' -A- '*. -.■ CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY GIFT OF Anonymous UNDERGRADUATE LIBRARY The original of tliis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/cletails/cu31924057711768 CORNELL UND/ERSITY LIBRARY 3 1924 057 71 768 CYPTUS PRESENTING THE GOBLET TO EUXENES THE HISTORY OP FRANCE THE EARLIEST TIMES TO 1848 BY M. GUIZOT AND MADAME GUIZOT DE WITT TRANSLATED BY ROBERT BLACK PROFUSELY ILLUSTRATED VOLUME 1 NEW YORK: HURST AND COMPAN 12a Nassau Strebt. URISlIBRARf mi.m LETTER TO THE PUBLISHERS. Gentlemen, You were given to understand that for some years past I have been doing myself the paternal pleasure of telling my grandchildren the History of France, and you ask if I have any intention of publishing these family studies of our coim try's grand life. I had no such idea at the outset; it was of my grandchildren, and of them alone, that I was thinking. What I had at heart was to make them really comprehend our his- tory, and to interest them in it by doing justice to their under- standing and, at the same time, to their imagination, by set- ting it before them clearly and, at the same time, to the hfe. Every history, and especially that of France, is one vast, long drama, in which events are hnked together according to de- fined laws, and in which the actors play parts not ready made and learnt by heart, pai'ts depending, in fact, not only upon the accidents of their birth but also upon their own ideas and their own will. There are, in the histoiy of peoples, two sets of causes essentially different and, at the same time, closely con- nected; the natural causes which are set over the general course of events, and the unrestricted causes which are inci- dental. Men do not make the whole of history ; it has laws of higher origin; but, in history, men are unrestricted agents who produce for it results and exercise over it an influence for which they are responsible. The fated causes and the unre- stricted causes, the defined laws of events and the spontaneous actions of man's free agency — herein is the whple of history. And in the faithful reproduction of these two elements consist the truth and., the moral of stories from it. Never was I more struck with this twofold character of his- tory than in my tales to my grandchildren. When I com- menced these lessons with them, they, beforehand, evinced a lively interest, and they began to listen to me with serious good will; but whew they did not well apprehend the length,- 4 LBTTEU TO THE PUBLISHERS. ening chain of events, or when historical personages did not become, in their eyes, creatures real and free, worthy of sympathy or reprobation, when the drama was not developed before them with clearness and animation, I saw their atten- , lion grow fitful and flagging ; they required Hght and life to- gether; they wished to be illumined and excited, instructed and amused. At the same time that the difficulty of satisfying this two- fold desire was painfully felt by me, I discovered therein more means and chances than I had at first foreseen of succeeding in making my young audience comprehend the history of France in its complication and its grandeur. When Corneille observed,— " In the well-born soul' Valor ne'er lingers till due seasons roll," ' he spoke as truly for intelligence as for valor. When once awakened and really attentive, young minds are more earnest and more capable of complete comprehension than any one would suppose. In order to explain fully to my grandchildren the connection of events and the infiuence of historical person- ages, I was sometimes led into very comprehensive consider- ations and into pretty deep studies of character. And in such cases I was nearly always not only perfectly understood but keenly appreciated. I put it to the proof in the sketch of Charlemagne's reign and character ; and the two great objects of that great man, who succeeded in one and failed in the other, received from my youthful audience the most rivetted attention and the most clear comprehension. Youthful minds have greater grasp than one is disposed to give them credit for, and, perhaps, men would do well to be as earnest in their lives as children are in their studies. In order to attain the end I had set before me, I always took care to connect my stories or my reflections with the great events or the great personages of history. When we wish to examine and describe a district scientifically, we traverse it in all its divisions and in every direction ; we visit plains as well as mountains, villages as well as cities, the most obscure cor- ners as weU as the most famous spots ; this is the way of pro- ceeding with the geologist, the botanist, the archseologist, the statistician, the scholar. But when we wish particularly to get an idea of the chief features of a country, its fixed outhnes, |to general con£orma,tion, its special aspects, its §reat roads. LETTER TO THE PVBLISHBRS. 5 We mount the heights ; we place ourselves at points whence we can best take in the totality and the physiognomy of the landscape. And so we must proceed in history when we wish neither to reduce it to the skeleton of an abridgment nor ex- tend it to the huge dimensions of a learned work. - Great events and great men are the fixed points and the peaks of history; and it is thence that we can observe it in its totality, and fol- low it along its highways. In my tales to my grandchildren I sometimes lingered over some particular anecdote which gave me an opportunity of setting in a vivid light the dominant spirit of an age or the characteristic manners of a people ; but, with rare exceptions, it is always on the great deeds and the great' personages of history that I have relied for making of them in my tales what they were in reality, the centre and the focus of the life of France. At the outset, in giving these lessons, I took merely short notes of dates and proper names. When I had reason given me to believe that they might be of some service and interest to other children than my own, and even, I was told, to others besides children, I undertook to put them together in the form in which I had developed them to my youthful audience. I wiU send you, gentlemen, some portions of the work, and if it really appears to you advisable to enlarge the circle for which it was originally intended, I will most gladly entrust to you the care of its pubhcation. Accept, gentlemen, the assurance of my most distinguished sentiments. GUIZOT. Tal-Bicher, December, 1860. TABLE OF CONTENTS-VOL. I. PAGE Chapter I. Gaul 9 n. The Gauls out of Gaul 20 m. The Romans in Gaul 87 lY. Gaul conquered by Julius Ctesar 47 V. Gaul under Roman Dominion 65 YI. Establishment of Christianity in Gaul 87 Yn. The Germans in Gaul. The Franks and Clovis 102 Ym. The Merovingians 124 IX. The Mayors of the Palace. The Pepins and the Change of Dynasty. 143 X. Charlemagne and his Wars 166 XI. Charlemagne and his Government 185 XII. Decay and Fall of the Carlovingians 201 XIII. Feudal France and Hugh Capet 227 XIY. The Capetians to the Time of the Crusades 243 XV. Conquest of England by the Normans 2C4 XVI. The Crusades, their Origin and Success 296 XYII. The Crusades, their Decline and End 335 'XYlII. Tho Kingship in France 380 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. FACING PAGE. Gyptus presenting the Goblet to Euxenes Front. The Gauls in Rome ^ 14 The Women Defending the Cars 15 Mounted Gauls 46 Vercingetorix surrenders to Ceesar .' 47 Eponina and Sabinus 62 The Last of the Druids 63 The Huns. 94 " Thus diddest thou to the Vase of Soissons." 95 " Thinxst him away or thou diest in his stead." 110 The execution of Brunehaut Ill The Arabs had decamped silently in the night 143 Charlemagne inflicting Baptism upon the Saxons 143 Death of Roland at Roncesvalles 158 Charlemagne presiding at the school of the Palace 159 " He remained there a long while, and his eyes were filled with teas';. " 190 The Barques of the Northmen 191 Count Eudes re-entering Paris through the Besiegers 206 Ditcar the Monk recognizing the head of Morvan 207 " Who made thee King? " 238 G«rbert 939 " Robert had a friendly feeling for the weak and poor." 254 The "Accolade. " 255 William the Conqueror Landing in England 286 Edith discovers the body of Harold 287 " God Willeth It." W2 The four leaders of the First Crusade 303 Richard's Farewell to the Hqly Land 334 The Christians of the Holy City defiling before Saladin 335 Richard Coem* de Lion having the Saracens beheaded 350 Sire de JoinviUe 331 The Death of St. Louis 366 Louis the Fat, on an expedition 367 The Battle of Bouvines 382 Death of De Montfort 383 De La Marchess parting insult 430 " It is rather hard bread," , , 431 Battle of CoiU'trai , 446 Colonna striking the Pope ^4? ^he hanging of Marigny ....<.....- i , , . . < /^O THE HISTORY OF FRANCE. CHAPTER L GAUL. YoxjNG France inhabits a country, long ago civilized and Christianized, where, despite of much imperfection and much social misery, thirty-eight miUions of men Hve in security and peace, under laws equal for all and efficiently upheld. There is every reason to nourish great hopes of such a country, and to wish for it more and more of freedom, glory, and prosperity ; but one must be just towards one's own times, and estimate at their true value advantages already acquired and progress already accomplished. If one were suddenly carried twenty or thirty centuries backward, into the midst of that which was then called Gaul, one would not recognize France. The same mountains reared their heads; the same plains stretched far and wide; the same rivers roUed on their course ; there is no alteration in the physical formation of the country ; but its aspect was very different. Instead of the fields all trim with cultivation, and aU covered with various produce, one would see inaccessible morasses and vast forests, as yet uncleared, given up to the chances of primitive vegetation, peopled with wolves and bears, and even the urus, or huge wild ox, and with elks too — a kind of beast that one finds no longer now-a- days, save in the colder regions of north-eastern Europe, such as Lithuania and Courland. Then wandered over the cham- paign great herds of swine, as fierce almost as wolves, tamed only so far as to know the sound of their keeper's horn. The better sort of fruits and of vegetables were quite unknown; they were imported into Gaul— the greatest part from Asia, a portion from Africa and the islands of the Mediterranean; ard others, at a later period, from the New World. Cold ana 10 msTonr of France. [cs. t rough was the prevailing temperature. Nearly every winter the rivers froze sufficiently hard for the passage of ears. And three or four centuries before the Christian era, on that vast territory comprised between the ocean, the Pyrenees, the Mediterranean, the Alps, and. the Rhine, lived six or seven millions of men a bestial hfe, enclosed in dwellings dark and low, the best of them built of wood and clay, covered with branches or straw, made in a single round piece, open to day- light by the door alone, and confusedly heaped together be- hind a rampart, not inartistically composed, of timber, earth, and stone, which surrounded and protected what they were pleased to call a town. Of even such towns there were scarcely any as yet, save in the most populous and least uncultivated portion of Gaul ; that is to say, in the southern and eastern regions, at the foot of the mountains of Auvergne and the Cevennes, and along the coasts of the Mediterranean. In the north and the west were paltry hamlets, as transferable almost as the people them- selves ; and on some islet amidst the morasses, or in some hid- den recess of the forest, were huge entrenchments formed of the trees that were felled, where the population, at the first sound of the war-cry, ran to shelter themselves, with theii^ fiocks and all their movables. And the war-cry was often heard : men Uving grossly and idly are very prone to quarrel and fight. Gaul, moreover, was not occupied by one and the same nation, with the same traditions and the same chiefs. Tribes, very difiEerent in origin, habits, and date of settlement, were continually disputing the territory. In the south were Iberians or Aquitanian, Phoenicians and Greeks ; in the north and north-west Kymrians or Belgians ; everywhere else, Gauls or Celts, the most numerous settlers, who had the honor of giving their name to the country. Who were the first to come, then? and what was the date of the first settlement? Nobody knows. Of the Greeks alone does history mark with any precision the arrival in southern Gaul. The Phoenicians preceded them by several centuries ; but it is impossible to fix any exact time. The information is equally vague about the period when the Kymrians invaded the north of Gaul. As for the Gauls and the Iberians, there is not a word about their first entrance into the country, for they are discovered there al- ready at the first appearance of the country itself in the domain of history. The Iberians, whom Roman writers call Aquitanians, dwelt CH. I.] GA UL. 11 at the foot of the Pyrenees, in the territory comprised between the mountains, the Garonne, and the ocean. They belonged to the race which, under the same appellation, had peopled Spain ; but by what route they came into Gaul is a problem which we cannot solve. It is much the same in tracing the origin of every nation ; for in those barbarous times men lived and died without leaving any enduring memorial of their deeds and their destinies ; no monuments ; no writings ; just a few oral traditions, perhaps, which are speedily lost or altered. It is in proportion as they become enlightened and civihzed, that men feel the desire and discover the means of extending their memorial far beyond their own lifetime. That is the begin- ing of history, the offspring of noble and useful sentiments, which cause the mind to dwell upon the future, and to yearn for long continuance; sentiments which testify to the supe- riority of man over all other creatures hving upon our earth, which foreshadow the immortality of the soul, and which are warrant for the progress of the human race by preserving for the generations to come what has been done and learned by the generations that disappear. By whatever route and at whatever epoch the Iberians came into the south-west of Gaul, they abide there still in the de- partment of the Lower Pyrenees, imder the name of Basques ; a peoplet * distinct from all its neighbors in features, costume, and especially language, which resembles none of the present languages of Europe, contains many words which are to be found in the names of rivers, mountains, and towns of olden Spain, and which presents a considerable analogy to the idioms, ancient and modern, of certain peoples of northern Africa. The Phoenicians did not leave, as the Iberians did, in the south of France distinct and weU-authenticated descend- ants. They had begun about 1100 B.C. to trade there. They went thither in search of furs, and gold and silver, which were got either from the sand of certain rivers, as for instance the Ariege (in Latin Aurigera), or from certain mines of the Alps, the Cevennes, and the Pyrenees; they brought in exchange stuflEs dyed with purple, necklaces and rings of glass, and, above all, arms and wine ; a trade like that which is now-a- days carried on by the civilized peoples of Europe with the savage tribes of Africa and America. For the purpose of ex- tending and securing their commercial expeditions, the Phoeni- * Fr, " peuplade," from people, on the analogy of circlet from cjreJe,— Trans, 12 HISTORY OP FRANC m. [cH. t cians founded colonies in several parts of Gaul, and to them is attributed the earliest origin of Nemausus (Nimes), and of Alesia, near Semur. But, at the end of three or four centuries, these colonies fell into decay ; the trade of the Phoenicians was ■withdrawn from Gaul, and the only importanb sign it pre- served of their residence was a road which, starting from the eastern Pyrenees, skirted the Gallic portion of the Mediter- ranean, crossed the Alps by the pass of Tenda, and so united Spain, Gaul, and Italy. After the withdrawal of the Phoeni- cians this road was kept up and repaired, at first by the Greeks of Marseilles, and subsequently by the Eomans. As merchants and colonists, the Greeks were, in Gaul, the successors of the Phoenicians, and Marseilles was one of their first and most considerable colonies. At the time of the Phoenicians' decay in Gaul, a Greek peoplet, the Ehodians, had pushed their commercial enterprises to a great distance, and, in the words of the ancient historians, held the empire of the sea. Their ancestors had, in former times, succeeded the Phcenicians in the island of Ehodes, and they likewise suc- ceeded them in the south of Gaul, and founded, at the mouth of the Rhone, a colony called Rhodanusia or Rhoda, with the same name as that which they had already founded on the north-east coast of Spain, and which is now-a-days the town of Rosas, in Catalonia. But the importance of the Ehodians on the southern coast of Gaul was short-lived. It had already sunk very low in the year 600 b.o., when Euxenes, a