GILDAS
Britain's king, Vortigern, has invited the "impious Saxons, a race hateful both to God and men" to help him hold back the picts. The Saxons, hungry for land, break their treaty with Vortigern and make war against the Britons.
"All the husbandmen [were] routed, together with their bishops, priests, and people, whilst the sword gleamed, and the flames cracked around them on every side. Lamentable to behold, in the midst of the streets lay the tops of lofty towers, tumbled to th e 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...
"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 trul y was the greatest favour that could be offered them...
"But in the meanwhile, an opportunity happening, when these most cruel robbers were returned home, the poor remnants of our nation ... took arms under the conduct of Ambrosius Aurelianus, a modest man, who of all the Roman nation was then alone in the con fusion of this troubled period by chance left alive...
"After this, sometimes our countrymen, sometimes the enemy, won the field ... until the year of the siege of Bath-hill [Mount Badon], when took place also the last almost, though not the least slaughter of our cruel foes."
[Giles, J.A., ed. Old English Chronicles. George Bell & Sons; London, 1908.]
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