g of 70,000 people
means an immense service. We are so accustomed to find everything ready
to hand in cities containing millions as well as in villages of
hundreds, that we forget the magnitude of this service. No mind can
conceive the magnitude of the food supply of modern London, Paris, New
York, or even such towns as Portsmouth, Plymouth, Bristol. Yet try to
understand what it means to feed every day, without interruption, only a
small town of 70,000 people. So much bread for every day, so much meat,
so much fish, so much wine, beer, mead, or cider--because at no time did
people drink water if they could get anything else--so much milk, honey,
butter, cheese, eggs, poultry, geese and ducks, so much beans, pease,
salad, fruit. All this had to be brought in regularly--daily. There was
salted meat for winter; there was dried fish when fresh could not be
procured; there were granaries of wheat to provide for emergencies. All
the rest had to be provided day by day.

First, the East Saxons, settling in Essex and spreading over the whole
of that county, stopped the supplies and the trade over all the eastern
counties; then the Jutes, landing on the Isle of Thanet, stopped the
ships that went up and down the river; they also spread over the south
country and stopped the supplies that formerly came over London Bridge.
Then the Picts and Scots, followed by more Saxons, harassed the north
and middle of the island, and no more supplies came down Watling Street.
Lastly, the enemy, pressing northward from the south shore, gained the
middle reaches of the Thames, and no more supplies came down the river.

London was thus deprived of food as well as of trade.

This slowly, not suddenly, came to pass. First, one source of supply was
cut off, then another. First, trade declined in one quarter, then it
ceased in that quarter altogether. Next, another quarter was attacked.
The foreign merchants, since there was no trade left, went on board
their own ships and disappeared. Whether they succeeded in passing
through the pirate craft that crowded the mouth of the river, one knows
not. The bones of many lie at the bottom of the sea off the Nore. They
vanished from hapless Augusta; they came back no more.

Who were left? The native merchants. Despair was in their hearts;
starvation threatened them, even amid the dainty appointments of their
luxurious villas; what is the use of marble baths and silken hangings,
tesselated pavements, and pic