SECTION I.

 

Two great revolutions have happened in the political state, and in the manners of the European nations. The first was occasioned by the progress of the Roman power; the second by the subversion of it. When the spirit of conquest led the armies of Rome beyond the Alps, they found all the countries which they invaded, inhabited by people whom they denominated barbarians, but who were nevertheless brave and independent These defended their ancient possessions with obstinate valor. It was by the superiority of their discipline, rather than that of their courage, that the Romans gained any advantage over them. A single battle did not, as among the effeminate inhabitants of Asia, decide the fate of a state. The vanquished people resumed their arms with fresh spirit, and their undisciplined valor, animated by the love of liberty, supplied the want of conduct as well as of union. During those long and fierce struggles for dominion or independence, the countries of Europe were successively laid waste, a great part of their inhabitants perished in the field, many were carried into slavery, and a feeble remnant, incapable of further resistance, submitted to the Roman power.

The Romans having thus desolated Europe, set themselves to civilize it. The form of government which they established in the conquered provinces, though severe, was regular, and preserved public tranquility. As a consolation for the loss of liberty, they communicated their arts, sciences, language, and manners, to their new subjects. Europe began to breathe, and to recover strength after the calamities which it had undergone; agriculture was encouraged; population increased; the ruined cities were rebuilt; new towns were founded; an appearance of prosperity succeeded, and repaired, in some degree, the havoc of war.

This state, however, was far from being happy or favorable to the improvement of the human mind. The vanquished nations were disarmed by their conquerors, and overawed by soldiers kept in pay to restrain them. They were given up as a prey to rapacious governors, who plundered them with impunity; and were drained of their wealth by exorbitant taxes, levied with so little attention to the situation of the provinces, that the impositions were often in proportion to their inability to support them. They were deprived of their most enterprising citizens, who resorted to a distant capital in quest of preferment, or of riches; and were accustomed in all their actions  to look up to a superior, and tamely to receive his commands. Under so many depressing circumstances, it was hardly possible that they could retain vigour or generosity of mind. The martial and independent spirit, which had distinguished their ancestors, became, in a great measure, extinct among all the people subjected to the Roman yoke; they lost not only the habit, but even the capacity of deciding for themselves, or of acting from the impulse of their own minds; and the dominions of the Romans, like that of all great empires, degraded and debased the human species.

A society in such a state could not subsist long. There were defects in the Roman government, even in its most perfect form, which threatened its dissolution. Time ripened these original seeds of corruption, and gave birth to many new disorders. A constitution, unsound and worn out, must have fallen into pieces of itself, without any external shock. The violent irruption of the Goths, Vandals, Huns, and other barbarians, hastened this event, and precipitated the downfall of the empire. New nations seemed to arise and to rush from unknown regions, in order to take vengeance on the Romans for the calamities which they had inflicted on mankind. These fierce tribes either inhabited the various provinces in Germany which had never been subdued by the Romans, or were scattered over those vast countries in the north of Europe, and north-west of Asia, which are now occupied by the Danes, the Swedes, the Poles, the subjects of the Russian empire, and the Tartars. Their condition and transactions, previous to their invasion of the empire, are but little known. Almost all our information with respect to these is derived from the Romans; and as they did not penetrate far into countries, which were at that time uncultivated and uninviting, the accounts of their original state given by the Roman historians are extremely imperfect. The rude inhabitants themselves, destitute of science as well as of records, and without leisure or curiosity to inquire into remote events, retained, perhaps, some indistinct memory of recent occurrences; but beyond these, all was buried in oblivion, or involved in darkness and in fable.

The Storehouse of Nations

The prodigious swarms which poured in upon the empire from the beginning of the fourth century to the final extinction of the Roman power, have given rise to an opinion that the countries whence they issued were crowded with inhabitants; and various theories have been formed to account for such an extraordinary degree of population as had produced these countries the appellation of The Storehouse of Nations. But if we consider that the countries possessed by the people who invaded the empire were of vast extent; that a great part of these was covered with woods and marshes; that some of the most considerable of the barbarous nations subsisted entirely by hunting or pasturage, in both which states of society large tracts of land are required for maintaining a few inhabitants; and that all of them were strangers to the arts and industry, without which population cannot increase to any great degree, we must conclude, that these countries could not be so populous in ancient times as they are in the present, when they still continue to be less peopled than any other part of Europe or of Asia.

