BOOK A. C. 368. The Saxons attack Britain: CHAP. VI. Sequel of their History to the Period of the ANGLO-SAXON Invasion. WHILE In a similar combination of hostilities, Nectaridus, the commander of the Saxon shore, was slain, and the general of the island, Fullo-faudes, perished in an ambush. Several officers were sent by the Roman emperors to succeed them; but their exertions being inadequate to the necessity, Theodosius, an experienced and successful leader, was appointed by Valentinian in their room. The Picts and the co-operating tribes attacked from the north, while the Saxons and their allies assaulted the maritime coasts. Theodosius, from Richborough, marched towards London, and dividing his army into battalions, correspondent to the positions of the enemies, he attacked the robbers incumbered with their plunder. The bands that were carrying away the manacled inhabitants and their cattle, he destroyed, and regained the spoil; of this he distributed a small share among his wearied soldiers; are defeat- the residue he restored to its owners, and entered the city, wondering at its sudden deliverance, with the glories of an ovation. ed by Theodosius. LESSONED by experience, and instructed by the VI. confessions of the captives and deserters, he com- CHAP. bated this mixture of enemies, with well-combined artifice and unexpected attacks. To recal those who in the confusion, from fear or from cowardice, had abandoned their ranks or their allegiance, he proclaimed an amnesty1; and to complete the benefit he had begun, he prosecuted the war with vigour in the north of Britain. He prevented by judicious movements the meditated attack; and hence the Orkneys became the scene of his triumphs. The Saxons, strong in their numbers and intrepidity, sustained several naval encounters before they yielded to his genius. They ceased at last to molest the tranquillity of Britain, and the addition of a deserved sur-name, Saxonicus, proclaimed the services of Theodosius. He added the province of Valentia to Roman Britain, restored the deserted garrisons, and coerced the unruly borderers by judicious stations and a vigilant1 defence. 2 by the Ro THE SAXON Confederation might be defeated, but 370. was not subdued. Such was its power, that they Defeated were now bold enough to defy the Roman armies mans on by land, and invaded the regions on the Rhine the conwith a formidable force. The imperial general was unable to repulse them; a reinforcement en 1 Am. Marcel. lib. xxvii. c. 8. p. 283. 2 Claud. 4 Cons. Hon. 31. "maduerunt Saxone fuso Orcades." Saxo consumptus bellis navalibus, Pacatus Paneg. Theod. p. 97. 3 Pacat. 98. "Quum ipse Saxonicus."-The British government have wisely done equal justice to the defenders of their country: We have Earl St. Vincent, Lord Viscount Duncan Baron of Camperdown, and Baron Nelson of the Nile, and Earl of Trafalgar. 4 Am. Marc. p. 406. Claudian. de 3 Consul. Hon. states his successes against the Picts and Scots, p. 44. tinent. II. BOOK Couraged him. The Saxons declined a battle, and sued for an amicable accommodation. It was granted. A number of the youth fit for war, was given to the Romans, to augment their armies; the rest were to retire unmolested. The Romans were not ashamed to confess their dread of the invaders, by a perfidious violation of the treaty. They attacked the retreating Saxons from an ambush; and, after a brave resistance, the unguarded barbarians were slain or made prisoners. It is to the disgrace of literature, that the national historian of the day has presumed, while he records, to apologise for the ignominious fraud. 6 5 SUCH an action might dishonourably gain a temporary advantage, but it could only exasperate the Saxon nation. The loss was soon repaired in the natural progress of population, and before many years elapsed, they renewed their depredations, and defeated Maximus. At the close of the fourth century they exercised the activity and resources of Stilicho. The unequal struggle is commemorated by the encomiastical poet, whose genius gilds, with a departing ray, the darkening hemisphere of Rome. After his death the Saxons commenced new eruptions. They supported the Armorici in their rebellion, awed the Gothic Euric, began to war with the Francs1, and, extending the theatre 8 9 5 Am. Mar. 416.- Orosious, vii. c. 12. and Cassiodorus, 2 vol. 636. also mention the incident. 6 S. Ambrose, quoted 1 Mascou, 371. 7 Claudian. de Laud. Stil. lib. ii. p. 140. Elz. edit. * Jerom. in Mascou, 410. Sid. Apoll. Paneg. Avit. v. 369. 10 2 Mascou, 39. Gregory of Tours, lib. ii. c. 19. mentions the capture of the Saxon islands by the Francs; and lib. iv. VI. of their spoil, made Belgium, Gaul, Italy, and CHAP. Germany tremble at their presence. At length, Charlemagne, having prosecuted against them one of the most obstinate and destructive wars which history has recorded, their predominance was abased, and their spirit of aggression " destroyed. The celebrity and power of the Saxons on the continent then ceased. They dwindled to a secondary rank, and have ever since acted a secondary part in the events of German history. But they have never been obscure. In the tenth and eleventh and twelfth centuries, colonies of their population settled themselves in 12 Hungary and Transilvania 13; and allied themselves by marriages with the ruder chieftains of those regions. Saxon dukes became emperors of Germany soon after the separation of this dignity from the crown of France. Branches from their stem have formed the most illustrious princes in the north of Germany, and Saxony has the honour of having given birth to the great Reformer of Christianity in the fifteenth century, and her chieftains of successfully supporting this intellectual emancipation and improvement, till it 13 c. 10. what he calls their rebellion and Chlotarius' successes against them. Ib. et c. 14.; and their ravages in France, c. 37. p. 35. 11 See this war in Eginhart's Vita Carol. Magn. and in the Poeta Saxon. Antiq. Annal. de gestis Caroli M. ap. Duchesne, ii. p. 136. 12 See the Chronicles of Hungary, of Thwrocz, pars ii. c. 11. c. 22. 13 See the authorities collected by Eder on this point, in his De initiis, juribus que primævis Saxonum Transilvanorum. Comment. p. 17. and 63-78. Flemings, Hollanders, and others also went there, ibid. Ed. Vienn. 1792. II. BOOK became impossible for power or craft to suppress it. A king of Saxony still exists, though with dismembered dominions, and the country yet presents a people of the most cultivated mind of all the German continent. The rise of the Saxon nation has been, therefore, singularly propitious to human improvement. It created a new formation of mind and manners, and polity in the world, whose beneficial results the state and history of England expressively display. No events tended more to civilize Germany from the third century to the eleventh, than the activity, leagues, colonies, conquests, and transactions of this people. All the improvements of Germany, beyond what Rome imparted, have arisen from the Saxon and the Frankish mind. They kept from it the more barbarous population of the Slavonians and the Huns, and the rude heroes of Scandinavia and the Baltic. The imperial reigns of the house of Saxony, notwithstanding the faults of some of its princes, principally contributed to establish the German independence, civilization, and prosperity during the middle ages. But the beneficial agencies of this race on the continent having diminished, other nations, whom they assisted to form and educate, are now attaining a political, and will probably gain a mental preponderance; unless Saxony, in her adversity, shall regain a moral one-the great foundation of all intellectual superiority. |