the place of the landlords, to avail themselves of the labour of the existing body of labourers. And if the Roman upper class was killed out in England and not in Gaul, this would furnish a fairly adequate explanation of the fact that in Gaul the language of the conquered is spoken, and in England that of the conquerors. It is reassuring to find, on referring to Gibbon’s chapter on the English conquest of Britain, that this conclusion agrees with the judgment of one “whose lightest words are weighty.”[33] Gibbon dwells as strongly as anyone could wish on the thorough character of the English operations: “Conquest has never appeared more dreadful or destructive than in the hands of the Saxons.” He lays due stress on the fate of Andredes-Ceaster: “the last of the Britons, without distinction of age or sex, was massacred in the ruins of Anderida; and the repetition of such calamities was frequent and familiar under the Saxon heptarchy.” He asserts, with vigorous rhetoric, that a clean sweep was made of the Roman administrative organisation: “The arts and religion, the laws and language, which the Romans had so carefully planted in Britain, were extirpated by their barbarous successors.... The kings of France maintained the privileges of their Roman subjects, but the ferocious Saxons trampled on the laws of Rome and of the emperors. The proceedings of civil and criminal jurisdiction, the titles of honour, the forms of office, the ranks of society ... were finally suppressed.... The example of a revolution, so rapid and so complete, may not easily be found.” Nevertheless, he does not agree with those who hold that such a revolution involved either the “extirpation” or the “extermination” or even the “displacement” of the subject population. “This strange alteration has persuaded historians, _and even philosophers_” (an amusing touch) “that the provincials of Britain were totally exterminated; and that the vacant land was again peopled by the perpetual influx and rapid increase of the German colonies.... But neither reason nor facts can justify the unnatural supposition that the Saxons of Britain remained alone in the desert which they had subdued. After the sanguinary barbarians had secured their dominion, and gratified their revenge, _it was their interest to preserve the peasants as well as the cattle_ of the unresisting country. In each successive revolution the patient herd becomes the property of its new masters; and the salutary compact of food and labour is silently ratified by their mutual necessities.”[34]