Greek trader, coming from Phocea, an Ionian town of Asia Minor, to seek his fortune, landed from a bay eastward of the Rhone. The Segobrigians, a tribe of the Gallic race, were in occupation of the neighboring country. Nann, their chief, gave the strangers kindly welcome, and took them home with him to a great feast which he was giving for his daughter's marriage, who was called Gyptis, according to some, and Petta, accord- ing to other historians. A custom, which exists still in several cantons of the Basque country, and even at the centre of France, in Morvan, a mountainous district of the department of the Nievre, would that the maiden should appear only at the end of the banquet and holding in her hand a filled wine-cup, and that the guest to whom she should present it should become the husband of her choice. By accident, or quite another cause, say the ancient legends, Gyptis stopped opposite Euxenes, and handed him the cup. Great was the surprise, and, probably, anger amongst the CH. I.] OA UL. 13 Gauls who were present; but Nann, believing he recognized a commandment from his gods, accepted the Phocean as his son- in-law, and gave him as dowry the bay where he had landed, with some cantons of the territory around. Euxenes, in gratitude, gave his wife the Greek name of Aristoxena (that is, " the best of L. -.esses"), sent away his ship to Phocea for colonists, and, whUst waiting for them, laid in. the centre of the bay, on a peninsiila hollowed out harbor-wise, towards the south, the foundations of a town, which he called MassiUa — thence Marseilles. Scarcely a year had elapsed when Euxenes' ship arrived from Phocea, and with it several galleys, bringing colonists full of hope, and laden with provisions, utensils, arms, seeds, vine- cattiags, and oUve-cuttings, and, moreover, a statue of Diana, which the colonists had gone to fetch from the celebrated temple of that goddess at Ephesus, and which her priestess, Axistarche, accompanied to its new coimtry. The activity and prosperity of Marseilles, both within, and without, were rapidly developed. She carried her commerce wherever the Phoenicians and the Ehodians had marked out a road; she repaired their forts; she took to herself their establishments; and she placed on her medals, to signify dominion, the rose, the emblem of Rhodes, beside the lion of MarseUles. But Nann, the Gallic chieftain, who had protected her infancy, died; and his son, Coman, shared the jealousy feltbytheSegobrigians and the neighboring peoplets towards the new comers. He promised and really resolved to destroy the new city. It was the time of the flowering of the vine, a season of great festivity amongst the Ionian Greeks, and Marseilles thought solely of the preparations for the feast. The houses and public places were being decorated with branches and flowers. No guard was set ; no work was done. Coman sent into the town a number of his men, some openly, as if to take par-^ "-> the festivities; others hidden at the bot- tom of the cars wnich conveyed into MarseUles the branches and foliage from the outskirts. He himself went and lay in ambush in a neighboring glen, with seven thousand men, they say, but the number is probably exaggerated, and waited for his emissaries to open the gates to him during the night. But once more a woman, a near relation of the Gallic chieftain, was the guardian angel of the Greeks, and revealed the plot to a young man of Marseilles, with whom she was in love. The gates were jmRiediately shut, a,nc!, so many Sogobrigiar.^ 14 msronr of fbanoe. [ch. l as happened to be in the town were massacred. Then, when night came on, the inhabitants, armed, went forth to surprise Coman in the ambush where he was awaiting the moment to surprise them. And there he fell mth all his men. Delivered as they were from this danger, the Massilians nevertheless remained in a difficult and disquieting situation. The peoplets around, in coalition against them, attacked them often and threatened them incessantly. But whilst they were struggling against these embarrassments, a grand disaster, happening in the veiy same spot whence they had emigrated half a century before, was procuring them a great accession of strength and the surest means of defence. In the year 543 B.C., Phocea succumbed beneath the efforts of Cyrus, King of Per- sia, and her inhabitants, leaving to the conqueror empty streets and deserted houses, took to their ships in a body, to transfer their homes elsewhither. A portion of this floating population made straight for Marseilles; others stopped at Corsica, in the harbor of Alalia, another Phocean colony. But at the end of five years they too, tired of piratical life and of the incessant wars they had to sustain against the Carthaginians, quitted Corsica, and went to rejoin their com- patriots in Gaul. Thenceforward Marseilles found herself in a position to face, her enemies. She extended her walls all round the bay and her enterprises far away. She f oimded on the southern coast of Gaul and on the eastern coast of Spain, permanent settle- ments, which are to this day towns : eastward of the Rhone, Hercules' harbor, Moncecus (Monaco), Niccea (Nice), AntipoUs (Antibes) ; westward, Heraclea Cacabaria (Saint-GUles), Agatha (Agde), Emporim (Ampurias in Catalonia), etc., etc. In the valley of the Rhone, several towns of the Gauls, CabelKo (CavaUlon), Avenio (Avignon), Ar elate (Aries), for instance, were hke Greek colonies, so great there was the num- ber of travellers or established merchants who spoke Greek. With' this commercial activity Marseilles united intellectual and scientific activity; her grammarians were among the first to revise and annotate the poems of Homer; and bold travellers from Marseilles, Euthymenes and Pytheas by name, cruised, one along the western coast of Africa beyond thei Straits of Gibraltar, and the other the southern and western coasts of Europe, from the mouth of the Tanaia (Don), in the Black Sea, to the latitudes and perhaps into the interior of the Baltic, They lived, botU of tbero, m the second half pf the THE GAULS IN ROME. rilE WOMEN DEi'EiNDlN'O '1 HE CARb. CH. I.] OAUL. 15 fourth century B.C., and they wrote each a Periplus, or tales of their travels, which have unfortunately ' been almost entirely lost. But whatever may have been her intelligence and activity, a single town situated at the extremity of Gaul and peopled with foreigners could have but little influence over so vast a country and its inhabitants. At first civihzation is very hard and very slow ; it requires many centuries, many great events, and many years of toil to overcome the early habits of a people, and cause them to exchange the pleasures, gross indeed, but accompanied with the idleness and freedom of barbarian Ufe, for the toilful advantages of a regulated social condition. By dint of foresight, perseverance, and courage, the merchants of Marseilles and her colonies crossed by two or three main hues the forests, morasses, and heaths through the savage tribes of Gauls, and there effected their exchanges, but to the right and left they penetrated but a short distance ; even on their main lines their traces soon disappeared ; and at the com- mercial settlements which they estabhshed here and there they were often far more occupied in self-defence than in spreading their example. Beyond a strip of land of uneven breadth, along the Mediterranean, and save the space peopled towards the south-west by the Iberians, the country, which received its name from the former of the two, was occu- pied by the Gauls and the Kymrians; by the Gauls in the centre, south-east, and east, in the highlands of modem France, between the Alps, the Vosges, the mountains of Auvergne and the Cevennes; by the Kymrians in the north, north west, and west, in the lowlands, from the western boundary of the Gauls to the Ocean. Whether the Gauls and the Kymrians were originally of the same race, or at least of races closely connected ; whether they were both anciently comprised under the general name of Celts; and whether the Kymrians, if they were not of the same race as the Gauls, belonged to that of the Germans, the final conquerors of the Roman Empire, are questions which the learned have been a long, long while discussing without deciding. The only facts which seem to be clear and certain are the following. The ancients for a long while applied without distinction the naine of Celts to the peoples who lived in the west and north of Em-ope, regardless of precise limits, language, or srigin. It was a geographical title applicable to a vast but ill' 16 HISTORY OF FRANCE. [ch. i explored territory, rather than a real historical name of race or nation. And so, in the earliest times, Gauls, Germans, Bretons, and even Iberians, appear frequently confounded under the name of Celts, peoples of Celtica. Little by little this name is observed to become more re- stricted and more precise. The Iberians of Spain are the first to be detached; then the Germans. In the century preceding the Christian era, the Gauls, that is, the peoples inhabiting Gaul, are alone called Celts. We begin even to recognize amongst them diversities of race, and to distinguish the Iberians .of Gaul alias Aquitanians and the Kymrians or Belgians from the Gauls, to whom, the name of Celts is confined. Sometimes even it is to a confederation of certain Gallic tribes that the name specially applies. However it be, the Gauls appear to have been the first inhabitants of western Europe. In the most ancient historical memorials they are found there, and not only in Gaul, but in Great Britain, in Ireland, and in the neighboring islets. In Gaul, after a long predominance, their race commingled with other races to form the French nation. But, in this commingling, numerous traces of their language, monuments, manners, and names of persons and places, sur- vived and still exist, especially to the east and south-east, in local customs and vernacular dialects. In Ireland, in the highlands of Scotland, in the Hebrides and the Isle of Man, Gauls (Gaels) still live under their primitive name. There we stiU have the Gaelic l-ace and tongue, free, if not from any change, at least from absorbent fusion. From the seventh to the fourth century B.C., a new population spread over Gaul, not at once, but by a series of invasions, of which the two principal took place at the two extremes of that epoch. They caUed themselves Kymrians or Kimrians, whence the Romans made the Cimbrians, which recalls Cimmerii or Cimmerians, the name of a people whom the Greeks placed on the western bank of the Black Sea and in the Cimmerian pen,- insula, called to this day Crimea. During these irregular and successively repeated movements of wandering populations, it often happened that tribes of different races met, made terms, united, and finished by amalgamation under one name. All the peoples that successively invaded Europe, Gauls, Kymri- ans, Germans, belonged at first, in Asia, whence they came, to a common stem; the diversity of their languages, tradi- tions, and manners, grea,t as it ah-eady was at the time of their appe^rancQ m the "West, was the wprk of time and of th^ CH. 1.] OAUL. 17 diverse circumstances in the midst of which they had lived; but there always remained amongst them traces of a primitive affinity which allowed of sudden and frequent comminglings, amidst their tumultuous dispersion. The Kymrians, who crossed the Rhine and flung themselves into northern Gaul towards the middle of the fourth century B.C., called themselves Bolg, or Belg, or Belgians, a name which indeed is given to them by Roman writers, and which has remained that of the country they first invaded. They descended southwards, to the banks of the Seine and the Marne. There they encountered the Kymrians of former invasions, who not only had spread over the country com- prised between the Seine and the Loii'e, to the very heart of the peninsula bordered by the latter river, but had crossed the sea, and occupied a portion of the large island opposite Gaul, crowding back the Gauls, who had preceded them, upon Ireland and the highlands of Scotland. It was from one ot these tribes and its chieftain, called Pryd or Prydain, Brit or Britain, that Great Britain and Brittany in France received the name which they have kept. Each of these races, far from forming a single people bound to the same destiny and under the same chieftains, split into peoplets, more or less independent, who foregathered or sepa- rated according to the shifts of circumstances, and who pur- sued, each on their own account and at their own pleasure, their fortunes or their fancies. The Ibero-Aquitanians num- bered twenty tribes ; the Gauls twenty-two nations ; the origi- nal Kymrians, mingled with the Gauls between the Loire and the Garonne, seventeen; and the Kymro-Belgians twenty- three. These sixty-two nations were subdivided into several hundreds of tribes ; and these petty agglomerations were dis- tributed amongst rival confederations or leagues, which dis- puted one-with another the supremacy over such and such a portion of territory. Three grand leagues existed amongst-the Gauls ; that of the Arvernians, formed of peoplets established in the country which received from them the name of Auvergne; that of the -^duans, in Burgundy, whose centre was Bibracte (Autun); and that of the Sequanians, in :;Franche-Comte, whose centre was Vesontio (Besangon). Amongst the Kymrians of the West, the Armor ic league bound together the tribes of Brittany and lower Normandy. From these alliances, intended to group together scattered forces, sprang fresh passions or interests, which became sq 18 SIST0R7 OF FRANCE. [cn- !• many fresh causes of discord and hostility. And, in these divers agglomerations, government was every where almost equally irregular and powerless to maintain order or found an enduring state. Kymrians, Gauls, or Iberians were nearly equally ignorant, improvident, slaves to the shiftings of their ideas and the sway of their passions, fond of war and idleness and rapine and feasting, of gross and savage pleasures. All gloried in hanging from the breast-gear of their horses, or naUing to the doors of their houses, the heads of their enemies. All sacrificed human victims to their gods; all tied their prisoners to trees, and burned or flogged them to death; all took pleasure in wearing upon their heads or round their arms, and depicting upon their naked bodies fantastic orna- ments, which gave them a wild appearance. An unbridled passion for wine and strong liquoi-s was general amongst them: the traders of Italy, and especially of Marseilles, brought supplies into every part of Gaul; from interval to interval there were magazines established, whither the Gauls flocked to sell for a flask of wine their furs, their grain, their cattle, their slaves. "It was easy," says an ancient historian, ' ' to get the Ganymede for the liquor. " Such are the essential characteristics of barbaric life, as they have been and as they still are at several points of our globe, amongst people of the same grade in the scale of civihzation. They existed in nearly an equal degree amongst the different races of ancient Gaul, whose resemblance was rendered much stronger thereby than their diversity in other respects by some of their customs, traditions, or ideas. In their case, too, there is no sign of those permanent de- marcations, those rooted antipathies, and that impossibility of unity which are observable amongst peoples whose original moral condition is really very different. In Asia, Africa, and America, the EngUsh, the Dutch, the Spanish, and the French have been and are stfll in frequent contact with the natives of the country — Hindoos, Malays, Negroes, and Indians; and, in spite of this contact, the races have remained widely separaS ted one from another. In ancient Gaul not only did Gauls, Kymrians, and Iberians live frequently in alliance and almost intimacy, but thsy actually commingled and cohabited without scruple on the same territory. And so we find in the midst of the Iberians, towards the mouth of the Garonne, a GaUic tribe, the Viviscan Biturigians, come from the neigh- borhood of Bourges, where the bulk of the nation was settled: CH. 1.] GA UL. 19 they had been driven thither by one of the first invasions of the Kymrians, and peabeably taken root there; Burdigala afterwards Bordeaux, was the chief settlement of this tribe, and even then a trading-place between the Mediterranean and the ocean. A little farther on, towards the south, a Kymrian tribe, the Bo'ians, hved isolated from its race, in the waste- lands of the Iberians, extracting the resin from the pines which grew in that territory. To the south-west, in the country situated between the Garonne, the eastern Pyrenees, the Cevennes, and the Rhone, two great tribes of Kymro- Eelgians, the Bolg, Volg, Volk, or Voles, Arecomican and Tectosagian, came to settle towards the end of the fourth cen- tury B.C., in the midst of the Iberian and Gallic peoplets; and there is nothing to show that the new comers lived worse with their neighbors than the latter had previously lived together. It is evident that amongst £ill these peoplets, whatever may have been their diversity of origin, there was sufficient simili- tude of social condition and manners to make agreement a matter neither very difficult nor very long to accomplish. On the other hand, and as a natural consequence, it was precarious and often of short duration: Iberian, Gallic, or Kymrian as they might be, these peoplets underwent frequent displacements, forced or voluntary, to escape from the attacks of a more powerful neighbor; to find new pasturage; in conse- quence of internal dissension; or, perhaps, for the mere pleasure of warfare and running risks, and to be dehvered from the tediousness of a monotonous hfe. From the earliest times to the first century before the Christian era, Gaul appears a prey to this incessant and disorderly movement of the population; they change settlement and neighborhood; disappear from one point and reappear at another; cross one another ; avoid one another ; absorb and are absorbed. And the movement was not confined within Gaul; the Gauls of every race went, sometimes iu very numerous hordes, to seek far away plunder and a settlement. Spain, Italy, Germany, Greece, Asia Minor, and Africa have been ia turn the theatre of those Gallic expeditions which entailed long wars, grand 'displacements of peoples, and sometimes the formation of new nations. Let us make a slight acquaintance with this outer history of the Gauls; for it is well worth whDe to follow them a space upon their distant wanderings. We will then return to the sou of France and concern ourselves only with what Jias passed within her boundaries. 