contemptuously as the "Welsh," or the "Strangers."

For a long time the struggle went on between the two races, and
nowhere mere fiercely than in the south-west, where the invaders set
up the Kingdom of Wessex; but at last there arose among the Britons a
great chieftain called Arthur. The old histories speak of him as
"Emperor," and he seems to have been obeyed by all the Britons;
perhaps, therefore, he had succeeded to the position of the Roman
official known as the Comes Britanniæ, whose duty it was to hasten to
the aid of the local governors in defending any part of Britain where
danger threatened. At all events, under his leadership, the oppressed
people defeated the Saxons in a desperate fight at Mons Badonicus,
perhaps the little place in Dorsetshire known as Badbury, or, it may
be, Bath itself, which is still called Badon by the Welsh. After that
victory, history has little to say about Arthur. The stories tell that
he was killed in a great battle in the west; but, nowadays, the wisest
historians think it more probable that he met his death in a conflict
near the River Forth.

And so, in history, Arthur, the hero of such a mass of romantic
story, is little more than a name, and it is hardly possible to
explain how he attained to such renown as the hero of marvellous
and, sometimes, magical feats, unless on the supposition that he
became confused with some legendary hero, half god, half man, whose
fame he added to his own. Perhaps not the least marvel about him is
that he who was the hero of the Britons, should have become the
national hero of the English race that he spent his life in
fighting. Yet that is what did happen, though not till long
afterwards, when the victorious English, in their turn, bent before
their conquering kinsmen, the Normans.