Part 463

During the civil wars and religious quarrels which followed the death of Constantine the Great—more especially in the three years of the usurpation of Magnentius, in the west (A. D. 350-353), Gaul was not only abandoned, for the most part, to the barbarians of Germany, but Franks and Alemanni were invited by Constantius to enter it. "In a little while a large part of the north and east of Gaul were in their almost undisputed possession. The Alamans seized upon the countries which are now called Alsace and Lorraine; the Franks secured for themselves Batavia and Toxandria: forty-five flourishing cities, among them Cologne, Treves, Spires, Worms, and Strasburg, were ravaged; and, in short, from the sources of the Rhine to its mouth, forty miles inland, there remained no safety for the population but in the strongly fortified towns." In this condition of the Gallic provinces, Julian, the young nephew of the emperor, was raised to the rank of Cæsar and sent thither with a trifling force of men to take the command. "During an administration of six years [A. D. 355-361] this latest Cæsar revived in Gaul the memory of the indefatigable exploits and the vigorous rule of the first Cæsar. Insufficient and ill-disciplined as his forces were, and baffled and betrayed as he was by those who should have been his aids, he drove the fierce and powerful tribes of the Alamans, who were now the hydra of the western provinces, beyond the Upper Rhine; the Chamaves, another warlike tribe, he pursued into the heart of their native forests; while the still fiercer and more warlike Franks were dislodged from their habitations on the Meuse, to accept of conditions from his hands. … A part of these, called the Salians, and destined to figure hereafter, were allowed to settle in permanence in Toxandria, between the Meuse and the Scheld, near the modern Tongres. … By three successful expeditions beyond the Rhine [he] restored to their friends a multitude of Roman captives, recovered the broken and down-trodden lines of the empire, humiliated many of the proud chiefs of the Germans, and impressed a salutary awe and respect upon their truculent followers. … He spent the intervals of peace which his valor procured in recuperating the wasted energies of the inhabitants. Their dilapidated cities were repaired, the excesses of taxation retrenched, the deficient harvests compensated by large importations of corn from Britain, and the resources of suspended industry stimulated into new action. Once more, says Libanius, the Gauls ascended from the tombs to marry, to travel, to enjoy the festivals, and to celebrate the public games."

_P. Godwin, History of France: Ancient Gaul, book 2, chapter 7._

ALSO IN: _E. Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, chapter 19._

GAUL: A. D. 365-367. Expulsion of the Alemanni by Valentinian.

See ALEMANNI: A. D. 365-367.

GAUL: A. D. 378. Invasion of the Alemanni. Their destruction by Gratian.

See ALEMANNI: A. D. 378.

{1413}

GAUL: A. D. 406-409. The breaking of the Rhine barrier.

The same year (A. D. 406) in which Radagaisus, with his motley barbaric horde, invaded Italy and was destroyed by Stilicho, a more fatal assault was made upon Gaul. Two armies, in which were gathered up a vast multitude of Suevi, Vandals, Alans and Burgundians, passed the Rhine. The Franks opposed them as faithful allies of the Roman power, and defeated a Vandal army in one great battle, where 20,000 of the invaders were slain; but the Alans came opportunely to the rescue of their friends and forced the Frank defenders of Gaul to give way. "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. … 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."

_E. Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, chapter 30._

GAUL: A. D. 407-411. Reign of the usurper Constantine.

See BRITAIN: A. D. 407.

GAUL: A. D. 410-419. Establishment of the Visigoths in the kingdom of Toulouse.

See GOTHS (VISIGOTHS): A. D. 410-419.

GAUL: A. D. 410-420. The Franks join in the attack on Gaul.

See FRANKS: A. D. 410-420.

GAUL: 5th-8th Centuries. Barbarities of the Frank conquest.

