Possible Arthurian battle - Badbury Rings
Who Fought
Britons under Ambrosius Aurelianus (per Bede) or under a war commander later identified as Arthur (per Nennius); Anglo-Saxon forces
History & Significance
The Battle of Badon, also known as the Battle of Mons Badonicus, was purportedly fought between Britons and Anglo-Saxons in Post-Roman Britain during the early 6th century. It was credited as a major victory for the Britons, stopping the westward encroachment of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms for a period.
The earliest known references to the battle, by the British cleric Gildas, was written c. 543-547. It is chiefly known today for the involvement of the man who would later be remembered as the legendary King Arthur. His name is not known, although the name under the form "Arthur" first appears in the 9th-century Historia Brittonum, where he is mentioned as having participated in the battle alongside the Brittonic kings as a war commander, though is not described as a king himself. Because of the limited number of sources, there is no certainty about the date, location, or details of the fighting apart from the result being a victory for the Britons.
Almost all scholars agree that this battle did take place. Gildas wrote within living memory of the battle (he claims to have been born in the same year it was fought). But being a moralist, he does not mention Arthur or the names of other British leaders who took part, nor does he provide the names of the Saxon leaders. Gildas also does not describe it as an actual open battle, but rather as a siege.
From that time, the citizens were sometimes victorious, sometimes the enemy, in order that the Lord, according to His wont, might try in this nation the Israel of today, whether it loves Him or not. This continued up to the year of the siege of Badon Hill (obsessionis Badonici montis), and of almost the last great slaughter inflicted upon the rascally crew. And this commences, a fact I know, as the forty-fourth year, with one month now elapsed; it is also the year of my birth.
De Excidio Britanniae describes the battle as such an "unexpected recovery of the [island]" that it caused kings, nobles, priests, and commoners to "live orderly according to their several vocations." Afterwards, the long peace degenerated into civil wars and the iniquity of Maelgwn Gwynedd.
That Arthur had gone unmentioned by Gildas, ostensibly the source closest to his own time, was noticed at least as early as a 12th-century hagiography of Gildas which claims that Gildas had praised Arthur extensively but then excised him completely after Arthur killed the saint's brother, Hueil mab Caw. Modern writers have suggested the details of the battle may have been so well known that Gildas expected his audience to be familiar with them.
The battle is next mentioned in an 8th-century text of Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People (Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum), which describes the "siege of Mount Badon, when they made no small slaughter of those invaders," as occurring 44 years after the first Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain. Bede refers to Ambrosius Aurelianus as the leader of the Britons at that battle, whose parents had perished 'in the storm' and who were 'of the royal race'. Since Bede places that arrival just before, during or just after the joint reign in Rome of Marcian and Valentinian III in AD 449–456, he must have considered Badon to have taken place between 493 and 500. Bede then puts off discussion of the battle – "But more of this hereafter" – only to seemingly never return to it.
The ground they fought on
The site of Possible Arthurian battle - Badbury Rings lies on White Chalk Subgroup, bedrock that formed in the Maastrichtian. The rock here is chalk.
Gildas, writing within living memory of the engagement and claiming to have been born in the very year it took place, described the siege of Badon Hill as bringing about an unexpected recovery of the island, causing kings, nobles, priests, and commoners to live orderly according to their several vocations, before a long peace eventually degenerated into civil wars and the iniquity of Maelgwn Gwynedd.
- Historia Brittonum claims 960 men fell in a single charge; figures are legendary rather than verified
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- Battle of Badon · Wikipedia