The westward advance of the Goths was not continuous. It met with checks from the legions, but again and again they came on, like waves of the sea, returning after retreating. In 402 they were driven back, but in a later invasion they came three times, in three successive years, up to the walls of Rome itself: that is, in 408, 409, and 410; and some time in these years it seems that a large force of the Ostrogoths joined their kinsmen of the Western Goths in this Italian invasion. These Eastern Goths were still pagans. In 410 the Goths actually entered and sacked Rome. The effect of this was that the Empire was compelled, if it was to survive at all, to make some terms of peace with the invaders, even if the terms meant that it had to give up a large territory to them. This is precisely what happened. Within a few years after the sack of Rome the Goths had established themselves in the south of Gaul and pushed down over the Pyrenees into Spain. Their Spanish conquests at this time were given back to the Roman Empire, though some of the Goths remained in Spain, but by way of compensation Rome recognised what was known as the Visigothic Kingdom of Toulouse. This Visigothic territory reached right across to the Atlantic Ocean and as far north as the River Loire.

The Vandals

But now we ought to take a look at what was happening a little further north again, for this pressing through of the Germanic barbarians went on, as I have said, all along the eastern boundary. Just as the Goths had come flooding in from across the Danube, so too came the Vandals from across the Rhine. This happened in 406 or 407; and it was in 407 that the Empire, harassed by all these incursions from the east, was obliged to withdraw its legions from Britain.

We have seen something already of a tribe or nation called Franks, that had passed into Northern Gaul some years before this and had been repelled by the Romans. But some of them stayed within the Empire's bounds on terms of friendship with the Romans, and when the Vandals appeared in Gaul these Franks met them in a great battle wherein the Vandals are said to have lost two thousand killed—a very large number, considering the comparatively small armies of the time. The effect of this beating seems, curiously enough, to have been, not to send them back, as we should expect, to the north-east, whence they came. Instead of that we find them going onward, south-west, and two years later crossing the Pyrenees into Spain. They fought there with the Visigoths and other German tribes that had found their way there before them, and in the end—that is to say, after twenty or more years—had taken possession of that southern part of Spain, which is called Andalusia.

And then a very strange thing happened, and they undertook an extraordinary adventure, which we have already just glanced at.

Vandals in Africa

A stretch of the northern coast of Africa, along the south of the Mediterranean Sea, belonged to the Western Roman Empire. It ran from the Straits of Gibraltar eastward to the boundary of the province of Egypt which was part of the Eastern Empire. All this strip was put under the command of a Roman official who had the title of Count of Africa.

Just at this time the Count of Africa had given offence to the Imperial authority, and, in his fear of what the offended majesty of Rome might do to him, he invited the Vandals to come across the straits to his assistance. They came—probably in larger numbers than he had reckoned on. Eighty thousand of them, in all, including the women and children, are said to have come. The Count of Africa quickly repented of what he had done. He patched up his quarrel with the Emperor, and then set to work to turn out these guests and helpers that he had invited. But they were by no means so ready to go as they had been to come. They fought to remain, and so successfully that within two years of their landing in Africa they had possession of all the Roman territory along that shore with the exception of three cities, of which Carthage was the chief. At this time Carthage was estimated as the most important city, after Rome and Constantinople, in the Empire. And a few years later again, the Vandal king, breaking a treaty which he had made with Rome, attacked and took Carthage itself; and so, once again, this city, which had been the source of such deadly peril to the Empire in the days of Hannibal, fell into an enemy's hands; and it was for nearly a hundred years held in those hands.

Thus, to the year 440 or so, we may trace the extraordinary fortunes of this people to their zenith—their highest point. There, for the moment, we leave them.

Now a great part of the reason why the Vandals in Spain were so very ready to respond to the invitation of the Count of Africa was that the Visigoths with some allied tribes were pressing upon them there very much more severely than was pleasant. Spain is a country, as you should know, very much cut up and divided by mountain ranges, so that it was difficult for any conqueror to conquer the whole of the country, because those who were defeated could retreat into the mountainous places from which it was hard to hunt them out. You will find this happening again and again in the story of what we now call Spain. It is not certain, but it seems likely, that the people called Basques, living along the Pyrenees, are descendants of those Celts whom we saw moving westward and settling as Brythons in Britain and in Brittany. If that is so, they have maintained their language and their national character to this day, in spite of the many conquerors that have, at one time or other in the great story, had possession of the greater part of Spain.

I write sometimes of "Spain" and sometimes of "Italy," and so forth, because it seems the natural and easy way of indicating the lands which we now speak of by those names; but they were not so known at the time of which I am telling you. And I would warn you against a mistake into which we are only too ready to fall—the mistake of supposing that this Spain and this Italy, for example, have certain natural boundaries—that there is any particular reason, apart from the arrangements, the treaties and so on, which nations, in the course of the story, have made with each other, why they should have the bounds which are set to them to-day. It is true that these arrangements about the territory allotted to each are determined in some measure by the natural features, as we call them—by mountain ranges and by big rivers—but if it were not for these arrangements there is no reason in nature why the countries should be divided out among mankind as they are, and the divisions are continually being changed all through the story.

