FRANCE.--IBERIAN BLOOD IN GAUL AS WELL AS THE SPANISH
PENINSULA.--IBERIANS OF GASCONY, ETC.--LIGURIANS.--HOW FAR
KELTIC.--BODENCUS.--INTERMIXTURE.--ROMAN, GERMAN,
ARAB.--ALSATIA.--LORRAINE.--FRANCHE-COMTÉ.--BURGUNDY, SOUTHERN,
WESTERN, AND NORTHERN FRANCE.--CHARACTER OF THE KELTS.--THE
ALBIGENSIAN CRUSADE.--BELGIUM.--ITS ELEMENTS.--KELTIC, GERMAN, AND
ROMAN.--SWITZERLAND.--HELVETIA.--ROMANCE, FRENCH, AND GERMAN
LANGUAGES.
It is convenient to take the ethnology of France next in order to that
of Spain, because we have already seen that, when we examine the
earliest populations of the two countries we shall find that the
_Iberic_ stock was common to the two. Although I find no Gauls in
Iberia, the Iberians in ancient Gaul were numerous; indeed, they occur
in Gascony and Bearn at the present moment.
The predominant stock, however, of Gallia, as is well-known, is the
_Keltic_, still existing, along with its ancient language, and other
characteristics in Brittany.
The Iberians belonged chiefly, though not wholly and exclusively, to
_Aquitania_. In the reign of Augustus this term denoted a _political_,
in that of Julius Cæsar, an _ethnological_ area. The _province_ reached
from the Pyrenees to the Loire; the _Aquitania_ of the true _Aquitani_
from the Pyrenees to the Garonne.
In the present towns of Bazas, Eauze, and Auch, we have the names of the
ancient Vas-_ates_, Elus-_ates_, and Ausci; besides which, the
Soci-_ates_, the Tarus-_ates_, the Garumni, the Bigerriones, the
Preciani, the Gari-_tes_, the Sabuz-_ates_, the Cocos-_ates_, the
Lector-_ates_, and the Tarbelli occupied the present provinces of
Gascony and Bearn in general. It is usual to say that these names are
Iberian. This is scarcely the case. The remarkable peculiarity of them
is as follows: the termination -_at_ is Gallic, and probably the sign of
the plural number, whilst the radical part is not _evidently_ Gallic,
and, probably, not Gallic at all; or (changing the expression) whilst
the Gallic _inflexion_ is common amongst the old names of Gascony, the
Gallic _roots_ (-_magus_, _tre_-, _con_-, &c.) are rare; from which I
infer that the geographical nomenclature of south-western France was
Iberic in respect to its roots, but Gallic in respect to its form; so
that the words in question are Iberic names taken from Gallic
informants. Nothing, however, of great importance depends on this.
In the parts about Baignerres there was a Roman colony, that of the
Convenæ; partly Gallic, partly Iberic, and partly Legionary.[4]
As were Gascony and Bearn, so were Rousillon and the greater part of
Languedoc--Iberic; for the Iberi extended to the Rhone.
Along the frontier of the Iberian area there was certainly intermixture
between the Aquitanians and the true Gauls, and there were also Gallic
settlements, such as Hebro-_magus_, within the Iberian area itself.
Nevertheless, Southern Gaul was Northern Spain, and Northern Spain
Southern Gaul.
Provence and Dauphiné differ from Gascony and Languedoc in having had a
_Ligurian_ rather than an Iberian substratum; in having received Roman
influences earlier and more largely, in having been the area of the
Phocæan colony of Massilia, or Marseilles, in and around which city
there must have been a notable tincture of Greek blood.
Who were the Ligurians?
The Phocæan Greeks founded the colony of Marseilles; and it was not long
before the parts along the coast, and to some distance inland, became
imperfectly known. When Prometheus gives to Hercules the details of his
travels westwards, he says that, “You” (Hercules) “shall reach the
fearless people of the Ligyes, where, with all your bravery, you shall
find no fault with their warlike vigour. It is ordained that you shall
leave your arrows behind. But as all the country is soft, you shall be
unable to find a stone. Then Zeus shall see you in distress, and pity
you, and overshadow the land with a cloud, whence a storm of round
stones shall rain down. With these you shall easily smite and pursue the
army of the Ligyes.” Such is the gist of a quotation from a writer so
early as Æschylus, in his drama of the “Prometheus Unbound,” as given by
Strabo.
These Ligyes are the Ligurians, better known as a people of Italy, and
as the coastmen of the Gulf of Genoa. Southwards and eastwards they
extended as far as the Arno, and westwards to the Rhone; where (as
already stated) they came in contact with the Iberians. So that the
ancient Ligurians were a population common to both Gaul and Italy, just
as the Iberians were common to Gaul and Spain. Herodotus places
Marseilles in the country of the Ligyes.