20 msTORT OF fttANCB. [oh, n CHAPTER II. THE GAULS OUT OF GAUL. About three centuries B.C. numerous hordes of Gauls crossed the Alps and penetrated to the centre of Etruria, which is now-a-days Tuscany. The Etrus cans, being then at war with Rome, proposed to take them, armed and equipped as they had come, into their own pay. "If you want our hands," answered the Gauls, " against your enemies the Romans, here they are at your service — ^but on one condition: give us lands." A century afterwards other Gallic hordes, descending in like manner upon Italy, had commenced building houses and tilling fields along the Adriatic, on the territory where afterwards was Aqmleia. The Roman Senate decreed that their settle- ment should be opposed, and that they should be summoned to give up their implements and even their arms. Not being in a position to resist, the Gauls sent representatives to Rome. They, being introduced into the Senate, said, " The multitude of people in Gaul, the want of lands, and necessity forced us to cross the Alps to seek a home. We saw plains uncultivated and uninhabited. We settled there without doing any one barm. . . . We ask nothing but lands. We will live peace- fully on them under the laws of the republic. " Again, a century later, or thereabouts, some Gallic Kymrians, mingled with Teutons or Germans, said also to the Roman Senate, " Give us a little land as pay; and do what you please with our hands and weapons." Want of room and means of subsistence have, in fact, been the principal causes which have at all times thrust barbarous people, and especially the Gauls, out of their fatherland. An immense extent of country is required for indolent hordes who live chiefly upon the produce of the chase and of their flocks ; and when there is no longer enough of forest or pasturage for the families that become too numerous, there is a swarm from the hive and a search for livelihood elsewhere. The Gauls emi- grated in every direction. To find, as they said, rivers and lands, they marched from north to south, and from east to west. They crossed at one time the Rhine, at another the Alps, CH. n.] T3E GAULS OUT OF GAUL. 21 at another the Pyrenees. More than fifteen centuries B.C. they had already thrown themselves into> Spain, after many fights, no doubt, with the Iberians established between the Pyrenees and the Garonne. They penetrated north-westwards to the northern point of the Peninsula, into the province which re- ceived from them and stUI bears the name of G-alicia ; south- eastwards to the southern point, between the river Anas (now- a-days Guadiana) and the ocean, where they founded a Little Celtica; and centrewards and southwards from Castile to An- dalusia, where the amalgamation of two races brought about the creation of a new people, that found a place in history as Celtiberians. And twelve centuries after those events, about 230 B.C., we find the Gallic peoplet, which had planted itself in the south of Portugal, energetically defending its independence against the neighboring Carthaginian colonies. Indortius, their chief, conquered and taken prisoner, was beaten with rods and hmig upon the cross, in the sight of his army, after having had his eyes put out by command of Hamilcar-]3arca, the Carthaginian general; but a Gallic slave took care to avenge him by assassinating, some years after, at a hunting- party, Hasdrubal, son-in-law of Hamilcar, who had succeeded to the command. The slave was put to the torture ; but, in- domitable in his hatred, he died insulting the Africans. A little after the Gallic invasion of Spain, and by reason per- haps of that very movement, in the first half of the fourteenth century B.C., 'another vast horde of Gauls, who called them- selva Amhra, Ambra, Ambrons, that is, " braves, " crossed the Alps, occupied northern Italy, descended even to the brink of the Tiber, and conferred the name of Ambria or Unibria on the country where they founded their dominion. If ancient accounts might be trusted, this dominion was glorious and flourishing, for Umbria numbered, they say, 358 towns ; but falsehood, according to the Eastern proverb, lurks by the cra- dle of nations. At a much later epoch, in the second century B.C., fifteen towns of Liguria contained altogether, as we learn from Livy, but 20,000 souls. It is plain, then, what must really have been— even admitting their existence— the 358 towns of Umbria. However, at the end of two or three centuries, this Gallic colony succumbed beneath the superior power of the Etruscans, another set of invaders from eastern Europe, perhaps from the north of Greece, who founded in Italy a mighty empire. The Umbrians or Ambrons were driven out or Bubjugated, NeYertbeless some of their peoplets, preserY« 22 mSTOBT OF FBANGE. [ch. ". ing their name and manners, remained in the mountains of Upper Italy, where they were to be subsequently discovered by fresh and more celebrated Gallic invasions. Those just spoken of are of such antiquity and obscurity, that we note their place in history without being able to say how they came to fill it. It is only with the sixth century be- fore our era that we light upon the really historical expeditions of the Gauls away from Gaul, those, in fact, of which we may foUow the course and estimate the effects. Towards the year 587 B.C., almost at the very moment when the Phoceans had just founded Marseilles, two great Gallic hordes got in motion at the same time and crossed, one the Rhine, theother the Alps, making one for Germany, the other for Italy. The former followed the course of the Danube and settled in Ulyria, on the right bank of the river. It is too much, perhaps, to say that they settled ; the greater part of them contmued wandering and fighting, sometimes amalga- mating with the peoplets they encountered, sometimes chasing them and exterminating them, whilst themselves were inces- santly pushed forward by fresh bands coming also from Gaul. Thus marching and spreading, leaving here and there on their route, along the rivers and in the valleys of the Alps, tribes that remained and founded peoples, the Gauls had arrived, towards the year 340 B.C., at the confines of Macedonia, at the time when Alexander, the son of PhUip, who was already famous, was advancing to the same point to restrain the ravages of the neighboring tribes, perhaps of the Gauls them- selves. From curiosity, or a desire to make terms with Alex- ander, certain Gauls betook themselves to his camp. He treated them weU, made them sit at his table, took pleasure in exhibiting his magnificence before them, and in the midst of his carouse made his interpreter ask them what they were most afraid of. "We fear naught," they answered, "unless it be the fall of heaven ; but we set above every thing the friend- sMp of a man Kke thee." "The Celts are proud," said Alex- anier to his Macedonians; and he promised them his friend- ship. On the death of Alexander the Gauls, as mercenaries, entered, in Europe and Asia, the service of the kings who had been his generals. Ever greedy, fierce, and passionate, they were almost equally dangerous as auxiliaries and as neighbors. Antigonus, King of Macedonia, was to pay the band he had enrolled a gold piece a-head. They brought their wives and children witlj them, and. at the end of the campaign they CH. II,] THB GAULS OUT OF GAUL. 23 claimed pay for their following as weU as for themselves : ' ' We were promised," said they, "a gold piece a-head for each Gaul; and these are also Gauls.". ^ Before long they tired of fighting the battles of another; their power accumulated ; fresh hordes, in great numbers, ar- rived amongst them about the year 281 B.C. They had before them Thrace, Macedonia, Thessaly, Greece, rich, but distracted and weakened by civil strife. They effected an entrance at several points, devastating, plimdering, loading their cars with booty, and dividing their prisoners into two parts ; one offered in sacrifice to their gods, the other strung up to trees and abandoned to the gais and matars, or javelins and pikes of the conquerors. Like all barbarians, they, both for pleasure and on principle, added insolence to ferocity. Their Brenn, or most famous chieftain, whom the Latins and Greeks call Brennus, dragged in his train Macedonian prisoners, short, mean, and with shaven heads, and, exhibiting them beside Gallic warriors, tall, robust, long-haired, adorned with chains of gold, said, "This is what we are, that is what our enemies are." Ptolemy the Thunderbolt, King of Macedonia, received with haughtiness their first' message requiring of him a ransom for his dominions, if he wished to preserve peace. "TeU those who sent you," he replied to the Gallic deputation, ".to lay down their arms and give up to me their chieftains. I wiU then see what peace I can grant them." On the return of the deputation, the Gauls were moved to laughter. ' ' He shall soon see," said they. " whether it was in his interest or our own that we. offered him peace." And, indeed, in the first engagement, neither the famous Macedonian phalanx, nor the elephant he rode, could save King Ptolemy ; the phalanx was broken, the elephant riddled with javelins, the king him- self taken, killed, and his head marched about the field of bat- tle on the top of a pike. Macedonia was in consternation ; there was a general flight ^from the open country, and the gates of the towns were closed. "The people," says an historian, "cursed the foUy of King Ptolemy, and invoked the names of Philip and Alexander, the guardian deities of their land. " ■ Three years later, another and a more formidable invasion came bursting upon Thessaly and Greece. It was, according to the unquestionably exaggerated account of the ancient Jjjstorians, .300,000 strong, and commanded by that famous, 24 BISTORT OF FRANCE. [cii. n. ferocious, and insolent Brennus mentioned before. His idea was to strike a blow which should simultaneously enrich the Gauls and stun the Greeks. He meant to plunder the temple at Delphi, the most venerated place in aU Greece, whither flowed from century to century all kinds of offerings, and where, no doubt, enormous treasure was deposited. Such was, in the opinion of the day, the sanctity of the place, that, on the rumor of the projected profanation, several Greeks es- sayed to divert the Gallic Brenn himself, by appealing to his superstitious fears; but his answer was, "The gods have no need of wealth ; it is they who distribute it to men. " All Greece was moved. The nations of the Peloponnese closed the isthmus of Corinth by a wall. Outside the isthmus, the BoBotians, Phocidians, Locrians, Megarians, and .^toUans formed a coalition under the leadership of the Athenians ; and, as their ancestors had done scarcely two hundred years before against Xerxes and the Persians, they advanced in all haste to the pass of Thermopylae, to stop there the new barbarians. And for several days they did stop them; and instead of three hundred heroes, as of yore in the case of Leonidas and his Spartans, only forty Greeks, they say, fell in the first engagement. Amongst them was a young Athenian, Cydias by name, whose shield was hung in the temple of Zeus the saviour, at Athens, with this inscription : THIS SHIKIyD, DEDICATED TO ZBITS, IS THAT OF A VALIANT MAN, CYDIAS. IT STILL BEWAILS ITS TOUNG MASTER. FOR THE FIRST TIME HE BARE IT ON H18 LEFT ARM WHEN TERRIBLE ARES CRU8HKD , THE GAULS. But soon, just as in the case of the Persians, traitors guided Brennus and his Gauls across the mountain -paths ; the posi- tion of Thermopylae was turned; the Greek army owed its safety to the Athenian galleys ; and by evening of the same day the barbarians appeared in sight of Delphi. Brennus would have led them at once to the assault. He showed them, to excite them, the statues, vases, cars, monu- ments of every kind, laden with gold, which adorned the approaches of the town and of the temple: "'Tis pure gold, massive gold," was the news he had spread in every direction. But the very cupidity he provoked was against his plan ; for CH, n.] TEE GAULS OUT OF GAUL. 25 the Gauls fell out to plunder. He had to put off the assault until to-morrow. The night was passed in irregularities and orgies. The Greeks, on the contrary, prepared with ardor for the fight. Their enthusiasm was intense. Those barbarians, with their half-nakedness, their grossness, their ferocity, their igno- rance and their impiety, were revolting. They conamitted murder and devastation like dolts. They left their dead on the field, without biirial. They engaged in battle without con- sulting priest or augur. It was not only their goods but their families, their Ufe, the honor of their country and the sanctu- ary of their rehgion that the Greeks were defending, and they might rely on the protection of the gods. The oracle of Apollo had answered, " I and the white virgins wiU provide for this matter." The people surrounded the temple, and the priests supported and encouraged the people. During the night small bodies of ^tohans, Amphisseans and Phocidians arrived one after another. Tour thousand men had joined within Delphi, when the GaUic bands, in the morning, began to mount the narrow and rough incline which led up to the town. The Greeks rained down from above a deluge of stones and other missiles. The Gauls recoiled, but recovered themselves. The besieged fell back on the nearest streets of the town, leaving open the approach to the temple, upon which the barbarians threw themselves. The pillage of the shrines had just, com- menced when the sky looked threatening; a storm burst forth, the thunder echoed, the rain fell, the hail rattled. EeadUy taking advantage of this incident, the priests and the augurs sallied from the temple clothed in their sacred garments, with hair dishevelled and sparkling eyes, proclaiming the advent of the god: "'Tishe! we saw him shoot athwart the temple's vault, which opened under his feet ; and with him were two virgins, who issued from the temples of Artemis and Athena. We saw them with our eyes. We heard the twang of their bows, and the clash of their armor." Hearing these cries and the roar of the tempest, the Greeks dash on, the Gauls are panic-stricken, and rush headlong down the hill. The Greeks push on in pursuit. Eumors of fresh apparitions are spread : three heroes, Hyperochus, Laodocus, and Pyrrhus, son of Achilles, have issued from their tombs hard by the temple, and are thrusting at the G;auls with their lances. The rout was speedy and general; the barbarians rushed to the cover of their camp; but the camp was attacked nest morning by 26 mSTOBY OF FRANCE. ^ch- li- the Greeks from the town and by reinforcements from the country places. Brennus and the picked warriors about him made a gallant resistance, but defeat was a foregone conclU' sion. Brennus was wounded, and his comrades ,bore him of£ the field. The barbarian army passed the whole day in flight. During the ensuing night a now access of-- terror seized them ; they again took to flight, and four days after the pasaage of Thermopylse some scattered bands, forming scarcely a third of those who had marched on Delphi, rejoined the division which had remained behind, some leagues from the town, in the plains watered by the Cephissus. Brennus summoned his comrades; "Kill all the wounded and me," said he; "burn yoxir cars; make Cichor king; and away at fuU speed." Then he called for wine, drank himself drunk, and stabbed himself. Oichor did cut the throats of the wounded, and traversed, fly- ing and fighting, Thessaly and Macedonia; and