447-559: The Mercenaries Take Over

The fateful but probably unavoidable decision in 449 by the Romano-British warlord Vortigern to invite a mixed Anglo-Saxon force over to Britain to help defeat the Picts and the Scots is shrouded in mystery but the legends plausibly suggest a brutal palace coup by the incomers and their seizure of the profitable part of the country closest to the trade route across the Channel (Kent).

The coup took place in 455 in Aylesford in Kent and was not without cost to the invaders. Hengist, the leading Angle, may have slaughtered the Romano-British court but he lost his brother Horsa and it is quite possible that an attempt to seize control of the whole country by ousting the 'superbus tyrranus' merely left them with Kent which they seem to have ethnically cleansed of the entire Romano-British elite who then fled to Londinium and elsewhere. The exiles would be the descendants of the thoroughly Romanised Cantiaci and have included many merchant princes. It can reasonably be said that England was founded on an ethnic massacre which might suggest to the English that they should be wary of being over-judgmental about the founding histories of other nations.

The matter was not uncontested. Hengest and his son Esc have to defend their newly acquired acquisition. The dispossessed, called the Welsh by the Angles (or rather Wealhas which means foreigners or strangers in Anglo-Saxon) fight back but are defeated at Crayford in 456, apparently with great losses, and then at Wippedesfleot (probably Ebbsfleet) in 465 before the Anglo-Saxons go on the offensive with a major raid in 473 against the Cymri (the term we will now use rather than Romano-British which they have ceased to be and use rather than Wealhas which defines them in the terms of the invader). There is no point in trying to tell the story in detail of the remorseless drive for control of South Britain by clearly superior (in military terms and in terms of sheer will and greed) Anglo-Saxons but we can perhaps highlight the process by which Roman Britain failed to become Cymru and largely became England instead.

The next key moment is a mini-invasion by Saxons under Aelle and his three sons and the seizure of another key economic asset close to the continent, Sussex, in 477. They need only three ship loads of men to dispossess the Cymry landowners, engaging in the same slaughter that Hengist and his brother had dished out two decades earlier. This is essentially an organised crime operation, using superior force to seize assets from a richer but more vulnerable population although we should perhaps not feel overly sorry for a local elite grown fat on slaves and peasant labour and refusing to organise itself adequately for resistance. There is method in all this - the new warlords are targeting the existing rackets with the same determination that Al Capone did in Chicago. Selsey where Aelle lands was a central distribution hub for the profitable trade in wheat and other agricultural and industrial goods in a regional economy which is still (just) functioning on Roman lines although the political and military protection for it has long since crumbled.

As in Kent, the Cymry try to fight back but the fighting skills and no doubt armament of these ruthless gangs is too much for them. They are finally defeated in Sussex with the seizure of the important Roman fort at Pevensey (Anderida) in 491 and the slaughter of everyone inside. There is much that is obscure in all this - context, precise dates and events, names and lineages, the actual politics - but Britain (we reserve the name Cymru for later and apply it to the area the Wealhas/Cymri were finally pushed into) may have suffered these attacks because around 480, Clovis, King of the Franks, was cutting the possibility of the Saxons raiding and seizing Northern French land. The idea that England might have emerged as much on one side of the Channel as the other might amuse but the reality was that Germanic aggression was taking place on a massively wide front, filling the huge vacuum left by the Romans.

In 495 the Saxon warlord Cerdic appears in Hampshire to create the basis for what will be the Kingdom of Wessex (to follow alongside Sussex and Kent). Other Saxon warlords seize land around Portsmouth in 501. The pattern of capturing the export zones of Britain continues, exerting a stranglehold on the old Romano-British economic system. Since the new arrivals are interested in extracting as much as they can by way of taxation and dues and pushing the locals off the best land in order to be otherwise self-sufficient, the economic disruption is immense. It is at this point that there is an attempt to pull together the Cymry in what might be called a last attempt to create a viable independent Romano-British state, that of 'King Arthur' and push the Anglo-Saxons back into the sea.

In fact, King Arthur is so shrouded in legend and subsequent accretions that we can discount the vast bulk of it as history. What it is probably safe to say is that a Romano-British warlord was able to muster the forces to halt the Western Anglo-Saxon advance and, if not push them back into the sea, stop their move inland and seizure of prime agricultural land and markets for a while. The legend centres around a major battle at an unknown site, the Battle of Badon Hill, where the Cymry finally defeated a major Anglo-Saxon force in pitched battle in or around 513. The relief is not one that lasts for long. Cerdic is acknowledged King of Wessex by 519 (to be succeeded by his son Cynric in 534), although all these dates and even persons are uncertain, and he apparently seizes the Isle of Wight (although it seems to have been settled and ruled in practice by Jutes) in 530. Wessex appears at this time still to be a small  'stranglehold' kingdom in and around Hampshire and to be far from the West of England hegemon that it was to become later.

Meanwhile, a similar process of invasion and settlement is taking place in Northern Britain with the most important development being the reign of Ida (547-559), King of Bernicia, an Anglo-Saxon Kingdom established throughout the sixth century to give Anglo-Saxons mastery of south-eastern Scotland and what is north-eastern England. It almost certainly emerged out of mercenary operations similar to those in the south east and directed at northern Pictish and Scottish raiders. Ida builds a strong fortress at Bamburgh and is succeeded by his son Glappa but we are going to forgo king lists in this series. Ida's ability to maintain his position and fight off attempts to oust him is the basis for what will be the important Kingdom of Northumbria.

By the middle of the sixth century, Roman Britain is not merely dead on paper but in fact. Romano-Britons, to be the ancestors of the modern Cymry but already regarded as such in our series for convenience, are still occupying much of the country but their frontiers to the North East and South are firmly in the hands of Germanic warlords who, in the South, have a stranglehold on the vital export trades that had kept the country prosperous. It is down hill for the original inhabitants all the way from now on.