A.D. 420. STATE OF THE BARBARIANS IN GAUL. 129 was confirmed by the lawful emperor; the lands of the First, or Upper, Germany, were ceded to those formidable barbarians; and they gradually occupied, either by conquest or treaty, the two provinces which still retain, with the titles of Duchy and of County, the national appellation of Burgundy.168 The Franks, the valiant and faithful allies of the Roman republic, were soon tempted to imitate the invaders whom they had so bravely resisted. Trèves, the capital of Gaul, was pillaged by their lawless bands; and the humble colony which they so long maintained in the district of Toxandria, in Brabant, insensibly multiplied along the banks of the Meuse and Scheld, till their independent power filled the whole extent of the Second, or Lower, Germany. These facts may be sufficiently justified by historic evidence; but the foundation of the French monarchy by Pharamond, the conquests, the laws, and even the existence of that hero, have been justly arraigned by the impartial severity of modern criticism. 169 barbarians A.D. 420, &c. The ruin of the opulent provinces of Gaul may be dated from the establishment of these barbarians, whose alliance was dan- State of the gerous and oppressive, and who were capriciously impelled, in Gaul, by interest or passion, to violate the public peace. A heavy and partial ransom was imposed on the surviving provincials who had escaped the calamities of war; the fairest and most fertile lands were assigned to the rapacious strangers, for the use of their families, their slaves, and their cattle; and the trembling natives relinquished with a sigh the inheritance of their fathers. Yet these domestic misfortunes, which are seldom the lot of a vanquished people, had been felt and inflicted by the Romans themselves, not only in the insolence of foreign conquest, but in the madness of civil discord. The Triumvirs proscribed eighteen of the most flourishing colonies of Italy, and distributed their lands and houses to the veterans who revenged the death of Cæsar, and oppressed the liberty of their 168 Orosius (1. vii. c. 32, p. 550) commends the mildness and modesty of these Burgundians, who treated their subjects of Gaul as their Christian brethren. Mascou has illustrated the origin of their kingdom in the four first annotations at the end of his laborious History of the Ancient Germans, vol. ii. p. 555-572 of the English translation. 169 See Mascou, 1. viii. c. 43, 44, 45. Except in a short and suspicious line of the Chronicle of Prosper (in tom. i. p. 638), the name of Pharamond is never mentioned before the seventh century. The author of the Gesta Francorum (in tom. ii. p. 543) suggests, probably enough, that the choice of Pharamond, or at least of a king, was recommended to the Franks by his father Marcomir, who was an exile in Tuscany." a The first mention of Pharamond is in the Gesta Francorum assigned to about the year 720. St. Martin, iv. 469. The modern French writers in general subscribe to the opinion of Thierry: Fara VOL. IV. mond fils de Markomir, quoique son nom soit bien germanique, et son règne possible, ne figure pas dans les histoires les plus dignes de foi. A. Thierry, Lettres sur l'Histoire de France, p. 90.-M. country. Two poets, of unequal fame, have deplored, in similar circumstances, the loss of their patrimony; but the legionaries of Augustus appear to have surpassed, in violence and injustice, the barbarians who invaded Gaul under the reign of Honorius. It was not without the utmost difficulty that Virgil escaped from the sword of the centurion who had usurped his farm in the neighbourhood of Mantua ; 170 but Paulinus of Bourdeaux received a sum of money from his Gothic purchaser, which he accepted with pleasure and surprise; and, though it was much inferior to the real value of his estate, this act of rapine was disguised by some colours of moderation and equity.171 The odious name of conquerors was softened into the mild and friendly appellation of the guests of the Romans; and the barbarians of Gaul, more especially the Goths, repeatedly declared that they were bound to the people by the ties of hospitality, and to the emperor by the duty of allegiance and military service. The title of Honorius and his successors, their laws and their civil magistrates, were still respected in the provinces of Gaul, of which they had resigned the possession to the barbarian allies; and the kings, who exercised a supreme and independent authority over their native subjects, ambitiously solicited the more honourable rank of master-generals of the Imperial armies. 172 Such was the involuntary reverence which the Roman name still impressed on the minds of those warriors who had borne away in triumph the spoils of the Capitol. Revolt of Britain and Armorica, Whilst Italy was ravaged by the Goths, and a succession of feeble tyrants oppressed the provinces beyond the Alps, the British island separated itself from the body of the Roman empire. The regular forces which guarded that remote province had been gradually withdrawn ; and Britain was abandoned, without defence, to the Saxon pirates and the savages of Ireland and Caledonia. The Britons, reduced to this extremity, no longer relied on the tardy and doubtful aid of a declining monarchy. They 170 O Lycida, vivi pervenimus: advena nostri See the whole of the ninth eclogue, with the useful Commentary of Servius. Fifteen miles of the Mantuan territory were assigned to the veterans, with a reservation in favour of the inhabitants of three miles round the city. Even in this favour they were cheated by Alfenus Varus, a famous lawyer and one of the commissioners, who measured eight hundred paces of water and morass. 