Now the Visigoths, as soon as they were free of the Vandals, extended their Kingdom of Toulouse, as it was called, towards the west until they were masters of nearly all Spain; but that was not until, in conjunction with the Romans, they had attended to another business further north—that is to the invasion of Gaul by Attila, King of the Huns. That Hunnish invasion was checked and pushed back by a great battle fought near Chalons in 451; and, curiously enough, it was almost exactly at the same place that the advance of the Eastern power, the Germans, was checked and repelled in the Great War of a few years ago. In this battle against the Huns, which was one of the battles that has made a great difference in the story of the world, there were fighting together, Romans, Visigoths and also Franks.

The Franks

The Franks, as we saw before, were perhaps the first of the Germanic tribes to break through the Roman wall. But on that first incursion they were repulsed and made a treaty with the Empire. Then they came again in the year 429 and, though defeated once, gradually fought their way south beyond the Somme River, and eventually right down to the Loire. South of that region they fought as allies of the Romans as late as 460.

The battle at, or near, Chalons counted for a great deal in our story. The Huns were a far more savage and uncultured people than any of the former invading tribes, and it really was a battle fought on behalf of civilisation, as civilisation was then understood, between the Romans, Goths, and Franks on the one side and the Huns and savagery on the other. And with these Huns were some of the Ostrogoths, whom we thus find fighting against their own kinsmen. One of the results of the battle was that the Ostrogoths now shook off the yoke of the Huns and became again an independent people.

And not only was the battle of Chalons a battle on behalf of civilisation; it was a battle on behalf of Christianity too, for the Huns—probably one and all—and the Ostrogoths, for the most part, were pagans, and the Goths and Franks and Romans nearly all Christians.

Therefore you see that Romans and barbarians had come together and made common cause, as we say, by the middle of the fifth century. Let us see what was happening in Britain in the meantime, now that the Roman soldiers had been withdrawn from it.

CHAPTER VI

HOW BRITAIN BECAME ENGLAND

We might naturally expect to find that as soon as the conquering Romans left our island, the native Brythons would rejoice in their freedom and in getting rid of their masters. They had, indeed, made an attempt, under their Queen Boadicea, to free themselves while the legions still were there, but the attempt had failed. The good discipline and fighting qualities of the Romans had been too much for them.

So, for a short while after the Roman soldiers went, they may have rejoiced in their freedom; but they did not rejoice long. You remember those walls that the Romans built across the island, and what their purpose was. It was to help keep out the Picts and Caledonians, those wild tribes that lived in what we call the Highlands of Scotland. We should regard these walls, not as insurmountable barriers, but merely as aids to defence, connecting camps and forts established at intervals along them. And within a very short time of the withdrawal of the Roman garrison, or guards, the Picts were over the wall and constantly harrying and robbing and killing the Britons.

Now the story goes that the Britons, worn by the perpetual inroads of the Northerners, invited to their assistance certain princes of the Saxon people—the people, you will remember, who lived in Sleswig. There were Jutes in the North of that country—in Jutland—then Angli, as the Romans called them, that is English, in the middle, and Saxons in the south. But both Angli and Saxons were names used to cover all those people. The names were used rather inexactly.

The Anglo-Saxons

These Anglo-Saxons—let us call them so, for that will include both the covering names—were great sea-farers, rovers, pirates. They went on marauding expeditions in their ships just as the Phœnicians had gone marauding long before and just as the Northmen, the Vikings, went a little later. It may be they were invited by the Britons; it may be they came without invitation, as their pirate fleet went down along the east coast of Britain. If they were invited, the result was very much like the result of the invitation which we saw that the Count of Africa gave to the Vandals. The Vandals came and helped him; but then they helped themselves also so liberally that they drove him out of his own possessions. The Anglo-Saxons did just the same by the Britons. They helped them: they drove back the Caledonians: but then they stayed: they drove out the Britons: they established themselves in the island: they changed Britain, the land of the Britons, into England, the land of the Angles.

At least, they made that change over much of the island. We have noted its geography in an earlier chapter, and saw that the east and the south are less mountainous and therefore less strong for defence against an invader, than the west and north. So it was all down the East of England and along the southern part that the Anglo-Saxons settled. The Britons went back into the hills of Devon and Cornwall, of Wales and of Cumberland.

We have to picture to ourselves all the eastern and southern shores of Britain and the western coast of the Continent of Europe as very liable to the attack of one or other of the sea-rovers at this time, and, as a consequence of different tribes of these rovers arriving in strength in different parts of our island, we find it divided into three different main kingdoms—in the north the kingdom of Northumbria, which reached up as far as the Firth of Forth; in the south the kingdom of Wessex, or the West Saxons; and between the two the kingdom of Marcia, or Mercia, which meant, originally, the kingdom of the Marches—of the "mark" or boundary between the English and the Britons.

The Briton had become Romanised—that is to say had adopted Roman ways of thought and living, and had lived under Roman law, while the legions were there. Of course, since the legions formed permanent encampments—practically towns—as we have seen, all the Romans and the Roman influence did not leave when the soldiers and the governors, appointed by Rome, went. The Britons had the Roman way of talking of these English as "barbarians"—men outside the pale.