on returning whence they had set out, the Gauls dispersed, some to settle at the foot of a neighboring mountain under the command of a chieftain named Bathanat or Baedhannat, i.e. son of the wild boar; others to march back towards their own country ; the greatest part to resume the same life of incursion and adventure. But they changed the scene of operations. Greece, Macedonia, and Thrace were exhausted by pillage, and made a league to resist. About 278 B.C. the Gauls crossed the Helles- pont and passed into Asia Minor. There, at one time in the pay of the kings of Bithynia, Pergamos, Cappadocia, and Syria, or of the free commercial cities which were struggling against the kings, at another carrying on wars on their own account, they wandered for more than thirty years, divided into three great hordes which parcelled out the territories among themselves, overran and plundered them during the fine weather, entrenched themselves during winter in their camp of cars, or in some fortified place, sold their services to the highest bidder, changed masters according to interest or incUnation, and by their bravery became the terror of these efEemiaate populations and tlie arbiters of these petty states. At last both princes and people grew weary. Antiochus, King of Syria, attacked one of the three bands— that of the Tectosagians, conquered it, and cantoned it in a district of Upper Phrygia. Later stUl, about 241 b.o., Eumenes, sover- eign of Pergamos, and Attains, his successor, drove and shut up the other two bands, the Tolistoboians and Trocmians, likewise in the same region. The victories of Attalue over the CH. II.] TEE OAULS OUT OF OAUL. 27 Gauls excited veritable enthusiasm. He was celebrated as a special envoy from Zeus. He took the title of King, -which his predecessors had not hitherto borne. He had his battles showily painted ; and that he might triumph at the same time both in Europe and Asia, he sent one of the pictures to Athens, where it was still to be seen three centuries afterwards, hang- ing upon the wall of the citadel. Forced to remain stationary, the Gallic hordes became a people — the Galatians — and the country they occiipied was called Galatia. They lived there some fifty years, aloof from the indigenous population of Greeks and Phrygians, whom they kept in an almost servile condition, preserving their warlike and barbarous habits, resuming sometimes their mercenary service, and becoming once more the bulwark or the terror of neighboring states. But at the beginning of the second century before our era, the Eomans had entered Asia, in pursuit of their great enemy, Hannibal. They had just beaten, near Magnesia, Antiochus, King of Syria. In his army they had encountered men of lofty stature, with hair light or dyed red, half naked, march- ing to the fight with loud cries, and terrible at the first onset. They recognized the Gauls, and resolved to destroy or subdue them. The consul, Cn. Manlius, had the duty and the honor. Attacked in their strongholds on Mount Olympus and Mount Magaba, 189 B.C., the three GaUic bands, after a short but stout resistance, were conquered and subjugated ; and thence- forth losing all national importance, they amalgamated httle by little with the Asiatic populations around them; From time to time they are stiU seen to reappear with their primi- tive manners and passions. Rome humored them; Mithri- dates had them for allies in his long struggle with the Eomans. He kept by him a Galatian guard ; and when he sought death, and poison failed him ; it wasthe captain of the guard, a Gaul named Bituitus, whom he asked to run him through. That is the last historical event with which the Gallic name is found associated in Asia. Nevertheless the amalgamation of the Gauls of Galatia with the natives always remained very imperfect ; for towards the end of the fourth century of the Christian era they did not speak Greek, as the latter did, but their national tongue, that of the Kymro-Belgians ; and St. Jerome testifies that it differed very little from that which was spoken in Belgica itself, in the region of Treves. Tfhe Eomans had good ^ound for keeping a watchful eye, 28 " BISTORT OF FRANCE. [oh. ii. from the time they met them, upon the Gauls, and for dread- ing them particularly. At the time when they determined to pursue them into the mountains of Asia Minor, they were just at the close of a desperate struggle, maintained against them for 400 years, in Italy itself; "a struggle," says SaUust, "in which it was a question not of glory, but of existence, for ■Rome." It was but just now remarked that at the beginning of the sixth century before our era, whilst, under their chief- tain Sigovesus, the Gallic bands whose history has occupied the last few pages were crossing the Ehine and entering Ger- many, other bands, under the command of Bellovesus, were traversing the Alps and swarming into Italy. From 587 to 521 B.C. five Gallic expeditions, formed of Galhc, Kymric, and Ligurian tribes, followed the same route and invaded succes- sively the two banks of the Po—the bottomless river, as they called it. The Etruscans, who had long before, it will be re- membered, themselves wrested that country from a people of Gallic origin, the Umbrians or Ambrons, could not make head against the new conquerors, aided, may be, by the remains of the old population. The well-built towns, the cultivation of the country, the ports and canals that had been dug, nearly aU these labors of Etruscan civilization disappeared beneath the footsteps of these barbarous hordes that knew only how to de- stroy, and one of which gave its chieftain the name of Hurri- cane (Elitorius, Ele Dov) . Scarcely five Etruscan towns, Mantua and Ravenna amongst others, escaped disaster. The Gauls also founded towns, such as Mediolanum (Milan), Brixia (Brescia), Verona, Bononia (Bologna), Sena-Gallica (Sinigaglia), etc. But for a long while they were no more than entrenched camps, fortified places, where the population shut themselves up in case of necessity. "They, as a general rule, straggled about the country, " says Polybius, the most correct and clear- sighted of the ancient historians, ' ' sleeping on grass or straw, living on nothing but meat, busying themselves about nothing but war and a httle husbandry, and counting as riches nothing but flocks and gold, the only goods that can be carried away at pleasure and on every occasion. " During nearly thirty years the Gauls thus scoured not only Upper Italy, which they had almost to themselves, but all the eastern coast, and up to the head of the peninsula, encounter- ing along the Adriatic, and in the rich and effeminate cities of Magna Grsecia, Sybaris, Tarentum., Crotona, and Locri, no cueray capable of resisting them. But in the year 391 B.C., Ch. n.] fllB OAtfLS OJJT Of GAtTL. 29 finding themselves cooped up in their territory, a strong band of Gauls crossed the Apennines, and went to demand from the Etruscans of Clusium the cession of a portion of their lands. The only answer Clusium made was to close her gates. The G-auls formed up around the walls. Clusium asked help from Rome, with whom, notwithstanding the rivalry between the Etruscan and Eoman nations, she had lately been on good terms. The Eomans promised first their good ofiices with the Gauls, afterwards material support; and thus were brought face to face those two peoples, fated to continue for four cen- turies a struggle which was to be ended only by the complete subjection of Gaul. The details of that struggle belong specially to Roman his- tory ; they have been transmitted to us only by Eoman histo- rians; and the Romans it was who were left ultimately in possession of the battle-fleld, that is, of Italy. It wiU suflSce here to make known the general march of events and the most characteristic incidents. Four distinct periods may be recognized in this history ; and each marks a deferent phase in the course of events, and, so to speak, an act of the drama. During the first period, which lasted forty-two years, from 391 to 349 B.C., the Gauls carried on a war of aggression and conquest against Rome. Not that such had been their original design; on the contrary, they replied, when the Romans ofEered intervention between them and Clusitim, "We ask only for lands, of which we are in need ; and Clusium has more than she can cultivate. Of the Eomans we know very little ; but we believe them to be a brave people, since the Etruscans put themselves imder their protec- tion. Remain spectators of our quarrel ; we wUl settle it before yoiu- eyes, that you may report at home how far above other men the Gauls are in valor." But when they saw their pretensions repudiated and them- selves treated with outrageous disdain, the Gauls left the siege of Clusium on the spot, and set out for Rome, not stopping for plunder, and proclaiming every where on their march, "We are bound for Rome ; we make war on none but Romans ;'' and when they encountered the Roman army, on the 16th of July, 390 B. c. , at the confluence of the AUia and the Tiber, half a day's march from Rome, they abruptly struck up their war-chaunt, and threw themselves upon their enemies. It is well known how they gained the day ; how they entered Rome, and found none but a few grey-beards, who, being unable or unwilling to BO msTonr of fbangb. [ch. m. leave their abode, had remained seated in the vestibule on their chairs of ivory, with truncheons of ivory in their hands, and decorated with the insignia of the public offices they had filled. All the people of Rome had fled, and were wandering over the country or seeking a refuge amongst neighboring peo- ples. Only the senate and a thousand warriors had shut them- selves up in the Capitol, a citadel which commanded the city. The Gauls kept them besieged there for seven months. The circumstances of this celebrated siege are well known, though they have been a Uttle embellished by the Roman historians. Not that they have spoken too highly of the Romans them- selves, who, in the day of their country's disaster, showed admirable courage, perseverance, and hopefulness. Pontius Cominius, who traversed the Gallic camp, swam the Tiber, and scaled by night the heights of the Capitol, to go and carry news to the senate; M. Manlius, who was the first, and for some moments the only one, to hold in check, from the cita- del's walls, the Gauls on the point of effecting an entrance ; and M. Furius Camillus, who had been banished from Rome the preceding year, and had taken refuge in the town of Ardea, and who instantly took the field for his country, raUied the Roman fugitives, and incessantly harrassed the Gauls — are true heroes, who have earned their meed of glory. Let no man seek to lower them in public esteem. Noble actions are so beautiful, and the actors ' often receive so little recompense, that we are at least bound to hold sacred the honor attached to their name. The Roman historians have done no more than justice in extolling the saviours of Rome. But their memory *ould have suffered no loss had the whole truth been made known ; and the claims of national vanity are not of the same weight as the duty one owes to truth. Now it is certain that Camillus did not gain such decisive advantages over the Gauls as the Roman accounts would lead one to believe, and, that the deliverance of Rome was much less complete. On the 13th of February, 389 B.C., the Gauls, it is true, allowed their retreat to be purchased by the Romans ; and they experienced; as they retired, certain checks whereby they lost a part of their booty. But twenty-three years afterwards they are found in Latium scouring in every direction the outlying country of Rome, without the Romans daring to go out and fight them. It was only at the end of five years, in the year 361 B.C., that, the very city being menaced anew, the le.^ions marched out to meet the enemy. ' ' Surprised at this audacity, " says Polybius, the Gaula CH. II.] THE GAULS OUT OF GAUL. 81 fell back, but merely a few leagues from Rome, to the environs of Tibur ; and thencg, for the space of twelve years, they at- tacked the Roman territory, renewing the campaign every year, often reaching the very gates of the city, and being re- pulsed indeed, but never farther than Tibur and its slopes. Rome, however, made great efforts ; every war with the Gauls was previously proclaimed a tumult, which involved a levy in mass of the citizens, without any exemption, even for old men and priests. A treasure, specially dedicated to Gallic wars, •was laid by in the Capitol, and religious denimciations of the most awful kind hung over the head of whoever should dare to touch it, no matter what the exigency might be. To this epoch belonged those marvels of daring recorded in Roman tradition, those acts of heroism tinged with fable, which are met with amongst so many peoples, either in their earhest age or in their days of great perU. In the year 361 e.g., Titus Manlius, son of him who had saved the Capitol from the night attack of the Gauls, and twelve years later M. Valerius, a young military tribune, were, it will be remembered, the two Roman heroes who vanquished in single combat the two Gallic giants who insolently defied Rome. The gratitude towards them was general and of long duration, for two centuries after- wards (in the year 167 B.C.) the head of the Gaul with his tongue out stiU appeared at Rome, above the shop of a money- changer, on a circular sign-board, called " the Eymrian shield" {scutum Cimbricum). After seventeen years' stay in Latium, the Gauls at last withdrew, and returned to their adopted coun- try in those lovely valleys of the Po which already bore the name of Cisalpine Gaul. They began to get disgusted with a wan- dering life. Their population multiplied ; their towns spread ; their fields were better cultivated ; their manners became less barbarous. For fifty years there was scarcely any trace of hostility, or even contact between them and the Romans. But at the beginning of the third century before our era, the coali- tion of the Samnites and Etruscans against Rome was near its climax; they eagerly pressed the Gauls to join, and the latter assented easily. Then commenced the second period of strug- gles between the two peoples. Rome had taken breath, and had grown much more rapidly than her rivals. Instead of shutting herself up, as heretofore, within her walls, she forth- with raised three armies, took the offensive against the coali- tionists, and carried the war into their territory. The Etrus- cans rushed to the defence of their hearths. The two consuls, S2 msTonr op mancb. . [ch. n. Fabiua and Decius, immediately attacked the §amnites and Gauls at the foot of the Apennines, close to Sentinum (now Sentina). The battle was just beginning, when a hind, pur- sued by a wolf from the mountains, passed in flight between the two armies and threw herself upon the side ■ of the Gauls, ■who slew her ; the wolf turned towards the Romans, who let him go. "Comrades," cried a soldier, "flight and death are on the side where you see stretched on the ground the hind of Diana; the wolf belongs to Mars; he is un wounded, and re- minds us of our father and founder ; we shall conquer even as he." Nevertheless the battle went badly for the Eomans; several legions were in flight, and Decius strove vainly to rally them. The memory of his father came across his mind. There was a belief amongst the Eomans that if in the midst of an un- successful engagement the general devoted himself to the in- fernal gods, "panic and flight" passed forthwith to the enemies' ranks. "Why dally?" said Decius to the grand pontiff, whom he had ordered to follow him and keep at his side in the flight; "'tis given to our race to die to avert public disasters." He halted, placed a javelin beneath his feet, and, covering his head with a fold of his robe and supporting his chin on his right hand, repeated after the pontiff this sacred form of words : ' ' Janus, Jupiter, our father Mars, Quirinus, Bellona, Lares. . . ye gods in whose, power are we, we and our enemies, gods Manes, ye I adore ; ye I pray, ye I adjure to give strength and victory to the Roman people, the children of Quirinus, and to send confusion, panic, and death amongst the enemies of the Roman people, the children of Quirinus. And, in these words, for the republic of the children of Quirinus, for the army, for the legions, and for the allies of the Roman people, I devote to the gods Manes and to the grave the legions and the allies of the enemy and myself." Then remounting, Decius charged into the middle of the Gauls, where he soon fell pierced with wounds ; but the Romans recovered courage and gained the day ; for heroism and piety have power over the hearts of men, so that at the moment' of admiration they become capable of imitation. During this second period Rome was more than once in dan- ger. In the year 283 B.C. the Gauls destroyed one of her armies near Aretium (Arezzo), and advanced to the Roman frontier saying, ' ' We are bound for Rome ; the Gauls know how to take it," Seventy -two years afterwards the Cisalpine Gaula CH. n.] TEE GAULS OUT OF GAUL. 33 swore they would. not put off