171 See the remarkable passage of the Eucharisticon of Paulinus, 575, apud Mascou, 1. viii. c. 42. 172 This important truth is established by the accuracy of Tillemont (Hist. des Emp. tom. v. p. 641) and by the ingenuity of the Abbé Dubos (Hist. de l'Etablissement de la Monarchie Françoise dans les Gaules, tom. i. p. 259). A.D. 409. AND ARMORICA. 131 assembled in arms, repelled the invaders, and rejoiced in the important discovery of their own strength.173 Afflicted by similar calamities, and actuated by the same spirit, the Armorican provinces (a name which comprehended the maritime countries of Gaul between the Seine and the Loire) 174 resolved to imitate the example of the neighbouring island. They expelled the Roman magistrates, who acted under the authority of the usurper Constantine; and a free government was established among a people who had so long been subject to the arbitrary will of a master. The independence of Britain and Armorica was soon confirmed by Honorius himself, the lawful emperor of the West; and the letters by which he committed to the new states the care of their own safety might be interpreted as an absolute and perpetual abdication of the exercise and rights of sovereignty. This interpretation was, in some measure, justified by the event. After the usurpers of Gaul had successively fallen, the maritime provinces were restored to the empire. Yet their obedience was imperfect and precarious: the vain, inconstant, rebellious disposition of the people, was incompatible either with freedom or servitude; 175 and Armorica, though it could not long maintain the form of a republic, 176 was agitated by frequent and destructive revolts. Britain was irrecoverably lost.177 But as the emperors wisely 173 Zosimus (1. vi. [c. 5] 376 [c. 10], 383) relates in a few words the revolt of Britain and Armorica. Our antiquarians, even the great Camden himself, have been betrayed into many gross errors by their imperfect knowledge of the history of the continent. 174 The limits of Armorica are defined by two national geographers, Messieurs de Valois and d'Anville, in their Notitias of Ancient Gaul. The word had been used in a more extensive, and was afterwards contracted to a much narrower, signification. 175 Gens inter geminos notissima clauditur amnes, Armoricana prius veteri cognomine dicta. Torva, ferox, ventosa, procax, incauta, rebellis; Prodiga verborum, sed non et prodiga facti. Erricus, Monach. in Vit. St. Germani, 1. v. apud Vales. Notit. Galliarum, p. 43. Valesius alleges several testimonies to confirm this character; to which I shall add the evidence of the presbyter Constantine (A.D. 488), who, in the Life of St. Germain, calls the Armorican rebels mobilem et indisciplinatum populum. See the Historians of France, tom. i. p. 643. 176 I thought it necessary to enter my protest against this part of the system of the Abbé Dubos, which Montesquieu has so vigorously opposed. See Esprit des Loix, 1. xxx. c. 24.a 177 Βρεταννίαν μέντοι Ῥωμαῖοι ἀνασώσασθαι οὐκέτι ἔσχον, are the words of Procopius (de Bell. Vandal. 1. i. c. 2, p. 181, Louvre edition [tom. i. p. 318, ed. Bonn]), in a very important passage which has been too much neglected. Even Bede (Hist. Gent. Anglican. 1. i. c. 12, p. 50, edit. Smith) acknowledges that the Romans finally left Britain in the reign of Honorius. Yet our modern historians and antiquaries extend a See Mémoires de Gallet sur l'Origine des Bretons, quoted by Daru, Histoire de Bretagne, i. p. 57. According to the opinion of these authors, the government of Armorica was monarchical from the period of its independence of the Roman Empire.-M. acquiesced in the independence of a remote province, the separation was not embittered by the reproach of tyranny or rebellion; and the claims of allegiance and protection were succeeded by the mutual and voluntary offices of national friendship.178 State of A.D. 409-449. This revolution dissolved the artificial fabric of civil and military government; and the independent country, during a period of forty years, till the descent of the Saxons, was ruled by the authority of the clergy, the nobles, and the municipal towns.179 I. Zosimus, who alone has preserved the memory of this singular transaction, very accurately observes that the letters of Honorius were addressed to the cities of Britain.180 Under the protection of the Romans, ninety-two considerable towns had arisen in the several parts of that great province; and, among these, thirtythree cities were distinguished above the rest by their superior privileges and importance. 