Part 10 (1/2)
PART II
THE MEDIAEVAL WORLD
THE DELUGE OF BARBARISM THE MEDIAEVAL STRUGGLE TO PRESERVE AND REeSTABLISH CIVILIZATION
CHAPTER V
NEW PEOPLES IN THE EMPIRE
THE WEAKENED EMPIRE Though the first and second centuries AD have often been called one of the happiest ages in all huood Ehout the Roood Earded as clearly -point in the history of Ron Ron the Empire was beset by many difficulties-- pestilence, floods, famine, troubles with the Christians, and heavy German inroads--to which it had not before been accuston the Eh the elee in national destiny had their origin in the changes in the character of the national life at least two centuries earlier, it was not until now that the Ees in a lowered vitality and a weakened power of resistance
The virtues of the citizens of the early days of the Republic, trained according to the old ideas, had gradually given way in the face of the vices and corruption which beset and sapped the life of the upper and ruling classes in the later Eovernment on any honest and efficient civil-service basis, the failure of the State to establish and direct an educational systeerous national tendencies, the lack of a guiding national faith, the gradual adreat extent and de influence of slavery [2]--all contributed to that loss of national strength and resisting pohich was now beco elements of importance were the almost coreat landed estates and cattle ranches worked by slaves, in place of the small farms of earlier days; the increase of the poor in the cities, and the declining birth-rate; the introduction of large numbers of barbarians as farmers and soldiers; and the demoralization of the city rabble by political leaders in need of votes Captured slaves performed almost every service, and a lavish display of wealth on the part of a few careat middle, commercial, and professional classes were still prosperous and contented, but luxury, imported vices, slavery, political corruption, and new ideals [4] had gradually sapped the old national vitality and destroyed the resisting power of the State in the face of a great national calamity
Rome now stood, ood condition, but in reality ready to fall before the blast because it had been allowed to become rotten at the heart Sooner or later the boundaries of the Eainst the pressure fro, were destined to be broken and the barbarian deluge from the north and east would pour over the Empire
[Illustration: FIG 31 A BODYGUARD OF GERMANS A relief from the Column of Marcus Aurelius, at Rome, erected to celebrate his victories over the Marcomanni, and other German tribes]
THE BOUNDARIES OF THE EMPIRE ARE BROKEN While temporary extensions of territory had at times been made beyond the Rhine and the Danube, these rivers had finally come to be the established boundaries of the Empire on the north, and behind these rivers the Teutonic barbarians, or _Germani_, as the Romans called them, had by force been kept To do even this the Roed to admit bands of Germans into the Empire, and had taken thereat love for fighting to hold other Gerht back by soldiers returning from the East, carried off approximately half the population of Italy This saure 18), a former friendly tribe, invaded the Empire as far as the head of the Adriatic Sea, and it required thirteen years of warfare to put them back behind the Danube Even this was accomplished only by the aid of friendly German tribes From this time on the Empire was more or less on the defensive, with the barbarian tribes to the north casting increasingly longing eyes toward ”a place in the sun” and the rich plunder that lay to the south, and frequently breaking over the boundaries Roain
In 275 AD, after a five years' struggle, the Eastern Eave the province of Dacia, to the south of the Danube, to the Visigoths, in an effort to buy them off from further invasion and warfare This eased the pressure for another century In 378 AD, now pressed on by the terrible Huns frooths, as a body, invaded the Eastern Empire, and in the Battle of Adrianople, near Constantinople, defeated the Roman army, slew the Roman Emperor, definitely broke the boundaries of the Eoths now moved southward and settled in Moesia and Thrace The Gerions, and from this time on it was they, and not the Romans, who named the terms of ransom and the price of peace A few years later, under Alaric, the Visigoths invaded Greece, then turned ard through Illyria to the valley of the Po, in northern Italy, which they reached in the year 400 In 410 the great calamity came when they captured and sacked Rome The effect produced on the Roman world by the fall of the Eternal City, as the news of the almost incredible disaster penetrated to the reht hundred years Ron hands, and now it had been captured and plundered by barbarian hordes It see The Visigoths now turned west oncewith them the beautiful sister of the Emperor as a captive bride of the chief, and finally settled in Spain and southern Gaul, which provinces were thenceforth lost to Roreat permanent inroads into the Empire, and from now on Roman resistance seemed powerless to stop the flood
