Legacy - Uh oh here come the Barbarians

In AD 410 the last units of the Roman army left Britain. Why did they leave? The Empire was too big. By the end of the fourth century AD the Empire had been permanently split into two parts, each with it’s own Emperor. The Western part was the biggest. If you look at the map you can see that this empire had a border that stretched for miles and miles. It needed a huge army to defend it.
The army Soldiers from Britain were ordered to go and defend Gaul. This weakened the power of the army. The Roman Empire ran out of money the soldiers did not get paid and they got really fed up. Some soldiers deserted, others decided to elect their own Emperor. What happened to the forts when the soldiers left?
The People Huge sums of money were needed to pay the wages of public officials. Taxes couldn’t be collected because of all the fighting. Travel was unsafe so that even the money collected couldn’t be distributed. People had to look out for themselves and gradually there was less and less respect for Roman laws and customs.	The Emperors Many emperors and generals were cruel and greedy. They held office for only a few months before they were replaced, often murdered by others just as cruel and greedy.
The Barbarians Many of the tribes the Romans called the Barbarians joined forces to attack parts of the Empire. The Roman army could not deal with all of these attacks.	Finally … In AD 476 German invaders turned the last Roman Emperor, Romulus Augustus, off his throne. The Roman Empire in the West came to an end. However, in the East, Roman influence and ideas managed to survive as the Byzantine Empire for almost another 1000 years.
End of Roman Britain - Timeline

The following text is adapted from Gildas ‘The ruin of Britain’ translated by M. Winterbottom
" 'To Aetius, thrice consul: the groans of the British. The barbarians push us back to the sea, the sea pushes us back to the barbarians; between these two kinds of death, we are either drowned or slaughtered’. But they got no help in return."
	Then all the members of the council, were struck blind; the protection - or rather the method of destruction - they decided on, was that the ferocious Saxons (name not to be spoken!), hated by man and God, should be let into the island like wolves into the fold, to beat back the peoples of the north.
How utter the blindness of their minds! How desperate and crass the stupidity! Of their own free will they invited under the same roof a people whom they feared worse than death.
Then the Saxons came, coming in three keels, as they call warships in their language. The winds were favourable; favourable too the omens and auguries, which prophesied … that they would live for three hundred years in the land towards which their prows were directed, and that for half the time, a hundred and fifty years, they would repeatedly lay it waste.
	On the orders of the King, they first of all stayed on the east side of the island, supposedly to fight for our country, in fact to fight against it. More Saxons arrived by ship, and joined up with those already here.
The barbarians … asked to be given supplies, saying they were soldiers ready to undergo extreme dangers. The supplies were granted, and for a long time ‘shut the dog’s mouth’. Then they again complained that their monthly allowance wasn’t enough …and swore that they would break their agreement and attack and plunder the whole island unless more payment was given to them. They didn’t wait, but immediately put their threats into action.

	All the major towns were laid low by the repeated battering of enemy rams; laid low, too, all the inhabitants - church leaders, priests and people alike, as the swords glinted all around and the flames crackled. It was a sad sight.

In the middle of the squares the foundation-stones of high walls and towers that had been torn from their lofty base, holy altars, fragments of corpses, covered (as it were) with a purple crust of congealed blood, looked as though they had been mixed up in some dreadful wine-press.
The Ruin of Britain - Full Text Version The Ruin - Anglo-Saxon Verse