The Anglo-Saxons: A History of the Beginnings of England

by Marc Morris

There is no single agreed explanation of what caused this colossal political system to unravel, but one factor generally accepted as a catalyst was the appearance of the Huns. A nomadic people who originated on the wide grasslands of central Asia, the Huns were, in the words of a contemporary Roman writer, a ‘wild race, moving without encumbrances, and consumed by a savage passion to pillage the property of others’. By 376 those others included the Goths, a more settled people who lived on the frontier of the eastern empire. That year, because of Hunnish attacks, many thousands of Goths sought and received permission to cross the Danube and settle in imperial territory. But relations between the refugees and their Roman hosts soon soured, leading to rebellion and eventually a full-scale battle at Adrianople (now Edirne in modern Turkey).