Then these barbarians came in, just as they had come into Gaul, and conquered. But, for reasons that are not easily seen, they treated the conquered people, the Britons, with far more severity than the Continental conquerors showed. Perhaps they were of a fiercer race. Whatever the reason, they came killing, exterminating the natives; and, whereas in Gaul and other provinces that the Germans conquered, the Roman methods of law and all the Roman customs were allowed to go on, in Britain the Anglo-Saxons did away with all the Roman institutions and manners. They brought in their own ways and their own religion.

They were pagans, and the native Britons had become Christian. Perhaps that, in part, is why they treated the Britons so badly. But we have to be on our guard about believing quite all that is told us of their cruelty; because the only people who have told us about it, who wrote the history of the time and of the doings of the conquerors, were clerics, clerks of the holy orders, monks of a Christian monastery.

Druids

Britain had been Christian, because the Romans had introduced Christianity and established it in the stead of the old Druid religion of which the great stone circle at Stonehenge remains as a monument. But England was now pagan, and followed the religion of the North, whose gods were Woden, or Odin, the god of battles, who gives us our name for one of the days of the week—Woden's day, or Wednesday, and Thor, the god of the hammer, the great smith, like Vulcan in the religion which the Romans took from Greece. From Thor we get our Thursday. And Freia, the goddess who was supposed to be the wife of Odin, gives us our Friday. Tuesday is the day of the god Tiw.

STONEHENGE. The Druidical circle, from the air, at the present day. R. R. Edwards.] [Salisbury.
STONEHENGE.
The Druidical circle, from the air, at the present day.
R. R. Edwards. Salisbury.

By way of completing the story of our weekdays—Sunday, of course, is the day of the Sun; Monday, of the Moon. And Saturday—and you should note this, because it shows what a mixture our language is of words taken from the Saxon on the one side and from the Latin, the Roman, on the other—Saturday is the day of Saturn, one of the Roman gods adopted from the Greek.

For more than a century England remained pagan. It was not till very nearly A.D. 600 that any attempt was made to bring in Christianity again. That attempt was made in the south-eastern corner of England, just where the Anglo-Saxon pagans themselves had landed, and quite near our present chief cathedral town of Canterbury. But the revival of Christianity in England did not really come that way. The northern kingdoms in England were too strong for any influence from the southern kingdom to prevail, Christianity was reintroduced into England from Ireland, whither the Saxons had never come to destroy it. It came by way of an island, Iona, off the west coast of Scotland, and so across to the Holy Island, off the coast of Northumberland.

Then arose great fighting between the heathen, under Penda, King of Mercia and of the "Middle English," as you will read of their being called, and Christians under Oswi, King of Northumbria. Oswi utterly defeated Penda in A.D. 655 and from that victory followed the establishment of Christianity as the accepted religion over the British islands.

All this story of England under the rule of the Anglo-Saxons is separate and quite apart, for very many years, from the rest of the great story, which is, at this time, chiefly concerned with the destruction by the barbarians of the Western Roman Empire. It will come very closely into the great story again before many centuries are past, and you will see that it is closely involved in it by the time we reach the end of this volume; but until 600 or so, England is rather out of the main current of European history.

CHAPTER VII

THE PASSING OF THE BARBARIAN

We left the Vandals in 450 established in possession of all the African shore that had belonged to the Western Empire. The place of chief importance that fell into their hands was Carthage, that city from which so much trouble had come to Rome several centuries before. And just as had happened before, so it happened again now. The Carthaginian, descendants of those famous sea-rovers, the Phœnicians, had made Carthage, with its fine harbour, the headquarters of a fleet which went raiding and marauding all over the Mediterranean Sea. So too, now, the king of the Vandals assembled a great fleet which acted in just the same piratical way. Its first act was to defeat, so completely as practically to destroy it, the fleet of the Western Empire, and thereafter it became the terror of the Mediterranean, and its act of final and most unbearable insolence was when it came into the Tiber and the Vandals attacked and sacked Rome itself. This was in 455.

It is only a few years before, that we heard of the Goths "sacking" Rome. We may begin to ask ourselves what exactly is meant by this "sacking"; for we may wonder that there was very much left, after a while, to sack.

We have to remember, however, just as we had to remember when we were learning about the dreadful suffering of the Britons at the hands of the Anglo-Saxons, that all we know of what happened is what is told us by the sufferers of the "sacking." Probably the ferocity of it was a little exaggerated. You may have heard the phrase "an act of Vandalism," as describing some savage and senseless destruction of beautiful buildings and other works of art. And that description is taken from what the Vandals are supposed to have done when they sacked Rome. But the true story seems to be that they really did not destroy the most beautiful things in Rome, which were generally the temples to the old Greek gods. What they did destroy were the Christian churches. And they took away all the gold and silver they could lay their hands on, no doubt. But they destroyed the Christian churches just because they were pagans, and because Christianity was to them a false religion. It was a mistaken religious zeal which seems to have impelled them to do it. And since the men who have handed down the story were Christians, it is likely enough that the destruction would be described as somewhat worse than it really was.