The fact of this tract being known so much earlier than the interior of
Gaul, known too to the Greeks who first, and more than others, used the
term _Kelt_, confirms the view of its _non_-Gallic origin. At any rate,
it makes it either Iberian or Ligurian, and, consequently, only so far
_Keltic_ (in the modern sense of the term) as the Ligurians were
_Keltæ_.
This is the point now under notice. I think that the Ligurians _were_
Kelts.
In the first place, the name seems to have a meaning in the Keltic
tongue; since Prichard suggests that it may have been derived from
_Llygwyr_,[5] which means in Welsh _coastman_.
In my mind it is a _native_ name also; a point upon which Prichard
expresses a doubt, since he writes that, “it does not prove that the
people were Kelts, since the designation is one more likely to have been
bestowed upon them by a neighbouring tribe than assumed by themselves.”
Who, however, could have bestowed it? Scarcely any population of the
interior, since it is _Greeks_ from whom we get it, and the _coast_ was
the part with which they were chiefly acquainted. Had the name been a
late one, and derived from Roman sources, Dr. Prichard’s inference would
have been legitimate. As it is, however, we have nothing but Ligurians
and Iberians from the Pyrenees to the Arno, and as it cannot be both
Iberic and Keltic (_in the modern sense of the word_), it must, if
Keltic, be Ligurian.
Against it lies the evidence of Strabo, who separates the Ligyes from
the Kelts as a distinct race; differing, however, but _little from the
Kelts in their mode of life_. Now with this qualification, and with the
belief that the Kelts whom he contrasted with the Ligyes were, to a
great extent, Iberian, I lay but little stress on the evidence of
Strabo.
Against it, also, in the eyes of more than one good writer, is a very
questionable etymology; which I will give in full, as a lesson of
caution. Pliny says that the river Po in the Ligurian language was
called _Bodencus_, or _bottomless_. Prichard suggests, in a note, that
the true reading may have been _Boden_-los, and asks whether anybody
will venture hence to conjecture that the Ligurians were Germans? Sir
Francis Palgrave, taking Prichard’s suggestion as a _bonâ fide_ reading,
does this; and that with a great degree of confidence. Yet the
termination -_nc_ is found in the country of the Allobroges, or Dauphiné,
_e.g._, Lem-_incum_, Durot-_incum_, Vap-_incum_, and is also Gallic,
_e.g._, Aged-_incum_. It is British as well--Habita-_ncum_.
The reasons, then, _against_ the Keltic origin of the Ligurians are thus
exceptionable. Yet those in favour of it are weak. One thing, however,
they must have been: _a._ Kelts; _b._ Iberians; or _c._ members of a
wholly new, and now extinct, stock. I incline to the first of these
views rather than the second, and the second rather than the third. At
the same time, they were a well-marked variety; otherwise the Romans
would not so invariably have separated them from the Gauls of both Gaul
and Italy.
The primary population, then, of Gaul (supposing the Ligurians to have
been Keltic) was of a twofold character:--
1. Iberic, in Aquitania, and
2. Keltic (in the modern sense of the term) elsewhere--the Keltic
falling into three divisions:--
α. The Belgic--
β. The proper Gallic--
γ. The Ligurian (?).
The history of the displacement and intermixture is complex. Along the
Ibero-Gallic frontier, or in the parts north of the Garonne, and west of
the Rhone, there must have been small and partial quarrels, sufficient
to create intermixture, and a gradual change of the boundaries from the
earliest times. Perhaps, too, it may be added that the Gauls encroached
on the Iberians rather than the Iberians on the Gauls.
Along the valley of the Rhine, or the Germano-Gallic frontier, there was
the same mutual encroachment, but to a far greater degree, and the wars,
of which the conquest of Ariovistus is a sample, introduced German,
and, perhaps Slavonic blood into Gaul in more quarters than one.
At present--
_Alsatia_ contains the least amount of Keltic blood of all the provinces
of France, inasmuch as it is German in language, and French in respect
to its political relations only. The fifth century is the date of its
conquest, and it was by Germans of the High German division from Suabia
and Franconia that it was reduced. Before this it was Romanized. What
was it before its reduction by Rome? Many at once answer “German,”
because its occupants were the _Triboci_, whom Tacitus calls “_haud
dubie Germani_.” For reasons given elsewhere,[6] I believe that they
were Germanized Gauls rather than true Germans.
_Lorraine_, originally Keltic, and afterwards Romano-Keltic, is less
German than Alsatia, but more so than Champagne. Its name,
_Hlothringen_, is German. I cannot, however, say whether the German
blood in Lorraine was introduced from the north or from the south; by
the High Germans of Alsatia and Franche-Comté, or the Low-Germans of
Clovis.
