Sidebilder
PDF
ePub

great numbers of those unhappy strangers; and it was observed that the inhuman purchasers, instead of reaping the fruits of their labour, were soon obliged to provide the expense of their interment. Stilicho informed the emperor and the senate of his success; and deserved, a second time, the glorious title of Deliverer of Italy.*

The fame of the victory, and more especially of the miracle, has encouraged a vain persuasion that the whole army, or rather nation, of Germans, who migrated from the shores of the Baltic, miserably perished under the walls of Florence. Such indeed was the fate of Radagaisus himself, of his brave and faithful companions, and of more than one-third of the various multitude of Sueves and Vandals, of Alani and Burgundians, who adhered to the standard of their general.† The union of such an army might excite our surprise, but the causes of separation are obvious and forcible; the pride of birth, the insolence of valour, the jealousy of command, the impatience of subordination, and the obstinate conflict of opinions, of interests, and of passions, among so many kings and warriors, who were untaught to yield, or to obey. After the defeat of Radagaisus, two parts of the German host, which must have exceeded the number of one hundred thousand men, still remained in arms, between the Apennine and the Alps, or between the Alps and the Danube. It is uncertain whether they attempted to revenge the death of their general; but their irregular fury was soon diverted by the prudence and firmness of Stilicho, who opposed their march, and facilitated their retreat; who considered the safety of Rome and Italy as the great object of his care; and who sacrificed, with too much indifference, the wealth and tranquillity of the distant provinces. The barbarians

* And Claudian's muse, was she asleep? had she been ill paid? Methinks the seventh consulship of Honorius (A.D. 407), would have furnished the subject of a noble poem. Before it was discovered that the state could no longer be saved, Stilicho (after Romulus, Camillus, and Marius) might have been worthily surnamed the fourth founder of Rome. A luminous passage of Prosper's Chronicle, "In tres partes, per diversos principes, divisus exercitus," reduces the miracle of Florence, and connects the history of Italy, Gaul, and Germany. Orosius and Jerome positively charge him with instigating the invasion. "Excitatæ a Stilichone gentes," &c. They must mean indirectly. He saved Italy at the expense of Gaul.

372 THE EMPIRE DEFENDED BY THE FRANKS. [CH. XXX. acquired, from the junction of some Pannonian deserters, the knowledge of the country, and of the roads; and the invasion of Gaul, which Alaric had designed, was executed by the remains of the great army of Radagaisus.*

Yet if they expected to derive any assistance from the tribes of Germany, who inhabited the banks of the Rhine, their hopes were disappointed. The Allemanni preserved a state of inactive neutrality; and the Franks distinguished their zeal and courage in the defence of the empire. In the rapid progress down the Rhine, which was the first act of the administration of Stilicho, he had applied himself with peculiar attention to secure the alliance of the warlike Franks, and to remove the irreconcilable enemies of peace and of the republic. Marcomir, one of their kings, was publicly convicted, before the tribunal of the Roman magistrate, of violating the faith of treaties. He was sentenced to a mild but distant exile, in the province of Tuscany; and this degradation of the regal dignity was so far from exciting the resentment of his subjects, that they punished with death the turbulent Sunno, who attempted to revenge his brother; and maintained a dutiful allegiance to the princes who were established on the throne by the choice of Stilicho.† When the limits of Gaul and Germany were shaken by the northern emigration, the Franks bravely encountered the single force of the Vandals; who regardless of the lessons of adversity, had again separated their troops from the

*The count de Buat is satisfied that the Germans who invaded Gaul, were the two-thirds that yet remained of the army of Radagaisus. See the Histoire Ancienne des Peuples de l'Europe (tom. vii, p. 87— 121, Paris, 1772), an elaborate work, which I had not the advantage of perusing till the year 1777. As early as 1771, I find the same idea expressed in a rough draught of the present History. I have since observed a similar intimation in Mascou. (8. 15.) Such agreement, without mutual communication, may add some weight to our common sentiment.

+

Provincia missos

Expellet citius fasces, quam Francia reges
Quos dederis.

Claudian (1 Cons. Stil. 1. 1. 235, &c.) is clear and satisfactory. These kings of France are unknown to Gregory of Tours; but the author of the Gesta Francorum mentions both Sunno and Marcomir, and names the latter as the father of Pharamond. (in tom. ii, p. 543.) He seems to write from good materials, which he did not understand.

standard of their barbarian allies. They paid the penalty of their rashness; and twenty thousand Vandals, with their king Godigisclus, were slain in the field of battle. The whole people must have been extirpated, if the squadrons of the Alani, advancing to their relief, had not trampled down the infantry of the Franks; who, after an honourable resistance, were compelled to relinquish the unequal contest. The victorious confederates pursued their march, and, on the last day of the year, in a season when the waters of the Rhine were most probably frozen, they entered, without opposition, the defenceless provinces of Gaul. This memorable passage of the Suevi, the Vandals, the Alani, and the Burgundians, who never afterwards retreated, may be considered as the fall of the Roman empire in the countries beyond the Alps; and the barriers which had so long separated the savage and the civilized nations of the earth were, from that fatal moment, levelled with the ground.*

While the peace of Germany was secured by the attachment of the Franks, and the neutrality of the Allemanni, the subjects of Rome, unconscious of their approaching calamities, enjoyed the state of quiet and prosperity, which had seldom blessed the frontiers of Gaul. Their flocks and herds were permitted to graze in the pastures of the barbarians; their huntsmen penetrated, without fear or danger, into the darkest recesses of the Hercynian wood.† The banks of the Rhine were crowned, like those of the Tiber, with elegant houses, and well-cultivated farms; and if a poet descended the river, he might express his doubt, on which

*See Zosimus (1. 6, p. 373), Orosius (1. 7, c. 40, p. 576), and the Chronicles. Gregory of Tours (1. 2, c. 9, p. 165, in the second volume of the Historians of France) has preserved a valuable fragment of Renatus Profuturus Frigeridus, whose three names denote a Christian, a Roman subject, and a semi-barbarian. Claudian (1 Cons.