their haldricks till they had mounted the Capitol, and they arrived within three days' march of Rome. At every appearance of this formidable enemy the alarm at Rome was great. The senate raised all its forces and summoned its alHes. The people demanded a con- sultation of the Sibylhne books, sacred volumes sold, it was said, to Tarquinius Priscus by the sibyl Amalthea, and contain- ing the secret of the destinies of the Republic. They wei-e actually opened in the year 228 B.C., and it was with terror found that the Gaids would twice take possession of the soil of Rome. On the advice of the priests, there was dug within the city, in the middle of the cattle-market, a huge pit, in which two Gauls, a man and a woman, were entombed alive ; for thus they took possession of tlie soil of Rome, the oracle was fulfilled, and the mishap averted. Thirteen years afterwards, on occa sion of the disaster at Cannse, the same atrocity was again committed, at the same jplace and for the same cause. And by a strange contrast, there was at the committing of this barbar- ous act, "which was against Roman usage," says Livy, a secret feeling of horror, for, to appease the ttianes of the victims, a sacrifice was instituted, which was celebrated every year at the pit, in the month of November. In spite of sometimes urgent peril, in spite of popular alarms, Rome, during the course of this period, from 299 to 258 b. c, maintained an increasing ascendency over the Gauls. She always cleared them off her territory, several tiraes ravaged theirs, on the two banks of the Po, called respectively Trans- padan and Cispadan Gaul, and gained the majority of the great battles she had to fight. Finally in the year 283 B.C. the pro- praetor Drusus, after having ravaged the country of the Se- nonic Gauls, carried off the very ingots and jewels, it was said, which had been given to their ancestors as the price of their retreat. Solemn proclamation was made that the ransom of the capitol had returned within its walls; and, sixty years afterwards, the Consul M. CI. Marcellus having defeated at Clastidium a numerous army of Gatils, and with his own hand slain their general, Virdumar, had the honor of dedicating to the temple of Jupiter the third "grand spoils" taken since the foundation of Rome, and of ascending the Capitol, himself con- 1 veying the armor of Virdumar, for he had got hewn an oaken trunk, round which he had arranged the helmet, tunic, and breast-plate of the barbarian king. Noj" was war Rome's only weapon against her enemies. Be- 34 HISTORY OF FliANOE. [ch. ii. sides the ability of her generals and the discipline of her legions, she had the sagacity of her Senate. The Gauls were not want- ing in ratelHgence or dexterity, but being too free to go quietly under a master's hand, and too barbarous for self-government, - carried ^way, as they were, by the interest or passion of the moment, they could not long act either in concert or with sameness of purpose. Far-sightedness and the spirit of persist- ence were, on the contrary, the familiar virtues of the Roman Senate. So soon as they had penetrated Cisalpine Gaul, they labored to gain there a permanent footing, either by sowing dissension amongst the GaUic peoplets that lived there, or by founding Romati colonies. In the year 383 B.C. several Roman famihes arrived, with colors flying and under the guidance of three triumvirs or commissioners, on a territory to the north- east, on the borders of the Adriatic. The triumvirs had a round hole dug, and there deposited' some fruits and a handful of earth brought from Roman soil ; then yoking to a plough, having a copper share, a white bull and a white heifer, they marked out by a furrow a large enclosure. The rest followed, flinging within the line the ridges thrown up by the plough. When the line was finished, the buU and the heifer were sacri- ficed with due pomp. It was a Roman colony come to settle at ■ Sena, on the very site of the chief town, of those Senonic Gauls who had been conquered and driven out. Fifteen years after- wards another Roman colony was founded at Ariminuni (Rimini) on the frontier of the Boian Gauls. Fifty years later stUl two others, on the two banks of the Po, Cremona and Placentia (Plaisance). Rome had then, in the midst of her enemies, garrisons, magazines of arms and provisions, and means of supervision and communication. Thence proceeded at one time troops, at another intrigues, to carry dismay or disunion amongst the Gauls. Towards the close of the third centm-y before our era, the triumph of Rome in Cisalpine Gaul seemed nigh to accomplish- ment, when news arrived that the Romans' most formidable enemy, Hannibal, meditating a passage from Africa Into Italy by Spain and Gaul, was already at work, by his emissaries, to ensure for his enterprise the concurrence of the Transalpine and Cisalpine Gauls. The Senate ordereid the envoys they had just then at Carthage to traverse Gaul on returning, and seek out allies there against Hannibal. The envoys halted amongst tbe Gallo-Ib^rian peoplets who Uv^d at the foQt qt the eastern CH. II.] THE GAULS OUT OF GAUL. 35 Pyrenees. There, in the midst of the warriors assembled in arms, they charged them in the name of the great and power- ful Roman people, not to suffer the Carthaginians to pass through their territory. Tumultuous laughter ai'ose at a re- quest that appeared so strange. " You wish us," was the an- swer, "to draw down war upon oifrselves to avert it from Italy, and to give our own fields over to devastation to save yours. We have no cause to complain of the Carthaginians or to be pleased with the Eomans, or to take up arms for the Eomans and against the Carthaginians. We, on the contrary, hear that the Roman people drive out from their lands, in Italy, men of our nation, impose tribute upon them, and make them undergo other indignities." So the envoys of Rome quitted Gaul without allies. Hannibal, on the other hand, did not meet with aU the favor and all the enthusiasm he had anticipated. Between the Pyre- nees and the Alps several peoplets united with him ; and several showed coldness, or even hostility. In his passage of the Alps the mountain tribes harassed him incessantly. In- deed, in Cisalpine Gaul itself there was great division and hesi- tation ; for Rome had succeeded in iospiring her partisans with confidence and her enemies with fear. Hannibal was often obhged to resort to force even against the Gauls whose alliance he courted, and to ravage their lands in order to drive them to take up arms. Nay, at the conclusion of an alUance, and in the very camp of the Carthaginians, the Gauls sometimes hesitated still, and sometimes rose against Hannibal, accused him of ravaging their country, and refused to obey his orders. How- ever, the delights of victory and of pUlage at last brought into full play the Cisalpine Gauls' natural hatred of Rome. After Ticinus and Trebia, Hannibal had no more zealous and devoted troops. At the battle of Lake Trasimene he lost 1500 men, nearly all Gauls ; at that of Cannse he had 30, 000 of them, form- ing two-thirds of his army ; and at the moment of action they cast away their tunics and chequered cloaks (similar to the plaids of the Gaels or Scottish Highlanders) and fought naked from the belt upwards, according to their custom when they meant to conquer or die. Of 5500 men that the victory of CannsB cost .Hannibal, 4000 were Gauls. All Cisalpine Gaul was moved; enthusiasm was at its height; new bands hurried off to recruit the army of the Carthaginian who, by dint of pa- tieuQe and g;eiuus, brought Rome within an ace of dest4'ucti9a, 36 niSrORY OF FRANCE. [ch. ii. with the assistance almost entirely of the barbarians he hai? come to seek at her gates, and whom he had at first found so cowed and so vacillating. When the day of reverses came, and Rome had recovered her ascendency, the Gauls were faithful to Hannibal ; and when at length he was forced to return to Africa, the Grallic bands, whether from despair or attachment, followed him thither. In the year 200 B.C., at the famous battle of Zama, which decided matters between Rome and Carthage, they again formed a third of the Carthaginian army, and showed that they were, in the words of Livy, "inflamed by that innate hatred towards the Romans which is peculiar to their race." This was the third period of the struggle between the Gauls and the Romans in Italy. Rome, weU advised by this terrible war of the danger with which she was ever menaced by the Cisalpine Gauls, formed the resolution of no longer restraining them, but of subduing them and conquering their territory. She spent thirty years (from 200 to 170 B.C.) in the execution of this design, proceeding by means of war, of founding Roman colonies, and of sowing dissension amongst the Gallic peoplets. In vain did the two principal, the Boians and the Insubrians, endeavor to rouse and rally all the rest: some hesitated; some absolutely refused, and remained neutral. The resistance was obstinate. The Gauls, driven from their fields and their towns, estabhshed themselves, as their ancestors had done, in the for-. ests, whence they emerged only to fall furiously upon the Ro- mans. And then, if the engagement were indecisive, if any legions wavered, the Roman centurions hurled their colors into the midst of the enemy, and the legionaries dashed on at all risks to recover them. At Parma and Bologna, in the towns taken from the Gauls, Roman colonies came at once and planted themselves. Day by day did Rome advance. At lengthy in the year 190 B.C. , the wrecks of the 112 tribes which had formed the nation of the Boians, unable any longer to resist, and un- willing to submit, rose as one man, and departed from Italy. The Senate, with its usual wisdom, multiplied the number of Roman colonies in the conquered territory, treated with mod- eration the tribes that submitted, and gave to Cisalpine Gaul the name of the Cisalpine or Hither Gallic Province, which was afterwards changed for that of Gallia Togata or Roman Gaul. Then, declaring that nature herself had placed the Alps between Gaul and Italy as an insurmountable barrier, the Senate prq. pounced " a cui'se on wl^osoever should attempt to crogg it,'' CH. III.] TEE ROMANS IN GA UL. 37 CHAPTER IIL THE ROMANS IN GAUL. It was Rome herself that soon crossed that barrier of the Mps which she had pronounced fixed by nature and insur- mountable. Scarcely was she mistress of Cisalpine Gaul when she entered upon a quarrel with the tribes which occupied the mountain-passes. With an unsettled frontier, and between neighbors of whom one is ambitious and the other barbarian, pretexts and even causes are never wanting. It is Ukely that the Galhc mountaineers were not careful to abstain, they and their flocks, from descending upon the territory that had be- come Roman. The Romans, in turn, penetrated into the ham- lets, carried off flocks and people, and sold them in the pubhc markets at Cremona, at Placentia, and in all their colonies. The Gauls of the Alps demanded succor of the Transalpine Gauls, applying to a powerful chieftain, named Cincibil, whose influence extended throughout the mountains. But the terror of the Roman name had reached across. Cincibil sent to Roftie a deputation, with his brother at their head, to set forth the grievances of the mountaineers, and especially to complain of the consul Cassius, who had carried off and sold several thou- sands of Gauls. Without making any concession, the Senate was gracious. Cassius was away; he must be waited for. Meanwhile the Gauls were well treated; Cincibil and his brother received as presents two golden collars, five silver vases, two horses fully caparisoned, and Roman dresses for all their suite. StUl nothing was done. Another, a greater and more decisive opportunity offered itself. Marseilles was an ally of the Romans. As the rival of Carthage, and with the Gauls for ever at her gates, she had need of Rome by sea and land. She pretended, also, to the most eminent and intimate friendship with Rome. Her founder, the Phocean Euxenes, had gone to Rome, it was said, and concluded a treaty with Tarquinius Priscus. She had gone into mourning when Rome was burnt by the Gauls ; she had ordered a public levy to aid towards the ransom of the Capitol. Rome did not dispute these claims to remembrance. The friendship of Marseilles was of great use to her. In thg 38 BISTORT OP FiiANCE. [oh. in. whole course of her struggle with Carthage, and but lately, at the passage of Hannibal through Gaul, Rome had met with the best of treatment there. She granted the Massilians a place amongst her senators at the festivals of the Republic, and exemption from all duty in her ports. Towards the mid- dle of the second century B.C. Marseilles was at war with cer- tain Gallic tribes, her neighbors, whose territory she coveted. Two of her colonies, Nice and Antibes, were threatened. She called on Rome for help. A Roman deputation went to decide the quarrel; but the Gauls refused to obey its summons, and treated it with insolence. The deputation retxirned with an army, succeeded in beating the refractory tribes, and gave their land to the Massilians. The same thing occurred re- peatedly with the same result. Within the space of thirty years nearly all the tribes between the Rhone and the Var, in the country which was afterwards Provence, were subdued and driven back amongst the mountains, with notice not to approach within a mile of the coast in general, and a mile and a half of the places of disembarkation. But the Romans did not stop there. They did not mean to conquer for Marseilles alone. In the year 123 B.C., at some leagues to the north of the Greek city, near a little river, then called the Ccenus and now- a-days the Arc, the consul C. Sextius Calvinus had noticed, during his campaign, an. abundance of thermal springs, agree- ably situated amidst wood-covered hUls. There he constructed an enclosure, aqueducts, baths, houses, a town in fact, which he called after himself, AqucR Sextice, the modern Aix, the first Roman establishment in Transalpine Gaul. As in the case of Cisalpine Gaul, with Roman colonies came Roman intrigue and dissensions got up and fomented amongst the Gauls. And herein Marseilles was a powerful seconder; iat she kept up communications with all the neighboring tribes, and fanned the spirit of faction. After his victories, the con- sul C. Sextius, seated at his tribunal, was selling his prisonerff by auction, when one of them came up to him and said, "I have always Kked and served the Romans ; and for that reason I have often incurred outrage and danger at the hands of my countrymen." The consul had him set free— him and his family — and even gave him leave to point out amongst the captives any for whom he woiild like to procure the same kind- ness. At his request nine hundred were released. The man's name was Crato, a Greek name, which points to a connection with Marseilles or one of her colonies. The Gaids, moreover CH. iir.] THE ROMANS IN OA XIL. 39 ran of themselves into the Roman trap. Two of their confed- erations, the ^duans, of whom mention has ab-eady heen made, and the Allobrogians, who were settled between the Alps, the Isere, and the Rhone, were at war. A third confederation, the most powerful in Gaul at this time, the Arvernians, who were rivals of the jEduans, gave their countenance to the Al- lobrogians. The ^duans, with whom the Massilians had commercial deaUngs, solicited through these latter the assist- ance of Rome. A treaty was easily concluded. The JSduans obtained fi-om the Romans the title of friends and allies ; and the Romans received from the jEduans that of brothers, which amongst the Gauls impUed a sacred tie. The consul Domitius forthwith commanded the Allobrogians to respect the terri- tory of the alhes of Rome. The Allobrogians rose up in arms and claimed the aid of the Arvernians. But even amongst them, in the very heart of Gaul, Rome was much dreaded; she- was not to be encountered without hesitation. So Bitui- tus, King of the Arvernians, was for trying accommodation. He was a powerful and wealthy chieftain. His father Luem used to give amongst the mountains magnificent entertain- ments ; he had a space of twelve square furlongs enclosed, and dispensed wine, mead, and beer from cisterns made within the enclosure; and aU the Arvernians crowded to his feasts. Bi- tuitus displayed before the Romans his oarbaric splendor. A numerous escort, superbly clad, sii^TOunded his ambassador; in attendance were packs of enormous hounds; and in front went a bard, or poet, who sanj: with rotte or harp in hand, the glory of Bituitus and of the Arvernian people. Disdainfully the consul received and sent back the embassy. War broke out ; the Allobrogians, with the usual confidence and hastiness of all barbarians, attacked alone, without waiting for the Ar- vernians, and were beaten at the confluence of the Rhone and the Sorgue, a Httle above Avignon. The next year, 121 B.C., the Arvernians in their turn descended from the mountains, and crossed the Rhone with all their tribes, diversely armed and clad, and ranged each about its own chieftain. In his barbaric