Can you smell the kaffir?

Over and over again we destroy the thing we defend, better to prevent the situation developing in the first place.

Oops that’s not how human beings work.

Badon p113-114 The Age of Arthur: A History of the British Isles 350-650. John Morris, Weidenfeld and Nicolson 5^th Edn 1989.

“The aim of a large infantry army advancing deep into British territory must have been to overwhelm the main force of British cavalry by weight of numbers, and destroy the bases whence it drew remounts and fodder. Gildas calls Badon a siege. Though he does not say who besieged whom, it is probable that the infantry besieged the cavalry. He describes the site as Mons Badonicus, a distinct and separate hill at or near Badon. Hard-pressed cavalry required the shelter of a steep sided hill not too large for their dismounted men to hold against superior odds. There are many hills and hill forts in the neighbourhood of Bath. Most are defended by spurs, easily attacked from the rear, or forts placed on the flat tops of large hills. One only is a separate Mons, sharply escarped on all sides, small enough to be defended with ease by a body of dismounted cavalry, Soldbury Hill by Batheaston. Though there are endless possibilities, this site best fits both Gildas’ choice of words and the nature of the campaign.

Whatever the precise site, the circumstances are the same. The size of the forces engaged cannot be known, but there is no reason to suppose that the British cavalry numbered above a thousand men, if so many. To entertain hope of success the English required an army several times as large as the British. A siege of cavalry on a steep hill demanded more of logistics and supplies than of tactics; if the siege had been in English territory, only time was needed before starvation forced the besieged to try to break out whatever the odds. But in British territory, time favoured the defenders. An exeptionally large infantry army must needs live on the country: and any supplies available in the immediate neighbourhood of the siege must quickly have been consumed. In British territory, small foraging parties of the English risked encountering larger forces of armed men on foot, for men without horses might fight in their homelands near the shelter of their walls. The despatch of larger parties in search of food also risked weakening the encirclement. Nennius’ poem allots the siege three days. The figure might be chosen to suite the metre, but it is not unreasonable. Competently organised cavalry with well-stocked saddle-bags might last three days with greater ease than a larger infantry force hungry in an alien land. At the end of the three days, the poem makes Arthur charge, slaughtering 960 of the enemy. Few of the English can have hoper of escape. Unless the survivors were very numerous, able to withdraw in good order, those who escaped the first charge were at the mercy of the pursuit, in enemy country where none would give them shelter.

Badon was the “final victory of the fatherland”. It ended a war whose issue had already been decided. The British had beaten back the barbarians. They stood alone in Europe, the only remaining corner of the western Roman world where a native power withstood the all-conquering Germans. Yet the price of victory was the loss of almost everything the victors had taken arms to defend. Ambrosius and Arthur had fought to restore the Roman civilisation into which they had been born. But in most of Britain, the society of their fathers was ruined beyond repair. What emerged was a new world, startling not only because it differed from the past, but because it differed from the rest of Europe.”

The other thing to make note of is that we were poor then, clipped coins are everywhere. All precious and semi precious metals were gone. The traffic from Cathay to the Med had drained the West of Gold and Silver.

Kind of like today.

In one of these you can do whatever you like to your harem in international airspace.

Go on then burn your bras now CIA Bitchboys.

I love the smell of elastane in the morning.

Heads up fucked up.