But the same circumstances that prevented the barbarous nations from becoming populous, contributed to inspire, or to strengthen, the martial spirit by which they were distinguished. Inured by the rigor of their climate, or the poverty of their soil, to hardships which rendered their bodies firm, and their minds vigorous; accustomed to a course of life which was a continual preparation for action and disdaining every occupation but that of war or of hunting; they undertook and prosecuted their military enterprises with an ardour and impetuosity of which men softened by the refinements of more polished times can scarcely form any idea.

Their first inroads into the empire proceeded rather from the love of plunder than from the desire of new settlements. Roused to arms by some  enterprising or popular leader, they sallied out of their forests; broke in upon the frontier provinces with irresistible violence; put all who opposed them to the sword; carried off the most valuable effects of the inhabitants; dragged along multitudes of captives in chains; wasted all before them with fire or sword; and returned in triumph to their wilds and fastnesses. Their success, together with the accounts which they gave of the unknown conveniences and luxuries that abounded in countries better cultivated, or blessed with a milder climate than their own, excited new adventurers, and exposed the frontier to new devastations.

When nothing was left to plunder in the adjacent provinces, ravaged by frequent excursions, they marched farther from home, and finding it difficult, or dangerous to return, they began to settle in the countries which they had subdued. The sudden and short excursions in quest of booty which had alarmed and disquieted the empire, ceased; a more dreadful calamity impended. Great bodies of armed men, with their wives and children, and slaves and flocks, issued forth, like regular colonies, in quest of new settlements. People who had no cities, and seldom any fixed habitation, were so little attached to their native soil, that they migrated without reluctance from one place to another. New adventurers followed them. The lands which they deserted were occupied by more remote tribes of barbarians. These, in their turn, pushed forward into inure fertile countries, and, like a torrent continually increasing, rolled on, and swept everything before them. In less than two centuries from their first eruption, barbarians of various names and lineage plundered and took possession of Thrace, Pannonia, Gaul, Spain, Africa, and at last of Italy, and Rome itself. The vast fabric of the Roman power, which it had been the work of ages to perfect, was in that short period overturned from the foundation.

Causes of the Fall of the Roman Empire

Many concurring causes prepared the way for this great revolution, and ensured success to the nations which invaded the empire. The Roman commonwealth had conquered the world by the wisdom of its civil maxims, and the rigour of its military discipline. But, under the emperors, the former were forgotten or despised, and the latter were gradually relaxed. The armies of the empire in the fourth and fifth centuries bore scarcely any resemblance to those invincible legions which had been victorious wherever they marched. Instead of freemen, who voluntarily took arms from the love of glory, or of their country, provincials and barbarians were bribed or forced into service. These were too feeble, or too proud to submit to the fatigue of military duty. They even complained of the weight of their defensive armour as intolerable, and laid it aside. Infantry, from which the armies of ancient Rome derived their vigour and stability, fell into contempt; the effeminate and undisciplined soldiers of later times could hardly be brought to venture into the field but on horseback. These wretched troops, however, were the only guardians of the empire. The jealousy of despotism had deprived the people of the use of arms; and subjects, oppressed and rendered incapable of defending themselves, had neither spirit nor inclination to resist their invaders, from whom they had little to fear, because their condition could hardly be rendered more unhappy.

At the same time that the martial spirit became extinct, the revenues of the empire gradually diminished. The taste for the luxuries of the East increased to such a pitch in the Imperial court, that great sums were carried into India, from which, in the channel of commerce, money never returns. By the large subsidies paid to the barbarous nations, a still greater quantity of specie was withdrawn from circulation. The frontier provinces, wasted by frequent incursions, became unable to pay the customary tribute, and the wealth of the world, which had long centred in the capital of the empire, ceased to flow thither in the same abundance, or was diverted into other channels. The limits of the empire continued to be as extensive as ever, while the spirit requisite for its defence declined, and its resources were exhausted. A vast body, languid, and almost unanimated, became incapable of any effort to save itself, and was easily overpowered.

The emperors, who had the absolute direction of this disordered system, sunk in the softness of Eastern luxury, shut up within the walls of a palace, ignorant of war, unacquainted with affairs, and governed entirely by women and eunuchs, or by ministers equally effeminate, trembled at the approach of danger, and, under circumstances which called for the utmost vigour in council as well as in action, discovered all the impotent irresolution of fear and of folly.

In every respect the condition of the barbarous nations was the reverse of that of the Romans. Among the former, the martial spirit was in full vigour; their leaders were hardy and enterprising; the arts which had enervated the Romans were unknown; and such was the nature of their military institutions, that they brought forces into the field without any trouble, and supported them at little expense. The mercenary and effeminate troops stationed on the frontier, astonished at their fierceness, either fled at their approach, or were routed on the first onset. The feeble expedient to which the emperors had recourse, of taking large bodies of the barbarians into pay, and of employing, them to repel new invaders, instead of retarding, hastened the destruction of the empire. These mercenaries soon turned their arms against their masters, and with greater advantage than ever, for, by serving in the Roman armies, they had acquired all the discipline, or skill in war, which the Romans still retained; and, upon adding these to their native ferocity, they became altogether irresistible.