In _Franche-Comté_ the particular descent is from the Sequani, the tribe
which, of all others equally far from the German frontier, was most
Germanized. For when Cæsar was in Gaul, the Sequani called in the Suevi
and Marcomanni of Ariovistus, and gave up one-third of their land as the
price of his tyrannical protection. Now the army of Ariovistus was
mixed, and there is reason for believing that even Slavonians were to be
found in it. At any rate it infused German blood into the Sequani more
than into their neighbours. The process, however, of Romanizing went on
all the same, until the fifth century, when the invasion that gave their
names to the present province and to Burgundy took place. From which
time forwards the ethnology of _Franche_-Comté, or the country of the
_Franks_, is that of--
_Burgundy._--Here the Kelts were the Sequani, and the Germans, certain
High-Germans of Franconia. Sir James Stephen, in his valuable “Lectures
on the History of France,” draws a broad distinction between the German
blood introduced by the Burgundians, and the German blood introduced by
the Franks of Clovis; exaggerating, however, in my mind, the rudeness of
the latter, as well as the cultivation of the former. Speaking of the
Germany of Tacitus, he says, that it better suited the author to
“pourtray the more striking characteristics of the Teutonic tribes
collectively, than to investigate the more minute peculiarities which
distinguished them from each other. Yet we cannot doubt that, even in
his day, they were far more widely discriminated in fact, than in his
delineation of them, as, beyond all controversy, they were so in the age
of Clovis.
“Thus, for example, the Burgundians, before their irruption to Gaul,
were remarkable for their skill as artizans; and in the poems in which,
not long after that event, they were described by Sidonius Apollinaris,
we have the best attestation of their resemblance to the kind and
simple-hearted German of our own days. Thus also the Gothic people,
almost immediately after their settlement in Aquitaine, manifested a
singular aptitude for a yet higher civilization. For, if St. Jerome was
correctly informed, Ataulph their king seriously projected the
substitution of a new Gothic for the old Roman empire; a scheme in which
the character of Julius was to be ascribed to Alaric, that of Augustus
being reserved for the projector himself. Euric, the successor of
Ataulph, filled his court at Toulouse with rhetoricians, poets, and
grammarians; and coveted (and not altogether in vain) the applause of
the Italian critics for the pure Latinity of his despatches.
“The Franks, on the other hand, were a barbarous people, and their
history is in fact a barbaric history. At their entrance into Gaul they
were worshippers of Odin, and believed that the gates of the Walhalla
rolled back spontaneously on their hinges to admit the warrior who had
dyed, with the blood of his enemies, the battle-field on which he had
himself fallen. From their settlements on the lower Rhine they had
sometimes marched to the defence of the Romano-Gallic province, but more
frequently and gladly to the invasion of it. Their appetite for rapine
was insatiate, unrestrained, and irresistible. In war they were the
prototypes of the Norman pirates of a later age, or of the West Indian
buccaneers of more modern times. In peace they were the very counterpart
of the North American Indians, as depicted by the early travellers in
Canada; a comparison which almost every commentator on Tacitus has
instituted and verified.”
Now I have great doubts about the superior civilization of the
conquerors of Burgundy, Alsatia, and Franche-Comté; but these arise from
a view, perhaps, peculiar to myself, of the nature of the Frank
confederacies. I believe the word Frank to have distinguished the
Germans who were independent of Rome from those who were in allegiance
to the empire, and, consequently, that it might be borne by different
divisions of the German stock, and by wholly unconnected alliances. More
than this--if it separated the Romanized from the independent Germans,
it separated, to a certain extent, the rude from the refined, the Pagan
from the Christian. Now, of these two classes, the rude independent
Pagans were the more likely conquerors of Burgundy and Franche-Comté; in
which case the differences of their civilization is likely to have been
inconsiderable. It is true that they may have been Christianized by
time--but so were the Salians of Clovis. On the other hand, their
contact with the undoubtedly Christian Goths of Dauphiné and Languedoc,
had a truly civilizing tendency.
It was the Franks of Franche-Comté, and not the Salians of Clovis,
amongst whom we find the dynasty of the Merovings: Ptolemy, at least,
places the Μαροὑιγγοι in the country of the Burgundians,
anterior to their passage of the Rhine and their conquest of the Gallic
provinces beyond it. Hence, the true _Meroving_ was the Burgundian
princess Chlotilda, the wife of Clovis, rather than Clovis himself.
In _Savoy_ the foreign intermixture has been but small; the population
being, in the more mountainous parts at least, simply Romano-Keltic--and
then more Keltic than Roman.
