By Rev. W. G. WILLIAMS, A.M.

II.

From the time of Julius CÆsar to the fall of the Roman Empire, a period of more than four hundred years, the greater part of the Germans were subject to Roman rule, a rule maintained only by military force. But the struggle against Rome never entirely ceased—and as Roman power gradually declined the Germans seized every opportunity to recover their liberty and in their turn became conquerors. To trace the succession of their vicissitudes during this period would be to give the narrative of a bold, vigorous, war-like people in their rude barbaric condition. We should discover even in those early times those race characteristics of strength, bravery and persistence which became so marked in later centuries; we should recognize in Hermann, the first German leader, the prophecy of the Great Charles who steps upon the scene nearly eight centuries later.

HERMANN, THE FIRST LEADER.

He it was (Hermann Arminius) who, with a power to organize equal to that of William of Orange, bound the German tribes in a secret confederacy, whose object it was to resist and repel the Roman armies. While still himself serving as an officer in the Roman army, he managed to rally the confederated Germans and to attack Varus’s army of forty thousand men—the best Roman legions—as they were marching through the Teutoburger Forest, where, aided by violent storms, the Germans threw the Romans into panic and the fight was changed to a slaughter. When the news of the great German victory reached Rome the aged Augustus trembled with fear; he let his hair and beard grow for months as a sign of trouble, and was often heard to exclaim: “O, Varus, Varus, give me back my legions.” Though Rome, under the able leadership of Germanicus, soon after defeated the Germans, yet she had been taught that the Germans possessed a spirit and a power sufficient to make her tremble for her future supremacy.

Hermann seems to have devoted himself to the creation of a permanent union of the tribes he had commanded. We may guess, but can not assert, that his object was to establish a national organization like that of Rome, and in doing this he must have come into conflict with laws and customs which were considered sacred by the people. But his remaining days were too few for even the beginning of a task which included such an advance in the civilization of the race. We only know that he was waylaid and assassinated by members of his own family in the year 21. He was then 37 years old and had been for thirteen years the leader of his people.[A]

He was undoubtedly the liberator of Germany, having dared to grapple with the Roman power, not in its beginnings, like other kings and commanders, but in the maturity of its strength. He was not always victorious in battle, but in war he was never subdued. He still lives in the songs of the barbarians, unknown to the annals of the Greeks, who only admire that which belongs to themselves—nor celebrated as he deserves by the Romans, who, in praising the olden times, neglect the events of the later years.[B]

GERMAN NATIONALITIES AT THE CLOSE OF THE THIRD CENTURY.

When we meet the Germans at the close of the third century we are surprised to find that the tribal names which they bore in the time of Hermann have nearly all disappeared, and new names of wider significance have taken their places. Instead of thirty to forty petty tribes, they are now consolidated into four chief nationalities with two or three inferior, but independent branches. Their geographical situation is no longer the same, migrations have taken place, large tracts of territory have changed hands, and many leading families have been overthrown and new ones arisen. Nothing but the constant clash of arms could have wrought such change. As each of these new nationalities plays a prominent part in the following centuries, a short description of them is given:

1. The Alemanni.—The name of this division (Alle Mannen, signifying “all men”) shows that it was composed of fragments of many tribes. The Alemanni first made their appearance along the Main, and gradually pushed southward over the Tithe lands, where the military veterans of Rome had settled, until they occupied the greater part of southwestern Germany, and eastern Switzerland to the Alps. Their descendants occupy the same territory to this day.

2. The Franks.—It is not known whence this name is derived, nor what is its meaning. The Franks are believed to have been formed out of the Sicambrians in Westphalia, a portion of the Chatti and the Batavi in Holland, together with other tribes. We first hear of them on the Lower Rhine, but they soon extended their territory over a great part of Belgium and Westphalia. Their chiefs were already called kings, and their authority was hereditary.

3. The Saxons.—This was one of the small original tribes settled in Holstein. The name “Saxon” is derived from their peculiar weapon, a short sword, called sahs. We find them occupying at the close of the third century nearly all the territory between the Harz Mountains and the North Sea, from the Elbe westward to the Rhine. There appears to have been a natural enmity—no doubt bequeathed from the earlier tribes out of which both grew—between them and the Franks.