181 Each of these cities, as in all the other provinces of the empire, formed a legal corporation, for the purpose of regulating their domestic policy; and the powers of municipal government were distributed among annual magistrates, a select senate, and the assembly of the people, according to the original model of the Roman constitution.182 The management of a common revenue, the exercise of civil and criminal jurisdiction, and the habits of public counsel and command, were inherent to these petty republics; and when they asserted their independence, the youth of the city, and of the adjacent districts, would naturally range themselves under the standard of the magistrate. But the desire of obtaining the advantages, and of escaping the burthens, of political society, is a perpetual and inexhaustible source of discord; nor can it reasonably be presumed that the restoration of British freedom was exempt from tumult and faction. The pre-eminence of birth and fortune must the term of their dominion; and there are some who allow only the interval of a few months between their departure and the arrival of the Saxons. 178 Bede has not forgot the occasional aid of the legions against the Scots and Picts; and more authentic proof will hereafter be produced that the independent Britons raised 12,000 men for the service of the emperor Anthemius in Gaul. 179 I owe it to myself and to historic truth to declare that some circumstances in this paragraph are founded only on conjecture and analogy. The stubbornness of our nguage has sometimes forced me to deviate from the conditional into the indicative mood. 180 Πρὸς τὰς ἐν Βρεταννίᾳ πόλεις. Zosimus, l. vi. [c. 10] p. 383. 181 Two cities of Britain were municipia, nine colonies, ten Latii jure donatæ, twelve stipendiaria of eminent note. This detail is taken from Richard of Cirencester, de Sitû Britanniæ, p. 36; and though it may not seem probable that he wrote from the MSS. of a Roman general, he shows a genuine knowledge of antiquity, very extraordinary for a monk of the fourteenth century." 182 See Maffei, Verona Illustrata, part i. 1. v. p. 83-106. a The names may be found in Whi- 379. Turner, Hist. Anglo-Saxons, vol. i taker's Hist. of Manchester, vol. ii. p. 330, p. 216.-M. A.D. 409-449. STATE OF BRITAIN. 133 have been frequently violated by bold and popular citizens; and the haughty nobles, who complained that they were become the subjects of their own servants," 183 would sometimes regret the reign of an arbitrary monarch. II. The jurisdiction of each city over the adjacent country was supported by the patrimonial influence of the principal senators; and the smaller towns, the villages, and the proprietors of land, consulted their own safety by adhering to the shelter of these rising republics. The sphere of their attraction was proportioned to the respective degrees of their wealth and populousness; but the hereditary lords of ample possessions, who were not oppressed by the neighbourhood of any powerful city, aspired to the rank of independent princes, and boldly exercised the rights of peace : 184 and war. The gardens and villas, which exhibited some faint imitation of Italian elegance, would soon be converted into strong castles, the refuge, in time of danger, of the adjacent country: the produce of the land was applied to purchase arms and horses; to maintain a military force of slaves, of peasants, and of licentious followers and the chieftain might assume, within his own domain, the powers of a civil magistrate. Several of these British chiefs might be the genuine posterity of ancient kings; and many more would be tempted to adopt this honourable genealogy, and to vindicate their hereditary claims, which had been suspended by the usurpation of the Cæsars.185 Their situation and their hopes would dispose them to affect the dress, the language, and the customs of their ancestors. If the princes of Britain relapsed into barbarism, while the cities studiously preserved the laws and manners of Rome, the whole island must have been gradually divided by the distinction of two national parties; again broken into a thousand subdivisions of war and faction by the various provocations of interest and resentment. The public strength, instead of being united against a foreign enemy, was consumed in obscure and intestine quarrels; and the personal merit which had placed a successful leader at the head of his equals might enable him to subdue the freedom of some neighbouring cities, and to claim a rank among the tyrants186 who infested Britain after the 183 Leges restituit, libertatemque reducit, Itinerar. Rutil. 1. i. 215. 184 An inscription (apud Sirmond, Not. ad Sidon. Apollinar. p. 59) describes a castle, cum muris et portis, tuitioni omnium, erected by Dardanus on his own estate near Sisteron in the second Narbonnese, and named by him Theopolis. 185 The establishment of their power would have been easy indeed if we could adopt the impracticable scheme of a lively and learned antiquarian, who supposes that the British monarchs of the several tribes continued to reign, though with subordinate jurisdiction, from the time of Claudius to that of Honorius. See Whitaker's History of Manchester, vol. i. p. 247-257. 186 ̓Αλλ ̓ οὖσα ὑπὸ τυράννοις ἀπ' αὐτοῦ ἔμενε. Procopius, de Bell. Vandal. l. i. c. 2, |