Hengist
Hengist is the Saxon war-leader whose arrival in Britain and subsequent treachery against the Britons forms one of the central episodes of the Roman de Brut.
Hengist is the Saxon war-leader whose arrival in Britain and subsequent treachery against the Britons forms one of the central episodes of the Roman de Brut. He came to Britain as part of a Saxon custom of sending surplus young men abroad when their land could no longer sustain the population: "the princes who rule the realm assemble before them all the young men of the age of fifteen years and upwards" to be sent "into divers lands, seeking fiefs and houses of their own" (Roman de Brut, Hengist and the Saxons). Hengist and his people arrived claiming to have been guided by Mercury, "putting our trust in Mercury, the god has led us to your realm" (Roman de Brut, Hengist and the Saxons).
Having established himself at Vancaster, Hengist invited King Vortigern to lodge with him there. Eighteen war galleys subsequently arrived "bearing to land Hengist's kindred, together with knights and footmen" (Roman de Brut, Hengist and the Saxons). After consulting with his brother and friends, Hengist agreed to give his daughter Rowena to Vortigern in marriage, on the condition that the king deliver Kent as her dowry (Roman de Brut, Hengist and the Saxons).
The alliance soured when Hengist returned to Britain with three hundred thousand armed men despite being asked to bring few (Roman de Brut, Hengist and the Saxons). The Britons assembled in wrath, "promising amongst themselves that they would join them in battle, and throw the heathen from the realm" (Roman de Brut, Hengist and the Saxons). The two peoples agreed to a peace council with mutual pledges, and it was commanded that none should bear weapons (Roman de Brut, Hengist and the Saxons).
The peace council became the scene of Hengist's most notorious act. He had secretly instructed his men to conceal "a sharp, two-edged knife hidden in his hose" (Roman de Brut, Hengist and the Saxons). At the council, with Britons and Saxons seated together "the naked Briton near by the false heathen," Hengist cried the signal "Nimad covre seax" -- "Pluck forth your knives" -- and the Saxons drew their hidden weapons and "slew that man sitting at their side" (Roman de Brut, Hengist and the Saxons). Hengist personally seized Vortigern by his mantle, sparing the king from the slaughter (Roman de Brut, Hengist and the Saxons).
Hengist's end came at Caerconan, where he fled when his champions "turn their backs, like children, to the stroke" (Roman de Brut, Aurelius, Hengist's Fall, and Stonehenge). He rallied his forces and chose to fight in the open rather than be starved behind walls (Roman de Brut, Aurelius, Hengist's Fall, and Stonehenge). A bishop provided moral justification for his execution by citing the biblical precedent of Samuel (Roman de Brut, Aurelius, Hengist's Fall, and Stonehenge).
The Roman de Brut presents Hengist through a consistent but double-edged characterization. On one hand, his arrival in Britain is framed within a legitimate cultural practice -- Saxon overpopulation necessitating emigration. The text describes this custom with an almost ethnographic neutrality, noting that "the children came more thickly than the beasts which pasture in the fields" and "Go out they must, since the earth cannot contain them" (Roman de Brut, Hengist and the Saxons). On the other hand, the narrative explicitly labels him "cunning and felon of heart" (Roman de Brut, Hengist and the Saxons).
This tension between cultural explanation and moral judgment runs throughout the account. The Nimad covre seax episode is the fulcrum: the text takes care to note that the Saxon phrase "would not be understanded of the Britons" (Roman de Brut, Hengist and the Saxons), emphasizing the calculated nature of the betrayal. Yet Hengist had "plighted troth right willingly" for the peace council (Roman de Brut, Hengist and the Saxons), making the treachery all the more pointed.
At the end, the characterization shifts again. Hengist is called "a stout champion" who survived an initial blow that would have felled a lesser man (Roman de Brut, Aurelius, Hengist's Fall, and Stonehenge). The narrative grants him physical courage even as it condemns his character, and his execution requires ecclesiastical justification rather than simple military triumph.
Appears in: Beings, Entities in Roman de Brut, Norse Tradition
On trail: Genealogies