The conquests of the Franks in Gaul, under Clovis, began in 486 and ended with his death in 511 (see FRANKS: A. D. 481-511). "In the year 532, Theoderik, one of the sons and successors of Chlodowig, said to those Frankish warriors whom he commanded: 'Follow me as far as Auvergne, and I will make you enter a country where you will take as much gold and silver as you possibly can desire; where you can carry away in abundance flocks, slaves, and garments.' The Franks took up arms and once more crossing the Loire, they advanced on the territory of the Bituriges and Arvernes. These paid with interest for the resistance they had dared to the first invasion. Everything amongst them was devastated; the churches and monasteries were razed to their foundations. The young men and women were dragged, their hands bound, after the luggage to be sold as slaves. The inhabitants of this unfortunate country perished in large numbers or were ruined by the pillage. Nothing was left them of what they had possessed, says an ancient chronicle, except the land, which the barbarians could not carry away. Such were the neighbourly relations kept up by the Franks with the Gallic populations which had remained beyond their limits. Their conduct with respect to the natives of the northern provinces was hardly less hostile. When Hilperik, the son of Chlother, wished, in the year 584, to send his daughter in marriage to the king of the West Goths, or Visigoths, settled in Spain, he came to Paris and carried away from the houses belonging to the 'fisc' a great number of men and women, who were heaped up in chariots to accompany and serve the bride elect. Those who refused to depart, and wept, were put in prison: several strangled themselves in despair. Many people of the best families enlisted by force into this procession, made their will, and gave their property to the churches. 'The son,' says a contemporary, 'was separated from his father, the mother from her daughter; they departed sobbing, and pronouncing deep curses; so many persons in Paris were in tears that it might be compared to the desolation of Egypt.' In their domestic misfortunes the kings of the Franks sometimes felt remorse, and trembled at the evil they had done. … But this momentary repentance soon yielded to the love of riches, the most violent passion of the Franks. Their incursions into the south of Gaul recommenced as soon as that country, recovered from its terrors and defeats, no longer admitted their garrisons nor tax collectors. Karle, to whom the fear of his arms gave the surname of Marteau, made an inroad as far as Marseilles; he took possession of Lyons, Arles, and Vienne, and carried off an immense booty to the territory of the Franks. When this same Karle, to insure his frontiers, went to fight the Saracens in Aquitania, he put the whole country to fire and sword; he burnt Bérgiers, Agde, and Nûnes; the arenas of the latter city still bear traces of the fire. At death of Karle, his two sons, Karlemann and Peppin, continued the great enterprise of replacing the inhabitants of the south, to whom the name of Romans was still given, under the yoke of the Franks. … Southern Gaul was to the sons of the Franks what entire Gaul had been to their fathers; a country, the riches and climate of which attracted them incessantly, and saw them return as enemies, as soon as it did not purchase peace of them."

_A. Thierry, Narratives of the Merovingian Era, Historical Essays, etc., essay 24._

GAUL: 5th-10th Centuries. The conquerors and the conquered. State of society under the barbarian rule. The evolution of Feudalism.

