"Why did King Arthur fail?" Topic

I came across an old copy of Wargamers Digest that I had that discussed Arthur's battles against the Saxons and it has got me interested in the period.
Why did the real King Arthur fail in His attempt to keep the Saxons out?

Dude had a lot on his plate, what with Lancelot sleeping with his wife. Modred's rebellion. And his best knights running around looking for The Grail.

Uh, "real" King Arthur?

If we had any idea what the "real" King Arthur did, we might be able to answer that question.

Civilization appears strong when viewed from outside but is actually rather fragile because it has many moving parts, each of which affects many others. The fragment of Roman civilization left in Britain after the legions were withdrawn was not large enough, perhaps, to be self-sustaining. And the external pressure may have been relentless. A strong leader, with luck, might hold back the Night, for a little while.

'Why did the real King Arthur fail in His attempt to keep the Saxons out?'

He didn't he just died, however someone set the Saxon expansion into reverse for fifty years. Tradition says it was Arthur.

If, as we are told, the Britons had reverted to native laws, then the normal procedure was that defeated peoples became tributary. Hence they live to fight another day.

Britannia seems to have been quite prosperous before the Saxon rebellion.

Uh, "real" King Arthur?

"Forget it, he's on a roll."

Boatloads of Saxons.

Guinevere off in a nunnery.

He slept with his sister and tried to murder his bastard son,product of the conjunction.With baggage like that everything goes downhill..and then his wife slept with his best friend, really with trouble like that Saxons are nothing at all.
And there was no "real" king Arthur and "the Saxon invasion" is a bit of myth invented by Bede..

But absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, not in the dark ages. "Don't know" means "DON'T KNOW."

Go read "Winter King" by Cornwell, even if it's not true it should be.

""the Saxon invasion" is a bit of myth invented by Bede.."

Really? So how did all those Saxons get to England then?

And Arthur and his knighthood for a space
Were all one will, and through that strength the King
Drew in the petty princedoms under him,
Fought, and in twelve great battles overcame
The heathen hordes, and made a realm and reigned.

He's just regrouping in Avalon until he returns. I've got a feeling that today's Saxons won't be as big a problem as the were in the 6th century.

Same reason all Celtic kingdoms failed – they were rubbish in battle.
Romans smashed them
Germans smashed them
Saxons smashed them

Celtic warfare is vastly over-rated – as Tacitus obseved, if you withstood the first frantic charge they were a busted flush

Well, if you accept the few historical sources that mention someone who might have been Arthur, he did succeed in halting (or significantly slowing) the spread of Saxons in Britain for almost fifty years, lasting from the Battle of Mount Badon (ca. 490 AD) to the Battle of Camlann (ca. 537 AD), when Arthur is recorded to have died. Half a century ain't half bad for a single leader.

Same reason all Celtic kingdoms failed – they were rubbish in battle.

But Arthur's forces would have been Romanized Britons, probably adopting late Roman tactics, rather than the earlier Celts some 400 years prior. So Tacitus's observations are irrelevant, and your assumptions are incorrect.

"Really? So how did all those Saxons get to England then?"

You really must remember that it was only AFTER those Saxons [and Angles} got to 'England' that it was called "England". While they were doing it (by whatever means), the piece of real estate in question was known as 'Britannia'.

As for Arthur… I suppose you have to exist before you can do anything, even if that existence is only in someone's imagination.

"Why did King Arthur fail?"

Because he was working with people.

Arthur will do as a name for whoever held the Saxons back.
In many ways the acheivement of the Britons was remarkable. Other Roman provinces do not hold the barbarians back. Once the Roman field army is gone the provinces fall. There are local attempts at resistance, Gaul with Syagrius, unknown leaders in cities n Spain, but only the Britons end with an element of the old Roman province (Wales, Cornwall) that is long term unconquered.
It is particularly remarkable that the Britons manage to resist for a period given that they are attacked by the Irish , the Picts and the Saxons, Angles, Jutes etc. so they have enemies on all sides.
Perhaps their resistance was both prolonged and ultimately undone by their disunity. After the 'Arthur' period they cease to have a unified command (and even under Vortigern it is not a centralised state). That has the advantage that the Saxons cannot find one place and one leader to destroy and then take over. The disadvantage is that no Celtic state is powerful enough to clear the Saxons out and once they have been pushed back the Celts are too wary of each other to keep going and conquer the kingdoms in the East of the island. What we must remember is that most Saxon and British kingdoms are the size of one or two counties and thus put an army in the field of a few hundred men. One unified leader, let's call him Arthur seems to be called for when the Saxons unite and make a push for the western sea , but it all falls apart when victory is one. Leaving apart the details of the Arthur legend of incest and adultery and parricide , perhaps the legends carry at the heart a truth about disunity and selfishness taking over when the danger appears to have receded.
Roy

Why did the " real" Siegfried fail? ???

