During the three centuries after Hermann had arrested the flood of
Roman conquest, a civilization of the simplest sort was slowly
developing in Germany, where society was divided into the _free_ and
the _unfree_ classes.
The tribes in the south differed greatly from those in the north. They
had no settled homes, nor ownership in land. This was divided among
them every year by lot; one-half of the people remaining yearly at home
to till the soil, and the other half giving their entire time to the
wars which were as perennial as the growing crops of grain.
In the north, however, where lived the ancestors of the Anglo-Saxon
race, conditions very different prevailed. There the lands were
bestowed in perpetuity upon the most powerful members of the tribes,
and by them handed down to their sons. The unfree class tilled the
soil, and were thus the serfs of a ruling class, and only freemen could
bear arms.
There were no cities in ancient Germany, only villages which were
composed of rude huts. A collection of these villages formed a group
which was called a _Hundred_. Every Hundred had its chief, who was
elected by the people; and the one chosen by the combined will of all
these Hundreds was the chief or King of the tribe.
The chiefs of the Hundreds formed a sort of advisory council to the
King or tribal chief. But supreme over the will of these chiefs and
their King was the will of the people. Every village had its _meetings
of the people_, which all freemen were entitled to attend. The real
governing power lay in these meetings, to which both chiefs of the
Hundreds and the King were compelled to defer.
Was a new King to be elected, or were there grave questions concerning
wars to be considered--they were discussed in advance by the chiefs and
the King. But the ultimate decision lay with the people themselves; a
general meeting of the whole tribe being required to elect a new King;
the people clashing their arms in token of approval, or shouting their
dissent.
As all freemen bore arms, there was no distinct military organization.
Every man held himself ready at any moment to respond to a call, and
the army was the people!
About the middle of the third century, numerous small German tribes
became united into large confederacies. Conspicuous among these were
the Allemani, the Franks, the Saxons, and the Goths.
The Allemani, in the south of Germany, it is said were so called
because of the fact that _all men_ held the land in common. If this be
so, then the French name for Germany is essentially communistic, and it
is not strange that communism has always found a congenial soil in that
land.
The Franks occupied the banks of the Rhine and of the river Saal. The
Saxons were spread over North Germany, and the Goths, on both sides of
the river Dnieper, were divided into the Ostro-Goths and the Visi-Goths
(or the East and West Goths).
It was these Visigoths under Alaric who inflicted the deadliest blows
upon the Roman Empire. The sacking of Rome in 410, and the
establishing of a Gothic kingdom in Spain, shook the very foundations
of that power. Then the legions could no longer be spared in distant
Britain, which was left to its fate. And that fate was of deepest
import to us! The Saxons and the Angles overflowed and absorbed the
land, and Keltic Britain was Teutonized.
So this untamed and untamable Teuton was being spread, like some coarse
but renovating element, over the surface of old Europe. And with the
occupation of Gaul by the Franks in 481, and the annexing of France to
the Frankish kingdom under Clovis, the process was complete.
I cannot resist the temptation of saying a few words about the
Anglo-Saxon occupation of Britain, which, as it virtually converted us
from Kelts into Teutons, is not a digression.
From the time of Julius Caesar the island of Britain had been occupied
by the Romans, and in consequence had become partly civilized and
Christianized. Upon the fall of the empire, the Roman legions were
withdrawn, and the people, left defenseless, became the prey of their
own northern barbarians, the Picts and Scots; the drama of Southern
Europe and the Goths being re-enacted on a diminished scale. In the
fourth century the Britons implored the Angles and Saxons to come and
protect them from these savages. Invited as allies, they came as
invaders, and remained as conquerors, implanting their habits, speech,
and paganism upon the prostrate island. It was the extermination of
this exotic paganism which impelled to those deeds of valor recited in
the Round Table romances, and which made King Arthur and his knights
the theme of poet and minstrel for centuries.
But the Saxon had come to stay, and Teuton and Kelt became merged, much
as do the lion and lamb, after the former has dined! The Teutonic
Saxon may be said to have dined on the Keltic Briton, and remained
master of the island until the Normans came, six centuries later, and
in turn dominated, and made him bear the yoke of servitude.
Nor was this French-speaking Norman French at all, except by adoption;
being, in fact, the terrible Northman of two centuries before, on
account of whose ravages the noble had intrenched himself in his strong
castle, and the wretched serf had in mortal terror sold himself and all
that he possessed, for the protection of its solid walls and moat; and
thus had been laid the foundations of feudalism. He it was who, with
longhair reeking with rancid oil, battle-ax, spear, and iron hook--with
which to capture human and other prey--had held France in a state of
unspeakable terror for centuries, but who had finally settled down as a
respectable French citizen in the sea-board province of Normandy, and
in two centuries had made such wonderful improvement in manners,
apparel, and speech that the simple Saxon baron stood abashed before
the splendid refinements of his conquerors.
The origin of this mysterious Northman is unknown; but whatever it was,
or whoever he was, he certainly possessed Aryan germs of high potency.
So the Saxon had built the solid walls of the racial structure upon a
foundation of Britons; and, though with no thought for beauty, had
built well, with strong, true structural lines. It was the Norman who
finished and decorated the structure, but he did not alter one of these
lines; the speech, traits, institutions, and habits of England being at
the core Saxon to-day, while there is a decorative surface only of
Norman.
So when the Englishman calls himself, with swelling pride, a Briton, he
speaks wide of the mark. The Keltic Briton was buried fathoms deep
under seven centuries of Saxon rule, and then, to make the extinction
more complete, was overlaid with this brilliant lacquer of Norman
surface. And if that mixed product, the English people, have any race
paternity, it is Teutonic, and herein may lie the impossibility of
making the English and Irish a homogeneous people--the English Teuton
and Irish Kelt being in the nature of things antagonistic, the
particles refuse to combine chemically, and can only be brought
together (to use the language of the chemist) in mechanical mixture.