Dauphiné, Provence, Languedoc, and Gascony carry us to the Ligurian and
Iberian areas.
Between the second and third Punic wars the Ligyes of Gaul were reduced,
rather later than the Ligurians of Italy. They seem from the first to
have been a warlike nation. Æschylus, as has been seen, arms them
against Hercules; and their brothers in the Apennines defended
themselves with valour and obstinacy. The Salyes were their chief tribe.
How far they extended inwards is uncertain. It is only safe to say that
Provence was Ligurian, and Dauphiné Gallo-Ligurian before it became
Romanized: and that the remainder of the ethnological history of the
Ligurians of Gaul is nearly the same as that of the Gallic Iberians.
Next to the Spanish peninsula, the southern provinces of France were the
most deeply tinctured with _Arab_ influences of any part of Europe.
In the parts between the Loire and Garonne, Poitou, Santonge, Limoges,
and Perigord, exhibit, in a modern form, the names of the ancient
Pictones, Santones, Lemovici, and Petrocorii, all of which were Gallic,
though, perhaps, not so typically Gallic as the Parisii, Carnutes,
Turones, and Bituriges of the Isle of France, the Orleannois, Touraine,
and Berri. In these parts the admixture of Roman and Keltic blood, has
been less disturbed by subsequent admixture of Arabs and Goths than
elsewhere; not that even here it is pure. The Franks of the Netherlands,
Lorraine, and the Franks of Burgundy and Franche-Comté must have
seriously tinctured the blood even in these parts. Champagne, too, may
be in the same category.
French Flanders, Artois, and part of Picardy are just more Romano-Keltic
and less German than the French provinces of Belgium. Normandy has its
peculiar and characteristic Scandinavian elements.
If France, then, be essentially and fundamentally Romano-Keltic, it is
the parts of which Orleans is the centre, where the mixture is in the
most normal proportions; as is shown by even the names of the provinces.
Brittany, Normandy, Flanders, Lorraine, Franche-Comté, Burgundy,
Provence, Gascony,--each of these indicates something either more or
less Roman and Keltic than the typical and central parts of the middle
Loire and Seine. Thus,--
1. Brittany is more Keltic, and consequently less Roman.
2. Normandy, is not only Romano-Keltic, but Scandinavian.
3. Flanders, more or less German.
4. Lorraine, the same.
5. Franche-Comté and Burgundy, Frank and Burgundian, _i.e._, German.
6. Provence, inordinately Roman; the basis being Ligurian, and the
superadded elements Gothic and Arab.
7. Gascony--Roman on an Iberian basis.
It is now time to consider the physical and moral characters of the
ancient Kelts. It is just possible that, from the admixture of German
and other blood, the average stature of the Italians may have increased;
so that the difference between a Gaul and an Italian may have been
greater in the time of Cæsar than now. That the stature of the French
and Germans has decreased is improbable. Be this, however, as it may,
the evidence not only of the second-hand authorities amongst the
classics, but of Cæsar himself, is to the effect that the Gauls when
compared with the soldiers that were led against them, were taller and
stouter. “The generality despise our men for their shortness, being
themselves so tall.” Thus writes Cæsar. A good series of measurements
from ancient graves, would either confirm or overthrow this and similar
testimonies. For my own part, I am dissatisfied with them. The habit of
magnifying the thews and sinews of the conquered, is a common habit with
conquerors, and Cæsar had every motive for giving their full value to
his Gallic conquests great as they really were. Again,--we may easily
believe that both the slaves who were bought and sold, and the
individual captives who ornamented the triumph were picked men; as also
would be those who were “butchered to make a Roman holiday” in the
amphitheatres.
Again,--differences of dress and armour have generally a tendency to
exaggerate the size of the wearers; and hence it is that the Scotch
Highlanders, amongst ourselves, are often considered as larger men than
they really are. All who have investigated the debated question as to
the stature of the Patagonians, have recognized in the bulky, baggy
dress, a serious source of error in all measurements taken by the eye
only.
Nevertheless, the external evidence is to the great stature of the
ancient Gauls: evidence which the present size of the French slightly
invalidates. As far, too, as my knowledge extends, the exhumations of
the older skeletons do the same.
As to their hair, whether flaxen, yellow, or red, it was _light_
(ξἁνθος), rather than dark. Livy applies to it the term
_rutilatæ_ suggesting that it was _reddened_ rather than simply _red_,
and Diodorus Siculus expressly states that it was so; artificial means
being used to heighten the natural hue.
A long list of Keltic gods can be made out, if we allow to the Keltic
Pantheon every deity whose name can be found in inscriptions, or whose
_cultus_ has been attributed to the _Galli_. But it is not safe to admit
this.