The Scourge of God, the Destroyer of Nations

But though, from these and many other causes, the progress and conquests of the nations which overran the empire became so extremely rapid, they were accompanied with horrible devastations, and an incredible destruction of the human species. Civilized nations, which take arms upon cool reflection, from motives of policy or prudence, with a view to guard against some distant danger, or to prevent some remote contingency, carry on their hostilities with so little rancor or animosity, that war among them is disarmed of half its terrors. Barbarians are strangers to such refinements. They rush into war with impetuosity, and prosecute it with violence. Their sole object is to make their enemies feel the weight of their vengeance; nor does their rage subside until it be satiated with inflicting on them every possible calamity. It is with such a spirit that the savage tribes in America carry on their petty wars. It was with the same spirit that the more powerful and no less fierce barbarians in the north of Europe, and of Asia, fell upon the roman empire.

Wherever they marched, their route was marked with blood. They ravaged or destroyed all around them. They made no distinction between what was sacred and what was profane. They respected no age, or sex, or rank. What escaped the fury of the first inundation, perished in those which followed it. The most fertile and populous provinces were converted into deserts, in which were scattered the ruins of villages and cities, that afforded shelter to a few miserable inhabitants whom chance had preserved, or the sword of the enemy, wearied with destroying, had spared. The conquerors who first settled in the countries which they had wasted, were expelled or exterminated by new invaders, who, coming from regions farther removed from the civilized parts of the world, were still more fierce and rapacious. This brought fresh calamities upon mankind, which did not cease until the north, by pouring forth successive swarms, was drained of people, and could no longer furnish instruments of destruction.

Famine and pestilence, which always march in the train of war, when it ravages with such inconsiderate cruelty, raged in very part of Europe, and completed its sufferings. If a man were called to fix upon the period in the history of the world, during which the condition of the human race was most calamitous and afflicted, he would, without hesitating, name that which elapsed from the death of Theodosius the Great, to the establishment of the Lombards in Italy. The contemporary authors, who beheld that scene of desolation, labor and are at a loss for expressions to describe the horror of it. The Scourge of God, the Destroyer of Nations, are the dreadful epithets by which they distinguish the most noted of the barbarous leaders; and they compare the ruin which they had brought on the world, to the havoc occasioned by earthquakes, conflagrations, or deluges, the most formidable and fatal calamities which the imagination of man can conceive.

But no expressions can convey so perfect an idea of the destructive progress of the barbarians as that which must strike an attentive observer when he contemplates the total change which he will discover in the state of Europe, after it began to recover some degree of tranquility, towards the close of the sixth century. The Saxons were by that time masters of the southern and more fertile provinces of Britain; the Franks of Gaul; the Huns of Pannonia; the Goths of Spain; the Goths and Lombards of Italy and the adjacent provinces. Very faint vestiges of the Homan policy, jurisprudence, arts, or literature remained. New forms of government, new laws, new manners, new dresses, new languages, and new names of men and countries, were everywhere introduced. To make a great or sudden alteration with respect to any of these, unless where the ancient inhabitants of a country have been almost totally exterminated, has proved an undertaking beyond the power of the greatest conquerors. The great change which the settlement of the barbarous nations occasioned in the state of Europe, may therefore be considered as a more decisive proof than even the testimony of contemporary historians, of the destructive violence with which these invaders carried on their conquests, and of the havoc which they had made from one extremity of this quarter of the globe to the other.

In the obscurity of the chaos occasioned by this general wreck of nations, we must search for the seeds of order, and endeavor to discover the first rudiments of the policy and laws now established in Europe. To this source the historians of its different kingdoms have attempted, though with less attention and industry than the importance of the inquiry merits, to trace back the institutions and customs peculiar to their countrymen. It is not my province to give a minute detail of the progress of government and manners in each particular nation, whose transactions are the object of the following history. But, in order to exhibit a just view of the state of Europe at the opening of the sixteenth century, it is necessary to look back, and to contemplate the condition of the northern nations upon their first settlement in those countries which they occupied. It is necessary to mark the great steps by which they advanced from barbarism to refinement. and to point out those general principles and events which, by their uniform as well as extensive operation, conducted all of them to that degree of improvement in policy and in manners which they had attained at the period when Charles V began his reign.

 

The Feudal System