populations were largely British, and some British or Roman traditions may have survived. But further south, where the bulk of the Anglo-Saxon settlement took place, it is unlikely that much remained of the Roman way of life. Towns disappeared (if they had not already done so earlier, in the third or fourth centuries), and so did the new religion of the Roman Empire, Christianity.

The fate of the descendants of the Roman civilians of Britain was varied. Many were enslaved or at least ruled by the barbarian newcomers. Others lived in various independent kingdoms in the west; these the Anglo-Saxons called 'Welsh', their word for 'foreigners'. But other Britons took part in a migration of their own, to what subsequently became known as Brittany. Whether the Britons were invited by the Roman authorities to keep order in that area, which had revolted against the Romans at least twice in the fifth century, whether they were invited by the rebels, or whether they simply came as refugees, it cannot now be said. But the establishment of Brittany (or Lesser Britain, as it came to be known in the Middle Ages, distinguishing it from Great Britain) ensured that throughout most of the Middle Ages this Celtic-speaking province pursued a fiercely independent policy. Even in those periods of nominal Frankish rule, the Bretons kept their own rulers, whom the Franks called counts but whom the Bretons themselves no doubt regarded as their kings.

The first two decades of the fifth century were just as chaotic on the Continent as in Britain. After the 'Great Invasion' of 406-7, the Rhine frontier collapsed, and the capital of the Gallic provinces moved to the safety of Arles. The Vandals and Sueves were deflected into Spain, with the help of the usurper Constantine and his British troops. But the Burgundians remained, setting up a kingdom on the middle Rhine, while the lower Rhine seems to have been largely abandoned to the various peoples known collectively as the Franks. The political instability at this time seems to have caused many Roman aristocrats to desert northern Gaul for more secure homes in the south. The Roman army was no longer able to protect the north; indeed, the Roman army in Gaul was, by the 430s or

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