The pastoral ancestors of the present European race were fierce, cruel, and vindictive barbarians; yet, spite of these forbidding features of their character, we can as distinctly trace to them the sources of all the more generous.and sorer virtues, that give happiness to their descendants, as we can the free and independent spirit that bestows on them liberty and security.Such nations have, therefore, naturally a much higher effective desire of accumulation than nations of mere hunters.The strength of this principle, in fact, seems with them in general, so great, as to incline them to form instruments requiring a much superior degree of providence and self-denial, to that indicated by the breeding of cattle.They are 'prevented from doing so, by their wandering life, and by the wars in which they are necessarily constantly engaged.When, for instance, they are settled in a country suited to agriculture, and to which the knowledge of the art has penetrated, they have a tendency to become agriculturists; that is, to change the land, from which they draw their subsistence, from an instrument yielding a large return, in proportion to the labor bestowed on it, to one yielding a still larger return, though requiring proportionally more labor and time, and being, therefore, of a more slowly returning order.
But such a change, though increasing the whole population of the state, leaves fewer in it who can be spared from labor, and, consequently, fewer soldiers.In pastoral nations, almost all the men are warriors; in agricultural, only a few can be withdrawn from the labors of the field.The latter are therefore, naturally inferior to the former in military prowess, and are consequently subject to be conquered and destroyed by them.Such seems to have been the fate impending over Gaul, from the side of Germany, when the appearance of Caesar gave another turn to affairs.The Gauls, we learn from him, though then inferior, had once been superior, in military renown, to the Germans.It appears likely, that the revolution had been occasioned, by their becoming an agricultural people, which they, in a great measure, were, in his time.The Germans, again, preserved themselves from the fatal effects of such a change, by the singular national custom, or constitution, that obliged them all, every year, to exchange the lands they respectively occupied.By this constant transfer of instruments, and of the materials of which they might be formed, they took away every inducement to work them up into orders of slow return, and confined the members of the community to the pastoral condition, which experience had doubtless instructed them, was most favorable to military prowess.
In the times of the Caesars, Europe was thus divided, by an irregular line running east and west, into two great parts, the one occupied by the barbarians, the other by the Empire.To the northward of this line, were many rude nations, strong in the mental and corporeal energies of the individuals composing them, and in the willingness of each to devote his abilities to objects conducive to the good of all, but whose strength was largely expended in furious intestine wars.These contests, destructive as they were, did not, however, occasion any progressive diminution of the vigor of the whole body; it was only the surplus powers of the parts that thus ran to waste.The strength of the people of the empire was, on the contrary, derived, from their union in one great body, and the power thence resulting of the energies of the whole being directed to any particular point.But this union, as it had been produced by compulsion, augured weakness in the several parts, and was the cause of weakness.What each contributed to the common good was not of will, but from necessity, and, in the strife thus arising, every man learned to consider his own good as separate from that of all others.Hence a continually increasing separation of interests, and consequent continual decrease of power and general decline.The gradually increasing weakness of the empire, while the strength of the nations to the northward, if not augmenting, remained at least unimpaired, rendered the arrival of a period when the former should be Overpowered by the latter inevitable.These barbarians believed, that the riches of the earth belonged, of right, to the best; according to their creed, the bravest.Their most powerful and warlike tribes, therefore, possessing themselves of the more fertile regions, those bordering on the line dividing them from the empire, pressed violently against it, and, opposed by a force continually diminishing, at length burst through it.
Three great events, each leading on this other, would seem to have been the necessary consequence of this revolution.Of these, the first was the occupation of the whole continent by the barbarians, and the driving back the still onward-urging host of their brethren; the adoption by them of the arts which had previously flourished in the empire, and their becoming an agricultural people, was the second; and their running the chance of being in turn overpowered by the northern warriors, the third.Until the arrival of the first period, when, the continent having been completely overrun and ravaged by the barbarian multitude, had assumed a form closely approximating to that of the territories they had formerly occupied, there could be no approach to rest, but the tide must still advance.When the receptacle vacant for its reception was once completely filled, the mighty mass had to recoil on itself.The battle of Chalons fixes this period.