4. The Goths.—Their traditions state that they were settled in Sweden before they were found by the Greek navigators on the southern shore of the Baltic in 330 B. C. It is probable that only a portion of the tribe navigated, and that the present Scandinavian race is descended from the remainder. They came in contact with the Romans beyond the mouth of the Danube about the beginning of the third century.[C]

INFLUENCE OF THE ROMANS ON THE GERMANS.

The proximity of the Romans on the Rhine, the Danube, and the Neckar, had by degrees effected alterations in the manners of the Germans. They had become acquainted with many new things, both good and bad. By means of the former they became acquainted with money, and even luxuries. The Romans had planted the vine on the Rhine, and constructed roads, cities, manufactories, theaters, fortresses, temples, and altars. Roman merchants brought their wares to Germany, and fetched thence amber, feathers, furs, slaves, and the very hair of the Germans; for it became the fashion to wear light flaxen wigs, instead of natural hair. Of the cities which the Romans built there are many yet remaining, as Salzburg, Ratisbonne, Augsburg, Basle, Strasburg, Baden, Spires, Worms, Metz, Treves, Cologne, Bonn, etc. But in the interior of Germany, neither the Romans nor their habits and manners had found friends, nor were cities built there according to the Roman style.[D]

INVASION OF THE HUNS—ATTILA.

The fourth century of our era and the first half of the fifth were characterized by the spirit of migration among all the peoples beyond the Rhine. Representatives of every German village and district went to Rome, and each brought back stories of the wealth and luxury that existed there. They had the keen perception and the strength to recognize the increasing weakness of the government, and also to despise the enervation and corruption of its citizens. The German was ambitious and restless as daily he regarded Rome more and more as his prey. The Romans themselves saw the danger of the Empire and lived in apprehension of overwhelming incursions long before they came. In the latter part of the fourth century the great impulse was given to the people of northern and eastern Europe by successive invasions from Asia; and a vast and general movement began among them which resulted in the disintegration of the Roman Empire, and the transfer of the principal arena of history from the shores of the Mediterranean Sea to the countries in which the great powers of modern Europe afterward grew up. The first impulse to this series of events was given by disturbances and migrations in central Asia, of whose cause hardly anything is known. Long before the Christian era there was a powerful race of Huns in northeastern Asia who became so dangerous to the Chinese that the great wall of China was built as a defense against them (finished B. C. 244).[E]

These Huns, a Mongol race, had migrated from the center of Asia westward three-quarters of a century previously (A. D. 375), carrying death and devastation on their path. They had nothing in common with the peoples of the West, either in facial features or habits of life. Contemporary historians describe them as surpassing by their savagery all that can be imagined. They were of low stature, with broad shoulders, thick-set limbs, flat noses, high cheek-bones, small eyes deeply sunk in the sockets, and yellow complexion. Ammianus Marcellinus compares them, in their monstrous ugliness, to beasts walking on two legs, or the grinning heads clumsily carved on the posts of bridges. They had no beard, because from infancy their faces were hideously scarred by being slashed all over, in order to hinder its growth. Accustomed to lead a wandering life in their native country, these wild hordes traversed the Steppes, or boundless plains which lie between Russia and China, in huge chariots, or on small hardy horses, changing their stations as often as fresh pasture was required for their cattle. Except constrained by necessity, they never entered any kind of house, holding them in horror as so many tombs. They were accustomed from infancy to endure cold, hunger, and thirst. As the great boots they wore deprived them of all facility in marching, they never fought on foot; but the skill with which they managed their horses and threw the javelin, made them more formidable to the Germans than even the disciplined, but less ferocious, legions of Rome.

This was the rude race which, bursting into Europe in the second half of the fourth century, shook the whole barbarian world to its center, and precipitated it upon the Roman Empire. The Goths fled before them, when they passed the Danube, the Vandals when they crossed the Rhine. After a halt of half a century in the center of Europe, the Huns put themselves again in motion.

