The Dark Ages Collection. David Hume

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СКАЧАТЬ prey; they reached Térouanne,39 not far from the sea, due east of Boulogne, but Boulogne itself they did not venture to attack. After this diversion to the north, they pursued their course of devastation southward, crossing the Seine and the Loire into Aquitaine, up to the foot of the Pyrenees. Few towns could resist them. Toulouse was one of the few, and its successful defence is said to have been due to the energy of its bishop Exuperius.

      Such, so far as we can conjecture from the evidence of our meagre sources, was the general course of this invasion, but we may be sure that the barbarians broke up into several hosts and followed a wide track, dividing among them the joys of plunder and destruction. Pious verse-writers of the time, who witnessed this visitation, painted the miseries of the helpless provinces vaguely and rhetorically, but perhaps truthfully enough, in order to point a moral.

      Uno fumavit Gallia tota rogo.

      The terror of fire and sword was followed by the horror of hunger in a wasted land.

      In Eastern Gaul too some famous cities suffered grievously from German foes. But the calamities of Strassburg, Speier, and Worms were perhaps not the work of the Vandals and their associates. The Burgundians seem to have taken advantage of the crisis to push down the Main, and at the expense of the Alamanni to have occupied new territory astride the Rhine. And it is probably these two peoples, especially the Alamanni dislodged from their homes, who were responsible for the havoc wrought in the province of Upper Germany.40

      It may have been in the early summer of A.D. 407 that the situation was changed by the arrival of Roman legions not from Italy but from Britain. That island had the reputation of being a fertile breeder of tyrants, and before the end of the previous year the Britannic soldiers had denounced the authority of Honorius and set up an Emperor for themselves in the person of a certain Marcus. We have no knowledge of their reason for this step, but we may conjecture that the revolt was due to discontent with the rule of the German Stilicho, just as the revolt of Maximus had been aimed at the German general Merobaudes. There was a certain Roman spirit alive among the legionaries, jealous of the growth of German influence. And we can well understand that they were impatient of the neglect of the defence of the Britannic provinces by the central government. One of the legions which guarded the island had been withdrawn in A.D. 40141 for the defence of Italy, but we are not informed whether it was sent back. In any case the troops in the island were probably not kept up to their nominal strength and were insufficient to contend against the constant inroads of the Picts and the expeditions of the Irish from beyond their channel, as well as the raids of Saxon freebooters from the continent. To subdue these enemies had been a task which had demanded all the energy of Theodosius himself. A victory over the Picts seems to have been gained in the early years of Honorius, but it was not of great account,42 and when events in the south forced Stilicho to denude the Rhine of its defenders, little thought can have been taken at Rome or Ravenna for the safety of remoter Britain. It was a favourable opportunity for such an expedition as that which Irish Annals record to have been led against the southern coasts of Britain by the High King of Ireland in A.D. 405.43 In such circumstances we can easily conceive that the troops longed for a supreme responsible authority on the spot.

      Marcus was not a success. Soon after his elevation he was pronounced unfit and slain, to make way for Gratian, who reigned for four months (A.D. 407) and then met the fate of Marcus. The third tyrant was a private soldier who bore the auspicious name of Constantine, and was to play a considerable part for a few years on the stage of western Europe.

      The first act of Constantine was to cross with an army into Gaul. It has been supposed that he feared an invasion of Britain by the German hordes, who had indeed approached the Channel, and that he went forth to meet the danger. It seems more probable that he was following the example of Magnus Maximus, who had in like manner crossed over to the continent to wrest Gaul and Spain from Gratian. He landed at Boulogne. It appears to be commonly supposed that he took with him all the forces in Britain, not only the field army, but also the garrisons of the frontiers. This is highly improbable. For we cannot imagine that he did not intend to retain his hold on the island, and it has been inferred from the evidence of a coin that he set up a colleague before he sailed.44 But he must have been accompanied by the whole field army, which was not very large, or the greater part of it.

      Gaul sorely needed a Roman defender at the head of Roman legions, and the Gallic legions went over to Constantine. He inflicted a severe defeat on the barbarians, we know not where, and he is said to have guarded the Rhine more efficiently than it had been guarded since the reign of Julian — a statement which comes from a pagan admirer of the Apostate. The representatives of Honorius fled to Italy when Constantine passed into the Rhone valley and the south-eastern districts, which had escaped the ravages of the Germans. He seems to have made agreements with some of the intruders,45 which they perfidiously violated. But we know nothing definite as to his dealings with them. “For two years,” writes a modern historian,46 “they and he both carry on operations in Gaul, each, it would seem, without any interruption from the other. And when the scene of action is moved from Gaul to Spain, each party carries on its operations there also with as little of mutual let or hindrance. It was most likely only by winking at the presence of the invaders and at their doings that Constantine obtained possession, so far as Roman troops and Roman administration were concerned, of all Gaul from the Channel to the Alps. Certain it is that at no very long time after his landing, before the end of the year 407, he was possessed of it. But at that moment no Roman prince could be possessed of much authority in central or western Gaul, where Vandals, Suevians, and Alans were ravaging at pleasure. The dominion of Constantine must have consisted of a long and narrow strip of eastern Gaul, from the Channel to the Mediterranean, which could not have differed very widely from the earliest and most extended of the many uses of the word Lotharingia. He held the imperial city on the Mosel, the home of Valentinian and the earlier Constantine.”

      When Constantine obtained possession of Arelate (Arles), then the most prosperous city of Gaul, it was time for Honorius and his general to rouse themselves. We saw how Stilicho formed the design of assigning to Alaric the task of subduing the adventurer from Britain, who had conferred upon his two sons, Constans, a monk, and Julian, the titles of caesar and nobilissimus respectively. But this design was not carried out. A Goth indeed, and a brave Goth, but not Alaric, crossed the Alps to recover the usurped provinces; and Sarus defeated the army which was sent by Constantine to oppose him. But he failed to take Valentia, and returned to Italy without having accomplished his purpose (A.D. 408).

      The next movement of Constantine was to occupy Spain.47 We need not follow the difficult and obscure operations which were carried on between Spanish kinsmen of Honorius and the troops which the Caesar Constans and his lieutenant Gerontius led across the Pyrenees.48 The defenders of Spain were overcome, and Caesaraugusta (Zaragoza) became the seat of the Roman Caesar. Thus in the realm of Constantine almost all the lands composing the Gallic prefecture were included; he might claim to be the lord of Britain; the province of Tingitana, beyond the straits of Gades, was the only province that had obeyed Honorius and did not in theory obey Constantine.

      Constans, however, was soon recalled to Gaul by his father, and elevated to the rank of Augustus. But Constantine himself meanwhile, possessing the power of an Emperor, was not wholly content; he desired also to be acknowledged as a colleague by the son of Theodosius, and become legitimised. He sent an embassy for this purpose to Ravenna (early in A.D. 409), and Honorius, hampered at the time by the presence of Alaric, was too weak to refuse the pacific proposals.49 Thus Flavius Claudius Constantinus was recognised as an Augustus and an Imperial brother by the legitimate emperor; but the fact that the recognition was extorted and soon repudiated, combined with the fact that he was never acknowledged by the other Augustus at New Rome, might justify us in refusing to include the invader from Britain who ruled at Arelate in the numbered list of Imperial Constantines. Some time afterwards another embassy, of whose purpose we are not informed, arrived at Ravenna, and Constantine promised to assist his colleague Honorius СКАЧАТЬ