The history of the conquest of the Roman provinces by the barbarians is, in general, simply the successive reduction of one town after another. Such was eminently the case in Britain, and the traditionary annals of the early Saxon period present little more than a list of conquered towns. Sometimes a town was taken by stratagem or force, and then it was plundered or destroyed, but in the far greater number of cases the town was too strong for the assailants and only submitted by composition, by which it paid a tribute to the conqueror and retained its old independent municipal institutions. We all know how many of our old cities and early municipal towns are thus the representatives of the cities of the Romans. In some parts of the island the destruction was greater than in others, and on the Welsh border, through the whole space between Chester (called by the Romans Deva), and Gloucester (which the Romans called Glevum), the towns seem to have been all ruined. One of the largest of these towns was no doubt that of Uriconium. We can only judge by implication, and by a comparison of what occurred in other places, of the manner in which a town like Uriconium was treated, when it was overcome by the barbarians. We know that these invaders were influenced by a love of plunder, but a love of destruction—we may perhaps call it an impulse of destruction—was still greater; and it is probable that the plundering of a town like Uriconium was a hasty and imperfect operation, and that the plunderers carried off chiefly objects made of the precious metals, or articles of dress and arms, or other objects on which they set considerable value, as they moved about rapidly, and could not be provided very extensively with the means of conveyance. (We are here speaking of the earlier plundering invasions of the barbarians, such as the Picts and Scots, in which perhaps Uriconium perished, towards the middle of the fifth century, for it is hardly probable that the Angles or Saxons could have reached this part of the island at so early a period.) The first impulse of the plunderers was to apply fire to the buildings, and the progress of the conflagration would hasten their departure. Where the inhabitants of the conquered town had not made their escape and abandoned it before it was taken—which was perhaps the case in some of the smaller towns—there would no doubt be a dreadful massacre, and the survivors would be dragged away into captivity, for the various peoples who preyed upon the carcass of the mighty empire of Rome, whether German or Celt, or Tartar or Arab, ambitioned, almost above other plunder, the possession of numerous slaves. Thus the plundered town was left without inhabitants, and in flames, of which the latter, as may be judged on the spot from the massive character of the walls of the houses, were probably partial in their effect, destroying chiefly the timber and roofs.