In 446 A.D., a British 'great king', named Vortigern, according to traditional legend, sent a delegation to Rome, asking for Roman military assistance to help the beleaguered Britons defend themselves against their enemies. According to Gildas, the message read:

To (Aetius) in his third consulship, come the groans of the Britons; the barbarians drive us to the sea, the sea drives us upon the barbarians; by one or the other of these two modes of death we are either killed or drowned.

Only fifty years before, the mighty Roman legions had garrisoned Britain with 30,000 troops. They had been divided into three main commands. The Dux Britanniarum, or overall commander-in- chief, as based in northern England along with most of the army, in the vicinity of York, maintaining a bastion of defense against the ever-present Picts who swept out of the Scottish highlands. The Comes Litoris Saxonici, based in Kent, commanded the coastal fortresses, while the Comes Britanniarum led a mounted cadre of mobile frontier troops, able to respond to threatened invasions or rebellions rapidly and decisively.

By the year 407 A.D., the Romans had left. Ever meticulous in their methods, the Roman generals sought to provide defenses for the Britons before withdrawing. Roman engineers constructed walls around the coastal towns on the eastern shore, and the army commanders provided the male inhabitants, as Gildas noted, "With bucklers, swords and spears. They then bid them farewell, as men who never intended to return".

It was certainly a wise decision on the part of the Roman leaders to abandon the distant province. Britain had continually been a rebellious land, both as an internal and external threat to the Empire. Would-be emperors twice had donned the purple and took their British legions across the channel to challenge the resident ruler in Rome. Constantine had been successful in the early part of the 3rd century, but Magnus Maximus had not in his attempt in 383 A.D. Rome also appeared to be literally falling apart. Most of the trained troops had been killed in the terrible civil and barbarian wars. Far-flung garrisons could no longer be maintained. As a final point, what little Britain returned to the Empire in economic terms did not make up for the costs of maintaining her as a province.

Britain was simply not cost efficient.

Island Safety

Thus, in 407 A.D., the security and safety of the island province had been put in severe jeopardy as the Roman troops returned to imperilled Italy. Chronicles note that the Britons were virtually helpless to stop the flood-tide of potential invaders. It has also been widely accepted that with the exception of a few minor local skirmishes, the Britons had no real battle experience and little organization as the Roman legions had provided their military protection.

The potential enemies of the Britons were, however, portrayed by contemporary writers as fearsome, skilled warriors, able to exact an awful punishment on the refined, decadent and unmilitary Britons. As Gildas described his fellow-countrymen,

"To oppose their (the Picts) attacks, there was stationed on the height of the stronghold, an army, slow to fight, unwieldy for flight, incompetent by reason of its cowardice of heart ... "

Not an inspiring observation.

The northern neighbors, the Picts, were fiercely independent The Romans had been unable to subdue them, so had built two massive walls across the island to keep them out of Britain. These warriors fought as their Celtic ancestors who had first battled Caesar's 1st century B.C. invasion army. Armed with little more than a shield and long spear, their close-packed ranks relied on an impetuous attack to throw their enemies into disorder. If the enemy possessed cavalry, the spears effectively kept the horsemen from charging them frontally and impaling themselves.

In the first few years after the Romans left, these ancient enemies of the Britons forced their way past Hadrian's wall into Bernicia and northern Briton.

The Picts were not the only invaders tempted by the fertile lands of the Britons. The early Saxons first appeared in Roman te ts in the 2nd century A.D. They were listed as occupying Holstein as well as three islands off the German coast in the Baltic. The Anglii are mentioned by Tacticus in his Germania as living on the Jutish peninsula and the Baltic coast, as well. Both groups occupied the upper Rhine region, along with the Frisians and warlike Franks.

The Saxons raided the coast of Britainlong before the Roman garrisons left, but they now began to strike even harder at the island.

According to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles, Saxon raiders successfully penetrated inland by 429 in extensive raiding expeditions and there is evidence of an established presence in Kent before the Romans vacated the island, perhaps as garrison mercenaries.8 As for the Britons themselves, they were far from being the helpless, inept and totally deplorable soldiers which the contemporary ecclesiastes would have us believe.

The military system of the Romano-Britons would not have been much different from the one imposed upon them by Rome. According to the chronicles, war certainly was not an unfamiliar occurrence to the Britons, as they actually regarded warfare as being quite natural. Gildas compared war to nature when he wrote -

"(The Romans) plunge their terrible swords in the necks of the enemies; the massacre ... to be compared to the fall of leaves at a fixed time ... a mountain torrent, swollen by numerous streams after storms..."

But natural though war seemed, Christian morale lapses were seen as reason enough for God to turn His back upon His brethren. Gildas clearly placed the blame for Britain's woes on the shoulders of the populace, as they had grown away from Christian grace by the 6th century and their wars were "unjust".

Bede noted that after the Romans left, "The people grew to loose and wanton living", with cruelty, hatred and drunkenness as the rule of the land before a great plague struck, but it was "A greater stroke of vengeance" when the Saxons were enlisted to aid the Britons against the Picts.