Doubtless it was bad enough; and the Vandals were not at all pleasant pagans. They persecuted the Christians wherever they laid hands on them.

Now, we may follow the fortune of these Vandals until they disappear from the great story altogether. They continued their bad work as pirates and persecutors of the Christians for the best part of a hundred years; and then there came against them a very great general of the Eastern Empire, Belisarius. In a hard-fought battle, Belisarius at length gained the victory over the Vandal king. It was a victory so complete that he could impose what terms he pleased on the conquered people. The whole fighting force of the Vandals that still survived was taken captive to Constantinople, where it was formed into a mounted guard and sent to fight the Empire's battles against that still unconquered enemy, the Parthian, on the Eastern boundary.

Thus the Vandals were destroyed, and their very name passes out of the story after contributing to it one of its most remarkable episodes. Let us briefly recapitulate their story. Starting from somewhere on the shores of the Baltic, they come across Gaul and down into and through Spain, westward and southward. Then, crossing into Africa, they turn eastward again and become a great and terrible force, and finally are vanquished and taken yet further eastward to Constantinople and to Parthia, disappearing out of history at a point far eastward of their original starting-place for their westward journey. They have gone from the Baltic to the Black Sea, after travelling to the farthest western confines of the world as then known in order to get there.

So vanish, then, the Vandals.

The Visigoths

Now as to those Visigoths, under whose pressure the Vandals were only too thankful to get out of Spain, we have seen them establishing their Kingdom of Toulouse, in the south of Gaul, and surging over the Pyrenees so that they made themselves masters of most of Spain. At first we find them making treaty with Rome under conditions which confess the superior sovereignty of the Roman Empire. But by the year 470 or so they have thrown off all pretence of regarding Rome as their mistress. They deal with her as an independent monarchy.

But though their kingdom is an independent kingdom, it is a kingdom based on the Roman model for its government. Its laws are the Roman laws. It has adopted Roman manners and Roman ways of thought. It does not, like the Anglo-Saxon government in Britain, impose German customs. It even gives to Roman habits and thought a vigour which they have lost in Rome itself. In Spain, at all events, their kingdom is to endure for the best part of three centuries, and it will then be ended by an actor who has not yet appeared at all in the great story—the Saracen.

With that we may now dismiss the Visigoths from the story. The main scenes in which they took the chief role have been sketched, and they may go behind the scenes with the Vandals. Their influence, however, and their descendants remain: their effect on the story far greater and more lasting than that of the Vandals.

Very soon after the date 470, or so, of the Visigoths claiming independence, there happened in Rome itself an event which was full of interest and of meaning in the story. A barbarian, by name Odoacer, was appointed King of Italy. That in itself was a notable appointment. What made it more notable still is that, though calling himself King of Italy, he did not also call himself emperor.

It was an acknowledgment that the Western Empire had ceased to exist or had ceased to be governed from Rome. Odoacer recognised the emperor at Constantinople as the one and only emperor; and accepted from him an official title, that of "Patrician," showing clearly that he regarded himself as owing some sort of service and obedience to the emperor of the East. It made Rome and Italy seem of no greater importance than other provinces or kingdoms, such as the kingdom of the Visigoths with its capital at Toulouse, or that of the Vandals in Africa.

Attila the Hun

Under Odoacer, as king, Italy suffered invasion from yet another tribe of barbarians, from those Ostrogoths, related to the Visigoths, whom we saw under Attila fighting against their cousins at Chalons. The power of the Hun was so broken by the defeat of Chalons that these Ostrogoths were then able to free themselves from their dependence. Likely enough, however, the Hun still pressed hard on them from the east, for although Attila's strength was shattered it was not wholly destroyed. Two years after the Chalons battle the "Scourge of God," as he was named, was at length killed, and most of the horde that he led was either exterminated or lost among the people of the land in which they made their last stand as fighters; but even this great host of Attila's we have to look on as only a "swarm," so to call it, from the main "hive" which still lived and multiplied somewhere in that immense territory which we now call Russia. Even three or four hundred years later we hear of Rome and Italy being menaced by Huns from the north at the same time as the Saracens are threatening from the south. For the moment, however, their defeats on the northern border of Italy, following on their disaster at, or near, Chalons, have sent them behind the scenes of our story. The Eastern Empire was threatened with an attack by them on Byzantium itself about ninety years later than the date of Attila's death; but this menace was dealt with successfully by that Belisarius whom we have already seen victorious over the Vandals. As he thrust the Vandals, so also it was he who thrust the Huns, out of the story.

But now, in Odoacer's reign, the Ostrogoths, free of the Huns, but still perhaps pushed westward by them, appear in North Italy. This happened in the year 488. Odoacer marched against them, but was heavily defeated, and was killed by the very hand of Theodoric, the famous king of these Eastern Goths. It was with the full knowledge and approval of the Eastern Emperor that these Goths thus invaded Italy, although the King of Italy had owed his kingdom in the first place to the Emperor at Constantinople. After their victory the Goths established themselves in North Italy, and this kingdom of the Ostrogoths in Italy lasted for about fifty years. By that time there was certainly no force at the disposal of Rome that could drive them out; but the Eastern Empire then moved against them. Once more it was that great Byzantine general Belisarius who had command of the Empire's forces. Once more he was completely victorious. The Ostrogoths were compelled to relinquish their hold of the Italian territory; and so they too, having played their part, pass behind the scenes.