It is by no means certain that even the Galli of northern Italy held a
common religion with those of Gaul; and still less is it certain that
the numerous tribes like the Scordisci, and others of the Tyrol, Styria,
and Carniola, were Gallic; although both Roman writers call them
_Galli_, and Greek, _Galatæ_. Neither are inscriptions conclusive. I
doubt, indeed, whether they be even _primâ facie_ evidence. We find them
generally, as may be expected, in the neighbourhood of the towns. Of
these many were military posts. Now the cohorts that occupied them were
Dacians, Moors, Germans, Spaniards, Pannonians,--anything, in short, but
Romans. What then are we to say, when an inscription to such a goddess
as Isis is dug up,--as has actually been the case in Britain? Not that
Isis was a British divinity, but that the garrison consisted of her
worshippers. In the way of detail, however,--
_Hesus_ and _Teutates_, as Gallic gods, rest on the authority of Lucan.
_Taranis_, whom he also mentions, has a further claim to notice. By
supposing him to be the God of _Thunder_, we find his name in the
present Welsh _taran_.
“Et quibus immitis placatur sanguine diro
Teutates, horrensque feris altaribus Hesus,
Et Taranis Scythicæ non mitior ara Dianæ.”
_Belenus_ rests on the authority of Ausonius; and as he was worshipped
in the Italian town of Aquileia, he may fairly be considered as common
property to the Galli of Gaul, and the Galli of Italy. At the same time,
Tertullian assigns him to the _Norici_, who were, probably, other than
Gauls; whilst his name has a look suspiciously Slavonic, since _bel_ may
be the first syllable in _bjelibog_, the _white god_.
_Ogmius_ seems to be a true Gallic name, and we learn from Lucian that
his attributes were intermediate to those of Hercules and Mercury.
_Peninus_ was, perhaps, the name of a locality rather than a deity;
although Livy writes _Deus Penninus_. The name evidently contains the
Keltic word _pen_, and signifies probably some sacred mountain-top
amongst the Pennine Alps.
_Andorta_ was a goddess of victory, and _Epona_ one of horses; the
latter belonging to the Gauls of Italy.
All these may fairly be considered Keltic; though the evidence for none
of them is conclusive. The names that are supplied by
inscriptions--names which, like the previous ones, I take from Zeuss
without having examined the details--exhibit a remarkable preponderance
of the termination -_enn_-, or _neh_-. Thus we have Nehal-_ennia_,
Ruma-_nehæ_, Vacalli-_nehæ_, Maviat-_inehæ_, Gesat-_enæ_, Etrai-_enæ_,
Aserici-_nehæ_, and Leher-_ennius_. I can throw no light on the
termination. Two other names ending in -_ast_, Arbog-_ast_ and
Morit-_ast_, seem Slavonic; and, as such, are probably referable to some
garrison.
_Dusius_ has a better claim than any word hitherto mentioned, since it
exists in the present word _deuce_.
It is little, then, that the minute ethnologist can add to the current
description of the ancient _Druidism_, for by that name it is convenient
to express the Paganism of Britain, in which Gaul, to a certain degree,
shared. The Druid as the priest, and the Bard as the poet--such are the
native names in the Gallic religion and literature. That certain deities
were analogous to the Roman Mercury, Apollo, Mars, Jupiter and Minerva,
is expressly stated, but what names each bore, and how close the
parallel ran is unknown. “Deum maxime Mercurium colunt: hujus sunt
plurima simulacra, hunc omnium inventorem artium ferunt, hunc viarum
atque itinerum ducem, hunc ad quæstus pecuniæ mercaturasque habere vim
maximam arbitrantur. Post hunc, Apollinem et Martem et Jovem et
Minervam. De his eandem fere quam reliquæ gentes, habent opinionem:
Apollinem morbos depellere; Minervam operum atque artificiorum initia
transdere; Jovem imperium cœlestium tenere; Martem bella regere.”
Their social constitution was a system of chiefs, retainers, and slaves;
nevertheless, the full development of such a form of government is not
easily to be reconciled with the existence of towns or cities, and such
centres of regular industry as we know the ancient Gauls to have
possessed. Whatever it may have been in the Belgic area, there are good
reasons for believing it to have been considerably modified in the
southern and central parts of Gaul.
The Gauls knew the use of the Greek alphabet, they cultivated land, they
built towns. It is impossible, in the face of this, to allow them a
capacity for civilization less than that of the Iberians, or even than
the Italians themselves, so far as these last were not improved by Greek
and Etruscan influences.
