Отрывок из книги
J. J. Jusserand
Published by Good Press, 2019
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The Britons who had taken to the toga—"frequens toga," says Tacitus—and who were no longer protected by the legions, made a vain resistance; the advancing tide of barbarians swept over them, they ceased to exist as a nation. Contributions were levied on the cities, the country was laid waste, villas were razed to the ground, and on all the points where the natives endeavoured to face the enemy, fearful hecatombs were slaughtered by the worshippers of Woden.
They could not, however, destroy all; and here comes in the important question of Celtic survival. Some admirers of the conquerors credit them with superhuman massacres. According to them no Celt survived; and the race, we are told, was either driven back into Wales or destroyed, so that the whole land had to be repopulated, and that a new and wholly Germanic nation, as pure in blood as the tribes on the banks of the Elbe, grew up on British soil. But if facts are examined it will be found that this title to glory cannot be claimed for the invaders. The deed was an impossible one; let that be their excuse. To destroy a whole nation by the sword exceeds human power, and there is no example of it. We know, besides, that in this case the task would have been an especially hard one, for the population of Britain, even at the time of Cæsar, was dense: hominum infinita multitudo, he says in his Commentaries. The invaders, on the other hand, found themselves in presence of an intelligent, laborious, assimilable race, trained by the Romans to usefulness. The first of these facts precludes the hypothesis of a general massacre; and the second the hypothesis of a total expulsion, or of such extinction as threatens the inassimilable native of Australia.
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