The Scots and Picts, attentive to every advantage, rushed with redoubled violence into this vacuity.  The Britons, who could find no protection but in slavery, again implore the assistance of their former masters.  At that time Aetius commanded the imperial forces in Gaul, and with the virtue and military skill of the ancient Romans supported the Empire, tottering with age and weakness.  Though he was then hard pressed by the vast armies of Attila, which like a deluge had overspread Gaul, he afforded them a small and temporary succor.  This detachment of Romans repelled the Scots; they repaired the walls; and animating the Britons by their example and instructions to maintain their freedom, they departed.  But the Scots easily perceived and took advantage of their departure.  Whilst they ravaged the country, the Britons renewed their supplications to Aetius.  They once more obtained a reinforcement, which again reestablished their affairs.  They were, however, given to understand that this was to be their last relief.  The Roman auxiliaries were recalled, and the Britons abandoned to their own fortune forever.

[Sidenote:  A.D. 432.]

When the Romans deserted this island, they left a country, with regard to the arts of war or government, in a manner barbarous, but destitute of that spirit or those advantages with which sometimes a state of barbarism is attended.  They carried out of each province its proper and natural strength, and supplied it by that of some other, which had no connection with the country.  The troops raised in Britain often served in Egypt; and those which were employed for the protection of this island were sometimes from Batavia or Germany, sometimes from provinces far to the east.  Whenever the strangers were withdrawn, as they were very easily, the province was left in the hands of men wholly unpractised in war.  After a peaceable possession of more than three hundred years, the Britons derived but very few benefits from their subjection to the conquerors and civilizers of mankind.  Neither does it appear that the Roman people were at any time extremely numerous in this island, or had spread themselves, their manners, or their language as extensively in Britain as they had done in the other parts of their Empire.  The Welsh and the Anglo-Saxon languages retain much less of Latin than the French, the Spanish, or the Italian.  The Romans subdued Britain at a later period, at a time when Italy herself was not sufficiently populous to supply so remote a province:  she was rather supplied from her provinces.  The military colonies, though in some respects they were admirably fitted for their purposes, had, however, one essential defect:  the lands granted to the soldiers did not pass to their posterity; so that the Roman people must have multiplied poorly in this island, when their increase principally depended on a succession of superannuated soldiers.  From this defect the colonies were continually falling to decay.  They had also in many respects degenerated from their primitive institution.[26] We must add, that in the decline of the Empire a great part of the troops in Britain were barbarians, Batavians or Germans.  Thus, at the close of this period, this unhappy country, desolated of its inhabitants, abandoned by its masters, stripped of its artisans, and deprived of all its spirit, was in a condition the most wretched and forlorn.