Anglo-Saxon conquest of Celtic England

Following the Romans, who abandoned the south of the island by 410 at the latest to focus on more pressing matters at home, present-day England
was progressively colonized by a succession of Germanic tribes, often in complementary waves.

These Germanic tribes originally came at the invitation of Vortigern , king of the Britons , as mercenaries ready to help the Bretons in their battles
against the Irish and Picts (ancient inhabitants of present-day Scotland ).

Most historians believe that waves of Germanic peoples, the Jutes , along with numerous Frisians and Ripuarian Franks , Saxons from
northern Germany and England in present-day Denmark—known generically as Anglo-Saxons—invaded England again around the middle of the 6th
century th. They were led by military leaders and settled on the east coast. They are believed to have conquered territories to the west, up
the Thames , in search of arable land, occupying the plains and leaving the hilly lands unsuited to the agriculture of the Celtic Bretons.

Research suggests that Celtic England underwent a form of ethnic cleansing in some parts of the country by Anglo-Saxon invaders following the 5th
century Roman withdrawal . However, Professors John Davies and AW Wade-Evans believe that the Saxons did not remove the entire population from
the occupied areas, as was assumed until the 19th century. The entire population of Britain was estimated to have been around 3.5 million in AD 43
when the Roman invasion took place. Many historians now believe that invaders after this time, from mainland Europe, did not have a very significant
genetic impact on the British. The notion that large-scale migrations caused drastic changes in the ethnic makeup of England has been heavily
discredited, argues Simon James, an archaeologist at the University of Leicester , England. For the English, their defining period is the arrival of the
Germanic peoples known collectively as the Anglo-Saxons. Some scholars suggest that the invaders numbered only 10,000 to 25,000 people,
insufficient to dislodge the inhabitants there.

Analysis of human remains unearthed at an ancient cemetery near Abingdon, England , indicates that Saxon immigrants and native Britons lived side
by side. "We are probably dealing with a British majority, politically dominated by a new elite," Miles said. "They were eliminated culturally, not
genetically." "Major cultural changes, even the assumption of new identities, occur relatively often without major genetic changes," said Simon James.

Constantly, the Romano-British population ( Britons , according to The Britons ) was assimilated, a process made possible by the lack of a clear unity
of the British populations against the invaders. The invasion or settlement of these "invaders" is known as the Conquest of the Saxons or the Anglo-
Saxons , or even the English (according to the Saxon Conquest or the Anglo-Saxon or, sometimes, the "English Conquest").

In 495 , at the Battle of Mount Badon (Badbury rings fortress, Mons Badonicus in Latin, Mynydd Baddon in Welsh) near the Roman road Porchester-
Southampton-Poole, the invading Anglo-Saxon army suffered a great defeat at the hands of the Britons. Although it was a very important political and
military event in 5th and 6th century Britain, it is not known with certainty who commanded the resisting forces. This victory of the British army made it
possible to stop the Saxon invasion and ensured a long period of peace for Celtic Britain.

At the decisive Battle of Deorham in 577 , the advancing Saxons divided the British people of southern Britain into the Scots and the Scots of the west
( Cornwall and Devon ).

By the 4th century , many Britons escaped from Wales , Cornwall and southern Britain by crossing the English Channel with their rulers, soldiers,
families, monks and priests and began to settle in the western part ( Armorica ) of Gaul ( France ) which he colonizes, here laying the foundations of a
new nation: Britain .

The expansion of the Britons increased after the military troops and Roman authorities in Britain were withdrawn, and the invasions of the Anglo-
Saxons and Scots (Gaelic-speaking population) on the territory of Britain increased, they settled here. Emigrant Britons gave their new country its
present-day name and contributed to the Breton language , Brezhoneg, a sister language to Welsh and Cornish (language spoken by a minority
population in the Cornwall region). The name Brittania (from Little Britain) appeared around this time to differentiate the new Britain from Great
Britain. As of 2005 Brezhoneg (the British language) is still spoken in Brittania.

The Vikings made many raids on England beginning with the 793 raid on the monastery at Lindisfarne .

In 829 , in the town of Dore (now a suburb of Sheffield ), Eanred of Northumbria swore allegiance to Egbert of Wessex , who thus became the first
Saxon ruler of all England.

After a period of raiding and invasion, the Vikings began to settle in England and trade, eventually ruling the Danelaw (historical region in north-east
England ruled by the Danes, the name translating to Danish laws ) from the end of the century the ninth . One of the Viking settlements was in York ,
called Jorvik by the Vikings. Viking leadership left important traces in the English language ; the similarity between Old English and Old Norse resulting
in many borrowings between the two languages.

The main legacy left behind in those territories from which the British were displaced is that of toponyms. Many town names in England and to a lesser
extent in Scotland are derived from British names, including London, Dumbarton, York, Dorchester, Dover and Colchester. A few elements in place
names are thought to be wholly or partly British in origin, notably 'bre-', 'bal-', and '–dun' for hills, 'carr'' for upland , "coomb" for small, deep valleys.

Until recently it was believed that those regions where the Anglo-Saxons settled were uninhabited at the time or that the Britons had fled from their
path. However, genetic studies show that the Britons were not pushed to the Celtic borders – many tribes remained in what would become England
(see C. Capelli et al “The AY Chromosome Census of the British Isles”, Current Biology 13, 979– 984, ( 2003 )). Capelli's findings confirm research by
Steven Bassett of the University of Birmingham; his work in the 1990s suggests that much of west-central England was superficially colonized by
Anglic and Saxon settlements.