But To A People So Cunning And
Crafty, This Yoke Is Pleasant, And This Burden Is Light.
CHAPTER II
Their living by plunder, and disregard of the bonds of peace and
friendship
This nation conceives it right to commit acts of plunder, theft,
and robbery, not only against foreigners and hostile nations, but
even against their own countrymen. When an opportunity of
attacking the enemy with advantage occurs, they respect not the
leagues of peace and friendship, preferring base lucre to the
solemn obligations of oaths and good faith; to which circumstance
Gildas alludes in his book concerning the overthrow of the Britons,
actuated by the love of truth, and according to the rules of
history, not suppressing the vices of his countrymen. "They are
neither brave in war, nor faithful in peace." But when Julius
Caesar, great as the world itself,
"Territa quaesitis ostendit terga Britannis,"
were they not brave under their leader Cassivellaunus? And when
Belinus and Brennus added the Roman empire to their conquests?
What were they in the time of Constantine, son of our Helen? What,
in the reign of Aurelius Ambrosius, whom even Eutropius commends?
What were they in the time of our famous prince Arthur? I will not
say fabulous. On the contrary, they, who were almost subdued by
the Scots and Picts, often harassed with success the auxiliary
Roman legions, and exclaimed, as we learn from Gildas, "The
barbarians drove us to the sea, the sea drove us again back to the
barbarians; on one side we were subdued, on the other drowned, and
here we were put to death.
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