Meanwhile, in another part of Europe, a Teutonic settlement of quite another character from those on the mainland was going on. ♦The Romans withdrawn from Britain. A.D. 411.♦ Spain and Gaul fell away from the Empire by slow degrees; but the Roman dominion in Britain came to an end by a definite act at a definite moment. The Roman armies were withdrawn from the province, and its inhabitants were left to themselves. Presently, a new settlement took place in the island which was thus left undefended. ♦Difference between the conquest of Britain and other Teutonic conquests.♦ It is specially important to mark the difference between the Teutonic settlements in Britain and the Teutonic conquests on the mainland. The Teutonic conquests in Gaul and Spain were made by Teutonic neighbours who had already learned to know and respect the Roman civilization, who were either Christians already or became Christians soon after they entered the Empire. They pressed in gradually by land; they left the Roman inhabitants to live after the Roman law, and they themselves gradually adopted the speech and much of the manners of Rome. The only exception to this rule on the continent is to be found in the lands immediately on the Rhine and the Danube, where the Teutonic settlement was complete, and where the Roman tongue and civilization were pretty well wiped out. This same process happened yet more completely in the Teutonic conquest of Britain. ♦Character of the English settlement; | long struggle with the Britons.♦ The great island possession of Rome had been virtually abandoned by Rome before the Teutonic settlements in it began. The invaders had therefore to struggle rather with native Britons than with Romans. Moreover, they were invaders who came by sea, and who came from lands where little or nothing was known of the Roman law or religion. They therefore made a settlement of quite another kind from the settlement of the Goths or even from that of the Franks. They met with a degree of strictly national resistance such as no other Teutonic conquerors met with; therefore in the end they swept away all traces of the earlier state of things in a way which took place nowhere else. ♦The English remain Teutonic.♦ As far as such a process is possible, they slew or drove out the older inhabitants; they kept their heathen religion and Teutonic language, and were thus able to grow up as a new Teutonic nation in their new home without any important intermixture with the earlier inhabitants, Roman or British. ♦The Low-Dutch settlements in Britain.♦