That, contrasted with the Germans, they displayed a great mobility of
temper, is likely enough. To the literature and political power of Rome,
after the reduction of Gaul to a province, they contributed
largely--less, perhaps, than the Spaniards who gave to their conquerors
Seneca and Lucan as writers, and Trajan and Adrian as rulers, but still
largely: for Cornelius Gallus, in the palmy days of Roman literature,
and Ausonius in its decline, as well as others, had Gallic blood in
their veins.
Their aptitude for war can scarcely be measured by the early Gallic
aggressions on the Republic. He is a bold man who would say that the
Teutones and Cimbri were Keltic at all, whilst, in respect to the Galli
of Brennus, the Insubrians, the Cenomani, and other Gauls of the second
Punic war, they were Cisalpine rather than Gallic Kelts. Still, they
were Kelts--though Kelts beyond the pale of the Keltic fatherland. The
same applies to the Boii.
I must now change the subject to remark that those differences of blood
and pedigree, corresponding with (but, by no means, necessarily,
creating) a difference of habits and civilization which the previous
investigations have afforded, are only good up to the thirteenth
century; so that it must not be supposed that those peculiarities
(whatever they were), which the Ligurian and Iberian bases, the earlier
admixture of Romans, the subsequent influence of the Goths, and the
final introduction of Arab and Spanish elements evolved, exist at the
present moment. If it were so, the difference between the northern and
southern French would be greater than it really is. I do not say whether
this is little or much. I only say that, had the original influences and
intermixture taken their course, the present French of Languedoc and
Provence would show certain characteristics which they have now lost,
or, if they retain them, exhibit in a slighter degree. But in the
thirteenth century, the north of France was turned against the south.
There are good writers who put so high a value on the admixture of Arab
and Hispano-Arabic influences as to have persuaded themselves that
Provence and part of Gascony were on the high road to Mahometanism when
the Albigensian crusade arrested their career. One would willingly
believe that there was some reason for one of the most horrible
campaigns of history, which might, as far as a murderous fanaticism can
be put under the shadow of an excuse, palliate its atrocities. The
physical historian, however, looks only to its more material effects;
and these were to replace a vast proportion of the French of the
southern by the French of the northern type and lineage; for this is the
effect of wars of extermination, or (hoping that such have never existed
in the full extent of the dire import of the word) of those conquests
that either lust or fanaticism teaches to simulate them. I shall quote
Sir James Stephen to show that the Albigensian Crusade was of the kind
in question. He has given, with painful eloquence, the sickening details
of the wars under Simon de Montfort:--
“The church of the Albigenses had been drowned in blood. Those supposed
heretics had been swept away from the soil of France. The rest of the
Languedocian people had been over-whelmed with calamity, slaughter, and
devastation. The estimates transmitted to us of the numbers of the
invaders and of the slain, are such as almost surpass belief. We can
neither verify nor correct them; but we certainly know, that, during a
long succession of years, Languedoc had been invaded by armies more
numerous than had ever before been brought together in European warfare
since the fall of the Roman empire. We know that these hosts were
composed of men inflamed by bigotry, and unrestrained by
discipline,--that they had neither military pay nor magazines,--that
they provided for all their wants by the sword, living at the expense of
the country, and seizing at their pleasure both the harvests of the
peasants and the merchandise of the citizens. More than three-fourths of
the landed proprietors had been despoiled of their fiefs and castles. In
hundreds of villages, every inhabitant had been massacred. There was
scarcely a family of which some member had not fallen beneath the sword
of De Montfort’s soldiers, or been outraged by their brutality. Since
the sack of Rome by the Vandals, the European world had never mourned
over a national disaster so wide in its extent, or so fearful in its
character.”[7]
From the beginning of the thirteenth century to the present time
everything has had a tendency to amalgamate the component ethnological
elements of France--to make it a country of one nation, rather than the
area of many varieties. Its _civil_ history, however, is the source for
our knowledge of all this.
* * * * *
The ethnology of Belgium is comparatively simple. Its elements are the
same as those of Northern France,--Keltic, German, and Roman; for the
analysis (as has perhaps been observed) grows simpler when we passed the
Seine. And this was but natural, as the scene receded from the great
centre of conquest and the great points of international contact.
In Belgium the Roman element is somewhat less, the occupation being
somewhat more imperfect; whilst the Keltic basis is referable to the
Belgic variety--a point in which Picardy, French Flanders, Artois, and
part of Champagne agree.