vanity, Bituitus marched to war with the same pomp that he had in vain displayed to obtain peace. He sat upon a car glittering with silver ; he wore a plaid of striking colors ; and he brought in his train ^a pack of war-hounds. At tha sight of the Roman legions, few in number, iron-clad, in ser- ried ranks that took up little space, he cont^mptucasly oried, '"There is not ^ i»eal for my homing,'' 40 niSTOBY OF FRANCE. [en. lU The Arvernians were beaten, as the Allobrogians had been. The hounds of Bituitus were of httle use to him against the elephants which the Romans had borrowed from Asiatic usage, and which spread consternation amongst the Gauls. The Eoman historians say that the Arvernian army was 200,000 strong, and that 120,000 were slain; but the figures are absurd, Uke most of those found in ancient chronicles. We know now-a-days, thanks to modern civilization, which shows every thing in broad day-light and measures every thing with proper caution, that only the most populous and powerful nations, and that at great expenditure of trouble and time, can succeed in moving aiinies of 200,000 men, and that no battle, however murderous it may be, ever costs 120,000 liyes^ Rome treated the Arvernians with consideration; but the Allobrogians lost their existence as a nation. The Senate de- clared them subject to the Roman people ; and all the country comprised between the Alps, the Rhone from its entry into- the Lake of Geneva to its mouth, and the Mediterranean, was made a Roman consular province, which means that every year a consul must march thither with his army. In the three following years, indeed, the consuls extended the boun- daries of the new province, on the right bank of the Rhone, to the frontier of the Pyrenees southward. In the year 115 b.o. a colony of Roman citizens was conducted to Narbonne, a town even then of importance, in spite of the objections made by certain senators who were unwUling, say the historians, so to expose Roman citizens "to the waves of barbarism." This was the second colony which went and established itself out of Italy; the first had been founded on the i-uins of Carthage. Having thus completed their conquest, the Senate, to render possession safe and sure, decreed the occupation of the passes of the Alps which opened Gaul to Italy. There was up to that time no communication with Gaul save along the Mediterranean, by a narrow and diflScult path which has become in our time the beautiful route called the Corniche. The mountain tribes defended their independence with desperation; when that of the Staenians, who occupied the pass of the maritime Alps, saw their inability to hold their own, they cut the throats of their wives and children, set fire to their houses, and threw themselves into the flames. But the Senate pursued its course imperturbably. All the chief defiles of the Alps fell into its hands. The old Phoenician road, restored by the consul Do- mitius, bore thenceforth his name {Via Domitia)^ and less than CH. III.] THB ROMANS IN OAtTL. 41 Bixty years after Cisalpine G-aul had been reduced to a Eoman province, Eome possessed, in Transalpine Gaul, a second province, whither she sent her armies, and where she estab- lished her citizens without obstruction. But Providence sel- dom allows men, even in the midst of their successes, to forget foi long how precarious they are; and when He is pleased to remind them, it is not by words, as the Persians reminded their king, but by fearful events that He gives His warnings. At the very moment when Eome believed herself set free from GaUic invasions and on the point of avenging herself by a course of conquest, a new invasion, more extensive and more barbarous, came bursting upon Eome and upon Gaul at the same time, and plunged them together in the same troubles and the same perils. In the year 113 B.C. there appeared to the north of the Adri- atic, on the right bank of the Danube, an immense multitude of barbarians, ravaging Noricum and threatening Italy. Two nations predominated; the Kymrians or Cimbrians, and the Teutons, the national name of the Germans. They came from afar, northward, from the Cimbrian peninsula, now-a-days Jutland, and from the countries bordering on the Baltic which now-a-days form the duchies of Holstein and Schleswig. A violent shock of earthquake, a terrible inundation, had driven them, they said, from their homes; and those countries do in- deed show traces of such events. And Cimbrians and Teutons had been for some time roaming over Germany. The consul Papirius Carbo, despatched in all haste to defend the frontier, bade them, in the name of the Eoman people, to withdraw. The barbarians modestly rephed that "they had no intention of settUng in Noricum, and if the Eomans had rights over the country, they would carry their arms else- whither." The consul, who had found haughtiness succeed, thought he might also employ perfidy against the barbarians. He offered guides to conduct them out of Noricum; and the guides misled them. The consul attacked them unexpectedly duaing the night, and was beaten. However, the barbarians, stUl fearful, did not venture into Italy. They roamed for three vears along the Danube, as far as the mountains of Macedonia and Thrace. Then retracing their steps, and marching eastward, they inundated the valleys of the Helvetic Alps, now Switzerland, having their- nxmibers swelled by other tribes, Gallic or German, who preferred join- ing in pillage to undergoing it. The Ambrons, among others, 42 EISTORT OF FRANCE. tcH. in. a Gallic peoplet that had taken refuge in Helvetia after the ex- pulsion of the Umbrians by the Etruscans from Italy, joined the Cimbrians and Teutons; and in the year 110 B.C. all to- gether entered Gaul, at first by way of Belgica, and then, con- tinuing their wanderings and ravages in central Gaul, they at last reached the Rhone, on the frontiers of the Roman province. There the name of Rome again arrested their progress; they applied to her anew for lands, with the offer of their services. "Rome," answered M. Silanus, who commanded in the prov- ince, "has neither lands to give you nor services to accept from you." He attacked them in their camp, and was beaten. Three consuls, L. Cassius, C. Servilius Csepio, and Cn. Man- lius, successively experienced the same fate. With the bar- barians victory bred presumption. Their chieftains met, and deliberated whether they should not forthwith cros.s into Italy, to exterminate or enslave the Romans, and make Kymrian spoken at Rome. Scaurus, a prisoner, was in the tent, loaded with fetters, during the deliberation. He was questioned about the resources of his country. "Cross not the Alps," said he; "go not into Italy: the Romans are invincible." In a trans- port of fury the chieftain of the Kymrians, Boiorj s by name, fell upon the Roman, and ran him through. Howbeit the ad- vice of Scaurus was followed. The barbarians did not as yet dare to decide upon invading Italy ; but they f re^ly scoured the Roman province, meeting here with repulse, and there with reinforcement from the peoplets who formed the inhabi- tants. The Tectosagian Voles, Kymrian in origin and mal- treated by Rome, joined them. Then, on a sudden, whilst the Teutons and Ambrons remained in Gaul, the KymriE^ns passed over to Spain, without apparent motive, and probal^>ly as an overswollen torrent divides, and disperses its waters in aU directions. The commotion at Rome was extreme ; never had so many or such wild barbarians threatened the Republic; never had so many or such large Roman armies been beaten in succession. There was but one man, it was said, who could avert the danger, and give Rome the ascendency. It was Marius, low-born, but already illustrious ; esteemed J>y the Senate for his genius as' a commander and for his victories • swaying at his will the people, who saw in him one of them- selves, and admired without envying him ; beloved and f es red by the army for his bravery, his rigorous discipline, and his readiiiess to share their toils and dangers; stenj and rugged; CH. III.] THE ROMANS IN OA VL. 43 without education, eloquence, or riches; ill-suited for shining in public assemblies, but resolute and dexterous in action; verily made to dominate the vigorous but unrefined multitude, whether in camp or city, partly by participating their feelings, partly by giving them in his own person a specimen of the deserts and sometimes of the virtues which they esteem but do not possess. He was consul in Africa, where he was putting an end to the war with Jugurtha. He was elected a second time consul, without interval and in his absence, contrary to all the laws of the RepubUc. Scarcely had he returned, when, on descending from the Capitol, where he had just received a triumph for having conquered and captured Jugurtha, he set out for Gaul. On his arrival, instead of proceeding, as his predecessors, to attack the barbarians at once, he confined himself to organizing and inuring his troops, subjecting them to frequent marches, all kinds of military exercises, and long and hard labor. To insure supplies he made them dig, towards the mouths of the Ehone, a large canal which formed a junction with the river a little above Aries, and which, at its entrance into the sea, offered good harborage for vessels. This canal, which existed for a long while under the name of Fossae Marianae. {the dykes of Marius), is filled up now-a-days ; but at its southern extrem- ity the viUage of Foz still preserves a remembrance of it. Trained in this severe school, the soldiers acquired such a reputation for sobriety and laborious assiduity, that they were proverbially called Marius' mules. He was as careful for their moral state as for their physical fitness, and labored to exalt their imaginations as well as to ' harden their bodies. In that camp, and amidst those toils in jvhich he kept them strictly engaged, frequent sacrifices, and scrupulous care in consulting the oracles, kept superstition at a white heat. A Syrian prophetess, named Martha, who had been sent to Marius by his wife Julia, the aunt of Julius Csesar, was ever with him, and accompanied him at the sacred cere- monies and on the march, being treated with the greatest respect, and having vast influence over the minds of • the soldiers. Two years rolled on in this fashion ; and yet Marius would not move. The increasing devastation of the country, fire, and famine, the despair and complaints of the inhabitants, did not shake his resolution. Nor was the confidence he inspired both in the camp and at Rome a vrhit shaken: he was twice re 44 HISTOUY OF mANCB. [cu. iir. elected consul, once -while he was still absent, and once during a visit he paid to Rome to give directions to his party in person. It was at Rome, in the year 102 b.o. , that he learned how the Eymrians, weary of Spain, had recrossed the Pyrenees, re- joined their old comrades, and had at last resolved, in concert, 1)0 invade Italy; the Kymrians from the north, by way of Helvetia and Noricum, the Teutons and Ambrons from the south, by way of the maritime Alps. They were to form a jimction, on the banks of the Po, and thence march together on Rome. At this news Marius returned forthwith to Gaul, and, without troubling himself about the Kymrians, who had really put themselves in motion towards the north-east, he placed his camp so as to cover at one and the same time the two Roman roads which crossed at Aries, and by one of which the Ambro-Teutons must necessarily pass to enter Italy on the south. They soon appeared "in immense numbers," say the his- torians, " with their hideous looks and their wild cries," draw- ing up their chariots and planting their tents in front of the Roman camp. They showered upon Marius and his soldiers continual insult and defiance. The Romans, in their irritation, would fain have rushed out of their camp, but Marius re- strained them. "It is no question," said he, with his simple and convincing common sense, "of gaining triumphs and trophies; it is a question of averting this storm of" war and of saving Italy." A Teutonic chieftain came one day up to the very gates of the camp, and challenged him to fight. Marius had him informed that if he were tired of life he could go and hang himself. As the barbarian still ^persisted, Marius sent him a gladiator. However, he made his soldiers, in regular succession, mount the ramparts, to get them familiarized with the cries, looks, arms, and movements of the barbarians. The most distin- guished of his officers, young Sertorius, who understood and spoke GaUic well, penetrated, in the disguise of a Gaul, into the camp of the Ambrons, and informed Marius of what was going on there. At last the barbarians, in their impatience, having vaiijly attempted to storm the Roman camp, struck their own and put themselves in motion towards the vUps. For six whole days, it is said, their bands were defiling beneath the ramparts of the Romans, and crying, "Have you any message for your wives? We shall soon be with them." CH. III.] Tna ROMANS IN GAUL. 45 . Marius, too, struck his camp, and followed them. They halted, both of them, near Aix, on the borders of the Ccenus, the barbarians in the valley, Marius on a hiU which com- manded it. The ardor of the Eomans was at its height ; it was warm weather ; there was a want of water on the hill, and the soldiers murmured. "You are men," said Marius, point- ing to the river below, "and there is water to be bought with blood." " Why don't you lead us against them at once, then," said a soldier, ' ' whilst we still have blood in our veins ?" " We must first fortify our camp," answered Marius quietly. The soldiers obeyed: but the hour of battle had come, and weU did Marius know it. It commenced on the brink of the Ccenus, between some Ambrons who were bathing and some Roman slaves gone down to draw water. When the whole horde of Ambrons advanced to the battle, shouting their war- cry of Ambra! Atribra! a body of GaUic auxiliaries in the Roman army, and in the first rank, heard them with great amazement; for it was their own name and their own cry; there were tribes of Ambrons in the Alps subjected to Rome as weU as in the Helvetic Alps ; and Ambra! Ambra! resoimded on both sides. The battle lasted two days, the first against the Ambrons, the second against the Teutons. Both were beaten, in spite of their savage bravery, and the equal bravery of their womeji, who defended, with indomitable obstinacy, the cars with which they had remained almost alone, in charge of the children and the booty. After the women, it was necessary to exterminate the hounds who defended their masters' bodies. Here again the figures of the historians are absurd, although they differ ; the most extravagant raise the nmnber of barbarians slain to 200,000, and that of the prisoners to 80,000, the most moderate stop at 100,000. In any case, the carnage was great, for the battle-field, where all these corpses rested without burial, rot ting in the sun and rain, got the name of Campi PutricH, or Fields of Putrefaction, a name traceable even now-a-days in that of Pourrieres, a neighboring village. As to the booty, the Roman army with one voice made a free gift of it to Marius; but he, remembering perhaps what had been lately done by the barbarians after the defeat of the consuls Manlius and Csepio, determined to have it all burned in honor of the gods. He had a great sacrifice prepared. The soldiers, crowned with laurel, were ranged about the pyre; their general, holding ®n high a blazing torch, was about to 46 HISTORY OF FRANCE. [ch. hi. apply the light with his own hand, when suddenly, on the very spot, whether by design or accident, came from Eome tha news that Marius had just been for the fifth time elected consul. In the midst of acclamations from his army, and with a fresh chaplet hound upon his brow, he applied the torch in person, and completed the sacrifice.. Were we travelling in Provence, in the neighborhood of Aix, we should encounter, peradventure, some peasant who, whilst pointing out to us the summit of a hiU whereon, in all prob- ability, Marius offered, 1940 years ago, that glorious sacrifice, would say' to us in his native dialect, ' Aqui es lou deloubre de laVittoria:" " There is the temple of victory. " There, indeed, was built, not far from a pyramid erected in honor of Marius, a little temple dedicated to Victory. Thither, every year, in the month of May, the population used to come and celebrate a festival and light a bonfire, answered by other bonfires on the neighboring heights. When Gaul became Christian, neither monument nor festival perished ; a saint took the place of the goddess, and the temple of Victory became the church of St. Victoire. There are still ruins of it to this day ; the rehg- ious procession which succeeded the pagan festival ceased only at the first outburst of the Revolution ; and the vague memory of a great national event still mingles in popular, tradition witla the legends of the saint. The Ambrons and Teutons beaten, there remained the Eym- rians, who, according to agreement, had repassed the Helvetic Alps and entered Italy on the north-east, by way of the Adige. Marius marched against them in July of the following year, 101 B.C. Ignorant of what had occurred in Gaul, and possessed, as ever, with the desire of a settlement, they again sent to him a deputation, saying, "Give us lands and towns for us and our brethren. " ' ' What brethren ?" asked Marius. ' ' The Teu- tons." The Romans who were about Marius began to laugh. "Let your brethren be," said Marius; "they have land, and will always have it ; they received it from us. '' The Kymrians, perceiving the irony of his tone, burst out into threats, telling Marius that he should suffer for it at their hands first, and after- wards at those of the Teutons when they arrived. "They are here, " rejoined Marius ; ' ' you must not depart without saluting your brethren;" and he had Teutobod, King of the Teutons, brought out with other captive chieftains. The envoys re- ported the sad news in their own camp, and three days after- wards, July 30th, a ^eat Ijattl^ took place between the KyrQf MOUNTED GAULS. VERCINGETORIX bb' RRENDERS TO CESAR CH. IV.] GAUL CONQUERED BY JULIUS OjESAB. 