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CHAP. subject, not to one wind or current, but to hundreds of conflicting impulses, conquest, religion, migration, epidemy, passing over countries and destroying their very identity. Man and the soil were not wedded together. There were traditions of races and records of lands, no combined history of both.

An empire was the work of force, and of assimilation. by force. Starting from a centre, conquest extended its power and influence in a circle, and carved a wide. dominion which held together as long as the original force which framed it endured. A nation is not born in such wise. Conquest alone will not produce it. Nor will any amount of violence or terror knit those durable ligaments which grow into the muscle of a nation.

Regions which can answer to that name must come together by a kind of cohesion, adhering by a law of their own nature, not from any bidding of man. The swords of Cyrus and of Alexander founded the empires of those potentates; but it was not Charles the Seventh, or Richelieu, or Louis the Fourteenth, who made France, produced its nationality, and achieved its extent. The provinces between the Alps and the ocean came together, as salts do by crystallisation, at no word of command, but as soon as a fitting temperature and a favourable state of the elements to be combined rendered their amalgamation feasible.

There is no country which more completely embodies the idea of a nation than France. No other presents a whole so compact, a people so sympathetic, a power and influence so great, when rightly wielded. Whilst so homogeneous is the race, and so naturally defined its frontier, that one is induced to contemplate France as a state existing from the earliest time, and as a monarchy which at once succeeded to the Roman province of Gaul. But the truth is, that France is the youngest born, or the latest formed, of the great western nations. Whilst England and Germany each reached,

'in the dark ages, their territorial development, France, split into heritages, was obliged to recommence its national formation, and with tedious difficulty pursue it through several generations.

Before this was commenced by the family of the Capets in the tenth century, two great efforts were made to found, by the blending of barbarian elements with Roman traditions, an empire in Gaul. The first of these was made towards the close of the fifth century, when the Teutonic tribes, hitherto in the military pay of Rome, advanced to conquer and divide its provinces. They did this in divers fashions. The Burgundians and the Goths, on the Sâone and the Garonne, first imposed themselves as guests, to live at free quarters on the people,—a forced hospitality, afterwards converted into a formal division of the land. The Franks adopted a different arrangement. They overran a region, deposed its ruler, plundered houses and churches, and imposing a tribute, returned to their old camp or residence, where the army kept together around their leader or king. They styled themselves, not his officers or soldiers, but his companions and fellow warriors. They participated in all political resolves, exercised judicial authority in popular assemblies, and gave the king but a larger share of booty and of tribute. They thus preserved their Teutonic attributes, traditions, and laws, whilst Goths and Burgundians, scattering over the land, and adopting Roman magistracies, laws, and organisation, became soon assimilated to the conquered.

One immediate result of this was the superiority of the more military tribe to either Burgundian or Goth, and the consequent formation of a Frankish empire in Gaul.

The first Frank chief who showed enlarged ambition, not in the service, but in direct rivalry of Rome, was Clodovig, or Clovis. The tomb of his father, Childeric, containing the symbols of royalty, was discovered two

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CHAP. centuries ago at Tournay. From this town, Clovis, towards the end of the fifth century, marched to combat Ægidius, who with his seat of government at Soissons, pretended to wield the authority of Rome over central Gaul. Clovis annihilated in battle this last vestige of the Empire, and assumed the dignity and power of him whom he had overthrown. St. Remi, then Archbishop of Rheims, and chief prelate of the region, congratulated the conqueror on the occasion, and offered him the patronage or adhesion of the Church.

A well-known anecdote records the early gratitude of Clovis, and at the same time bears witness to the independent freedom of his followers. A golden vase had been taken from the church of Rheims. The prelate claimed it of Clovis, who bade him await the distribution of the spoil at Soissons. There the king asked that the vase should be given to him over and above his lot. To this demand a rude Frank demurred, declaring the monarch should have but his share; and he struck the vase with his axe, to defeat the intention of restoring it to the Church. Clovis did not deem it prudent to resent this insult at the moment, but waited for another opportunity, when, finding the soldier's arms in a faulty state, he, apparently for this, but reminding him of the adventure of the vase, struck him to the ground.