Attila, the king of this people, constrained all the tribes wandering between the Rhine and the Oural to follow him. For some time he hesitated upon which of the two empires he should carry the wrath of heaven. Deciding upon the West, he passed the Rhine, the Moselle, and the Seine, and marched upon Orleans. The populations fled before him in indescribable terror, for the Scourge of God, as he was called, left not one stone upon another wheresoever he passed. Metz and twenty other cities had been destroyed. Troyes alone had been saved by its bishop, Saint Loup. He wished to seize upon Orleans, the key of the southern provinces; and his innumerable army surrounded the city. Its bishop, St. Aignan, sustained the courage of the inhabitants by promising them a powerful succor. Ætius, in fact, arrived with all the barbarian nations encamped in Gaul, at the expense of which the new invasion was made. Attila for the first time fell back; but in order to choose a battle-field favorable for his cavalry, he halted in the Catalaunian plains near MÉry-sur-Seine. There the terrible shock of battle took place. In the first onset the Franks, who formed the vanguard of Ætius, fought with such animosity that 15,000 Huns strewed the plain. But next day, when the great masses on both sides encountered, the bodies of 165,000 combatants were left on that field of carnage. Attila was conquered. The allies, however, not daring to drive the wild Huns to despair, suffered Attila to retreat into Germany (451). In the year following he made amends for his defeat by an invasion of northern Italy, ravaging Aquileia, Milan, and other cities in a frightful manner, but died of an apoplectic stroke (453), soon after his return, and his empire fell with him, but not the terrible remembrance of his name and of his cruelties. The Visigoths, whose king had perished in the fight, and the Franks of Meroveus, had had, with Ætius, the chief honor of that memorable day in the Catalaunian plains. For it had become a question whether Europe should be German or Mongolian, whether the fierce Huns or the Germans should found an empire on the ruins of that which was then crumbling.[F]

FALL OF THE WESTERN EMPIRE—MANNERS AND MORALS OF THE GERMANS IN THIS AGE.

The Western Empire had now but a short time to live. The dastardly emperor Valentinian III., suspicious of the independent position of Ætius, recalled the conqueror of Attila from Gaul, and slew him with his own hand (A. D. 454). He was himself murdered soon after, and his widow, Eudoxia, though forced to marry the assassin, determined to avenge her husband. She invited the Vandals, for this purpose, from Africa across the sea to Rome. This German tribe, still ruled by the aged Genseric, was the only one which possessed a fleet; and by this means the Vandals had already made themselves masters of the great islands of the Mediterranean, of Sicily, Sardinia, and Corsica. The “sea-king” eagerly obeyed the summons (A. D. 455), and now “golden Rome” was given up for fourteen days to his soldiers, and was sacked with such horrors that the name of Vandal has ever since been a proverb for barbarity and destruction. Yet the mediation of Leo the Great, then Bishop of Rome, saved the city from utter ruin. From this time onward the emperors, who followed one another in quick succession, were mere tools of the German generals, and symbols of power before the common people; for the whole imperial army now consisted of the remnants of various German nations, who had sought service for pay. These too, at last, like their kindred in the provinces, demanded lands in Italy, and would have no less than one-third of the soil. When this was refused, Odoacer, at the head of his soldiers—Heruli, Sciri, Turcilingi, and Rugii, who forced their way thither from the Danube—put an end to the very name of the Roman Empire, stripping the boy Romulus Augustulus, the last emperor, of the purple, and ruling alone in Italy, as German general and king. Thus the Western Empire fell by German hands, after they had already wrested from it all its provinces, Africa, Spain, Gaul and Britain. This occurred in the year 476. Ancient history ends with this event; but in the history of the Germans it is merely an episode.

At the time of the great migrations, the German tribes were barbarians, in that they were destitute alike of humanity toward enemies and inferiors, and of scientific culture. Neither the pursuit of learning nor the practice of mercy to the vanquished could seem to them other than unmanly weakness. Their ferocity spread misery and ruin through the whole arena of history, and made the fifth and sixth centuries of our era the crowning epoch in the annals of human suffering; while their active, passionate contempt for learning destroyed the existing monuments of intelligence and habits of inquiry and thought, almost as completely as they swept away the wealth, prosperity, and social organization of the Roman world. Their ablest kings despised clerical accomplishments. Even Theodoric the Great could not write, and his signature was made by a black smear over a form or mould in which his name was cut. Nevertheless these nations were not what we mean by savages. Their originally beautiful and resonant language was already cultivated in poetical forms, in heroic songs. There was intercourse and trade among the several nations. Minstrels, especially, passed from one royal court to another, and the same song which was sung to Theodoric in Ravenna could be heard and understood by the Vandals in Carthage, by Clovis in Paris, and by the Thuringians in their fastnesses. A common language was a strong bond of union among these nations. Messengers, embassies, and letters were sent to and fro between their courts; gifts were exchanged, and marriages and alliances entered into. Thus the nations were informed concerning one another, and recognized their mutual relationship. It was this international intercourse that gave rise to the heroic minstrelsy—a faithful relation of the great deeds of German heroes during the migrations; but the minstrel boldly transforms the order of events, and brings together things which in reality took place at intervals of whole generations. Thus they sing of Hermanric, of Theodoric the Great (Dietrich the Strong, of Berne), and of his faithful knight Hildebrand; then of the fall of the Burgundian kings, of the far-ruling Attila, and of Sigurd, or Siegfried, who was originally a Northern god of spring, but here appears as a youthful hero, faithful and child-like, simple and unsuspicious, yet the mightiest of all—the complete image of the German character.