In Belgium the German element is more uniform, _i.e._, it is more
exclusively referable to a single division of the German stock. No
Goths, no High-German Burgundians are here; but Franks of the Lower
Rhine the followers of Clojo and Clovis; Franks from the Ysel or
_Salian_ Franks; Franks whose chief locality in the country that they
conquered was the parts about Tournay in Hainault; Franks who, if they
differed at all from the Franks of Charlemagne, whose line subsequently
replaced that of Clovis, did so but slightly; Franks, too, of the
Platt-Deutsch division of the German stock, whose nearest
representatives are the Dutch of Holland, and the Low-Germans of Cleves,
Juliers, and Berg. I believe that whether the kings of these Germans
ruled from Tournay or from Aix la-Chapelle, the section to which they
belonged was the same, herein differing from those writers who, because
Charlemagne was an Austrasian, contrast his descent somewhat strongly
with that of Clovis.
To begin, however, with the earliest ethnological history of Belgium, I
remark that the same question which presented itself in the case of
Alsatia re-appears here. Were the oldest known occupants of the country
Gauls, or Germans, or Germanized Gauls? I believe that they were the
latter, though not to any great extent; for it must be remembered that
Treves, Juliers, and Berg, where the modification was considerable, lie
beyond the Belgic frontier. Still, as Tongres (a locality which the
express evidence of Tacitus makes German) is in Belgium, and as Cæsar
calls the Nervii, Pæmani and others, _Germans_ (by which I understand
that they belonged to a Germanic confederacy) the existence of a
considerable and early intrusion of the tribes beyond the Rhine must be
admitted. So that the Romans, when they reduced Belgium, reduced a
country which, like Alsatia, although Gallic, was also _Quasi_-Germanic.
But they reduced it, and they Romanized it; and as we find the more
active emperors coercing the Batavi, Chamavi, and other populations
beyond the Rhine, we may reasonably suppose that they Romanized it
throughout.
The analogue to the Burgundian conquest of Burgundy and Franche-Comté
began in the fourth century, and not with the invasion of Clovis, as is
often imagined. Constantius and Julian had to defend the frontier by
land, and Carausius the Menapian by sea. And Julian was the last emperor
who defended it successfully. At the beginning of the fifth century a
Frank chief, not less formidable than Clovis, although less famous,
Clojo, invaded Gaul, and penetrated as far as the Somme. Hainault,
Brabant, and West Flanders he seems to have permanently reduced; and
what Clojo left undone, Clovis completed.
In the reign of Charlemagne, the process of Germanizing went on, but
soon after his death it came to a close; so that about four hundred
years is the time that must be allowed for the displacement of the
Romano-Belgic language of Belgium, _i.e._, of Antwerp, South Brabant,
Limburg, West Flanders, and Hainault; to which may be added French
Flanders, Artois, and the northern part of Picardy--for to this extent
it seems to have gone when it attained its _maximum_. And, then, a
reaction took place, and the French has encroached ever since. Artois,
French Flanders, and Northern Picardy have been wholly recovered in
respect to their language to France, and the Belgian provinces
partially. Such is the evidence of the _Flemish_ language in Belgium, of
the parts wherein it is still spoken, and of the traces of it in as far
south as the frontier of Normandy.
But it is not the only native language of Belgium--I say _native_,
because the French as it is spoken at Brussels and the towns is, to all
intents and purposes, as foreign a language as English is in Argyle or
Inverness. In Namur, Liege, and Luxembourg, the speech is what is called
_Walloon_, the same word as _Welsh_, and derived from the German root
_wealh_, a _foreigner_. By this designation the Germans of the Flemish
tongue denoted the Romano-Belgic population whose language was akin to
the French, and whom a hilly and impracticable country (the forest
districts of the Ardennes) had more or less protected from their own
arms. Now the Walloon is a form of the Romano-Keltic, so peculiar and
independent, that it must be of great antiquity, _i.e._, as old as the
oldest dialect of the French, and no extension of the dialects of
Lorraine, or Champagne from which it differs materially. It is also a
language which must have been formed on a Keltic basis, a fact which (as
stated elsewhere) is a strong argument against the doctrine of the Belgæ
of Cæsar and Tacitus having been Germans.
The Walloons, then, are Romano-Keltic; whereas the Flemings are Germans,
in speech and in blood--either Romano-Kelts Germanized, or else absolute
Germans; for upon the extent to which the Flemish language is a measure
of German descent, I venture no opinion. We must remember, however, that
as the Franks came from the other side of the Rhine, and from a not very
distant locality, the number of females who accompanied them may have
been considerable. Still, I think, that intermixture was the rule, and
purity of blood the exception.
In stature, the Flemish Belgians are larger men than the French, and, in
the country districts, more frequently fair-complexioned. In certain
families, too, there is a mixture of Spanish blood.
The Walloons are less bulky than the Flemings, dark-eyed and
black-haired.