While they were in Italy they had stretched hands across the Alps, and had come into touch again with their kinsmen, those Western Goths that had their Kingdom of Toulouse in Southern Gaul. But even before the Eastern Goths were pushed out of the Italian kingdom that they had conquered, the hold of the Western Goths on their kingdom in Gaul had been loosened, the extent of that kingdom had been diminished, and they were left with little on the northern side of the Pyrenees—that is, with little outside of what we now call Spain.

This loss was inflicted on them by that tribe or nation of Germanic barbarians of which I have several times made mention already, the Franks.

As of the Goths, so too of these Franks, there were more than one tribe or nation, but the tribe which is most important in the story is that of the Salian Franks. It was so called either because it came from the River Saal, or, more likely, because it came from the "salt," the "saline" sea. You may have heard of the "Salic Law," which provides that the right of succession to the throne shall not be given to a son by relationship through the mother with the previous occupant of the throne. It must come through the father—"in the male line," as is said. That was one of the ancient laws of these Salic, or Salian Franks.

About the middle of the fourth century, that is to say about, or a little after, 350, they were invading Gaul, in the north, but were checked and defeated, and after their defeat were allowed to settle north of the Rhine, under treaty with the Romans. Fifty years later, the Roman Empire had so much need of its legions to protect itself from the south, that the legions of the Rhine, like those of Britain, were withdrawn.

Clovis, King of the Franks

Upon that the Franks claimed, and took, their independence. Within another fifty years we find them established as far south as the River Somme. They had fought, as we have seen, with Romans and Visigoths against the Huns, the common enemy of them all, at Chalons, in 451. Only a few years later they were fighting with the Romans and against the Visigoths further south; but by 480 they asserted their independence, and the next year the famous Frankish King Clovis came to the throne, and under him the Franks took possession of nearly the whole of Gaul. He united all the tribes of the Franks under his sovereignty.

The only parts of Gaul which were not now under his rule were the kingdom of Burgundy, as it was called, after a German tribe, the Burgundi, coming from the east, like all the rest of them, and a piece of Provence, in the south, which is all that the Visigoths were able to retain on the north of the Pyrenees of their Kingdom of Toulouse.

Terrific and most picturesque warriors were these Franks, according to the accounts that we have of them, very tall men and strong, with long red or fair hair. For defence they had a wicker shield, light so that they could move it quickly. One of their chief weapons was the throwing axe, with which they were very accurate and expert. They had bows and arrows and a long spear. They wore breeches, close fitting, as far down as the knee, and a tunic that was belted about the waist with a broad leather girdle adorned with metalwork of iron and silver. Brooches kept it fastened.

Thus they came conquering; and the parent stock remarked above all the rest of the conquering and invading barbarians, because they came to stay. Doubtless many of the others stayed also, but not as conquerors.

There is one other tribe of barbarian invaders for us to notice—the Lombards.

But I fear that you will be rather tired of all these different nations to whom I am introducing you. Their comings seem very confusing. It is difficult to remember which came before another and where they went and what they did. The biggest things done were, I suppose, first—though not first of all in point of time—that wonderful pilgrimage of the Vandals. That is perhaps the strangest story of all. Secondly, the invasion of the Visigoths, establishing their kingdom temporarily in South Gaul and more permanently in Spain, was really more important, because it was more lasting in the form that it gave to the great story. And then, thirdly, this Frankish dominion in Gaul is of great interest to us. It is the beginning of modern France.

But they are very puzzling—the comings and the vanishings. A friend of mine gave me what we call a memoria technica, to help me, and you, in remembering the order in which the different nations of the barbarians came in from the east. You know what a memoria technica is: some words easy to remember which recall to our minds something that we find difficult to remember. These words, as he gave them to me, are: "Visiting friends' houses very often frankly laborious."

Do you see what that means? I am afraid he must have found himself rather bored, at times, when his friends were doing their best to entertain him. He does not seem to have been as grateful as he should have been. But the suggestion of the words is as follows: "Visiting" is for Visigoths, who were the first to come west, in any force; then "friends" is for Franks—they came very early in the story of the barbarian invasions, but they came in much greater number later, as is indicated by the later "frankly." "Houses" is for those Huns, defeated at Chalons, "very," for the Vandals, "often" for the Ostrogoths, and "laborious" for the Lombards.

THE IRON CROWN OF THE LOMBARDS. The iron part of this crown, supposed to have been forged from one of the nails of the Cross, is the narrow circlet embedded in its interior.
THE IRON CROWN OF THE LOMBARDS.
The iron part of this crown, supposed to have been forged from one of the
nails of the Cross, is the narrow circlet embedded in its interior.

