The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire · ¶335

Yet the Britons were not ignorant, they could not be ignorant, of the manufacture or the use of arms; the successive and disorderly attacks of the Saxons allowed them to recover from their amazement, and the prosperous or adverse events of the war added discipline and experience to their native valor.

Edward Gibbon · Project Gutenberg #733 (Milman edition) — public domain
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