"After the conclusion of the great struggles which took place in the fourth and fifth centuries, whether between the German conquerors and the last forces of the empire, or between the nations which had occupied different portions of Gaul, until the Franks remained sole masters of the country, two races, two populations, which had nothing in common but religion, appear forcibly brought together, and, as it were, face to face with each other, in one political community. The Gallo-Roman population presents under the same law very different and very unequal conditions; the barbarian population comprises, together with its own peculiar classifications of ranks and conditions, distinct laws and nationalities. In the first we find citizens absolutely free, coloni, or husbandmen belonging to the lands of a proprietor, and domestic slaves deprived of all civil rights; in the second, we see the Frankish race divided into two tribes, each having its own peculiar law [the law of the Salic Franks or Salic law, and the law of the Ripuarian Franks or Ripuarian law]; the Burgundians, the Goths, and the rest of the Teutonic races, who became subjected, either of their own accord or by force, to, the Frankish empire, governed by other and entirely different laws; but among them all, as well as among the Franks, we find at least three social conditions—two degrees of liberty, and slavery. {1414} Among these incongruous states of existence, the criminal law of the dominant race established, by means of the scale of damages for crime or personal injury, a kind of hierarchy— the starting-point of that movement towards an assimilation and gradual transformation, which, after the lapse of four centuries, from the fifth to the tenth, gave rise to the society of the feudal times. The first rank in the civil order belonged to the man of Frankish origin, and to the Barbarian who lived under the law of the Franks; in the second rank was placed the Barbarian, who lived under the law of his own country; next came the native freeman and proprietor, the Roman possessor, and, in the same degree, the Lidus or German colonus; after them, the Roman tributary—i. e., the native colonus; and, last of all, the slave, without distinction of origin. These various classes, separated on the one hand by distance of rank, on the other by difference of laws, manners, and language, were far from being equally distributed between the cities and the rural districts. All that was elevated in the Gallo-Roman population, of whatever character it might be, was found in the cities, where its noble, rich, and industrious families dwelt, surrounded by their domestic slaves; and, among the people of that race, the only constant residents in the country were the half-servile coloni and the agricultural slaves. On the contrary, the superior class of the German population established itself in the country, where each family, independent and proprietary, was maintained on its own domain by the labour of the Lidi whom it had brought thither, or of the old race of coloni who belonged to the soil. The only Germans who resided in the cities were a small number of officers in the service of the Crown, and of individuals without family and patrimony, who, in spite of their original habits, sought a livelihood by following some employment. The social superiority of the dominant race rooted itself firmly in the localities inhabited by them, and passed, as has been already remarked, from the cities to the rural districts. By degrees, also, it came to pass that the latter drew off from the former the upper portion of their population, who, in order to raise themselves still higher, and to mix with the conquerors, imitated, as far as they were able, their mode of life. … While Barbarism was thus occupying or usurping all the vantage points of the social state, and civil life in the intermediate classes was arrested in its progress, and sinking gradually to the lowest condition, even to that of personal servitude, an ameliorating movement already commenced before the fall of the empire, still continued, and declared itself more and more loudly. The dogma of a common brotherhood in the eyes of God, and of one sole redemption for all mankind, preached by the Church to the faithful of every race, touched the heart and awakened the mind in favour of the slave, and, in consequence, enfranchisements became more frequent, or a treatment more humane was adopted on the part of the masters, whether Gauls or Germans by origin. The latter, moreover, had imported from their country, where the mode of life was simple and without luxury, usages favourable to a modified slavery. The rich barbarian was waited upon by free persons—by the children of his relatives, his clients and his friends; the tendency of his national manners, different from that of the Roman, induced him to send the slave out of his house, and to establish him as a labourer or artisan on some portion of land to which he then became permanently attached, and the destination of which he followed, whether it were inherited or sold. … Domestic slavery made the man a chattel, a mere piece of moveable property. The slave, settled on a spot of land, from that time entered into the category of real property. At the same time that this last class, which properly bore the name of serfs, was increased at the expense of the first, the classes of the coloni and Lidi would naturally multiply simultaneously, by the very casualties of ruin and adverse circumstances which, at a period of incessant commotions, injured the condition of the freemen. … In the very heart of the Barbarian society, the class of small proprietors, which had originally formed its strength and glory, decreased, and finally became extinct by sinking into vassalage, or a state of still more ignoble dependence, which partook more or less of the character of actual servitude. … The freemen depressed towards servitude met the slave who had reached a sort of half liberty. Thus, through the whole extent of Gaul, was formed a vast body of agricultural labourers and rural artisans, whose lot, though never uniform, was brought more and more to a level of equality; and the creative wants of society produced a new sphere of industry in the country, while the cities remained stationary, or sank more and more into decay. … On every large estate where improvement flourished, the cabins of those employed, Lidi, coloni or slaves, grouped as necessity or convenience suggested, were multiplied and peopled more numerously, till they assumed the form of a hamlet. When these hamlets were situated in a favourable position … they continued to increase till they became villages. … The building of a church soon raised the village to the rank of a parish; and, as a consequence, the new parish took its place among the rural circonscriptions. … Thence sprung, altogether spontaneously, under the sanction of the intendant, joined to that of the priest, rude outlines of a municipal organization, in which the church became the depository of the acts which, in accordance with the Roman law, were inscribed on the registers of the city. It is in this way that beyond the towns, the cities, and the boroughs, where the remains of the old social condition lingered in an increasing state of degradation, elements of future improvement were formed. … This modification, already considerably advanced in the ninth century, was completed in the course of the tenth. At that period, the last class of the Gallo-Frankish society disappeared—viz., that of persons held as chattels, bought, exchanged, transferred from one place to another, like any other kind of moveable goods. The slave now belonged to the soil rather than to the person; his service, hitherto arbitrary, was changed into customary dues and regulated employment; he had a settled abode, and, in consequence, a right of possession in the soil on which he was dependent. This is the earliest form in which we distinctly trace the first impress of the modern world upon the civil state. {1415} The word serf henceforward took its definite meaning; it became the generic name of a mixed condition of servitude and freedom, in which we find blended together the states of the colonus and Lidus—two names which occur less and less frequently in the tenth century, till they entirely disappear. This century, the point to which all the social efforts of the four preceding ones which had elapsed since the Frankish conquest had been tending, saw the intestine struggle between the Roman and German manners brought to a conclusion by an important revolution. The latter definitively prevailed, and from their triumph arose the feudal system; that is to say, a new form of the state, a new constitution of property and domestic life, a parcelling out of the sovereignty and jurisdiction, all the public powers transformed into demesnial privileges, the idea of nobility devoted to the profession of arms, and that of ignobility to industry and labour. By a remarkable coincidence, the complete establishment of this system is the epoch when the distinction of races terminates in Frankish Gaul—when all the legal consequences of diversity of origin between Barbarians and Romans, conquerors and subjects, disappear. The law ceases to be personal, and becomes local; the German codes and the Roman code itself are replaced by custom; it is the territory and not the descent which distinguishes the inhabitant of the Gallic soil; finally, instead of national distinctions, one mixed population appears, to which the historian is able henceforward to give the name of French."

