As in the battle of Mons Badonicus or Mount Badon. Sometimes translated as Bath Hill on the assumption that it took place somewhere in the region of modern Bath; but in reality no one knows precisely where the battle field was located.

A battle fought between the Romano-British and Anglo-Saxons probably sometime between 490 AD and 518 AD (1) as part of the struggle between the two sides for the control of Britain.

Peter Salway describes it in his Roman Britain as a

British victory that at the end of the fifth century was to set back further Saxon agression in Britain for fifty years or more

Gildas writes of the battle

when took place also the last almost but not the least slaughter of our cruel foes
making clear that it was not necessarily the last battle in the this particular conflict nor indeed the most bloody , but still one of some significance.

The fame of the battle lies in the fact that both the Historia Brittonum and the Annales Cambriae attribute the victory to one Arthur who

carried the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ for three days and three nights on his shoulders


Part of the Sub-Roman Britain project, where sources are detailed.


NOTES

(1) The favoured date tends to be 496 AD as, according to Gildas this took place in the year of his birth, forty-four years and one month from the writing of De Excidio Britanniae. Since the consensus is that Gildas wrote this around 540 AD the rest is simple arithmetic.

(2) Oxford University Press 1991 p498

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