Revolt of army. A.D. 407 moderate and regular stipend. But the provinces of Gaul were 96 In the early part of the reign of Honorius, the vigilance of the British Stilicho had successfully guarded 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 95 See Mémoires de Guillaume du Bellay, 1. vi. In French the original reproof is less obvious and more pointed, from the double sense of the word journée, which signifies a day's travel or a battle. 96 Claudian (i. Cons. Stil. 1. ii. 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. i. p. 169. Whitaker's Genuine History of the Britons, p. 199). The sixty-six 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, Antiquit. Eccles. Britann. p. 431, and Tillemont, Mém. Ecclés. tom. xvi. p. 456, 782, &c.). [On Irish invasion of Britain, see Bury, Life of St. Patrick, 325 sqq., 1905.] tine is ledged in and Gaul. were the objects of their choice, were the instruments, and at length the victims, of their passion. Marcus was the first whom (A.D. 406] 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 of their third choice. They discovered in the constanranks a private soldier of the name of Constantine, and their acknowimpetuous levity had already seated him on the throne, before Britain they perceived his incapacity to sustain the weight of that A.D. 407 glorious appellation.98 Yet the authority of Constantine was less precarious, and his government was more successful, than the transient reigns of Marcus and of Gratian. The danger of leaving his inactive troops in those camps which had been twice polluted with blood and sedition urged him to attempt the reduction of the Western provinces. He landed at Boulogne with an inconsiderable force; and, after he had reposed himself some days, he summoned the cities of Gaul, which had escaped the yoke of the Barbarians, to acknowledge their lawful sovereign. They obeyed the summons without reluctance. The neglect of the court of Ravenna had absolved a deserted people from the duty of allegiance; their actual distress encouraged them to accept any circumstances of change, without apprehension, and perhaps with some degree of hope; and they might flatter themselves that the troops, the authority, and even the name of a Roman emperor, who fixed his residence in Gaul, would protect the unhappy country from the rage of the Barbarians. The first successes of Constantine against the detached parties of the Germans were magnified by the voice of adula The British usurpers are taken from Zosimus (1. vi. p. 371-375 [c. 2]), Orosius (1. vii. c. 40, p. 576, 577), Olympiodorus (apud Photium, p. 180, 181 [fr. 12]), the ecclesiastical historians, and the Chronicles. The Latins are ignorant of Marcus. [According to Zosimus, the invasion of Gaul by the Vandals caused the revolt in Britain. For the usurpers, see Appendix 16 and 17.] 98 Cum in Constantino inconstantiam... execrarentur (Sidonius Apollinaris, 1. v. epist. 9, p. 139, edit, secund. Sirmond.). Yet Sidonius might be tempted, by so fair a pun, to stigmatize a prince who had disgraced his grandfather. [A.D. 408] tion into splendid and decisive victories; which the reunion and insolence of the enemy soon reduced to their just value. His negotiations procured a short and precarious truce; and, if some tribes of the barbarians were engaged, by the liberality of his gifts and promises, to undertake the defence of the Rhine, these expensive and uncertain treaties, instead of restoring the pristine vigour of the Gallic frontier, served only to disgrace the majesty of the prince and to exhaust what yet remained of the treasures of the republic. Elated, however, with this imaginary triumph, the vain deliverer of Gaul advanced into the provinces of the South, to encounter a more pressing and personal danger. Sarus the Goth was ordered to lay the head of the rebel at the feet of the emperor Honorius; and the forces of Britain and Italy were unworthily consumed in this domestic quarrel. After the loss [Neviogast] of his two bravest generals Justinian and Nevigastes, the former of whom was slain in the field of battle, the latter in a peaceful and treacherous interview, Constantine fortified himself within the walls of Vienna. The place was ineffectually attacked Zos. vi. 21 seven days; and the Imperial army supported, in a precipitate retreat, the ignominy of purchasing a secure passage from the freebooters and outlaws of the Alps.99 Those mountains now separated the dominions of two rival monarchs; and the fortifications of the double frontier were guarded by the troops of the empire, whose arms would have been more usefully employed to maintain the Roman limits against the Barbarians of Germany and Scythia. [leg. Valentia, cp. He reduces On the side of the Pyrenees, the ambition of Constantine might be justified by the proximity of danger; but his throne was soon established by the conquest, or rather submission, of Spain; which yielded to the influence of regular and habitual subordination, and received the laws and magistrates of the Gallic præfecture. The only opposition which was made to the authority of Constantine proceeded not so much from the powers of government, or the spirit of the people, as from the private zeal and interest of the family of Theodosius. Four brothers 100 Bagaude is the name which Zosimus applies to them [Baкaúdαis, vi. 2]; perhaps they deserved a less odious character (see Dubos, Hist. Critique, tom. i. p. 203, and this History, vol. i. p. 383). We shall hear of them again. [Here they appear as a sort of national militia. Cp. Freeman, in English Historical Review, i. 63.] 