Because the dragon didn't come with a Friedrich Grohe faucet.

Roy of course is right the achievement of the British provincials is unique in holding out as long as they did.

As far as I can see the balance only tips when the kings of the Saxons arrive from overseas.

Its a pity that there is not a good and affordable edition of Gildas available to interested readers.

" Leaving apart the details of the Arthur legend of incest and adultery and parricide"

Well that's churchmen for you, bar the parricide the incest that excited churchmen was mainly Celtic dynastic cousin marraige and the legal provision for temporary marriage drove them nuts as it explicity permitted concubinage to married men and non church sanctioned legal union to unmarried men and women.

they came relatively peacefully, they were there before the Romans left.

"they came relatively peacefully, they were there before the Romans left."

Your evidence for this is…

Other provinces didn;t hold the barabarians back? other provinces evolved in to Barabarian kingdoms , the Barbaraina had been there already for a long time, most of the army was "barbarian". The Roman West effectively evolved in "Barabarian" kingdoms. Teh Barabarains often became almost indstinguishable and attemted to maitain things..The Goths in italy are a perfect example..if that psychopath Justinian hadn't intervened then who know what may have happened"Lest Darkness Fall"
Try this one
link

or even

this may help
link

If the Saxon invasion wa sinvented by Bede, why is it mentioned in Welsh mythologies as well?

Note the Welsh word for England translates as 'lost lands'.

Prof Guy Halsall's forthcoming "Worlds of Arthur" may contain some answers for you. Published 14th Feb IIRC.

You mean "Excalibur" is not a factual historical movie!? Next you'll tell me that Star Wars has plot holes. Now I'm depressed.

For all the revisionism and mythology, the Angles and Saxons certainly had something … Even today, most of us that live in these islands speak English.

The Romans were here for a long time but we don't speak Italian. The Danes came, ran half the country (even gave us kings and huscarles …) but their legacy barely survives in place names. The Normans were given a duchy in France, ended up speak French themselves – but even though they conquered and stayed in perpetuity, only a small proportion of our words are French.

Interesting thoughts in the discussion above – I find the evidence very much in the balance. As Gnu2000 suggests, anything by Guy Halsall will be interesting …

Phil

My copy of Guy Halsall's book has apparently been dispatched from Amazon today.

From his website, I gather that his theory is that large 'Saxon' kingdoms were formed much earlier than previously thought. He partly bases this thesis on Frankish models for which a few more records survive than Britain. I may have misrepresented this trough drastic oversimplification though. Halsall, I think, also argues against the 'small army' idea of armies in the hundreds in this period.

The 'real King Arthur' or the victor of Badon may have 'kept the Saxons out' of South West Britain until around 570 – over a hundred years after the Saxon revolt and establishment of the first Saxon kingdom. I doubt that they were 'rubbish in battle'. Perhaps disunited in the face of territorially acquisitive enemies. Or may be they just joined the Saxons – what about the British names in the 'Saxon' king lists of Wessex? (Cerdic, Cynric, Caedwalla etc.)

For many years after this period much Britain was non Saxon. The South West peninsular, Wales, and much of north-east Britain, remained British for at least another century and in the case of Wales until the 13th century. Scots and Picts maintained control in what is now Scotland.

Within the parameters set by the question, Arthur failed because ultimately all the Saxons had to do was not lose the war, whereas Arthur had to win every battle to win the war.

Er… the Romans didn't speak Italian either…. We do however have a language heavily Latinised – and Welsh has a strong Latin influence in places as well.

As for the Danish legacy, it's stronger than just palce names. Ditto the Normans – much of our language is derived from French.

If you think our language hasn't had many revisions due to these invaders, try learning Dutch or Frisian.

As for the Welsh being useless in battle – Gwynedd was the last piece of the Western Roman Empire to fall to invasion in 1282.

Given a series of splendid kicking doled out to the Anglo-Saxons and indeed Normans (plus plenty in reverse it hardly suggests a supine people.

As to the Celts, they dominated an enormous area for many centuries. And invented chainmail, didn't they? They also captured the city of Rome once, iirc. They couldn't handle the mature Roman military and political system, but neither could anyone else.

Celts might be the western and less civilized equivalent of the Achmaenid Persians; rapid expansion against weaker opposition, then collapse when opposed by a superior system.

Of course I did not say that the Romans spoke modern Italian … nor that the Danish legacy is _just place names … nor that our language hasn't had many revisions (goodness me!) …

However, in the interests of good natured debate, Bangorstu, I will leave it to TMP's astute readers to decide whether they thing our modern English has more in common with the Germanic dialects of the Angels, Saxons and related peoples than it does with Latin, Old French or Scandinavian …

Phil

"Prof Guy Halsall's forthcoming "Worlds of Arthur" may contain some answers for you. Published 14th Feb IIRC."

