The borderland was the scene of bloody skirmishes for centuries. Till 784 Shrewsbury had been accounted the capital of the British kingdom of Powys, but then Offa took the city and advanced the English frontier to the Wye. He then constructed a dyke or bank with a moat that ran from the estuary of the Dee to the mouth of the Wye, as a limit beyond which no Welshman might pass. Mona received an English colony under Egbert, and acquired its new name of Anglesey. Some time after the battles of Deorham and Chester the refugees began to call themselves Cymry. The name implies “compatriots,” and well describes those of the same blood from all parts of Britain, now united in a common overthrow, and in a common resolution to hold for ever their mountain fastnesses to which they had been driven. We may halt to inquire how it was that this great and heroic people, to which belong some of the finest qualities that are found in man, a people in some respects more gifted than that which dispossessed it, should have been so completely routed by invaders from across the stormy North Sea. The Gaul had been of precisely the same Brythonic stock, and he had allowed himself to be buffeted by Cæsar and brought to his knees. Cæsar was sharp-witted enough to detect at a glance the defects in character and in political organisation of the Gauls, and to take advantage of them. Cæsar could always reckon on tribal jealousies, and consequently on setting one clan against another; and there was not a tribe in which there were not traitors, who, offended in their self-esteem, were ready to betray those of their own race and household, to wipe off some petty slight, to avenge some personal grudge. Precisely the same cause led to the ruin of the Brittons when opposed to Germanic invaders, and, as we shall see in the sequel, the same cause again acted throughout the long struggle with the English kings. The divisions in Wales opened the door for Norman and English adventurers to come in and possess the land, and for the monarch to obtain an ever-strengthening grip on the land. A brother was always ready to go over to the foe to gain some mean advantage; one sept was ever prepared to side with the national foe if it thought thereby to humble another sept, or to acquire through this means a few more cows and a little more pasture. When Jute, Angle, or Saxon crossed the North Sea they were in the same political condition as were the Welsh; they also were tribally organised. But they quickly learned the lesson never to be taken to heart and acted on by the Britton, that of subordination of individual interests to the common good. The English kingdoms became consolidated into one; the British chieftains remained to the end disunited. In feudal France province was opposed to province, in much the same way, till the strong hand of Richelieu consolidated the monarchy.