100 Verinianus, Didymus, Theodosius, and Lagodius, who, in modern courts, would be styled princes of the blood, were not distinguished by any rank or privileges above the rest of their fellow-subjects. had obtained by the favour of their kinsman, the deceased emperor, an honourable rank, and ample possessions, in their native country; and the grateful youths resolved to risk those advantages in the service of his son. After an unsuccessful effort to maintain their ground at the head of the stationary troops of Lusitania, they retired to their estates; where they armed and levied, at their own expense, a considerable body of slaves and dependents, and boldly marched to occupy the strong posts of the Pyrenæan mountains. This domestic insurrection alarmed and perplexed the sovereign of Gaul and Britain; and he was compelled to negotiate with some troops of Barbarian auxiliaries, for the service of the Spanish war. They were distinguished by the title of Honorians; 101 a name which might have reminded them of their fidelity to their lawful sovereign; and, if it should candidly be allowed that the Scots were influenced by any partial affection for a British prince, the Moors and Marcomanni could be tempted only by the profuse liberality of the usurper, who distributed among the Barbarians the military, and even the civil, honours of Spain. The nine bands of Honorians, which may be easily traced on the establishment of the Western empire, could not exceed the number of five thousand men; yet this inconsiderable force was sufficient to terminate a war which had threatened the power and safety of Constantine. The rustic army of the Theodosian family was surrounded and destroyed in the Pyrenees: two of the brothers had the good fortune to escape by sea to Italy, or the East; the other two, after an interval of suspense, were executed at Arles; and, if Honorius could remain insensible of the public disgrace, he might perhaps be affected by the personal misfortunes of his generous kinsmen. Such were the feeble arms which decided the possession of the Western provinces of Europe, from the wall of Antoninus to the columns of Hercules. The events of peace and war have undoubtedly been diminished by the narrow 101 These Honoriani, or Honoriaci, consisted of two bands of Scots, or Attacotti, two of Moors, two of Marcomanni, the Victores, the Ascarii, and the Gallicani (Notitia Imperii, sect. xxxviii. edit. Lab). They were part of the sixty-five Auxilia Palatina, and are properly styled év Ty avλ táteis by Zosimus (1. vi. p. 374 [c. 4]). [Hodgkin rightly observes that it is a mistake to suppose that the troops of Auxilia Palatina, called Honoriani, formed a single division, or necessarily acted together. The Honoriani in Gaul had nothing to do with the Honoriani in Illyricum; and Constantine had only to do with the Honoriani in Gaul, Moreover the phrase of Zosimus does not refer to Auxilia Palatina.] VOL. IIL-19 Negotia tion of Stilicho. and imperfect view of the historians of the times, who were equally ignorant of the causes and of the effects of the most important revolutions. But the total decay of the national strength had annihilated even the last resource of a despotic government; and the revenue of exhausted provinces could no longer purchase the military service of a discontented and pusillanimous people. The poet whose flattery has ascribed to the Roman eagle the Alaric and victories of Pollentia and Verona pursues the hasty retreat of A.D. 404-408 Alaric, from the confines of Italy, with a horrid train of imaginary spectres, such as might hover over an army of Barbarians, which was almost exterminated by war, famine, and disease.102 In the course of this unfortunate expedition, the king of the Goths must indeed have sustained a considerable loss, and his harassed forces required an interval of repose, to recruit their numbers and revive their confidence. Adversity had exercised, and displayed, the genius of Alaric; and the fame of his valour invited to the Gothic standard the bravest of the Barbarian warriors, who, from the Euxine to the Rhine, were agitated by the desire of rapine and conquest. He had deserved the esteem, and he soon accepted the friendship, of Stilicho himself. Renouncing the service of the emperor of the East, Alaric concluded, with the court of Ravenna, a treaty of peace and alliance, by which he was declared master-general of the Roman armies throughout the præfecture of Illyricum; as it was claimed, according to the true and ancient limits, by the minister of Honorius.103 The execution of the ambitious design, which was either stipulated, or implied, in the articles of the treaty, appears to have been suspended by the formidable irruption of Radagaisus; and the neutrality of the Gothic king may perhaps be compared to the indifference of Cæsar, who, in the conspiracy of Catiline, refused either to assist or to oppose the enemy of the republic. After the defeat of the Vandals, Stilicho resumed his pretensions to the provinces of the East; appointed civil magistrates for the administration of justice, and of the finances; and declared his 102 -Comitatur euntem Pallor et atra fames, et saucia lividus ora Luctus, et inferni stridentes agmine morbi. Claudian in vi. Cons. Hon. 321, &c. 103 These dark transactions are investigated by the Count de Buat (Hist. des Peuples de l'Europe, tom. vii. c. iii.-viii. p. 69-206), whose laborious accuracy may sometimes fatigue a superficial reader. |