There is an unquestioned tradition among the Northern nations of Europe, importing that all that part of the world had suffered a great and general revolution by a migration from Asiatic Tartary of a people whom they call Asers.  These everywhere expelled or subdued the ancient inhabitants of the Celtic and Cimbric original.  The leader of this Asiatic army was called Odin or Wodin:  first their general, afterwards their tutelar deity.  The time of this great change is lost in the imperfection of traditionary history, and the attempts to supply it by fable.  It is, however, certain, that the Saxon nation believed themselves the descendants of those conquerors:  and they had as good a title to that descent as any other of the Northern tribes; for they used the same language which then was and is still spoken, with small variation of the dialects, in all the countries which extend from the polar circle to the Danube.  This people most probably derived their name, as well as their origin, from, the Sacae, a nation of the Asiatic Scythia.  At the time of which we write they had seated themselves in the Cimbric Chersonesus, or Jutland, in the countries of Holstein and Sleswick, and thence extended along the Elbe and Weser to the coast of the German Ocean, as far as the mouths of the Rhine.  In that tract they lived in a sort of loose military commonwealth of the ordinary German model, under several leaders, the most eminent of whom was Hengist, descended from Odin, the great conductor of the Asiatic colonies.  It was to this chief that the Britons applied themselves.  They invited him by a promise of ample pay for his troops, a large share of their common plunder, and the Isle of Thanet for a settlement.

The army which came over under Hengist did not exceed fifteen hundred men.  The opinion which the Britons had entertained of the Saxon prowess was well founded; for they had the principal share in a decisive victory which was obtained over the Picts soon after their arrival, a victory which forever freed the Britons from all terror of the Picts and Scots, but in the same moment exposed them to an enemy no less dangerous.

Hengist and his Saxons, who had obtained by the free vote of the Britons that introduction into this island they had so long in vain attempted by arms, saw that by being necessary they were superior to their allies.  They discovered the character of the king; they were eye-witnesses of the internal weakness and distraction of the kingdom.  This state of Britain was represented with so much effect to the Saxons in Germany, that another and much greater embarkation followed the first; new bodies daily crowded in.  As soon as the Saxons began to be sensible of their strength, they found it their interest to be discontented; they complained of breaches of a contract, which they construed according to their own designs; and then fell rudely upon their unprepared and feeble allies, who, as they had not been able to resist the Picts and Scots, were still