At any rate, in 455, if we may trust the ‘Anglo-Saxon Chronicle,’ the bands of Hengist broke out of Thanet and began to move westward, ravaging as they went. Probably at first they did not attack the walled towns; they may merely have intended an armed protest. Where Vortigern was or what he did we cannot say; his sons Vortimer and Categirn led the opposition to the invaders. A battle was fought at a place not specified, and Hengist was driven back into Thanet. Presumably reinforced from the Continent, he again emerged from his fastness, and encountered Vortimer in two battles, both claimed as British victories, but clearly indecisive. One was on the Durgwentid River (perhaps either the Stour or Darenth), the other at Rit-hergabail or Episford, generally supposed to be Aylesford on the Medway. Horsa and Categirn were both slain. It was apparently an English reverse, for the fourth battle was fought by a Roman monument on the shore of the Channel. The invaders were defeated and driven on board their ships; but Vortimer, unfortunately for the Britons, died soon afterwards, perhaps of wounds received in the battle. The story goes that he desired his followers to bury him at the spot where Hengist had landed--presumably therefore at Ebbsfleet--so that in death he might keep watch over the country that he had for the moment saved. He was not obeyed. Geoffrey of Monmouth, who may perhaps have had some written authority for his statement, says that he was buried at London. Vortigern now reappears on the scene, and opens negotiations with the invaders. The ‘Historia’ says that Hengist arranged a conference and banquet of six hundred unarmed notables, three hundred from each side. He, however, ordered his own followers to hide knives in their shoes, and when the feast was in full progress every Jute drew his dagger upon his helpless British comrade. Vortigern alone was spared, and, probably in fear of his life, concluded peace on very disadvantageous terms. There is no reason to discredit the story, except the quite inadequate one that the ancestors of Englishmen could not be guilty of such treachery. This catastrophe appears to have ended Vortigern’s sovereignty in the south, and he fled to his own Welsh realm. There is a wild legend that Germanus called down fire from heaven upon him, but Germanus had died in Gaul some years before. The motive of the legend is obvious: no fate was too terrible for the hated dynast who had betrayed Britain, and the temptation to bring in Germanus must have been irresistible. Vortigern’s genealogy appears to have been well known, and his descendants were ruling in south-east Wales ten generations later.