These later comers were the instruments of that more overwhelming
destruction for which the Goths had but prepared the way. To resist
Alaric, the Roman legions had been withdrawn from all the western
frontiers, and thus more distant and far more savage tribes of the
Teutons beheld the glittering empire unprotected, its pathways most
alluringly left open. They began streaming across the undefended Rhine
and Danube. Their bands were often small and feeble, such as earlier
emperors would have turned back with ease; but now all this fascinating
world of wealth, so dimly known and doubtless fiercely coveted, lay
helpless, open to their plundering. The Vandals ravaged Gaul and Spain,
and, being defeated by the Goths, passed on into Africa. The Saxons and
Angles penetrated England[2] and fought there for centuries against the
desperate Britons, whom the Roman legions had perforce abandoned to
their fate. The Franks and Burgundians plundered Gaul.

Fortunately the invading tribes were on the whole a kindly race. When
they joyously whirled their huge battle-axes against iron helmets,
smashing down through bone and brain beneath, their delight was not in
the scream of the unlucky wretch within, but in their own vigorous sweep
of muscle, in the conscious power of the blow. Fierce they were, but not
coldly cruel like the ancients. The condition of the lower classes
certainly became no worse for their invasion; it probably improved. Much
the new-comers undoubtedly destroyed in pure wantonness. But there was
much more that they admired, half understood, and sought to save.

Behind them, however, came a conqueror of far more terrible mood. We
have seen that when the Goths first entered Roman territory they were
driven on by a vast migration of the Asiatic Huns. These wild and
hideous tribes then spent half a century roaming through central Europe,