And now the history of the rise and progress of the Angles on the soil of Germany ends. Even if it can be increased there is but modicum of information. Yet we could scarcely expect more. On the contrary, why should not the Angles have shared the total obscurity of the Nuithones, Sigulones, and others? What population amongst those with which they came in contact could have recorded their alliances, their victories, or their defeats? Not the Frisians, who were unlettered as long as they were Pagan, and Pagan until the tenth century. Not the Slavonians, whose spiritual and intellectual darkness was equal. Not the Romans, for reasons already given. There only remained the Gauls and Britons. But, unfortunately, in the eyes of the Gauls and Britons, although all Angles were Saxons, all Saxons were not Angles—so that the proportion of proper Angle history which we have in the Gallic and British accounts of the Saxons cannot be determined.
The history of the Saxons of the continent has been stated to have been the history of the Old-Saxons. And up to the time of Beda, and about half a century later, such was the case. Hence, the rule is as follows—where we hear of Saxon actions by sea, the actors may be Old-Saxons,[217] Angles, Frisians, Scandinavians, or Slavonians, and where we hear of actions on the Terra Firma of Germany, and also in the times anterior to B.C. 800, the actors are Old-Saxons rather than Anglo-Saxons. In this case, except in Britain, we have little or no Angle history under the name of Saxon; and, as there is equally little under the name of Angle, we have, as has been already seen, next to no Angle history at all—i.e., in Germany.
But with the reign of Charlemagne the criticism changes. The Saxon history, even in Germany, becomes Anglo-Saxon, as well as Old-Saxon, and it may be that the events are pretty equally distributed between the two divisions. The reason is clear. The arms of Southern and Middle Europe have penetrated to the parts beyond the Weser, and it only requires the Angles to be described under their own proper name (instead of that of Saxon) for us to have the materials of an average history. It is a sickening and revolting history, and a history that few nations but the English can afford. Throughout the whole length and breadth of Germany there is not one village, hamlet, or family which can shew definite signs of descent from the continental ancestors of the Angles of England. There is not a man, woman, or child who can say, I have pure Angle blood in my veins. In no nook or corner can dialect or sub-dialect of the most provincial[218] form of the German speech be found which shall have a similar pedigree with the English. The Angles of the Continent are either exterminated or undistinguishably mixed up with the other Germans in proportions more or less large, and in combinations more or less heterogeneous. And the history of the Conquest and Conversion of the Saxons by Charlemagne is the history of this extinction. It is this that makes it so impossible to argue backwards from the present state of the Angles of Germany to an earlier one, and so to reconstruct their history. They have no present state. Neither have the Old-Saxons—their next of kin. Of the Frisians only, the next nearest, there are still fragments; for, although the enemy of the Old-Saxons and the Anglo-Saxons was the enemy of the Frisians also, he was not equally their exterminator. They may or may not have been braver than the Angles and Old-Saxons. They certainly occupied a more impracticable country. To this period—the period of their reduction—the Angli and Werini of Thuringia are attributed. They may, indeed, have got there as they did to Sleswick, by conquest, and at an earlier period. If so, there was an alliance. They were, however, more probably transplanted.
FOOTNOTES:
[22] Saxons in England, i. 24.
CHAPTER XI.
RECAPITULATIONS AND ILLUSTRATIONS.—PROPOSITIONS RESPECTING THE KELTIC CHARACTER OF THE ORIGINAL OCCUPANTS OF BRITAIN, ETC.—THE RELATIONS BETWEEN THE ANCIENT BRITONS AND THE ANCIENT GAULS, ETC.—THE SCOTCH GAELS.—THE PICTS.—THE DATE OF THE GERMANIC INVASIONS.—THE NAMES ANGLE AND SAXON.
Of the British Isles at the time of the Angle invasion we have effected a sketch, rather than a picture; a sketch indistinct in outline, and with several of its details almost invisible. Nevertheless, it is a sketch in which some of the points are pretty clear. Germans of one or more varieties, Kelts either Gaelic or British, Picts who may be anything, Romans and Roman Legionaries are the chief elements. These we have had to distribute in Time and Space as we best could. We have also had, as we best could, to investigate their relations to each other.