_A. Thierry, Formation and Progress of the Tiers État in France, volume 1, chapter 1._

GAUL: A. D. 412-453. The mixed administration, Roman and barbarian.

"A prætorian prefect still resided at Trèves; a vicar of the seventeen Gallic provinces at Aries: each of these provinces had its Roman duke; each of the hundred and fifteen cities of Gaul had its count; each city its curia, or municipality. But, collaterally with this Roman organisation, the barbarians, assembled in their 'mallum,' of which their kings were presidents, decided on peace and war, made laws, or administered justice. Each division of the army had its Graf Jarl, or Count; each subdivision its centenary, or hundred-man; and all these fractions of the free population had the same right of deciding by suffrage in their own mallums, or peculiar courts, all their common affairs. In cases of opposition between the barbarian and the Roman jurisdiction, the overbearing arrogance of the one, and the abject baseness of the other, soon decided the question of supremacy. In some provinces the two powers were not concurrent: there were no barbarians between the Loire and the Meuse, nor between the Alps and the Rhone; but the feebleness of the Roman government was only the more conspicuous. A few great proprietors cultivated a part of the province with the aid of slaves; the rest was desert, or only inhabited by Bagaudæ, runaway slaves, who lived by robbery. Some towns still maintained a show of opulence, but not one gave the slightest sign of strength; not one enrolled its militia, nor repaired its fortifications. … Honorius wished to confer on the cities of southern Gaul a diet, at which they might have deliberated on public affairs: he did not even find public spirit enough to accept the offered privilege."

_J. C. L. de Sismondi, Fall of the Roman Empire, chapter 7 (volume 1)._

GAUL: A. D. 451. Attila's invasion.

See HUNS: A. D. 451.

GAUL: A. D. 453-484. Extension of the Visigothic kingdom.

See GOTHS (VISIGOTHS): A. D. 453-484.

GAUL: A. D. 457-486. The last Roman sovereignty.

The last definite survival of Roman sovereignty in Gaul lingered until 486 in a district north of the Seine, between the Marne and the Oise, which had Soissons for its capital. It was maintained there, in the first instance, by Ægidius, a Gallic noble whom Marjorian, one of the last of the emperors at Rome, made Master-General of Gaul. The respect commanded by Ægidius among the surrounding barbarians was so great that the Salian Franks invited him to rule over them, in place of a licentious young king, Childeric, whom they had driven into exile. He was king of these Franks, according to Gregory of Tours, for eight years (457-464), until he died. Childeric then returned, was reinstated in his kingdom and became the father of Clovis (or Chlodwig), the founder of the great Frank monarchy. But a son of Ægidius, named Syagrius, was still the inheritor of a kingdom, known as, the "Kingdom of Syagrius," embracing, as has been said, the country around Soissons, between the Seine, the Marne and the Oise, and also including, in the opinion of some writers, Troyes and Auxerre. The first exploit of Clovis—the beginning of his career of conquest—was the overthrow of this "king of the Romans," as Syagrius was called, in a decisive battle fought at Soissons, A. D. 486, and the incorporation of his kingdom into the Frank dominions. Syagrius escaped to Toulouse, but was surrendered to Clovis and put to death.

_P. Godwin, History of France: Ancient Gaul, book 3, chapter 11._

ALSO IN: _W. C. Perry, The Franks, chapter 2._

GAUL: A. D. 474. Invasion of Ostrogoths.

See GOTHS (OSTROGOTHS): A. D. 473-474.

GAUL: A. D. 507-509. Expulsion of the Visigoths.

See GOTHS (VISIGOTHS): A. D. 507-509.

GAUL: A. D. 540. Formal relinquishment of the country to the Franks by Justinian.

See FRANKS: A. D. 539-553.

GAULS.