[Illustration: FIG 32 THE GERMAN MIGRATIONS The barriers of the E the Rhine and the Danube now are broken down Take a pencil and trace the route followed by each of these peoples]
A PERIOD OF TRIBAL MOVEMENTS The Hunnish pressure also started the Vandals and Suevi, and within fifty years they had been able tothe cities on their way
Finally they crossed to the northern coast of Africa, where they becareat sea pirates of the Mediterranean In 455 they crossed back to Italy, and Rome was sacked for the second time by barbarian hordes The Huns, under the leadershi+p of Attila, the so-called ”Scourge of God,” now ed Gaul (451) and northern Italy (452), and then, at the intercession of the Roman Pope Leo, were induced by a ransom price to return to the lower Danube, where they have since remained In 476 the barbarian soldiers of the E land on which they too ht settle, rose in revolt, displaced the last of the Western Emperors, and elevated Odovacar, a tribesman from the north, as ruler in his stead The Western Ro of the Ostrogoths, becales, Saxons, and Jutes left their earlier homes in what is now Denmark and northwestern Germany, and overran eastern and southern Britain In 486 the Franks, a great nation living along the lower Rhine, began to enerations had overrun almost all of Gaul In 586 the Lombards invaded and settled the valleys of northern Italy, displacing the Ostrogoths there Slavic tribes now ars--and settled in Moesia and Thrace
Southeastern Europe thus became Slavic-Greek, as western Europe had becoure 32 shows the results of these different rations up to about 500 AD
EUROPE TO BE TEUTONIC-LATIN In the seventh century another great wave of people, of a different racial stock and religion--Se the shores of the Red Sea, swept rapidly through Egypt and Africa and across into Spain and France For a tiht overrun all western Europe and bring the German tribes under subjection Fortunately they were definitely stopped and decisively defeated by the Franks, in the great Battle of Tours, in 732 They also overran Syria and Persia, but were held in check in Asia Minor by the Eastern Empire, which did not completely succumb to barbarian inroads until Constantinople was taken by the Turks, in 1453
The importance of the result, to the future of our western civilization, of this battle in the West can hardly be overestiovernment, law, education, and civilization was settled on that Saturday afternoon in October, on the battle plains of Tours [5] It was a struggle for mastery and dominion between the Aryan and Seions, between the forces representing order on the one side and destruction on the other, and between races destined to succeed to the civilization of Greece and Ro oriental despotism and static conditions
[Illustration: FIG 33 THE KNOWN WORLD IN 800 This reat extent of the Mohammedan conquests The part marked as ”European Heathen” was added to Christianity within the next few centuries, and became a part of our Latin-Teutonic or western civilization]
Driven back across the Pyrenees by the Franks, these people settled in Spain; later developed there, for a short period, a for-the-tihtly influenced the current of European development; and then disappeared as a force in our western developain a little later, but only for a little while, and then they concern our western development no more
Our interest from now on lies with the Teutonic-Latin peoples of western Europe, for it is through them that our western civilization has been worked out and has co-continued series of tribal ht a large number of new peoples within the boundaries of the old Empire They finally came so fast that they could not have been assimilated even in the best days of Roestive powers of Roe of limb, white-skinned, flaxen-haired, with fierce blue eyes, and clad in skins and rude cloths, they seeiants to the short, small, dark- skinned people of the Italian peninsula Quarrelsoiven to drunkenness and gluttonous eating; possessed of a rude polytheistic religion in which _Woden_, the war God, held the first place, and Valhalla was a heaven for those killed in battle; living in rude villages in the forest, and --it is not to be wondered that Ro of these forest barbarians (R 46)
[Illustration: FIG 34 A GERMAN WAR CHIEF Restored, and rather idealized (From the Musee d'Artillerie at Paris)]
The tribes nearest the Rhine and the Danube had taken on a little civilization fro contact with the Roanized (Rs 46, 47) In general they represented a degree of civilization not particularly different from that of the better A a er ability to learn The ”two terrible centuries” which brought these new peoples into the Ehtful destruction It was the most complete catastrophe that had ever befallen civilized society