在条顿堡森林战役中，落单的罗马士兵根本不是日尔曼人残酷杀掳的对手，几乎全部被屠杀，连投降的机会都没有。绝望的瓦卢斯害怕被日尔曼人俘虏后的恐怖谑杀，结果风行了人类史上少有的行为: 自杀身亡。两万罗马士兵中，不足百人生还。

The Making of England...

The following extract is a good example of a Victorian view of the origins of the British nations: England is Teutonic and owes nothing to the Celts! At the time of Taswell-Langmead's early editions views such as these would have fitted the pro-German climate. The same might not have been true after the Great War. After World War II they would certainly have appeared unpleasantly racist. Today, there is considerable disagreement with this perspective.

(...)"It is not unusual to speak of the English as a mixed race formed out of the fusion of the Britons, the Anglo-Saxons, the Danes, and the Normans; but this form of expression is apt to convey an erroneous idea of the facts. No modern European is, indeed, of pure unmingled race; yet in all some one element has maintained a clear and decided predominance. In the English people this predominant element is the Germanic or Teutonic. The Teutonic conquest of Britain was something more than a mere conquest of the contry; it was in all senses a national occupation, a sustained immigration of a new race, whose numbers, during a hundred and fifty years, were continually being augmented by fresh arrivals from the fatherland.' (Bizarrely, there is a reference at this point to Tacitus' Agricola).

"Before the end of the sixth century, the Teutonic invaders had established a dominion in Britain, extending from the German Ocean to the Severn and from the English Channel to the Firth of Forth. The Britons were soon driven into the western parts of the island, where they maintained themselves for a time in several small states.

"The remnant of the country which they retained was indeed at first of considerable context, including not only modern Wales but the great kingdom of Strathclyde, stretching from Dumbarton to Chester, together with Cornwall, Devon, and part of Somerset. But the eastern boundary of this territory yielded more and more to the influence of the invaders; and it was only in the mountains of Wales and Cumbria that the Britons preserved for any length of time their ever-decreasing independence. During the long-continued and peculiarly ferocious series of contests between the natives and invaders, vast numbers of the flower of the British race perished. Many Britons sought refuge in emigration to the continent. Not a few of the less warlike doubtless remained as slaves to the conquerors, and a still greater infusion of the Celtic element may have been effected by the intermarriages of the victors with the women of the vanquished. But the Germanic element has always constituted the main stream of our race, absorbing in its course and assimilating each of the other elements. It is "the paternal element in our system natural and political" (quote from Stubbs, Select Charters, Introductory Sketch, p.3). Since the first immigration, each infusion of new blood has served to add intensity to the national Teutonic element. The Danes were very closely allied in race, language, and institutions to the people whom they invaded; and the Normans, though speaking a different language, and possessing different political and social institutions, were yet descended from a branch of the same ethnic stock.

"But whatever be the proportion in which the various national elements have coalesced, it is certain that the principles of our constitution are in no wise derived from either Celt or Roman. The civilisation of the Romans, for the most part, departed with them. (...)"

Source: pp1-3, T.P. Taswell-Langmead (1919), English Constitutional History: From the Teutonic Conquest to the Present Time, Eighth Edition (ed. C. Phillipson), Sweet and Maxwell, London.

Taswell-Langmead obtained his ideas from Victorian Anglo-Saxonists such as Freeman. In an article in the English Historical Review (June 2000), Bryan Ward-Perkins comments that:

"In common with almost all thinkers of the time, he was certain that different moral and intellectual characteristics were biologically innate to different races. The shared certainty that nineteenth-century Englishmen had of their immense and self-evident superiority over their Celtic subjects (in particular the Irish), therefore had to be provided with a racial and biological explanation. Furthermore, links with Germany were fashionable at the time, as was an ideal of cultural and racial `purity'. In this intellectual climate, and given the message of the early sources, it is not surprising that, for Freeman, the English are in both culture and race pure Teutons, and not, to use his own term, a Mischvolk

."