They were a tribe that lived up north of the Visigoths and east of the Saxons and they were called Longo-bardi, long beards. They came last of all the Germanic tribes, for it is not till 568 that we hear of them in Italy, though they had drifted southward and had settled along the North of the Danube long before. But though the latest, they seem also to have been the rudest and least advanced of these tribes. They never became Romanised, as the others did, never learned any civilisation from the civilised people whom they conquered. But they came in great force and made their conquering way right down to the Tiber. They settled then and formed a kingdom in the North of Italy, more or less where Lombardy now is. They were still so powerful some two centuries later that we find them taking Ravenna, which was within the boundaries of the Eastern Empire and was a place of great importance with a fine harbour.

It was the increasing power and savage rapacity of the Lombards which led to an incident that was of the very greatest importance in the story. The Pope—and notice this particularly, for it is the very first time that we have had occasion to name him in our story—the Pope begged for help, against the Lombards, of the King of the Franks. And this assistance was given him, at first by Pepin and afterwards by Charlemagne—the greatest of all the Frankish kings—and the result of that assistance was that Charlemagne was triumphantly victorious and in 774 took to himself the title of King of the Lombards. The real result was that the Kingdom of Lombardy, in any independent sense, was at an end.

So now we may sum up these invasions of the various barbarian tribes and see what they amounted to and what effect they had on our story.

The Visigoths continued on in Spain until the Saracens and the Moors came to overthrow their Spanish kingdom in 710.

The Huns ceased, for some centuries, to be a danger to the West about 450, though at least a hundred years later they were a menace to Constantinople and the East, and even as late as 900 they were again threatening Northern Italy. The Vandals went out of the story, in the curious way that we have seen, in 533.

About 550 the Ostrogothic kingdom in North Italy was likewise ended.

Belisarius

Incidentally, we note that it was by the great Byzantine general Belisarius, that these last three were defeated and sent out of the story. None of the three left a very lasting impression on it, but that cannot be said of the Visigoths, who altered the way in which people lived both in Gaul and Spain very considerably. The Lombards' kingdom was swallowed up, as we saw, by Charlemagne, in 744. They, too, left little mark on the story.

There remain, however (and their kingdom does not, like that of the others, come to an end), the Franks. The others go, but the Franks stay. Charlemagne absorbs into his own domains many others besides those Lombards. He absorbs the Burgundians, the Saxons (this name had by now been transferred from those Northern Saxons who were sea-pirates and came to Britain, to a people occupying part of that territory in south-west Germany which is still called Saxony) and many besides.

With Charlemagne we come to the beginnings of Europe such as we know Europe now. But in order to see how Europe began at that time to seem something like the Europe that we know we must go back again to "the Eternal City," as it has been called—to Rome—and see what has been happening there, and especially what it is that has happened which has brought into being and into his great importance in the story that personage of whom we made our first mention only a page or two back—the Pope.

CHAPTER VIII

THE POPE

As Christianity spread through the world in the second and third centuries, churches, that is to say places in which the Christians assembled for worship, were established in many cities. In different parts of the Empire, as these parts were converted from paganism, overseers of the local churches were appointed and were called "episcopi," from a Greek word which is very literally translated by our word overseer. And our word "bishop" is formed from that word "episcopus." There was, of course, a bishop, an episcopus, at Rome.

If Jerusalem had not been, as we have seen that it was, so battered by war and so deserted by the inhabitants who were driven out of it, it is likely that Jerusalem would have been regarded as the chief Christian city, because Christ had taught and had suffered there. It was the centre and chief city of the religion on which Christianity was based and of that law which Christ Himself said that He came not to destroy but to fulfil. But Jerusalem itself was almost destroyed.

Rome was the chief city, the centre, of the Empire. At Rome, moreover, the apostle who did more than any other to spread Christianity among the Gentiles—that is to say, all over the world—St. Paul, had lived for some years, and had died.

Whether St. Peter ever came to Rome is still rather uncertain. The evidence is not clear. But the latest researches seem to make it probable that he did go to Rome, and perhaps died there, as martyr. For we must remember that all through the first centuries Christianity had to fight its way against great opposition from those of the pagan religion. Besides the hatred of Christianity which some felt because it was a new religion, it incurred the hatred of the rulers because the Christians seemed to be setting up for themselves another ruler than the Roman Emperor. Even during Christ's life we know that the Christians in Judæa were suspected of enmity to the Emperor. The Pharisees laid a trap for Jesus by asking Him whether it was lawful to pay tribute to Cæsar. So the Christians often had to meet for worship in secret, and thousands of them were cruelly put to death.

Rome, then, because it was the centre of the Empire—which, for all Rome's subjects, meant the centre of the Universe—and also because it was the place where certainly St. Paul, and very probably St. Peter also, lived and died, became naturally the place to which the Christians throughout the Empire looked as the chief place in which their God was worshipped, and the place to which they would bring for decision any difficult questions and differences of opinion which the bishop of the district in which such debate arose could not settle for them. These districts were named "dioceses" from a very early date.

The bishop of Rome

Thus the bishop of Rome came to have an authority above the others. And then the legend grew that to him St. Peter, who was supposed to be the keeper of the keys of the gate of Heaven, had bequeathed some, at least, of that authority which St. Peter himself had directly from Christ.