These wild times of warfare and wandering could not, of course, favorably affect morals and character. They did much to root out of the minds and lives of the people their ancient heathen faith and practices. Their old gods were associated with places, scenes, features of the country and the climate; and, with these out of sight, the gods themselves were easily forgotten. Moreover, the local deities of other places and nations were brought into notice. The people’s religious habits were broken up, their minds confused, and thus they were better prepared than before to embrace the new and universal doctrines of Christianity. But the wanderings had a bad effect on morality in all forms. The upright German was still distinguished by his self-respect from the false, faithless, and cowardly “Welshman,” whose nature had become deformed through years of servitude. But Germans, too, were now often guilty of faithlessness and cruelty; and some tribes grew effeminate and corrupt, especially the Vandals in luxurious Africa. They imitated the style of the conquered in dress, arms, and manner of life; and some adopted their language also. For instance, even Theodoric the Great corresponded in Latin with foreign monarchs; and as early as the sixth and seventh centuries, the Germans recorded their own laws in Latin, the West Goths and Burgundians introducing the practice, which was followed by the Franks, Alemanni, Bavarians, and Langobards. These laws, and the prohibitions they contain, are the best sources of information upon the manners of the time, and especially upon the condition of the lower orders, the peasants, and the slaves. The most frequent cases provided are of bodily injuries, murder, wounds, and mutilations, showing that the warlike disposition had degenerated into cruelty and coarseness. For all these injuries, the weregeld, or ransom, was still a satisfaction. The life of a nobleman, that of a freeman, of a slave, and the members of the body—the eye, ear, nose, and hand—were assessed each at a fixed money valuation, to be paid by the aggressor, if he would not expose himself to the vengeance of the wronged man or his family. But crimes committed by peasants and slaves were punished by death, sometimes at the stake, where freemen might escape by paying a fine. The oaths of parties and witnesses were heard; and they were sustained by the oaths of others, their friends, relations, or partisans, who swore that they were to be believed. If an accused party swore that he was innocent, it was only necessary for him to obtain a sufficient number of compurgators, or jurors, of his own rank to swear that they believed him, in order to secure acquittal. But the number required was much larger for men of low rank than for the nobles; and the freedmen and slaves had no rights of the kind, but were tortured at will to compel them to confess or testify. The slaves were often tried by an ordeal, and were held guilty of any accusation if they could not put their hands into boiling water without harm. For freemen, if no other evidence were accessible, a trial by battle was adopted, as an appeal to God’s judgment. The heathen tribes in Germany proper—the Frisi, Saxons, Thuringians, and Alemanni—lived on in their old ways; yet they too failed to maintain the spotless character assigned them by Tacitus. It was a time of general ferment. The new elements of civilization had brought with them new vices, and the simplicity of earlier days could not survive.[G]

[To be continued.]

Right well I know that improvement is a duty, and as we see man strives ever after a higher point, at least he seeks some novelty. But beware! for with these feelings Nature has given us also a desire to continue in the old ways, and to take pleasure in that to which we have been accustomed. Every condition of man is good which is natural and in accordance with reason. Man’s desires are boundless, but his wants are few. For his days are short, and his fate bounded by a narrow span. I find no fault with the man who, ever active and restless, crosses every sea and braves the rude extremes of every clime, daring and diligent in pursuit of gain, rejoicing his heart and house by wealth.—Goethe.