coming more promotive of their improvement, especially in war, and in all the mental qualities which were connected with it, and which could be excited by a struggle with an enemy so renowned and so successful. War became their necessity, as well as the theatre of their glory; and from the reign of Tiberius until the fall of the Roman empire under their swords, the German nations beyond the Rhine on the west, and beyond the Danube on the east, were, under various denominations, of Marcomanni, Alemanni, Franks, Saxons, Burgundians, Lombards, and Goths, every year training and educating themselves in those military habits, laws, and exercises, and in the corresponding policy and institutions, which new events and experience discovered to be most effective for their own welfare and for the annoyance of their enemy. They were in every generation becoming more and more the Spartans of modern Europe. Their martial systems increased progressively in wisdom and vigour. The whole frame of their society was made subservient to their warlike objects; and it became impossible for Rome, in the degeneracy of its confined civilisation, to withstand the unremitted onsets of a people daily attaining superiority in force of mind, loftiness of spirit, ardent feeling, and moral fortitude and probity, as well as in technical discipline and manual activity. CHAP. III. the Ro mans to the Rhine. The recall of Germanicus ended the progress of the A. c. 17. Romans in the north of Germany. They had many Repulse of conflicts and some successes; but they never reached the Elbe again. They retreated gradually to the south, though not with perpetual retrogression. Sometimes the interior tribes of the country were af flicted by their victorious invasions, and as often were consoled by their expulsion. At one period Hadrian made a rampart for sixty leagues, from Neustadt on the Danube to Wimpfen on the Neckar, which lasted till Aurelian the natives then pulled it down. Probus replaced it with stone; but it soon became an ineffective barrier. At length, after various conflicts, the Rhine near the modern Leyden, separated the Romans and their allies from the free nations of the north.20 It was not, indeed, an impassable boundary, but the Romans generally kept within it: and thus the nations beyond, and more especially the Saxons, who were among the most remote, had full leisure to increase their population, and to improve the propitious circumstances which attended their peculiar situation. The jealousy of Tiberius having stopped Germanicus from annihilating Arminius, and from destroying the nations beyond the Weser sufficiently for the extension of the Roman empire to the Elbe, all the German tribes from the Rhine to the Baltic were left to act, fight, and improve, with the new arts and knowledge which they had learnt from the Romans, and which they afterwards more fully imbibed from their future intercourse with the empire. Their continuation in this independent state, was favoured by the fall of Arminius. His talents and ambition might have subdued the north-western coast of Germany into a single dominion, but he being killed, and his Cherusci weakened, no similar hero, and no great kingdom, which such a character usually founds, arose in those parts. Hence every state from the Rhine to the Elbe, and amongst these the Saxons, grew up in the free exercise of its energies and means of power. Warlike activity was necessarily their predominating principle, not only in order to repel the Romans, but also to protect themselves 20 Bebelius too eagerly denies that any part of Germany beyond the Rhine was conquered, though the emperors arrogated the surname Germanicus. Orat. vet. Ger. 1 Schard. 257. Mascou fairly states the fact, i. p. 131. - The Tabula Peuting. (on which some excellent remarks of M. Freret are in Mem. vii. p. 292.) confirms this boundary. from each other. It was indeed an essential individual quality. The life of each depended on his martial efficiency; for their wars, whether public or private, were always those of desolation and death. The Romans continued to be the military educators of the population in these parts, without intending an effect so dangerous to their own domination. But their new principle or necessity, of forming part of their armies of German troops, led to this momentous result. They frequently felt its evil without changing their system. So early as the year 28, the Frisii, the neighbours of the Saxons, and some of whose nobles had served in the Roman armies, revolted, and for a long time remained 21 independent. Fifteen years