The clergy procured Clovis's marriage with Clotilda, a princess of the Burgundian royal family, who laboured to convert her still pagan husband to Christianity. This, it is said, she did not accomplish until, in a hardcontested battle with the German Franks, at Tolbiac, near Cologne, he followed the example of Constantine, and invoked the God of the Christians. The victory which ensued, and which, eked out by several murders, rendered Clovis monarch of the Frank race, was followed by his solemn conversion, St. Remi, as he poured on the barbarian's neck the sacred oil, exclaim

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ing, "Humble thyself, fierce Sicamber; adore what thou CHAP. didst burn, and burn that which thou hast adored." Master of the entire north, Clovis marched successively to the reduction of the Burgundians and the Goths. Both were Arians, whilst the orthodox belief was held by the clergy throughout the south. Clovis overcame the Burgundians on the Ouche, near Dijon, and defeated the Goths at the battle of Vouglé, near Poitiers, the country north of the Garonne, and around it, submitting to him.

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A rival to Clovis existed in Theodoric, the great Gothic monarch of Italy, who laboured to confederate the ultra-Rhenish Germans against him, as well as to support the Visigoths. He sent on one occasion a warhorse to the monarch of Thuringia, whilst to Clovis he made a present of a skilful harper, as if he wished to soothe his savage nature. Theodoric afterwards applied a more efficient check to the ambition of the Frank, by defeating his army engaged in the siege of Arles; thus preserving at least the coast of the Mediterranean, and keeping communications open between the Goths. in Spain and those in Italy. In his conquest of the south, Clovis made the same use of the Archbishop of Tours which in the north he had made of the prelate of Rheims; and the clergy opened to him the gates of every town. All that the Franks seemed to ask of the region, independent of immediate plunder, was tribute; and this, no doubt, the clergy willingly paid to an absent chief who maintained their authority. Clovis's conquests south of the Loire did not amount to more than this, even sanctioned as they appeared to be by the ensigns of the consular dignity, which were despatched to him by the Emperor Anastasius, and with which he caused himself to be invested at Tours. His hold of Burgundy was still more slight than his supremacy over Aquitaine,-princes of the old

CHAP. Burgundian family surviving and reigning, at times paying, at times refusing, tribute to the King of France.

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Clovis died in 511, five years after his victory of Vouglé. Advanced as were his ideas of empire, he could not bequeath it to any one son; so identified as yet was sovereignty with property, and no political reasons interfering to prevent its division. His four sons had their respective capitals as follows: at Metz, Soissons, Paris, and Orleans. All followed the policy of their sire, and employed their leaders and followers in expeditions towards the south, either against Burgundians or Goths, and always with the aim more of plunder and tribute than of conquest to be followed by occupation. Theuderich, or Thierry, the more eastern of the monarchs, extended his empire beyond the Rhine, reduced Thuringia, and then pushed his conquests in the direction of Burgundy and Auvergne. Theuderich, of the Frank kings, was he who had the largest following and most formidable armies; and to him, accordingly, Goth and Roman addressed themselves for aid. Theodoric was no more. The Greek emperor had undertaken to reconquer Italy. Theuderic first, and then his son Theudebert, were besought to lead armies across the Alps. The latter did so; and the result made him so conscious of military superiority, that he proposed marching by land to Constantinople, and establishing there the ascendancy of his race. He went no further than the Venetian territory, where sickness cut short his ambitious march. His son Theudebald succeeded, during whose youth two dukes of the German Franks led large armies into Italy, to the encounter of Narses. The greater portion perished, as did the royal race of Theuderic. And towards the middle of the century, Clothaire became monarch of the Frank race from the borders of Brittany to the banks of the German Saale. From Clovis to Clothaire the Franks maintained their old habits as soldiers, and their ambition as plunderers,

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