First Sentence

""The origins of Europe', a historian of the Middle Ages has recently reminded us 'were hammered out on the anvil of war'; and indeed 'war' is really too benign a term to describe the condition of the European continent once the precarious Pax Romana had disintegrated and waves of invaders swept over it; Goths and Vandals from the east, Moslems from the south and finally, most terrible of all, vikings from the north."