Stil. 1. 1, 221, &c., 1. 2. 186) describes the peace and prosperity of the Gallic frontier. The abbé Dubois (Hist. Critique, &c. tom. i, p. 174) would read Alba (a nameless rivulet of the Ardennes) instead of Albis, and expatiates on the danger of the Gallic cattle grazing beyond the Elbe. Foolish enough! In poetical geography, the Elbe and the Hercynian, signify any river or any wood, in Germany. Claudian is not prepared for the strict examination of our antiquaries. [The fallacies, both historical and geographical, introduced or sanctioned by a literal acceptance of poetical nomenclature, have been the subject of some preceding notes.-ED.]

374

DESOLATION OF GAUL.

[CH. XXX. side was situated the territory of the Romans.* This scene of peace and plenty was suddenly changed into a desert; and the prospect of the smoking ruins could alone distinguish the solitude of nature from the desolation of man. The flourishing city of Mentz was surprised and destroyed; and many thousand Christians were inhumanly massacred in the church. Worms perished after a long and obstinate siege; Strasburg, Spires, Rheims, Tournay, Arras, Amiens, experienced the cruel oppression of the German yoke; and the consuming flames of war spread from the banks of the Rhine over the greatest part of the seventeen provinces of Gaul. That rich and extensive country, as far as the ocean, the Alps, and the Pyrenees, was delivered to the barbarians, who drove before them, in a promiscuous crowd, the bishop, the senator, and the virgin, laden with the spoils of their houses and altars.† The ecclesiastics, to whom we are indebted for this vague description of the public calamities, embraced the opportunity of exhorting the Christians to repent of the sins which had provoked the Divine Justice, and to renounce the perishable goods of a wretched and deceitful world. But as the Pelagian controversy,‡ which attempts to sound Geminasque viator

*

Cum videat ripas, quæ sit Romana requirat. [Claudian has here borne valuable testimony to an important fact. The Gothic tribes did conform to the example of civilization which they saw before them. Yet when they afterwards established themselves in the conquered provinces of the empire, they are said to have destroyed not only the monuments of art but even every type of civilization. This is incredible. Natures so disposed to improve, can neither have crushed the means of improvement that came into their power, nor have disdained the proper use of them.-ED.]

Jerome, tom. i, p. 93. See in the first volume of the Historians of France, p. 777. 782, the proper extracts from the Carmen de Providentiâ Divinâ, and Salvian. The anonymous poet was himself a captive, with his bishop and fellow-citizens.

The Pelagian doctrine, which was first agitated A.D. 405, was condemned, in the space of ten years, at Rome and Carthage. St. Augustin fought and conquered: but the Greek church was favourable to his adversaries; and (what is singular enough) the people did not take any part in a dispute which they could not understand. [The author of the Pelagian heresy is said to have been a native of Wales, whose name was Morgan, meaning "born near the sea," which was converted into the Greek Pelagios. Although he irritated the haughtiest fathers of the church by denying the innate

the abyss of grace and predestination, soon became the serious employment of the Latin clergy, the Providence which had decreed, or foreseen, or permitted such a train of moral and natural evils, was rashly weighed in the imperfect and fallacious balance of reason. The crimes and the misfortunes of the suffering people were presumptuously compared with those of their ancestors; and they arraigned the Divine Justice, which did not exempt from the common destruction the feeble, the guiltless, the infant portion, of the human species. These idle disputants overlooked the invariable laws of nature, which have connected peace with innocence, plenty with industry, and safety with valour. The timid and selfish policy of the court of Ravenna might recall the Palatine legions for the protection of Italy; the remains of the stationary troops might be unequal to the arduous task; and the barbarian auxiliaries might prefer the unbounded license of spoil to the benefits of a moderate and regular stipend. But the provinces of Gaul were filled with a numerous race of hardy and robust youth, who, in the defence of their houses, their families, and their altars, if they had dared to die, would have deserved to vanquish. The knowledge of their native country would have enabled them to oppose continual and insuperable obstacles to the progress of an invader; and the deficiency of the barbarians in arms as well as in discipline, removed the only pretence which excuses the submission of a populous country to the inferior numbers of a veteran army. When France was invaded by Charles V., he inquired of a prisoner, how many days Paris might depravity of human nature and appealing to Origen, it is suspected that he was the actual writer of some commentaries and epistles, which are now ascribed to Jerome and Augustin, and included in their works. (Mosheim, Inst. of Ecc. Hist. vol. i, p. 498 and Note.) The laity took no part in this dispute, because there was no rich see at stake, for the defence or acquisition of which their turbulent spirit was called into action. The ecclesiastics, who from this time become the principal chroniclers of "the public calamities," have been very studious to conceal from posterity their own share in producing them. The prostration of reason and energy at their austere bidding, the strangling of education, and the withering of talent, are represented by them as the pious docility of submissive faith. When by this course they had deranged the social system, they threw off the burden of reproach from themselves, and cast it on the unconscious barbarians, who could not repel the charge.—ED.]

« ForrigeFortsett »