47 rians and the Romans in the Raudine Plains, a large tract near Verceil. It were unnecessary to dwell on the details of the hattle, which resembled that of Aix ; besides, fought as it was in Italy and by none but Romans, it has but little to do with the history of Gaul. It has been mentioned only to make known the issue of that famous invasion, of which Gaul was the principal theatre. For a moment it thseatened the very existence or the Roman Republic. The victories of Marius arrested the tor- rent, but did not dry up its source. The great movement which drove from Asia to Europe, and from eastern to western Europe, masses of roving populations, followed its course, bringing incessantly upon the Roman frontiers new comers and new perils. A greater man than Marius, Julius Caesar in fact, saw that to effectually resist these clouds of barbgj-ic assail- ants, the country into which they poured must be conquered and made Roman. The conquest of Gaul was the accomphsh- ment of that idea, and the decisive step towards the transforma- tion of the Roman republic into a Roman empire. CHAPTER IV. • GAUL CONQUERED BY JULIUS CffiSAK. Historians, ancient and modem, have attributed to the Roman Senate, from the time of the establishment of the Roman province in Gaul, a long-premeditated design of con- quering Gaul altogether. Others have said that when Julius Caesar, in the year of Rome 696, got himself appointed procon- sul in Gaul, his single aim was to form for himself there an an army devoted to his person, of which he might avail him- self to satisfy his ambition and make himself master of Rome. We should not bs too ready to beheve in these far-reaching and precise plans, conceived and settled so long beforehand, whether by a senate or a single man. Prevision and exact calculation do not count for so much in the lives of govern- ments and of peoples. It is unexpected events, inevitable sit- uations, the imperious necessities of successive epochs, which most often clecidle the conducf ot the greatest powers c\ij4 tlw 48 HISrOBY OF FRANCE. [ch iv. most able politicians. It is after the fair, when the course ol facts and their consequences has received full development, that, amidst their tranquil meditations, annalists and histori- ans in their learned way, attribute everything to systematic plans and personal calculations on the part of the chief actors. There is much less of combination than of momentary inspira- tion, derived from circumstances, in the resolutions and con- duct of political chiefs, kin gs,^ senators, or great men. From the time that discord and corruption had turned the Roman Republic into a bloody and tyrannical anarchy, the Roman Senate no longer meditated grand designs, and its members were preoccupied only with the question of escaping or aveng- ing proscriptions. When Caesar procured for himself the gov- ernment for five years of the Gauls, the fact was, that, not de- siring to be a sanguinary dictator like Scylla, or a gala chief- tain hke Pompey, he went and sought abroad, for his own glory and fortune's sake, in a war of general Roman interest, the means and chances of success which were not furnished to him in Rome itself by the dogged and monotonous struggle of the factions. In spite of the victories of Marius, and the destruction or dispersion of the Teutons and Cimbrians, the whole of Gaul re- mained seriously disturbed and threatened. At the north-east, in Belgica, some bands of other Teutons, who had begun to be called Germans (men of war), had passed over the left bank of the Rhine, and were setthng or wandering there without defi- nite purpose. In eastern and central Gaul, in thp valleys of the Jura and Auvergne, on the banks of the Saone, the Allier, and the Doubs, the two great Gallic confederations, that of the ^duans and that of the Arvernians, were disputing the pre- ponderance, and making war one upon another, seeking the aid, respectively, of the Romans and of the Germans. At the foot of the Alps, the httle nation of Allobrogians, having fallen a prey to civil dissension, had given up its independence to Rome. Even in southern and western Gaul the populations of Aquitania were rising, vexing the Roman province, and rendering necessary, on both .sides of the Pyrenees, the inter- vention of Roman legions. Everywhere floods of barbaric populations were pressing upon Gaul, were carrying dis- quietude even where they had not themselves yet penetrated and causing presentiments of a general commotion. ' The danger burst before long upon particular places and in con- nection with particular names which have remained historical. en. IV.] OAUL CONQUERED BY JULIUS C^SAR. 49 In the war with the confederation of the -lEduans, that of the Arvernians called to their aid the German Ariovistus, chieftain of a confederation of tribes which, under the name of Sueviahs, were roving over the right bank of the Ehine, ready at any time to cross the river. Ai-iovistus, with 15,000 warriors at his back, was not slow in responding to the appeal. The JEduans were beaten ; and Ariovistus settled amongst the Gauls who had been thoughtless enough to appeal to him. Numerous bands of Suevians came and rejoined him ; and in two or three years after his victory he had about him, it was said, 120,000 warriors. He had appropriated to their> a third of the terri- tory of his Gallic allies, and he imperiously demanded another third to satisfy other 25,000 of his old German comrades, who asked to share his booty and his new country. One of the foremost .3]duans, Divitiacus'by name, went and invoked the succor of the Roman people, the patrons of his confederation. He was admitted to the presence of the Senate, and invited to be seated; but he modestly declined, and standing, leaning upon his shield, he set forth the sufferings and the claims of his country. He received kindly promises, which at first re- mained without fruit. He, however, remained at Rome, per- sistent in his solicitations, and carrying on intercourse with several Romans of consideration, notably with Cicero, who says of him, ' ' I knew Divitiacus, the ^duan, who claimed proficiency in that natural science which the Greeks call phys- iology, and he predicted the future, either by augury or his own conjecture." The Roman Senate, with the indecision and indolence of all decUning powers, hesitated to engage, for the ^duans' sake, in a war against the invaders of a corner of Gallic territory. At the same time that they gave a cordial welcome to Divitiacus, they entered into negotiations with Ariovistus himself ; they gave him beautiful presents, the title of King, and even ot friend; the only demand they made was that he should live peaceably in his new settlement, and not lend his support to the fresh invasions of which tliere were symptoms in Gaul, and which were becoming too serious for resolutions not to be taken to repel them. A people of Gallic race, the Helvetians, who inhabited pres- ent Switzerland, where the old name still abides beside the •modem, found themselves, incessantly threatened, ravaged, and invaded by the German tribes which pressed upon their frontiers, ^ter some years of perplexity and internal dis- cord, the whole Helvetic nation decided upon abandoning itg 50 msroRT OF FRANGia. [cii. IV. territory, and going to seek in Gaul, westward, it is said, on the borders of the ocean, a more tranquil settlement. Being informed of this design, the Roman Senate and Caesar, at that time consul, resolved to protect the Roman province and their Gallic allies, the ^duans, against this inundation of roving neighbors. The Helvetians none the less persisted in their plan; and in the spring of the year of Rome 696 (58 B.C.) they committed to the flames, in the country they were about to leave, twelve towns, four hundred villages, and all their houses; loaded their cars with provisions for three months, and agreed to meet at the southern point of the Lake of Geneva. They found on their reunion, says CsBsar, a total of 333,000 emigrants, including 92,000 men-at-arms. The Switzer- land which they abandoned numbers now 2, 500, 000 inhabitants. But when the Helvetians would have entered Gaul,, they found there Caesar, who, after having got himself appointed pro- consul for five years, had arrived suddenly at Geneva, pre- pared to forbid their passage. They sent to him a deputation, to ask leave, they said, merely to traverse the Roman prov- ince without causing the least damage. Caesar knew as well how to gain time as not to lose any; he was not ready, so he put off the Helvetians to a second conference. In the interval he employed his legionaries, who could work as well as fight, in erecting upon the left bank of the Rhone a wall sixteen feet high and ten miles long, which rendered the passage of the river very difficult, and, on the return of the Helvetian en- voys, he formally forbade them to pass by the road they had proposed to follow. They attempted to take another, and to cross not the Rhone but the Saone, and march thence towards western Gaul. But whilst they were arranging for the execu- tien of this movement, Caesar, who had up to that time only four legions at his disposal, returned to Italy, brought away five fresh legions, and arrived on the left bank of the Saone at the moment when the rear-giiard of the Helvetians was em- barking to rejoin the main body which had already pitched its camp on the right bank. Caesar cut to pieces this rear-guard, crossed the river, in his turn, with his legions, pursued the emigrants without relaxation, came in contact with them on several occasions, at one time attacking them or repelling their attacks, at another receiving and giving audience to their en- voys without ever consenting to treat with them, and before the end of the year he had so completely beaten, decimated dispersed and driven them back, that of 368,000 Helvetians CiT. IV.] GAUL CONQXIERBD BY JULIU8 G^SAR tA who had entered Gaul, but 110,000 escaped from the Eomans, and were enabled, by flight, to regain their country. jEduans, Sequanians, or Arvemians, all the Gauls interested in the struggle thus terminated, were eager to congratulate Csesarupon his victory; but if they were delivered from the invasion of the Helvetians, another scourge fell heavily upon them ; Ariovistus and the Germans, who were settled upon their territory, oppressed them cruelly, and day by day fresh bands were continually coming to aggravate the evil and the danger. They adjured Csesar to protect them from these swarms of barbarians. "In a few years,'" said they, "all the Germans will have crossed the Rhine, and all the Gauls will be driven from Gaul, for the soil of Germany cannot compare with that of Gaul, any more than the mode of Hfe. If- Caesar and the Eoman people refuse to eiid us, there is nothing left for us but to abandon our lands, as the Helvetians would have done in their case, and go seek, afar, from the Germans, another dwelling-place." Csesar, touched by so prompt an appeal to the power of his name and fame, gave ear to the prayer of the Gavils. But he was for trying negotiation before war. He proposed to Ariovistus an interview "at which they might treat in common of affairs of importance for both. " Ario- vistus rephed that " if he wanted anything of Csesar, he would go in search of him ; if Csesar had business with him, it was for Csesar to come." Csesar thereupon conveyed to him by messenger his express injunctions, "not to summon any more from the borders of the Rhine fresh midtitudes of men, and to cease from vexing the ^duans and making war on them, them and their aUies. Otherwise, Caesar would not fail to avenge their wrongs." Ariovistus rephed that "he had conquered the ^duans. The Roman people were in the habit of treating the vanquished after their own pleasure, and not the advice of another ; he too, himself, had the same right. Csesar said he would avenge the wrongs of the ^duans ; but no one had ever attacked him with impunity. If Caesar would like to try it, let him come; he would learn what could be done by the bravery of the Grermans, who were as yet unbeaten, who were trained to arms, who for fourteen years had not slept beneath a roof." At the moment he received this answer Csesar had just heard that fresh bands of Suevians were encamped on the right bank of the Rhine, ready to cross, and that Ariovistus with all his forces was making towards Vesontio (Besangon), the chief town of the Sequanians. Csesar forthwith put him f)2 UrSTORJ OF FRANOK [cH. IV. self in motion, occupied Vcsontio, established there a strong garrison, and made his arrangements for issuing from it with his legions to go and anticipate the attack of Ariovistus. Then came to him word that no little disquietude was showing itself among the Roman troops ; that many soldiers and even oflacers appeared anxious about the struggle Vith the Germans, their ferocity, the vast forests that must be traversed to reach them, the difiacult roads, and the transport of provisions ; there was an apprehension of broken courage, and perchance of numer- ous desertions. Ceesar summoned a great council of war, to which he called the chief officers of his legions; he complained bitterly of their alarm, recalled to -their memory their recent success against the Helvetians, and scoffed at the rumors spread about the G-ermans, and at the doubts with which there was an attempt to inspire him about the fidelity and obedience of his troops. " An army," said he, " disobeys only the com- mander who leads them badly and has no good fortune, or is found guilty of cupidity and malversation. My whole life shows my integrity, and the war against the Helvetians my good fortune. I shall order forthwith the departure I had intended to put off. I shall strike the camp the very next night, at the fourth watch ; I wish to see as soon as possible whether honor and duty or fear prevail in your ranks. If there be any re- fusal to follow me, I shall march with only the tenth legion, of which I have no doubt; that shall be my praetorian cohort." The cheers of the troops, officers and men, were the answer given to the reproaches and hopes of their general; all hesita- tion passed away; and Ceesar set out with his army. He fetched a considerable compass, to spare them the passage of tliick forests, and, after a seven days' march, arrived at a short distance from the camp of Ariovistus. On learning that Cesesar was already so near, the German sent to him a mes- senger with proposals for the interview which was but lately demanded, and to which there was no longer any obstacle, since Csesar had himself arrived upon the spot. And the in- terview really took place, with mutual precautions for safety and warlike dignity. Csesar repeated all the demands he had made upon Ariovistus, who, in his turn, maintained his re- fusal, asking, "What was wanted? "Why had foot been set upon his lands? That part of Gaul was his province, just as the other was the Roman province. If Caesar did not retire, and withdraw his troops, he should consider him no more a liond but an enemy. He knew that if he were to slay Csesar, CH. rv.] GAUL CONQUERED BY JULIUS C^SAR. 53 he would recommend himself to many nobles and chiefs amongst the Roman people; he had learned as much from their own envoys. But if Csesar retired and left him, Ariovis- tus, in free possession of Gaul, he would pay liberally in re- turn, and would wage on Caesar's behalf without trouble or da'iger to him, any wars he might desire." During this inter- view it is probable that Csesar smiled more than once at the boldness and shrewdness of the barbarian. Ultimately some horsemen in the escort of Ariovistus began to caracole towards the Romans, and to hurl at them stones and darts. Csesar or- dered his men to make no reprisals, and broke off the confer- ence. The next day but one Ariovistus proposed a renewal ; hut Csesar refused, having decided to bring the quarrel to an issue. Several days in succession he led out his legions from their camp, and offered battle ; but Ariovistus remained within his Lines. Csesar then took the resolution of assailing the German camp. At his approach, the Germans at length moved out from their entrenchments, arrayed by peoplets, and defiling in front of cars filled with their women, who im.