Hengist Quotes
I will be to you both a father and an adviser; despise not my counsels, and you shall have no reason to fear being conquered by any man or any nation whatever; for the people of my country are strong, warlike, and robust: if you approve, I will send for my son and his brother, both valiant men who at my invitation will fight against the Scots, and you can give them the countries in the north, near the wall called Gual.
First Saxon King in Britain. British King Vortigen was a very weak king with a weak military. The Picts and the Scots were at the Northern border with no defense that could stop them. Hengist the first Saxons to come to Briton made an offer that Vortigen couldn’t refuse. The Saxons would defend the Northern border and be given those provinces in return. The rest was history (See {617660}) with most people today thinking that the Saxons have been in Britain forever.
Hengist, ?-488, King of Kent, Statement to the Briton King Vortigern, Quoted in Nennius, Historia Brittonum
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First Saxon King in Britain. The Saxons had come to Briton as “allies” to defend the Northern border in exchange for some Northern provinces. See {617659}. After doing so at a celebration of Britons and Saxons, the Briton nobility was murdered and Vortigern had to cede other provinces in the Midlands. The Saxons have been entrenched in Britain ever since with most people having little idea of how they first got there.
This quotation illustrates several historical differences of the past with today. To be a world superpower, one had to have a dominant navy. Yet that navy was, in Churchill’s concept, a defensive system. It could protect the nation from invasion, and its merchant ships on the seas, but a navy provided no threat to invade towns and villages in Europe or elsewhere. Germany and France in contrast, with their large armies could invade other nations and menace Europe and Asia. It also illustrates why the navy and the army were considered completely separate departments of government in that they had different functions. The early American government had a Navy Department and Secretary but no Secretary of the Army or standing army.
If we replace the word “socialist” with “capitalist” this statement would be approved by almost every American Senior Military officer and Defense Official as well as most members of Congress. The reality was that the basic defense posture of the Soviet Union and the United States was essentially the same during the Cold War.
No enemy had ever gotten close to Sparta. . See {632265} for a related quotation.
1st Baron Verulam. The word “estate’ meant a political unit or subunit. These might be ruled by kings, dukes, war lords, etc. However, Bacon’s point was all armaments and the physical trappings of war are relatively minor when compared to the qualities of the population. With modern technology, this principle has become less and less true. Given the same technology in war, the outcome will depend on the human qualities and warlike disposition of the humans. However, a modern force with modern equipment and weapons can defeat an enemy of braver and more warlike disposition which does not have the same technology. In the modern world, a number of cultures find this a very distressing reality. The noble and courageous man should win, but Western technology, many complain, is undermining the old, traditional virtues.
Hengist and Horsa are Germanic brothers said to have led the Angles, Saxons and Jutes in their invasion of Britain in the 5th century. Tradition lists Hengist as the first of the Jutish kings of Kent.
