Editing Battle of Badon (section)

===Gildas===
The earliest mention of the Battle of Badon appears in [[Gildas]]' ''[[De Excidio et Conquestu Britanniae]]'' (''On the Ruin and Conquest of Britain''), written in the early to mid-6th century. In it, the [[Anglo-Saxons]] are said to have "dipped <nowiki>[their]</nowiki> red and savage tongue in the western ocean" before [[Ambrosius Aurelianus]] organized a British resistance with the survivors of the initial Saxon onslaught. Gildas describes the period that followed Ambrosius' initial success:

{{quote|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.<ref>[[Hugh Williams (historian)|Hugh Williams]] (ed.), ''Gildas, De Excidio Britanniae'', Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion, 1899, p. 61–63.</ref>}}

''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 [[King Arthur|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.<ref name=Green31>Green, p. 31.</ref>