But Ward-Perkins accepts that such ideas were challenged at the time. For example, the essayist Grant Allen held a strong belief in the Celtic contribution to Englishness and the natural scientist Thomas Huxley contended that 'both historical probability and the appearance of the contemporary English population suggested racial mixture, including many Celtic ancestors.'

Birth Myths of the Nations of Britain

England, Scotland, Wales - the 'traditional' view

History is not impartial. Interpretations of early medieval Britain are linked to a number of distinct agendas: in particular, the foundation myths of England, Scotland and Wales. The strength of these agendas has coloured, and in many ways formed, most people's conception of what happened in this period. The main theme which concerned the 'traditional' (essentially Victorian) view of the dark ages in this island is that the Welsh, Scots and English were distinct nations, with a significant racial underpinning to the differences between them. For example, Bryan Ward-Perkins (English Historical Review

"Most of the English, if they know anything of early history, feel that their Englishness derives ultimately from a predominantly Anglo-Saxon ancestry, with perhaps a romantic tinge, but only a tinge, of later immigrant blood -- Viking, Norman, Huguenot, or whatever. The Britons (and the Romans) play little part in the perception that the English have of their ancestry. Consequently, they see themselves as markedly different from the other ancient inhabitants of the British Isles; and they would never describe themselves as `Celts', unless their recent ancestry included known Scottish, Irish, Welsh or Cornish ancestors."

Ward-Perkins (2000) cites Freeman, an influential Victorian Anglo-Saxonist who wrote in his Old English History for Children

"The [British] women of course would be made slaves, or they would sometimes be married to their masters. Thus there may doubtless be some little British and Roman blood in us, just as some few Welsh and Latin words crept into the English tongue from the very beginning. But we may be sure that we have not much of their blood in us, because we have so few of their words in our language ... Now you will perhaps say that our forefathers were cruel and wicked men ... And so doubtless it was ... But ... it has turned out much better in the end that our forefathers did, thus kill or drive out nearly all the people whom they found in the land ... [since otherwise] I cannot think that we should ever have been so great and free a people as we have been for many ages."

The main strands of the traditional interpretation adopt the following logic:

1. The end of Roman rule was a precise cut-off point point. There were few if any Germanic or Irish inhabitants in Britain before the Roman withdrawal. The Britons were left helpless, disorganised and incapable of defending themselves from hordes of invaders from across both North and Irish seas.
2. The invaders were prolific and warlike. They pushed the Britons into a narrow western strip: Cornwall, Wales, Cumbria and Strathclyde in south-west Scotland. The rest of the island (other than the parts of Scotland inhabited by the mysterious Picts) was repopulated by Anglo-Saxons and Gaels.
3. One brief flowering of British defence, organised by the great King Arthur, halted the invaders' advance for about fifty years.
4. The Cornish and Welsh languages developed from the tongue of the ancient Britons. Conversely, the English language has no Celtic elements and derives from Anglo-Saxon, with substantial borrowings from Latin and (later) Norman French. Gaelic quickly displaced British and Pictish in most of Scotland, eventually succumbing to English.

As we can see in Teutonic England, the essence of this interpretation is that England is fundamentally Anglo-Saxon rather than British or Celtic in racial and linguistic origin. Similarly, Scotland owes little to the Brythonic Celts, having been formed by a fusion of the Gaelic west and north (the mysterious Picts duly absorbed) and the Anglo-Saxons of Lothian in the south-east. Acceptance of this approach requires that the Romano-Britons, who numbered in millions, were simply overwhelmed by a few boatloads of invaders and fled to the west or died. Clearly, there is something wrong here!

Martin Henig (British Archaeology

Ken Dark (Britain and the End of the Roman Empire, 2000) uses archaeological evidence to demonstrate a different pattern of cultural division and evolution. He concludes that the Britons were alive and well inside 'Anglo-Saxon' territory for several hundred years at least.

Similarly, Martin Henig casts doubt on the interpretation of 'dark age' evidence such as the assumptions that Anglo-Saxons were buried with grave goods and Britons were not (British Archaeology

An article by Martin Evison looks at this from a genetic and linguistic perspective:  Lo, the conquering hero comes (or not)