Message #247836

[the Once and Future King]

Gildas and Badon

A message dated to c. 446, known as the Groans of the Britons, is recorded by Gildas in his De Excidio et Conquestu Britanniae and later by Bede. It is a plea to Aëtius, military leader of the Western Roman Empire who spent most of the 440s fighting insurgents in Gaul and Hispania, an attempt to persuade the late Western Roman Empire to help defend Britain from the rebelling Jutes, Angles and Saxons after the Roman withdrawal.

A variety of sources after Gildas name Arthur as the victor of the Battle of Mount Badon, at which the Saxons were routed and their invasions halted for many years. Historians regard it as a probable historical event.[14] Gildas' Latin is somewhat opaque: he does not name Arthur, or any other leader of the battle. He does discuss Ambrosius Aurelianus as a great scourge of the Saxons immediately prior.[14] but seems to say some time passed between Ambrosius' victory and the battle of Badon. He also tells us that he was born in the same year as the battle (which he describes as taking place "in our times" and being one of the latest - and greatest - slaughters of the Saxons) and that, at the time of his writing, a new generation born after the battle of Badon, has come of age in Britain.

According to Gildas Aurelianus was stayed calm despite the fact that his parents had been killed in the attacks and became leader of the remaining British, organised them, and led them in their first victory against the Saxons, although subsequent battles went both ways. Gildas also writes that Aurelianus’ parents "wore the purple", and thus were apparently descended from Roman emperors. The Aurelii were a noted Roman senatorial family and it is possible that Ambrosius was descended from them. Owing to a possible mistranslation of a word from Gildas, describing Aurelianus as either the "ancestor" or the "grandfather" of his descendants of Gildas’ generation, it is possible that Aurelianus lived in the generation before the Battle of Badon. According to the Major Chronicle Annals, he rose to power in 479.

The date of the battle is uncertain, with most scholars accepting a date around 500. The location is also unknown, though locations have been proposed over the years, including southwest England, perhaps near the city of Bath or the nearby Solsbury Hill, where an ancient hill fort existed, and somewhere to the north, in or near modern Scotland. Some believe Badon Hill was fought between the British and the invading South Saxons under their Bretanwealda Aelle. It is theorised that Aelle may have died in the battle and that Sussex did not again attack the Celts until 571.

Geoffrey of Monmouth's History of the Kings of Britain also states that Arthur led the forces at Badon. Geoffrey makes Aurelianus (whom he calls Aurelius Ambrosius) a king of Britain, an older brother of Uther Pendragon, the father of King Arthur, thus relating Aurelianus and Arthur. He also states that Aurelianus was the son of a Breton ruler named Constantinus, brother of Aldroenus.