- plored them with tears not to dehver them in slavery to the Romans. The struggle was obstinate, and not without mo raents of anxiety and partial check for the Romans ; but the genius of Csesar and strict discipline of the legions carried the day. The rout of the Germans was complete ; they fled towards the Rhine, which was only a few leagues from the field of bat- tle. Ariovistus himself was amongst the fugitives ; he found a boat by the river-side, and re-crossed into Germany, where he died shortly afterwards, "to the gi-eat grief of the Ger- mans," says Csesar. The Suevian bands, wlio were awaiting on the right bank the result of the struggle, plunged back again within their own territory. And so the invasion of the Germans was stopped as the emigration of the Helvetians had been ; and Csesar had only to conquer Gaul. It is uncertain whether he had from the very first deter- mined the whole plan ; but so soon as he set seriously to work, he felt all the difficulties. The expulsion of the Helvetian emigrants and of the German invaders left the Romans and Gauls alone face to face; and from that moment the Romans were, in the eyes of the Gauls, foreigners, conquerors, op- pressors.' Their deeds aggravated day by day the feehngs excited by the situation ; they did not ravage the country as the Germans had done; they did not appropriate such and euch a piece of land; but every where they assumed the 64 BISTORT OF FRANCE. [oh. iv mastery: they laid heavy burdens upon the population; they removed the rightful chieftains who were opposed to them, and forcibly placed or maintained in power those only who were subservient to them. Independently of the Roman em.- pire, Caesar established every where his own personal infl.,- ence; by turns gentle or severe, caressing or threatening, te sought and created for himself partisans amongst the Gav Is, as he had amongst his army, showing favor to those only whose devotion was assured to him. To national antipathy towards foreigners must be added the intrigues and personal rivalry of the conquered in their relations with the conqueror. Conspiracies were hatched, insurrections soon broke out in nearly every part of Gaul, in the heart even of the peoplets most subject to Roman dominion. Every movement of the. kind was for Csesar a provocation, a temptation, almost an obligation to conquest. He accepted them and profited by thejn, with that promptitude in resolution, boldness and ad- dress in execution, and cool indifference as to the means em- ployed, which were characteristic of his genius. During nine years, from a.u.c. 696 to 705, and in eight successive campaigns, he carried his troops, his lieutenants, himself, and, ere long, war or negotiation, corruption, discord, or destruction in his path, amongst the different nations and confederations of Gaul, Celtic, Kymric, Germanic, Iberian or Hybrid, northward and eastward, in Belgica, between the Seine and the Rhine ; west- ward, in Armorica, on the borders of the Ocean ; south-west- ward, in Aquitania; centre-ward, amongst the peoplets estab- lished between the Seine, the Loire, and the Saone. He was nearly always victorious, and then at one time he pushed his victory to the bitter end, at another stopped at the right mo- ment, that it might not be compromised. When he experienced reverses, he bore them without repining, and repaired them with inepchaustible ability and courage. More than once, to revive the sinking spirits of his men, he was rashly lavish of his person ; and on one of those occasions, at the raising of the siege of Gergovia, he was all but taken by some Arvernian horsemen, and left his sword in their hands. It was found, a while aftersv'ards, when the war was over, in a temple in which the Gauls had hung it. Caesar's soldiers would have torn it down, and returned it to him; but "let it be," said he, "'tis sanctified." In good or evil fortune, the hero of a triumph at Rome or a prisoner in the hands of Mediterranean pirates, ho was wirivaljecl ifi S^piking the imaginatigns of mc^j; and groAy. CH. rv.] OAUL CONQVEltBD BY JUlIUS O^SAR. tjQ ing great in their eyes. He did not confine himself to con- quering and subjecting the Gauls in Gaul ; his ideas were ever outstripping his deeds, and he knew how to make his powei' felt even where he had made no attempt to establish it. Twice he crossed the Ehine to hurl back the Germans beyond their river, and to strike to the very hearts of their forests the terror of the Eoman name (a.u.c. 699, 700). He equipped two fleets, made two descents on Great Britain (a.u.c. 699, 700), several times defeated the Britons and their principal chieftain Cas- wallon (CassiveUaunus), and set up, across the channel, the first land-marks of Eoman conquest. He thus became more and more famous and terrible, both in Gaul, whence he some- times departed for a moment, to go and look after his pohtical prospects in Italy, and in m.ore distant lands, where he was but an apparition. But the greatest minds are far from foreseeing all the conse- quences of their deeds, and aU the perils proceeding from their successes. Csesar was by nature neither violent nor cruel ; but he did not trouble himself about justice or hiunanity, and the success of his enterprises, no matter by what means or at what price, was his sole law of conduct. He could show, on occa- sion, moderation and mercy ; but when he had to put down an obstinate resistance, or when a long and arduous efEort had irritated him, he had no hesitation in employing atrocious severity and perfidious promises. During his first campaign in Belgica (a.u.o. 697 and 57 B.C.), two peoplets, the Nervians and the Aduaticans, had gallantly struggled, with brief mo- ments of success, against the Eopian legions. The Nervians were conquered and almost annihilated. Their last remnants, huddled for refuge in the midst of their morasses, sent a depu- tation to Csesar, to make submission, saying, "Of six hundred senators three only are left, and of sixty thousand rden that bore arms scarce five hundred have escaped." Caesar received them kindly, returned to them their lands, and warned their neighbors to do them no harm. The Aduaticans, on the con- trary, defended themselves to the last extremity. Csesar, having slain four thousand, had aU that remained sold by auction; and fifty-six thousand human beings, according tc his own statement, passed as slaves into the hands of their purchasers. Some years later, another Belgian peoplet, the Eburons, settled between the Meuse and the Ehine, rose and inflicted great losses ^upon the Eoman legions. Caesar put them beyond the pale of military and human law, and had all 56 BISTORT OF FRANCE. [en. iv. the neighboring peoplets and all the roving bands invited to come and pillage and destroy "that accursed race," promising to whoever would join in the work the friendship of the Roman people. A little later still, some insurgents in the centre of Gaul had concentrated in a place to the south-west, caUed Uxellodunum (now-a-days, it is said, Puy d'Issola, in the de- partment of the Lot, between Vayrac and Martel). After a long resistance they were obliged to surrender, and Caesar had . all the combatants' hands cut off, and sent them, thus muti- lated, to live and rove throiighout Gaul, as a spectacle to all the country that was or was to be brought to submission. Nor were the rigors of administration less than those of warfare. Csesar wanted a great deal of money, not only to maintain satisfactorily his troops in Gaul, but to defray the enormous expenses he was at in Italy, for the purpose of enriching his partisans, or securing the favor of the Roman people. It was with the produce of imposts and plunder in Gaul that he un- dertook the reconstruction at Rome of the basilica of the Forum, the site whereof, extending to the temple of Liberty, was valued, it is said, at more than twenty million five hundred thousand francs (820,000Z.). Cicero, who took the direction of the works, wrote to his friend Atticus, " We shall make it the most glor- ious thing in the world." Cato was less satisfied; three years previously despatches from Ceesar had announced to the Senate his victories over the Belgian and German insurgents. The Senators had voted a general thanksgiving, but "Thanks- giving!" cried Cato, "rather expiation ! Pray the gods not to visit upon our armies the sin of a guilty general. Give up Csesar to the Germans, and let the foreigner know that Rome does not enjoin perjury, and rejects with horror the fruit thereof !" Csesar had all the gifts, all the means of success and empire, that can be possessed by man. He was great in politics and in war ; as active and as full of resource amidst the intrigues of the Forum as amidst the combinations and surprises of the battle-field; equally able to please and to terrify. He had a double pride, which gave him double confidence in himself, the pride of a great noble and the pride of a great man. He was fond of saying, ' ' My aunt Julia is, maternally, the daugh- ter of kings ; paternally, she is descended from the immortal gods ; my family unites, to the sacred character of kings who are the most powerful amongst men, the awful majesty of the gods who have even kings in their keeping." Thus, by birtb CH. IV.] GAUL COKQUEItfJD BY JULIUS C^SAB. 57 as well as nature, Csesar felt called to dominion; and, at the same time, he was perfectly aware of the decadence of the Roman patriciate, and of the necessity for being popular in order to become master. With this double instinct he under- took the conquest of the Gauls as the surest means of achieving conquest at Eome. But owing either to his own vices or to the difficulties of the situation, he displayed in his conduct and his work in Gaul so much violence and oppression, so much iniquity and cruel indifference, that, even at that time, in the midst of Eoman harshness, pagan corruption, and Gallic or German barbarism, so great an infliction of moral and ma- terial harm could not but be followed by a formidable reaction. Where there is strength and abihty, the want of foresight, the fears, the weaknesses, the dissensions of men, whether indi- viduals or peoples, may be for a long while calculated upon ; but it may be carried too far. After six years' struggling Caesar was victor; he had successively dealt with all the different populations of Gaul ; he had passed through and sub- jected them all, either by his own strong arm, or thanks to their rivalries. In the year of Eome 702 he was suddenly in- formed in Italy, whither he had gone on his Roman business, that most of the Gallic nations, united under a chieftain hitherto unknown, were rising with one common impulse, and recommencing war. The same perils and the same reverses, the same sufferings and the same resentments, had stu-red up amongst the Gauls, without distinction of race and name, a sentiment to which they had hitherto been almost strangers, the sentiment of Gallic nationahty and the passion for independence, not loca^ any longer, but national. This sentiment was first manifested - amongst the populace and under obscure chieftains ; a band of Camiitian peasants (people of Chartrain) rushed upon the town of Genabum (Gien), roused the inhabitants, and massacred the Ttahan traders and a Eoman knight, C. Fusius Cita, whom Caesar had commissioned to buy com there. In less than twenty -four hours the signal of insurrection against Eome was borne across the coxmtry as far as the Arvemiahs, amongst whom comspiracy had long ago been waiting and paving the way for insurrection. Amongst them lived a young Gaul whose real name has remained unknown, and whom history has called Vercingetorix, that is, chief over a hundred heads, chief -in-general. He came of an ancient and powerful family of ArveraiaQS, aR4 Ms father had been put to d^a^b w Ms owq 58 BISTORT OF FRANCE. [en. iv. city for attempting to make himself king. Ceesar knew him, and had taken some pains to attach him to himself. It doea not appear that the Arvemian aristocrat had absolutely de- clined the overtures ; but when the hope of national independ- ence was aroused, Vercingetorix was its representative and chief. He descended with his followers from the mountain, and seized Gergovia, the capital of his nation. Thence his messengers spread over the centre, north-west, and west of Gaul; the greater part of the peoplets and cities of those regions pronounced from the first moment for insurrection; the same sentiment was working amongst others more com- promised with Rome, who waited only for a breath of success to break out. Vercingetorix was immediately invested with the chief command, and he made use of it with all the passion engendered by patriotism and the possession of power; he regulated the movement, demanded hostages, fixed the con- tingents of troops, imposed taxes, inflicted summary punish- ment on the traitors, the dastards, and the indifferent, and subjected those who turned a deaf ear to the appeal of their common country to the same pains and the same mutilations that Caesar inflicted on those who obstinateily resisted the Roman yoke. At the news of this great movement Caesar immediately left Italy, and returned to Gaul. He had one quality, rare even amongst the greatest men, he remained cool amidst the very hottest alarm; necessity never hurried him into precipi- tation, and he prepared for the struggle as if he were always sure of arriving on the spot in time to sustain it. He was always quick, but never hasty ; and his activity and patience were equally admirable and efficacious. Starting from Italy at the beginning of 702 a.u.c, he passed two months in trav- ersing within Gaul the Roman province and its neighborhood, in visiting the points threatened by the insurrection, and the openings by which he might get at it, in assembling his troops, in confirming his wavering allies ; and it was not before the early part of March that he moved with his whole army. to Agendicum fSens), the very centre of revolt, and started thence to push on the war with vigor. In less than three months he had spread devastation throughout the insurgent country; he had attacked and taken its principal cities, Vellaunodunum (Triguferes), Genabum (Gien), Noviodunum (Sancerre), and Avaricum (Bourges), delivering up every where country and city, lands aud inhabitants, to the rage of the Ronw^n soldiery, CH. rv.] GAVL COlSqUBRED BY JULIUS C^SAR. 59 maddened at having again to conquer enemies so often con- quered. To strike a decisive blow, he penetrated at last to the heart of the country of the Arvernians, and laid siege to Gergovia, their capital and the birthplace of Vercingetorix. The firmness and the ability of the Gallic chieftain were not inferior to such a struggle. He understood from the outset that he could not cope in the open field with Csesar and the Roman legions; he therefore exerted himself in getting to- gether a body of cavalry numerous enough to harass the Eomans during their movements, to attack their scattered detachments, to bear his orders swiftly to all quarters, and to keep up the excitement amongst the different peoplets with some hope of success. His plan of campaign, his repeated in- structions, his passionate entreaties to the confederates were to avoid any general action, to anticipate by their own ravages those of the Eomans, to destroy every where, at the approach of the enemy, stores, springs, bridges, trees, and habitations : he wanted Csesar to find in his front nothing but ruins and clouds of warriors relentless in pursuing him without getting within reach. Frequently he succeeded in obtaining from the people these painful sacrifices in the interest of the common safety ; as when the Biturigians (inhabitants of the district of Bourges) burned in one day twenty of their towns or villages. Vercingetorix adjured them also to burn Avaricum (Bourges), their capital ; but they refused, and the capture of Avaricum, though gallantly defended, justified the urgency of Ver- cingetorix, seeing that it was an important success for Csesar and a serious blow for the Gauls. Out of 40,000 combatants withm the walls, it is said, scarcely 800 escaped the slaughter and succeeded in joining Vercingetorix, who had hovered con- tinually in the neighborhood without being able to offer the besieged any effectual assistance. Nor was it only against the Romans that he had to struggle ; he had to fight amongst his own people, against rivalry, mistrust, impatience, and dis- couragement; he was accused of desiring, beyond every thing, the mastery ; he was even suspected of keeping up, with the view of assuring his own future, secret relations with Csesar ; he was called upon to attack the enemy in front, and so bring the war to a decisive issue. It is all very fine to be summoned by the popular voice to accomplish a great and arduous work; but you cannot be, with impunity, the most far-sighted, the most able, and the most in danger, because the ^if)^% devoted. Yercingetorix; was l?earing the bw