The Franks by J. | AdventAI

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jun 10, 1886

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 12, No. 22.

The Franks.

By J.

(Concluded.)

"In the blind fury of civil discord, Constantius had abandoned to the barbarians of Germany the countries of Gaul, which still acknowledged the authority of his rival. A numerous swarm of Franks and Alemanni were invited [A. D. 351] to cross the Rhine, by presents and promises, by the hopes of spoil, and by a perpetual grant of all the territories which they should be able to subdue. But the emperor, who for a temporary service had thus imprudently provoked the rapacious spirit of the barbarians, soon discovered and lamented the difficulty of dismissing these formidable allies, after they had tasted the richness of the Roman soil. Regardless of the nice distinction of loyalty and rebellion, these undisciplined robbers treated as their natural enemies all the subjects of the empire, who possessed any property which they were desirous of acquiring. Forty-five flourishing cities—Tongres, Cologne, Treves, Worms, Spires, Strasburgh, etc.—besides a far greater number of towns and villages, were pillaged, and for the most part reduced to ashes. The barbarians of Germany, still faithful to the maxims of their ancestors, abhorred the confinement of walls, to which they applied the odious names of prisons and sepulchres; and, fixing their independent habitations on the banks of rivers, the Rhine, the Moselle, and the Meuse, they secured themselves against the danger of a surprise, by a rude and hasty fortification of large trees, which were felled and thrown across the roads. The Alemanni were established in the modern countries of Alsace and Lorraine; the Franks occupied the island of the Batavians, together with an extensive district of Brabant, which was then known by the appellation of Toxandria, and may deserve to be considered as the original seat of their Gallic monarchy."

In a note Gibbon fixes the date of this permanent entrance of the Franks into Gaul, as follows:—

"The paradox of P. Daniel, that the Franks never obtained any permanent settlement on this side of the Rhine before the time of Clovis, is refuted with much learning and good sense by M. Biet, who has proved, by a chain of evidence, their uninterrupted possession of Toxandria one hundred and thirty years before the accession of Clovis."

The accession of Clovis was in A. D. 481; and one hundred and thirty years carry us back to A. D. 351, as dated above.

"From the sources to the mouth of the Rhine, the conquests of the Germans extended above forty miles to the west of that river, over a country peopled by colonies of their own name and nation; and the scene of their devastations was three times more extensive than that of their conquests. At a still greater distance the open towns of Gaul were deserted, and the inhabitants of the fortified cities, who trusted to their strength and vigilance, were obliged to content themselves with such supplies of corn as they could raise on the vacant land within the inclosure of their walls. The diminished legions, destitute of pay and provisions, of arms and discipline, trembled at the approach, and even at the name of the barbarians. Under these melancholy circumstances, an unexperienced youth was appointed to save and to govern the provinces of Gaul, or rather, as he expresses it himself, to exhibit the vain image of imperial greatness."—Decline and Fall, chap. 19, par. 20, 21.

In A. D. 355, Nov. 6, Constantius associated Julian with himself in the rule of the empire, and appointed to his administration the provinces of the West, with the immediate task of driving out these barbarians whom Constantius had invited in with the promise of a grant in perpetuity of all the lands which they should subdue.

"After Julian had repulsed the Alemanni from the province of the Upper Rhine, he turned his arms against the Franks [A. D. 358], who were seated nearer to the ocean, on the confines of Gaul and Germany, and who from their numbers, and still more from their intrepid valor, had ever been esteemed the most formidable of the barbarians. Although they were strongly actuated by the allurements of rapine, they professed a disinterested love for war, which they considered as the supreme honor and felicity of human nature; and their minds and bodies were so completely hardened by perpetual action, that, according to the lively expression of an orator, the snows of winter were as pleasant to them as the flowers of spring. In the month of December, which followed the battle of Strasburgh, Julian attacked a body of six hundred Franks, who had thrown themselves into two castles on the Meuse. In the midst of that severe season they sustained, with inflexible constancy, a siege of fifty-four days; till at length, exhausted by hunger, and satisfied that the vigilance of the enemy, in breaking the ice of the river, left them no hopes of escape, the Franks consented, for the first time, to dispense with the ancient law which commanded them to conquer or to die."

"The Cæsar immediately sent his captives to the court of Constantius, who, accepting them as a valuable present, rejoiced in the opportunity of adding so many heroes to the choicest troops of his domestic guards. The obstinate resistance of this handful of Franks apprised Julian of the difficulties of the expedition which he meditated for the ensuing spring, against the whole body of the nation. His rapid diligence surprised and astonished the active barbarians. Ordering his soldiers to provide themselves with biscuit for twenty days, he suddenly pitched his camp near Tongres, while the enemy still supposed him in his winter quarters of Paris, expecting the slow arrival of his convoys from Aquitain. Without allowing the Franks to unite or deliberate, he skillfully spread his legions from Cologne to the ocean, and, by the terror, as well as by the success, of his arms, soon reduced the suppliant tribes to implore the clemency, and to obey the commands, of their conqueror. The Chamavians submissively retired to their former habitations beyond the Rhine; but the Salians were permitted to possess their new establishment of Toxandria, as the subjects and auxiliaries of the Roman Empire. The treaty was ratified by solemn oaths, and perpetual inspectors were appointed to reside among the Franks, with the authority of enforcing the strict observance of the conditions."—Id., chap. 19, par. 25.

From this time onward the power of the Franks in Gaul steadily grew until the time of the establishment of the Visigoths in Aquitain, A. D. 419 (as already related), when they were powerful enough to share with the Visigoths, and the Burgundians, in almost equal proportion, the province of Gaul.

"The Franks, a loose confederation of German tribes, were in existence in the third century on the right bank of the Rhine, and for a long time showed no wish to migrate into Gaul. By degrees one of these tribes, the Salians, headed by a family called the Merewings or Merwings (the Merovingians), began to take the lead; they soon made themselves formidable by their incursions into Northern Gaul, and established themselves masters of the left bank of the lower Rhine. As the Roman power declined along that district, their authority increased; early in the fifth century they had spread from the Rhine to the Somme."—Encyc. Brit., Art. France, History, par. 13.

Thus the Franks had northeastern Gaul below the Moselle; the Visigoths held all of southwestern Gaul from the Loire to the Bay of Biscay and the Gulf of Lyons; and the Burgundians possessed southeastern Gaul, now Switzerland, with the country of the Saone and the Rhone clear to the sea.

Gibbon states it thus:—

"About the same time [A. D. 419-420] in the last years of the reign of Honorius, the Goths, the Burgundians, and the Franks, obtained a permanent seat and dominion in the provinces of Gaul. The liberal grant of the usurper Jovinus to his Burgundian allies, was confirmed by the lawful emperor; the lands of the First, or Upper, Germany, were ceded to those formidable barbarians; and they gradually occupied, either by conquest or treaty, the two provinces, which still retain, with the titles of Duchy and of County, the national appellation of Burgundy. The Franks, the valiant and faithful allies of the Roman republic, were soon tempted to imitate the invaders, whom they had so bravely resisted. Treves, the capital of the Gaul, was pillaged by their lawless bands; and the humble colony which they so long maintained in the district of Toxandria, in Brabant, insensibly multiplied along the banks of the Meuse and Scheld, till their independent power filled the whole extent of the Second, or Lower, Germany."—Id., chap. 31, par. 39.