The Anglo-Saxons weren't the only culture to engage in mass population movements in the wake of the collapse of the Western Roman Empire.

Just as Germanic and Eastern tribes swept into the former imperial provinces

in the 5th and 6th centuries, to claim new lives and new territories for themselves,

former imperial citizens and their subjects also moved about considerably.

Both as a result of displacement because of the newcomers

and because of their own expansionist goals.

One of these groups of former Roman citizens on the move had originated in Britain, probably

in the south-west of the province, in modern day Wales and Cornwall.

The region that would soon become known as Dumnonia.

Their destination had been the extreme northwesterly

point of Gaul, then known as Armorica. Today we know it by a different name,

one which was eventually adopted because of the origins of its inhabitants. We know

it as Brittany. From Hadrian's wall to the Black Sea, chaos reigned supreme in the 5th century AD,

as Anglo-Saxon, Pictish and Irish invaders began to flood over the collapsed imperial borders into the former province of Britannia,

large numbers of Romano-Britons seem to have migrated to mainland Europe in order to escape.

Following in the footsteps of the legions withdrawn at the start of the century.

Yet, they weren't the first to make this same journey.

Archaeological and written evidence, in fact, suggests at least two distinct waves of migrations, one in the wake

of Imperial collapse in the 5th and 6th centuries, and the other more than a century earlier,

in the late 300s. This earlier migration had perhaps been a result of Romano-Britonic auxiliary soldiers being stationed in northwestern gore,

opting to remain there to settle with their families rather than return to Britain.

Yet, rather than abandon the rest of the empire to its fate, somewhere between these two waves

...