The withdrawal of the legions from Britain by Stilicho left the population unprotected. The Britons were then a mixture of Celtic and Roman blood, and had become greatly demoralized during the long decay of the Empire; so they were unable to resist the invasions of the Picts and Scots, and in this emergency they summoned the Saxons and Angles to their aid. Two chiefs of the latter, Hengist and Horsa, accepted the invitation, landed in England in 449, and received lands in Kent. They were followed by such numbers of their countrymen that the allies soon became conquerors, and portioned England among themselves. They brought with them their speech and their ancient pagan religion, and for a time overthrew the rude form of Christianity which had prevailed among the Britons since the days of Constantine. Only Ireland, the Scottish Highlands, Wales and Cornwall resisted the Saxon rule, as across the Channel, in Brittany, a remnant of the Celtic Gauls resisted the sway of the Franks. From the year 449 until the landing of William the Conqueror, in 1066, nearly all England and the Lowlands of Scotland were in the hands of the Saxon race. Ataulf, the king of the Visigoths, was murdered soon after establishing his people in Southern France. Wallia, his successor, crossed the Pyrenees, drove the Vandals out of northern Spain, and made the Ebro river the boundary between them and his Visigoths. Fifteen years afterwards, in 429, the Vandals, under their famous king, Geiserich (incorrectly called Genseric in many histories), were invited by the Roman Governor of Africa to assist him in a revolt against the Empire. They crossed the Straits of Gibraltar in a body, took possession of all the Roman provinces, as far eastward as Tunis, and made Carthage the capital of their new kingdom. The Visigoths immediately occupied the remainder of Spain, which they held for nearly three hundred years afterwards. [Sidenote: 445. ATTILA, KING OF THE HUNS.] Thus, although the name and state of an Emperor of the West were kept up in Rome until the year 476, the Empire never really existed after the invasion of Alaric. The dominion over Italy, Gaul and Spain, claimed by the Emperors of the East, at Constantinople, was acknowledged in documents, but (except for a short time, under Justinian) was never practically exercised. Rome had been the supreme power of the known world for so many centuries, that a superstitious influence still clung to the very name, and the ambition of the Germanic kings seems to have been, not to destroy the Empire, but to conquer and make it their own.