The particular Germans who reduced the Flemish parts of Belgium, as well
as the north-western parts of France, were the Salii of Saal-land on the
Ysel in the parts about Zutphen and Deventer. But not alone. The Chamavi
of Hamaland were with them; and, probably tribes of Holland and the
Lower Rhine besides. Even there they were not altogether indigenous, as
will be seen when the ethnology of Holland comes under notice.
In the foregoing account Luxembourg, and Limburg, although politically
belonging to Holland, have been considered Belgian.
* * * * *
Switzerland, from having a Keltic basis, comes next in order. The
ancient Helvetia is at the present moment partly German, partly French,
partly Italian, and partly Romance; that is, if we look to its languages
and dialects only. Now as the last three tongues are derived from the
Roman, we may express the character of the Swiss tongues in more general
language, and reduce them to two great classes, the Gothic and the
Latin. This, however, will not give us the ethnology of the country,
since the blood is far more mixed than the speech. The analysis of this
is complex.
In the time of Cæsar the term Helvetia coincided with the modern country
of Switzerland sufficiently closely for all practical purposes of
general, perhaps for those of minute, ethnology also.
The Helvetii, also, of Cæsar were Kelts; so that the basis of the
population is Keltic--although the variety of that stock was probably a
very marked one.
The famous _Helvetian migration_ is one of the earliest and greatest
facts in the Swiss history. Orgetorix, a Keltic name, is the king. The
boundaries, on three sides, are well marked, but not on the fourth. The
Jura range separates them from the Sequani of Franche-Comté, the Rhine
from the populations of Baden and Wurtemburg (which Cæsar calls
_German_), and the Rhone and the Lake of Geneva from Savoy, which was
part of the Roman _Provincia_. The boundaries in the direction of the
Tyrol are undescribed, probably because they were unascertained. An
excess of population is the motive for their emigration. It is
undertaken with due foresight. Two years beforehand, they buy up all
kinds of vehicles and beasts of burden, and sow as much corn as the
ground will allow them. Alliances are sought with the neighbouring
powers. The Rauraci, Tulingi, Latobriges, and Boii, are asked to burn
their towns and join the expedition. The parts about Thoulouse are their
object. It is abortive. Cæsar defeats them and breaks it up; the
numbers of its component members being afterwards found to be as
follows:--
Helvetians, from Switzerland 263,000
Tulingians, from Savoy 36,000
Latobrigians 14,000
Rauraci, from Baden 23,000
Boii, from Bavaria 33,000
-------
Total 369,000
Of these, the number of warriors was 110,000, the rest being old men,
women, and children.
But as the historian of these movements is the conqueror of Gaul, we
must expect, ere long, the reduction of Helvetia to a Roman province. It
takes place as a matter of course. It is Cæsar who effects it; and the
process of Romanizing begins. The Roman language, however, I think,
extends itself into Switzerland from three points; from Gaul, from
Italy, and from the Tyrol. Such, at least, is the inference from the
present dialects; since in Tessino and the Valteline we have the
Italian; in Geneva and the Valais, the French; and in the Grisons, the
Romance.
This last requires notice. If we follow the Rhine from the Lake of
Constance, we are carried up into the narrow valley in which it rises,
and here the dialect is neither French nor Italian, but a separate
substantive tongue which, like them, is derived from the Latin, and
accordingly, it is known as the _Romance_ or _Rumonsch_ of the Grisons
or Graubünten. The Inn must then be traced upwards in like manner, when
in the valley of its head-waters, and the water-shed between it and the
Rhine, the Romance will be found again. It is reduced to writing and
spoken in several dialects and subdialects; so as to have all the
appearance of a language of long standing.
Now this, I imagine, represents the Latin of Rhætia--_i.e._, of the
Tyrol and Vorarlberg--rather than that of Gaul, and it was from the
Tyrol and Vorarlberg, conquered in the reign of Augustus by Tiberius and
Drusus, that it was introduced.
In few countries reduced by Rome must the blood on the mother’s side
have been more aboriginal than in Helvetia, and in few countries is the
extent to which the speech is Latin less a measure of the Latinity of
the descent.
Until the fifth century Switzerland was Keltic and Latin, even as France
was; and then mixture set in, partially. The Germans of Suabia and
Franconia, Germans of the High-German division, Germans by whom Alsatia,
Bavaria, Baden, Wurtemburg, Burgundy, and Franche-Comté, were
Germanized--some perfectly, some partially--extended their conquests to
the present cantons of Schwytz, Uri, Unterwalden, and the other cantons
of the German language; the populations of which are Keltic, Roman, and
_German_, those of the rest of Switzerland being simply Keltic and
Roman.
Switzerland, then, is the third country in which the basis is Keltic,
and the superadded elements Roman and German.