care; and who sacrificed, with too much indifference, the wealth and tranquillity of the distant provinces." The barbarians 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 Alemanni 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 Ger

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.

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. 7. 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

Claudian (1. Cons. Stil. lib. 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 PharaF

VOL. IV.

many 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 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 afterward 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.*

Desolation of Gaul.

A.D. 407,

While the peace of Germany was secured by the attachment of the Franks, and the neu&c. trality of the Alemanni, 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

mond. (in tom. 2. p. 543.) He seems to write from good materials, which he did not understand.

See Zosimus, (lib. 6. p. 373.) Orosius, (lib. 7. c. 40. p. 576.) and the Chronicles. Gregory of Tours (lib. 2. c. 9. p. 165. in the second volume of the His torians of France) has preserved a valuable fragment of Renatus Profuturus Frigeridus, whose three names denote a Christian, a Roman subject, and a semibarbarian.

u Claudian (1. Cons. Stil. lib. 1. 221, &c. lib. 2. 186.) describes the peace and prosperity of the Gallic frontier. The abbé Dubois (Hist. Critique, &c. tom. 1. p. 174.) would read Alba (a nameless rivulet of the Ardennes) instead of Albis, and

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 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 the abyss of grace and predestination, soon became the serious employment of the Latin clergy; the Providence which had decreed, or foreseen, or 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.

Geminasque viator

Cum videat ripas, quæ sit Romana requirat.

y Jerome, tom. 1. p. 93. See in the first vol. of the historians of France, p. 777. 782. the proper extracts from the Carmen de Providentiâ Divina, and Salvian. The anonymous poet was himself a captive, with his bishop and fellow-citizens.

z 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 sin gular enough) the people did not take any part in a dispute which they could not understand.

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 licence 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 be distant from the frontier? Perhaps twelve, but they will be days of battle. Such was the gallant answer which checked the arrogance of that ambitious prince. The subjects of Honorius, and those of Francis I., were animated by a very different spirit; and in less than two years, the divided troops of the savages of the Baltic, whose numbers, were they fairly stated, would appear contemptible, advanced without a combat to the foot of the Pyrenean mountains.

a See the Memoires de Guillaume du Bellay, lib. 6. In French, the original reproof is less obvious, and more pointed, from the double sense of the word journée, which alike signifies, a day's travel, or a battle.

Revolt of

army.

In the early part of the reign of Honorius, the the British vigilance of Stilicho had successfully guarded A. D. 407. the remote island of Britain from her incessant enemies of the ocean, the mountains, and the Irish coast." But those restless barbarians could not neglect the fair opportunity of the Gothic war, when the walls and stations of the province were stripped of the Roman troops. If any of the legionaries were permitted to return from the Italian expedition, their faithful report of the court and character of Honorius-must have tended to dissolve the bonds of allegiance, and to exasperate the seditious temper of the British army. The spirit of revolt, which had formerly disturbed the age of Gallienus, was revived by the capricious violence of the soldiers; and the unfortunate, perhaps the ambitious, candidates, who were the objects of their choice, were the instruments, and at length the victims, of their passion. Marcus was the first whom they placed on the throne, as the lawful emperor of Britain, and of the west. They violated, by the hasty murder of Marcus, the oath of fidelity which they had imposed on themselves; and their disapprobation of his manners may seem to inscribe an honourable epitaph on his tomb. Gratian was the next whom they adorned with the diadem and the purple; and, at the end of four months, Gratian experienced the fate of his predecessor. The memory of the great Constantine, whom the British legions had given to the church and to the empire, suggested the singular motive Constan- of their third choice. They discovered in the acknow- ranks a private soldier of the name of Constan

tine is

b Claudian. (1. Cons. Stil. lib. 2. 250.) It is supposed, that the Scots of Ireland invaded, by sea, the whole western coast of Britain and some slight credit may be given even to Nennius and the Irish traditions. (Carte's Hist. of England, vol. 1. p. 169. Whitaker's Genuine History of the Britons, p. 199.) The sixtysix lives of St. Patrick, which were extant in the ninth century, must have contained as many thousand lies; yet we may believe, that in one of these Irish inroads, the future apostle was led away captive. (Usher, Antiquitat. Eccles. Britann. p. 431. and Tillemont, Mem. Eccles. tom. 16. p. 456. 782, &c.)

The British usurpers are taken from Zosimus, (lib.6. p. 371-375.) Orosius, (lib. 7. c. 40. p. 576,577.) Olympiodorus, (apud Photium, p. 180, 181.) the ecclesiastical historians, and the Chronicles. The Latins are ignorant of Marcus.