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 island; two and a half centuries of happy peace had followed, in another half-century it was all over. Long before the last Roman legions were withdrawn in 407, pirates had been breaking down all the walls and defences of Britain. Celtic Picts from the North, Celtic Scots from Ireland; worse than all, down the north-east wind came terrible ‘Englishmen’, ‘Saxons’, from the shores of North Germany and Denmark. Rome had forced the wolf and the eagle to content themselves with rabbits and lambs; now they were going to feast once more upon the corpses of men.