On The Ruin of Britain (De Excidio Britanniae) by Gildas
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J.A. Giles >> On The Ruin of Britain (De Excidio Britanniae) by Gildas
18. The Romans, therefore, left the country, giving notice that
they could no longer be harassed by such laborious expeditions,
nor suffer the Roman standards, with so large and brave an army,
to be worn out by sea and land by fighting against these unwarlike,
plundering vagabonds; but that the islanders, inuring themselves
to warlike weapons, and bravely fighting, should valiantly protect
their country, their property, wives and children, and, what is
dearer than these, their liberty and lives; that they should not
suffer their hands to be tied behind their backs by a nation which,
unless they were enervated by idleness and sloth, was not more
powerful than themselves, but that they should arm those hands
with buckler, sword, and spear, ready for the field of battle;
and, because they thought this also of advantage to the people
they were about to leave, they, with the help of the miserable
natives, built a wall different from the former, by public and
private contributions, and of the same structure as walls generally,
extending in a straight line from sea to sea, between some cities,
which, from fear of their enemies, had there by chance been built.
They then give energetic counsel to the timorous natives, and
leave them patterns by which to manufacture arms. Moreover, on
the south coast where their vessels lay, as there was some
apprehension lest the barbarians might land, they erected towers
at stated intervals, commanding a prospect of the sea; and then
left the island never to return.
19. No sooner were they gone, than the Picts and Scots, like
worms which in the heat of the mid-day come forth from their
holes, hastily land again from their canoes, in which they had
been carried beyond the Cichican* valley, differing one from
another in manners, but inspired with the same avidity for blood,
and all more eager to shroud their villainous faces in bushy hair
than to cover with decent clothing those parts of their body which
required it. Moreover, having heard of the departure of our friends,
and their resolution never to return, they seized with greater
boldness than before on all the country towards the extreme north
as far as the wall. To oppose them there was placed on the heights
a garrison equally slow to fight and ill adapted to run away, a
useless and panic-struck company, who slumbered away days and
nights on their unprofitable watch. Meanwhile the hooked weapons
of their enemies were not idle, and our wretched countrymen were
dragged from the wall and dashed against the ground. Such premature
death, however, painful as it was, saved them from seeing the
miserable sufferings of their brothers and children. But why
should I say more? They left their cities, abandoned the protection
of the wall, and dispersed themselves in flight more desperately
than before. The enemy, on the other hand, pursued them with
more unrelenting cruelty than before, and butchered our countrymen
like sheep, so that their habitations were like those of savage
beasts; for they turned their arms upon each other, and for the
sake of a little sustenance, imbrued their hands in the blood of
their fellow countrymen. Thus foreign calamities were augmented
by domestic feuds; so that the whole country was entirely destitute
of provisions, save such as could be procured in the chase.
* The meaning of this expression is not known. O'Connor thinks
it is the Irish Sea.
20. Again, therefore, the wretched remnant, sending to Aetius,
a powerful Roman citizen, address him as follow:--"To Aetius,*
now consul for the third time: the groans of the Britons." And
again a little further, thus:--"The barbarians drive us to the
sea; the sea throws us back on the barbarians: thus two modes of
death await us, we are either slain or drowned." The Romans,
however, could not assist them, and in the meantime the discomfited
people, wandering in the woods, began to feel the effects of a
severe famine, which compelled many of them without delay to yield
themselves up to their cruel persecutors, to obtain subsistence:
others of them, however, lying hid in mountains, caves and woods,
continually sallied out from thence to renew the war. And then
it was, for the first time, that they overthrew their enemies, who
had for so many years been living in their country; for their
trust was not in man, but in God; according to the maxim of Philo,
"We must have divine assistance, when that of man fails." The
boldness of the enemy was for a while checked, but not the
wickedness of our countrymen; the enemy left our people, but the
people did not leave their sins.
* Or Agitius, according to another reading.