Thus it was, even before the Emperor Constantine confessed himself a Christian. You should observe that the Emperors themselves had been deemed to be in some degree divine, and to have the power and glory of gods, up to this time. Constantine, proclaiming Christianity as the State religion, gave up this claim to divinity for the Emperor. The time had not yet come when the Head of the Church—its Father, Papa, or Pope—should actually confer the Imperial authority on the Emperor by consecration in the great cathedral built in Rome to St. Peter's glory. That time was not yet; but it was not so very far distant. It came, about the year 800, with the consecration of Charlemagne after he had destroyed the kingdom of the Lombards and taken their territories for his own.

ROME. View of St. Peter's.
ROME.
View of St. Peter's.

The third city, in size and importance, in the Roman Empire was Carthage; but Carthage, as you know, was taken by the Vandals, who were pagans; so the Bishop of Carthage could not be any rival of the Bishop of Rome. And just as the Vandals, who were heathens, removed one possible rival to the power of Rome in the Church, so did another, and very much more important, anti-Christian power remove some of the other rivals, the Patriarchs. This anti-Christian force was that wonderful Moslem or Mahommedan power which rose up with marvellous swiftness in Arabia in the middle of the seventh century. The Saracens came surging up out of Arabia, into Palestine, where was the Jerusalem patriarchate, on to Asia Minor and the patriarchate of Antioch, westward into Egypt and the Alexandrian patriarchate. There remained then the Patriarch at Constantinople and the Patriarch, or Pope, at Rome.

Thus these two anti-Christian powers unconsciously fought the battle for the supremacy of the Pope.

Now you have seen how Odoacer, the barbarian, became King of Italy in 475, but did not claim to be Emperor: that made the way of the Pope's power more easy. And all through the fourth century—that is from 300 to 400, to speak in "round figures," as we say—the Emperor of the West had his court, not at Rome, but at Milan, in the North of Italy. Just after 400 the Western Emperor moved his court to Ravenna, though it was actually within the bounds of the Eastern Empire. The power, however, that went with the high-sounding title of Western Emperor was not great, at this time, until the days of Charlemagne, when it became attached to the Franks' kingdom, and by that time the position of the Pope of Rome was so high and so firmly set that we find Charlemagne himself being consecrated and anointed as Emperor by the Pope.

But before this date another very extraordinary thing in the story of the Church had occurred. Christianity had been introduced into some of the northern parts of what is now Germany; and the way by which it had come was not, as you would expect, straight up from Rome, but it had come in from the west, from England, and into England it had been brought from the west again—from Ireland. How that came to pass I will try to tell you in the next chapter.

CHAPTER IX

HOW ENGLAND BECAME CHRISTIAN

All Europe, we may say, west and south of the Rhine and of the Danube, had become Christian before the barbarians broke through the wall. And when we say "all Europe," it includes even Ireland, out in the north-west. When the Angles and the Saxons came invading Britain and driving the Britons westward, they destroyed Christianity and brought in their own northern religion with its gods, Odin, god of War, and Thor, god of the Hammer, and the rest of them. But their invasion and their disturbance never reached as far west as Ireland. There, the Christian religion continued, while it was destroyed in England.

The Anglo-Saxon conquerors were constantly fighting with each other, as well as with the Britons, in England. The three big kingdoms of these Anglo-Saxons were Northumbria, in the north; Wessex, in the south-east and stretching westward along the southern part of England; and Mercia, between the two. These fought with varying success, and somewhere about 600 came an invasion into Kent of a tribe closely allied to the Angles and the Saxons, and actually included sometimes under either of these names—the Jutes, from the northern end of that Sleswig peninsula from which they all came. They landed in Kent, and perhaps because they were so close of kin with the conquerors already there, or perhaps because they came in very great force, it was a Jute king who soon became master of all the east of England from the south of Kent as far north as the Wash. And one of his first acts of importance, as king of all this country, was to ask, and to receive, as his wife, the daughter of the King of the Franks. The Franks by that time were masters of Gaul.

WHITBY ABBEY. Photo by F. M. Sutcliffe. Whitby.
WHITBY ABBEY.
Photo by F. M. Sutcliffe. Whitby.

The explanation of that apparent contradiction is that this conversion which was brought about by St. Augustine was not lasting. The Mercians, who had been tributary, that is had paid tribute, to the Northumbrian king, allied themselves with the Britons of Wales and claimed independence. Their king Penda was the last of the great champions in England of the heathen gods, and his long reign was a continuous struggle against the new religion. By 650 he had defeated all his rivals except the Northumbrians. Northumbria still held out against him, but St. Augustine's envoy, who had brought Christianity again to Northumbria, had departed after a victory gained by Penda over the Northumbrian king. Even in the south people relapsed in numbers into heathenism. The zeal for Christianity was kept alive in the north by influences that had come in through Ireland.

