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. Not a trace of his work remains 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.
No human event was 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 four 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, even 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 Gallic 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.