21. For it has always been a custom with our nation, as it is
at present, to be impotent in repelling foreign foes, but bold
and invincible in raising civil war, and bearing the burdens of
their offences: they are impotent, I say, in following the standard
of peace and truth, but bold in wickedness and falsehood. The
audacious invaders therefore return to their winter quarters,
determined before long again to return and plunder. And then,
too, the Picts for the first time seated themselves at the extremity
of the island, where they afterwards continued, occasionally
plundering and wasting the country. During these truces, the
wounds of the distressed people are healed, but another sore,
still more venomous, broke out. No sooner were the ravages of
the enemy checked, than the island was deluged with a most
extraordinary plenty of all things, greater than was before known,
and with it grew up every kind of luxury and licentiousness. It
grew with so firm a root, that one might truly say of it, "Such
fornication is heard of among you, as never was known the like
among the Gentiles." But besides this vice, there arose also
every other, to which human nature is liable and in particular
that hatred of truth, together with her supporters, which still
at present destroys every thing good in the island; the love of
falsehood, together with its inventors, the reception of crime
in the place of virtue, the respect shown to wickedness rather
than goodness, the love of darkness instead of the sun, the
admission of Satan as an angel of light. Kings were anointed,
not according to god's ordinance, but such as showed themselves
more cruel than the rest; and soon after, they were put to death
by those who had elected them, without any inquiry into their
merits, but because others still more cruel were chosen to succeed
them. If any one of these was of a milder nature than the rest,
or in any way more regardful of the truth, he was looked upon
as the ruiner of the country, every body cast a dart at him, and
they valued things alike whether pleasing or displeasing to God,
unless it so happened that what displeased him was pleasing to
themselves. So that the words of the prophet, addressed to the
people of old, might well be applied to our own countrymen:
"Children without a law, have ye left God and provoked to anger
the holy one of Israel?* Why will ye still inquire, adding
iniquity? Every head is languid and every heart is sad; from the
sole of the foot to the crown, there is no health in him." And
thus they did all things contrary to their salvation, as if no
remedy could be applied to the world by the true Physician of all
men. And not only the laity did so, but our Lord's own flock and
its shepherds, who ought to have been an example to the people,
slumbered away their time in drunkenness, as if they had been
dipped in wine; whilst the swellings of pride, the jar of strife,
the griping talons of envy, and the confused estimate of right
and wrong, got such entire possession of the, that there seemed
to be poured out (and the same still continueth) contempt upon
princes, and to be made by their vanities to wander astray and
not in the way.
* Isa. I. 4,5. In most of these quotations there is great verbal
variation from the authorised version: the author probably quoted
from memory, if not from the Latin version.
22. Meanwhile, God being willing to purify his family who were
infected by so deep a stain of woe, and at the hearing only of
their calamities to amend them; a vague rumour suddenly as if on
wings reaches the ears of all, that their inveterate foes were
rapidly approaching to destroy the whole country, and to take
possession of it, as of old, from one end to the other. But yet
they derived no advantage from this intelligence; for, like frantic
beasts, taking the bit of reason between their teeth, they
abandoned the safe and narrow road, and rushed forward upon the
broad downward path of vice, which leads to death. Whilst,
therefore, as Solomon says, the stubborn servant is not cured
by words, the fool is scourged and feels it not: a pestilential
disease morally affected the foolish people, which, without the
sword, cut off so large a number of persons, that the living
were not able to bury them. But even this was no warning to them,
that in them also might be fulfilled the words of Isaiah the
prophet, "And God hath called his people to lamentation, to baldness,
and to the girdle of sackcloth; behold they begin to kill calves,
and to slay rams, to eat, to drink, and to say, 'We will eat and
drink, for to-morrow we shall die.'" For the time was approaching,
when all their iniquities, as formerly those of the Amorrhaeans,
should be fulfilled. For a council was called to settle what was
best and most expedient to be done, in order to repel such frequent
and fatal irruptions and plunderings of the above-named nations.
23. Then all the councillors, together with that proud tyrant
Gurthrigern [Vortigern], the British king, were so blinded, that,
as a protection to their country, they sealed its doom by inviting
in among them like wolves into the sheep-fold), the fierce and
impious Saxons, a race hateful both to God and men, to repel the
invasions of the northern nations. Nothing was ever so pernicious
to our country, nothing was ever so unlucky. What palpable
darkness must have enveloped their minds-darkness desperate and
cruel! Those very people whom, when absent, they dreaded more
than death itself, were invited to reside, as one may say, under
the selfsame roof. Foolish are the princes, as it is said, of
Thafneos, giving counsel to unwise Pharaoh. A multitude of whelps
came forth from the lair of this barbaric lioness, in three cyuls,
as they call them, that is, in there ships of war, with their
sails wafted by the wind and with omens and prophecies favourable,
for it was foretold by a certain soothsayer among them, that they
should occupy the country to which they were sailing three hundred
years, and half of that time, a hundred and fifty years, should
plunder and despoil the same. They first landed on the eastern
side of the island, by the invitation of the unlucky king, and
there fixed their sharp talons, apparently to fight in favour of
the island, but alas! more truly against it. Their mother-land,
finding her first brood thus successful, sends forth a larger
company of her wolfish offspring, which sailing over, join
themselves to their bastard-born comrades. From that time the
germ of iniquity and the root of contention planted their poison
amongst us, as we deserved, and shot forth into leaves and branches.
the barbarians being thus introduced as soldiers into the island,
to encounter, as they falsely said, any dangers in defence of
their hospitable entertainers, obtain an allowance of provisions,
which, for some time being plentifully bestowed, stopped their
doggish mouths. Yet they complain that their monthly supplies
are not furnished in sufficient abundance, and they industriously
aggravate each occasion of quarrel, saying that unless more
liberality is shown them, they will break the treaty and plunder
the whole island. In a short time, they follow up their threats
with deeds.
