The making of a nation is not unlike bread or cake making. One element
is used as the basis, to which are added other component parts, of
varying qualities, and the result we call England, or Germany, or
France. The steps by which it is accomplished, the blending and fusing
of the elements, require centuries, and the process makes what we
call--history.
It was written in the book of fate that Gaul should become a great
nation; but not until fused and interpenetrated with two other
nationalities. She must first be humanized and civilized by the Roman,
and then energized and made free from the Roman by the Teuton.
The instrument chosen for the former was Julius Caesar, and for the
latter--five centuries later--Clovis, the Frankish leader.
It is safe to affirm that no man has ever so changed the course of
human events as did Julius Caesar. Napoleon, who strove to imitate him
1800 years later, was a charlatan in comparison; a mere scene-shifter
on a great theatrical stage. Few traces of his work remain upon
humanity to-day.
Caesar opened up a pathway for the old civilizations of the world to
flow into Western Europe, and the sodden mass of barbarism was infused
with a life-compelling current. This was not accomplished by placing
before the inferior race a higher ideal of life for imitation, but by a
mingling of the blood of the nations--a transfusion into Gallic veins
of the germs of a higher living and thinking--thus making them heirs to
the great civilizations of antiquity.
Was any human event ever fraught with such consequences to the human
race as the conquest of Gaul by Julius Caesar?
The Gallic wars had for centuries drained the treasure and taxed the
resources of Rome. Caesar conceived the audacious idea of stopping
them at their source--in fact, of making Gaul a Roman province.
It was a marvellous exhibition, not simply of force, but of force
wielded by supreme intelligence and craft. He had lived many years
among this people and knew their sources of weakness, their internal
jealousies and rivalries, their incohesiveness. When they hurled
themselves against Rome, it was as a mass of sharp fragments. When the
Goths did the same, it was as one solid, indivisible body. Caesar saw
that by adroit management he could disintegrate this people while
conquering them.
By forcibly maintaining in power those who submitted to him, being by
turns gentle and severe, ingratiating here, terrifying there, he
established a tremendous personal force; and during nine years carried
on eight campaigns, marvels in the art of war, as well as in the
subtler methods of negotiation and intrigue. He had successively dealt
with all the Keltic tribes, even including Great Britain, subjugating
either through their own rivalries, or by his invincible arm.
Equally able to charm and to terrify, he had all the gifts, all the
means to success and empire, that can be possessed by man. Great in
politics as in war, as full of resource in the forum as on the
battle-field, he was by nature called to dominion.
It was not as a patriot, simply intent upon freeing Rome of an
harassing enemy, that he endured those nine years in Gaul; not as a
great leader burning with military ardor that he conducted those eight
campaigns. The conquest of Gaul meant the greater conquest of Rome.
The one was accomplished; he now turned his back upon the devastated
country, and prepared to complete his great project of human ascendency.
Rome was mistress of the world; he--would be master of Rome.
In the early days of the conquest of Gaul a small island lying in the
river Seine was chosen for the residence of the Roman Governors, and
called _Lutetia_. The residence soon grew into the Palace of the
Caesars; and then bridges spanned the river, and roads and aqueducts
and faubourgs sprang into existence across the Seine, and _Lutetia_ was
swallowed up in Paris--so named for a Gallic tribe, the _Parisii_,
which had once encamped there. Standing within the Palais de Justice
on this island to-day, one is in direct touch with Rome when she was
mistress of the world. The feet of the Caesars have pressed those
stones. Those vaulted ceilings have looked down upon Julian the
Apostate; he who upon his throne in the far East sighed for
"Lutetia"--his "dear Lutetia."
At Passy and Montmartre, and where stands the Palais Royal, rich Romans
had their suburban homes, and Roman legions were encamped where are now
the Palais de Luxembourg and the Sorbonne. And with a mingling of
Keltic and Latin, there had commenced a new form of human speech.
Not Paris alone, but all of Gaul felt the awakening touch of a great
civilization, and with improved ideals in living there came another
great advance. The human sacrifices and abhorrent practices of the
Druidical faith were abandoned, and Jupiter and Minerva and the gods of
Parnassus supplanted the grim deities of a more ancient mythology. But
while Rome was a powerful teacher, she was a cruel mistress--and
shackles were galling to these free barbarians. In the midst of
universal misery there came tidings of something better than the gods
of Parnassus, when in A.D. 160 Irenaeus came to Lyons and there
established the first Church of Christ; and here it was that Marcus
Aurelius ordered the persecution which was intended to stamp out the
new and fanatical heresy.