afterwards, Batavi were serving in the Roman armies in Britain.22 From the Batavian marshes, in A.D. 47, Gennascus became the leader of the Chauci, and began that system of operations which the Saxons in an after age so eagerly pursued. He plundered Gaul with light ships. He became strong enough to invade lower Germany.23 Yet in A.D. 69, the Emperor Vitellius became so fond of his German auxiliaries, as to take them to Rome, in their dresses of skins and long spears, and to consult their superstitions.24 After him Civilis essayed and demonstrated the military efficiency which the tribes of these regions had acquired from Roman tuition. He had served among the Batavian cavalry that was employed in Britain, and he visited Rome. He found the sailors in the Roman fleet on the Rhine to be chiefly Batavi. With talents which Tacitus compares with those of Hannibal and Sertorius, he roused his countrymen to arms against the Romans. The whole Batavian nation, Bructeri, Tencteri, and their neighbours, al 21 Tacit. Ann. lib. iv. 22 Dio Cass. lib. lx. 24 Tacit. Hist. lib. ii. Suet. in Vit. CHAP. IIL BOOK II. lied with him. He defeated the imperial armies, and was joined by the auxiliary forces whom the Romans had trained. The Gauls submitted to him. One division of his navy sunk or took the Roman fleet; and he equipped another to intercept their supplies from Gaul. Defeated at one time, he maintained a doubtful battle at another, and at last obtained a creditable peace; and the Romans again took Batavians into their service in Britain.25 These events deserve our contemplation, because they show that great improvements flowed from the. Romans, towards the regions where our Saxon ancestors were stationed, and thus assisted to educate them to a fitness for the great destination to which they were finally impelled. From the time of Civilis to the beginning of the third century, the emperors left the nations beyond the Rhine to the natural course of their own means of continuing the progress which the preceding events had excited. In Caracalla's reign the tribes that dwelt on the Elbe near the North Sea, a position that includes the Saxons, felt so highly their own importance, as to send an embassy to Rome offering peace, but requiring money for observing it. The emperor gave the demanded payment; and so greatly favoured them, as to form a German body-guard, like Augustus, and to wear himself a German dress.26 But the savage Maximin soon changed this flattering scene. After the assassination of Alexander 235-240. Severus, the ferocious Thracian assumed the contaminated purple, and announced his accession to Rise of the A.D. 25 Tacit. Hist. lib. iii. iv. Civilis had maintained a personal friendship with Vespasian. "Cum privatus esset amici vocabamur." Lib. v. c. 26. Mascou, to his summary of the actions of Civilis, adds that his memory continued dear to the Hollanders that in the Great Hall of the States General there were twelve pictures of his exploits, by Otto Veenius; and that the Dutch were fond of comparing him with their William, Prince of Orange, "the fountain of the liberties of Holland." Vol. i. p. 159. 26 Herodian, lib. iv. c. 7. the north of Germany in a series of victorious slaugh- " 27 For the space of This destructive invasion, like many other evils, generated, by the greatness of the necessity, a proportionate benefit. By a conjecture more probable in itself, and more consistent with contemporaneous facts, than any other which has been mentioned, a modern writer has very happily ascribed to it the formation of that important confederation which, under the name of Francs, withstood the Roman arms, and preserved the liberties of Germany.28 CHAP. III. origin. It is the prevailing opinion of the learned, that Their true about the year 240 a new confederation was formed, under the name of Francs, by the old inhabitants of the Lower Rhine and Weser.29 As the incursion of Maximin took place about the year 235, the additional supposition of Spener is very happy, that this con 27 Jul. Capitol. Maxim. c. 12. Herodian, lib. vii. p. 146. ed. Steph. The history of Maximin is related by Mr. Gibbon with elegance and accuracy, i. p. 173— 190. 4to. 28 Spener in his Notit. Germ. lib. iv. p. 338. "Non valde vereor adfirmare, Maximini crudelem in Germaniam incursionem fœdus inferioris Rheni accolis Germanis suasisse." 20 Gibbon, 1. p. 259.-Foncemagne, Mem. Ac. xv. p. 268., and Freret, Hist. Ac. Insc. ix. p. 88., and Mem. xxxiii. p. 134., unite in the opinion. — Mascou, who dislikes it, p. 196., has evidently not weighed all the circumstances. |