Not on previous performance I would look to Peter Heather myself.

King Arthur didn't fail it was all a government conspiracy! ;-) JK.
It wasn't Arthurs' fault, the hearts of men failed. It had nothing to do with Arthur and his intentions.

Simply the fact that he is still being spoken or written about all these centuries later, proves to me that he did not "fail"
He has become legend and probably will remain so.

I'd have a problem with all these AS and Welsh kingdoms having armies of more than a few hundred at a time . It might get up to the low thousands when there is some sort of levee en masse, but there are 40 or so little kingdoms , some, as I said, county sized. The population of the country cannot be that high because the period is so disrupted and town life collapses as does most trade.
In 544 the Saxons fight at Dyrrham against the kings of three towns, one of which is Cirencester, one Gloucester . I live in Cirencester, it didn't fill out its own walls in Roman times. And Glocester is only 20 or so miles away. I cannot imagine that the king of Cirencester had a large force, or for that matter the king of Essex or of Kent. Supporting a couple of hundred fully armed men who are pure warriors would have been a strain for their subsistence economies.
Still, we await enlightenment.

Cardinal Hawkwood, thanks for the link to the wiki article.

I think we need to note something here. Many modern archaeologists have what appears to be a political motive to underestimate the degree of decline of the Roman Empire and to minimise the effect of migration and invasion on that collapse. The idea cited in the wiki article that 20,000 Saxon immigrants arrive and change the way of life of 4 million Britons is laughable. Given those numbers and given that the German settlement was distributed along 600 miles of coast the Romans would have had little difficulty in ejecting them over a period of years. They couldn't eject the Goths or Vandals because these latter took over complete provinces and became the only armed force, but we know that the Britons had their own armed forces and secure bases to work from.
Hence the archaeologists must be wrong. A fair estimate of England's population in 1080 from Domesday book is about a million. England then was a prosperous country, far more so than in the disrupted Vth century so I could not believe that there were four million people here. That number is not achieved until Stuart times. I don't think that it is achieved even before the Black Death and we know then that the population in 1300 is having to farm marginal land and it suffers from malnutrition.
Even if the population were one million I could not see it changing fromWelsh to English for 20,000 invaders widely spread.
For 200,000 I could believe it because the English would then be in a majority in the areas of invasion and at the top of the social tree.

<<"Why did King Arthur fail?" >>

He didn't ballot the miners on strike action; had he done so, he would have had almost 100% backing, the Democratic Union of Mineworkers would never have formed let alone split, the strike would have been solid, and the government would have struggled to break it. Plus he was a deluded bu**er who still thinks he won.

I have no idea about what went wrong for the other one, though.

As a king he might have failed, but as a businessman it looks like the ole fellow is doing pretty well. kingarthurflour.com

I must consult my tome on the era: All episodes of "Arthur of the Britons" with Oliver Tobias.

It may as factual as 'Braveheart' but 'Excalibur' is a fan-bleedin'-tastic film. One of my top 5, easily, brilliantly shot, tremendous script, and just the right amount of humour, truly excellent.
Sorry, but it had to be said, please continue.

John

There's a good genetic history of Britain here that suggests that there was a large Germanic speaking population in Britain before the Roman invasion, which would mean a subsequent Angle / Saxon wave of immigrants would have a much easier time of it.

Link: link

Not sure where I stand on this but I think it's an idea worth exploring.

Wasn't there a recent study of genetics which showed that the Britons were not pushed out of southern and eastern Britain? Instead the Saxons were gradually assimilated into the Celtic peoples.

"There's a good genetic history of Britain here"

No its been debunked by geneticists and does not add anything to our understanding of what happened.

The language issue speaks strongly against assimilationist theories. There are few Celtic words in English.

Relatively small numbers of invaders can transform the language and culture of a people over a long period of time. For example the Arabs in North Africa. However, there are some crucial differences. For example the Koran is in Arabic and unless you converted in a conquered area you were loaded with disadvantages. German may have been the language of the elite in England, but it never had the inbuilt institutional advantages of Arabic.
It now appears that Welsh was very likely the base language in much of Roman Britain and one would expect that if Anglo Saxon soldiers arrived and took British wives then words to do with home and childhood would show some Celtic input and yet there is really nothing in English from Welsh. In contrast there is quite a lot from Danish, but it doesn't dominate the English element. Similarly, large amounts of French comes from the Normans onwards but the French contribution is elite words so pig is English, pork is French , similarly with beef and bull.
The genetic evidence fits with a strong English presence in the East. I think we can all believe that the West of England and upland areas are more a matter of assimilation and mixed population. But there will always have been patches such as Lindsey that have British populations. There were even Welsh survivors in Kent. This is not an argument for replacement, simply a substantial number of German immigrants.