This is an understandable parable from an ecclesiastes striving in the early years of the 8th century to explain the subjugation of the Christian Britons by pagans, a familiar tome which will appear frequently throughout succeeding centuries as military disasters are excused as "God's will". This repetitive response of man's just 'rewards' would find full-blown expression in the 11th-12th centuries during the Crusades.

Gildas makes reference to the Britons fleeing their towns and being massacred by the invading Picts. When he does applaud a British military victory, he writes that "Their (the Britons) trust was not in man but in God", but anticipated their eventual ruin because "Our countrymen withdrew not from their sin".

Military Class

After the Romans had evacuated the British fortresses, there still remained a military class in Britain, for although the legions had withdrawn, plenty of garrison and auxiliary forces remained behind with their families. Certain northern British rulers later claimed descent from Coel Hen, "Old King Cole", a major personage of the remaining Hadrian's Wall garrison. Though never in great numbers, enough of these troops remained to continue organized, military resistance to the invaders ... at least initially.

At the top of the British military caste system were the Combrogi, as the Welsh would later call them, the countrymen or bodyguard of the local ruler, chief or king--petty regional rulers immediately sprang up throughout Britain after the collapse of the centralized Roman government. These bands of well-armed and armored men numbered perhaps around 300 each and fought as mounted cavalry. The Gododdin a poem circa 600 A.D., contains numerous references to a band of 300 armored, disciplined mounted warriors, reinforcing the probability that such forces were in actual use as late as the 6th century in England.

Next would be the Comitatus, or Romanized professional foot soldier who would be armed with a spear and perhaps mounted as both armored or unarmored mounted infantry. These soldiers would be older--35 to 60 years of age--retired ex-auxiliaries of the Roman wars who had returned home after their years of service to the Empire.

Always few in number, bands of these troops were sought after and retained by the provincial rulers. At the Battle of Aeillestreu, Henry of Huntingdon refers to the discipline of the Britons who, seeing their flank supports routed, proceeded to turn and attack the victorious Saxon pursuers, routing them in turn.

This is hardly within the capability of undisciplined levies. Though not the loyal unto death warriors like the Combrogi, these men would still be bound together as a military unit out of mutual necessity for survival, a professional outlook that would endure throughout the Dark Ages.

Civilized militia or locally trained levy troops hastily equipped by the departing Romans were located in most large towns.

Though many of the Celtic tribes remained pagan, the populations of the urban areas were Christianized and as such received some training in the Roman methods of war. These local militia were an adequate defense when behind their town walls facing a band of barbarian raiders but were not considered of much use for open- field offensive combat.

Unarmored levies with light spears and some missile troops would also be available in short supply, but the vast bulk of Britons would be simply unarmored, untrained warriors, not any better--in fact, probably much worse--than their Pictish counterparts. Perhaps this is the type of soldier which Gildas so disparages in his writings. This was the raw manpower available to the Britons.

In their favor, they had the Roman road network, falling into disuse and decay during the passing decades of the 5th century, but still maintained to some extent between larger towns.

As a final advantage over their enemies, St. Germanus, visiting Britain in 429, instructed his Christian brothers to ensure victory by shouting "Alleluiah" before smashing into the Pictish ranks.

The Romano-Britons were, for the most part, bound together by their common Christian religion, a unifying factor which would be made much of during the later Crusading periods by contemporary writers.

German Raiders

The German sea raiders were actually not as sophisticated in breakdown of troops or training as the Britons. They did not use cavalry in a tactical sense, and there were basically only thre: types of fighters available.

The professional warband troop consisted of better armored fighters who carried a throwing spear or light axe, a shield and a sword or fighting spear. They would rush in wedge-shaped masses at the enemy, throw their missile weapons and charge in, as the Romans used to, combining mobility with missile fire and shock attack. These warriors were also loyal unto death to their tribal leader. Larger scale raids also contained numbers of unarmored fighters, boys, sailors and older men who would make up the rear ranks of the warband, adding to its mass. The warbands could number from 400-900 men, the main restriction in size was due to the difficulty of larger numbers to forage effectively.

The invaders possessed one thing which the Britons did not, however--large, available numbers of warriors; their forces limited only by the number of ships to transport them. Though there is much written about the Britons being slaughtered because of their moral decadence and material affluence by our ecclesiastical chroniclers, the truth of the matter is much more basic.

The trained, available warriors were few and far between, being confined within the walled Roman towns and commanded by 'tyrants', as Procopius called the petty rulers of sub-Roman Britain. The massive numbers of invaders simply overwhelmed the Britons. Contemporary impressions of mid-5th century Britain tell of a decaying, failing society.

St. Patrick, writing in the mid-5th century, perceived an increasingly barbarized Roman world where the "fellow-citizens" of Britain were a discredit to the Roman name and by 450, the "strongholds of Romanism"" had fallen: villas were destroyed, garrisons gone and towns were in decline. Out of desperation the Britons send their delegation to Rome in 446 asking for military assistance.

More Defense of Britain

Defense of Britain 450-537AD: Introduction
Defense of Britain 450-537AD: State of 5th Century Britain
Defense of Britain 450-537AD: Invasions of the 5th Century
Defense of Britain 450-537AD: Battle of Mons Badonicus (Mt. Badon)
Defense of Britain 450-537AD: Aftermath of Battle of Mons Badonicus