24. For the fire of vengeance, justly kindled by former crimes,
spread from sea to sea, fed by the hands of our foes in the east,
and did not cease, until, destroying the neighbouring towns and
lands, it reached the other side of the island, and dipped its
red and savage tongue in the western ocean. In these assaults,
therefore, not unlike that of the Assyrian upon Judea, was fulfilled
in our case what the prophet describes in words of lamentation;
"They have burned with fire the sanctuary; they have polluted on
earth the tabernacle of thy name." And again, "O God, the gentiles
have come into thine inheritance; thy holy temple have they
defiled," &c. So that all the columns were levelled with the
ground by the frequent strokes of the battering-ram, all the
husbandmen routed, together with their bishops, priests, and
people, whilst the sword gleamed, and the flames crackled around
them on every side. Lamentable to behold, in the midst of the
streets lay the tops of lofty towers, tumbled to the ground, stones
of high walls, holy altars, fragments of human bodies, covered
with livid clots of coagulated blood, looking as if they had
been squeezed together in a press;* and with no chance of being
buried, save in the ruins of the houses, or in the ravening
bellies of wild beasts and birds; with reverence be it spoken
for their blessed souls, if, indeed, there were many found who
were carried, at that time, into the high heaven by the holy
angels. So entirely had the vintage, once so fine, degenerated
and become bitter, that, in the words of the prophet, there was
hardly a grape or ear of corn to be seen where the husbandman
had turned his back.
25. Some therefore, of the miserable remnant, being taken in
the mountains, were murdered in great numbers; others, constrained
by famine, came and yielded themselves to be slaves for ever to
their foes, running the risk of being instantly slain, which truly
was the greatest favour that could be offered them: some others
passed beyond the seas with loud lamentations instead of the voice
of exhortation. "Thou hast given us as sheep to be slaughtered,
and among the Gentiles hast thou dispersed us." Others, committing
the safeguard of their lives, which were in continual jeopardy,
to the mountains, precipices, thickly wooded forests, and to the
rocks of the seas (albeit with trembling hearts), remained still
in their country. But in the meanwhile, an opportunity happening,
when these most cruel robbers were returned home, the poor remnants
of our nation (to whom flocked from divers places round about our
miserable countrymen as fast as bees to their hives, for fear of
an ensuing storm), being strengthened by God, calling upon him
with all their hearts, as the poet says,--"With their unnumbered
vows they burden heaven," that they might not be brought to utter
destruction, took arms under the conduct of Ambrosius Aurelianus,
a modest man, who of all the Roman nation was then alone in the
confusion of this troubled period by chance left alive. His
parents, who for their merit were adorned with the purple, had
been slain in these same broils, and now his progeny in these
our days, although shamefully degenerated from the worthiness
of their ancestors, provoke to battle their cruel conquerors,
and by the goodness of our Lord obtain the victory.
26. After this, sometimes our countrymen, sometimes the enemy,
won the field, to the end that our Lord might in this land try
after his accustomed manner these his Israelites, whether they
loved him or not, until the year of the siege of Bath-hill, when
took place also the last almost, though not the least slaughter
of our cruel foes, which was (as I am sure) forty-four years and
one month after the landing of the Saxons, and also the time of
my own nativity. And yet neither to this day are the cities of
our country inhabited as before, but being forsaken and overthrown,
still lie desolate; our foreign wars having ceased, but our civil
troubles still remaining. For as well the remembrance of such
terrible desolation of the island, as also of the unexpected
recovery of the same, remained in the minds of those who were
eyewitnesses of the wonderful events of both, and in regard
thereof, kings, public magistrates, and private persons, with
priests and clergymen, did all and every one of them live orderly
according to their several vocations. But when these had departed
out of this world, and a new race succeeded, who were ignorant
of this troublesome time, and had only experience of the present
prosperity, all the laws of truth and justice were so shaken and
subverted, that not so much as a vestige or remembrance of these
virtues remained among the above-named orders of men, except among
a very few who, compared with the great multitude which were
daily rushing headlong down to hell, are accounted so small a
number, that our reverend mother, the church, scarcely beholds
them, her only true children, reposing in her bosom; whose
worthy lives, being a pattern to al men, and beloved of God,
inasmuch as by their holy prayers, as by certain pillars and most
profitable supporters, our infirmity is sustained up, that it may
not utterly be broken down, I would have no one suppose I intended
to reprove, if forced by the increasing multitude of offences,
I have freely, aye, with anguish, not so much declared as bewailed
the wickedness of those who are become servants, not only to their
bellies, but also to the devil rather than to Christ, who is our
blessed God, world without end.