As the resistance of the Britons was greater than that of the other provincials of Rome so the forces of their assailants were less.

Attack by sea was less easy than attack by land, and the numbers who were brought across by the boats of Hengest or Cerdic cannot have rivalled those which followed Theodoric or Chlodewig across the Alps or the Rhine.

Landing in small parties, and but gradually reinforced by after-comers, the English invaders could only slowly and fitfully push the Britons back.

The absence of any joint action among the assailants told in the same way.

Though all spoke the same language and used the same laws, they had no such bond of political union as the Franks; and though all were bent on winning the same land, each band and each leader preferred their own separate course of action to any collective enterprise.
[Sidenote: The English settlement] Under such conditions the overrunning of Britain could not fail to be a very different matter from the rapid and easy overrunning of such countries as Gaul.