empire, had no leisure to attend to the complaints of allies, whom generosity alone could induce him to a**ist.[*] [* Saxon Chron. p. 11, edit. 1692.] The Britons, thus rejected, were reduced to despair, deserted their habitations, abandoned tillage, and flying for protection to the forests and mountains, suffered equally from hunger and from the enemy. The barbarians themselves began to feel the pressures of famine in a country which they had ravaged; and being hara**ed by the dispersed Britons, who had not dared to resist them in a body, they retreated with their spoils into their own country.[*] [* Alured. Beverl, p. 45.] The Britons, taking advantage of this interval, returned to their usual occupations; and the favorable seasons which succeeded, seconding their industry, made them soon forget their past miseries, and restored to them great plenty of all the necessaries of life. No more can be imagined to have been possessed by a people so rude, who had not, without the a**istance of the Romans, art of masonry sufficient to raise a stone rampart for their own defence; yet the monkish historians,[*] who treat of those events, complain of the luxury of the Britons during this period, and ascribe to that vice, not to their cowardice or improvident counsels, all their subsequent calamities. [* Gildas, Bede, lib. i. cap. 14.] The Britons, entirely occupied in the enjoyment of the present interval of peace, made no provision for resisting the enemy, who, invited by their former timid behavior, soon threatened them with a new invasion. We are not exactly informed what species of civil government the Romans, on their departure, had left among the Britons, but it appears probable that the great men in the different districts a**umed a kind of regal, though precarious authority, and lived in a great measure independent of each other.[*] [* Gildas, Usher, Ant. Brit. p. 248, 347.] To this disunion of counsels were also added the disputes of theology; and the disciples of Pelagius, who was himself a native of Britain, having increased to a great multitude, gave alarm to the clergy, who seem to have been more intent on suppressing them, than on opposing the public enemy.[*] [* Gildas, Bede, lib. i. cap. 17. Constant, in Vita Germ.] Laboring under these domestic evils, and menaced with a foreign invasion, the Britons attended only to the suggestions of their present fears, and following the counsels of Vortigern, prince of Dumnonium, who, though stained with every vice, possessed the chief authority among them,[*] they sent into Germany a deputation to invite over the Saxons for their protection and a**istance. [* Gildas, W. Malms. p. 8.]