From the Irish churches, untroubled by the incursion of barbarians, missionaries had come westward. A famous monastery had been established on the island of Iona, off the west coast of Scotland. Thence the missionary monks had passed on into Scotland, still, at that time, called Caledonia and inhabited by the people called Picts. They had passed, too, across the northern part of England and had settled on the island which even now is called Holy Island, off the east coast of Northumberland. That was the centre from which the new King of Northumbria and his people were inspired with a zeal for the Christian religion which made them continue the struggle against the Mercian king whose lordship was at this time acknowledged over most of the rest of Britain. Oswi, the Northumbrian king, had received some of his education at the monastery of Iona. In 655 he met and utterly defeated the Mercian forces, under the aged king Penda, near the modern town of Leeds.

Synod of Whitby

That battle gave heathenism in England its death-blow, and the inspiration for that blow had come from the Irish Church. But then, England being thus again united to Rome by religion, and its intercourse with Gaul renewed, the envoys of Rome reappeared, and pleaded for the supremacy of the Pope of Rome over the English. The Irish Church differed in opinion from the Pope of Rome, as we are told, about the date at which Easter should be kept and about the fashion in which the priests' heads should be shaved. The English Christians had to adopt the one opinion or the other, and Oswi, the Christian champion, summoned a great meeting, called a Synod, at Whitby, to settle which of the two England should follow. The envoys of the two claimant Churches, the Romish and the Irish, pleaded the case before him, and it is asserted that he gave his decision in favour of Rome on being told that St. Peter was both the founder of the Romish Church and also that he held the key of the gate of Heaven. Oswi feared that he might offend St. Peter if he declared for Ireland rather than for Rome, and that St. Peter in consequence might not admit him through the heavenly gate. Thus England passed again under the spiritual rule of the Pope, and the Irish monks left their monastery on the Holy Island. But, both before and after this, some of them travelled into Northern Europe and preached Christianity among the German tribes, even so far north and west as the southern shores of the Baltic where the most numerous and most powerful people were the Frisians.

They do not enter very importantly into the making of the great story, but they were a great force along that Baltic coast. Very occasionally we find the name Frisians used for all those who were much more commonly called Saxons, and it is possible that they were of the same original stock; but that is a question which we need not try to settle.

In this manner, then, it was determined for England that she should be Christian, and no longer heathen; and it was determined also that she should follow the Romish way, in strict obedience to the Pope of Rome, rather than the Irish. But though all the English kingdoms became Christian, that religion common to them all did not for very long bring them at peace together. For the whole length of another century they were fighting among themselves, now one and now the other having the advantage, but never so decisively that any one of them could call himself king of all the English, or of England.

All this while the Frank kings were very powerful in Gaul, and though they never seem to have had any idea of attempting the conquest of Britain, they kept their eyes attentively fixed on what went on there; and their purpose seems to have been to keep the country in a state of division and disturbance. This they did by helping, or at least by promising to help, the one that was the weakest.

Thus affairs went in Britain down to the time of the great King Pepin, of the Franks, and again, after him, of his yet greater son Charles, who was known as Charlemagne, or Charles the Great—that is to say until about the year 800. And at about that time there came down upon the English the invasion of another nation of sea-rovers like themselves—the Danes.

The Pope

All this while, too, the power of the Pope of Rome had been increasing, by no means at a steady rate of progress, but at times gaining greatly and at others losing, but on the whole going forward like the incoming tide.

Doubtless the fact that the Western Empire no longer looked on Rome as its capital city, gave the Bishop of Rome opportunity for increased power. So long as Rome was the home of the Emperor and his court, there was a greater and more powerful person in Rome than its bishop. But the Emperor, as we saw, removed his court to Milan and, later, to Ravenna. That left the Pope as certainly one of the chief men, if not absolutely chief, in Rome. We have also seen that about halfway through the seventh century—that is, about 650—the Saracens had turned out from their seats three of the five patriarchs of the Church, namely those of Jerusalem, Alexandria, and Antioch. There remained the Patriarch at Constantinople and the Patriarch, the Pope, at Rome. The regulation of religious matters in the Eastern Empire fell naturally therefore to the former and the latter became head of the Church throughout the Western Empire.

The authority of the Pope depended largely on the belief that when Constantine, the first Christian Emperor, made Constantinople the seat of his power, he gave, or donated, to the Bishop of Rome his authority over all the Western Empire. This "donation of Constantine" became very famous. It is generally thought that the deed, that is to say the parchment with the words on it which were supposed to make the gift good, was all made up—that the signature was a forgery, and the whole story of the donation an invention. But if it was so, it was an invention which had a great effect. It helped the Pope to establish his supremacy over all the churches in the West.

Nevertheless it seems that when there was trouble in any of the churches of Spain, where the Visigothic kingdom was established, the trouble used to be referred for decision to the capital city of that kingdom. Likewise in France, trouble in any of the Frankish churches was settled, if possible, by bringing the case up before the bishop in the capital of the Franks. But, for all that, both Visigoths and Franks looked on Rome, the city of St. Paul and St. Peter, as a place—we might say as the place—especially sacred and its bishop as a personage holding an authority superior to all others in Christendom. The feeling was the same in those churches yet farther from the Roman centre, the churches of Germany and of England.

The Western Empire, we have to realise, was no longer Roman; it was Frankish. Rome itself was included within the Empire of which the Emperor was Charlemagne. It was the Pope, you may remember, who had called in the aid of the Frankish, or French, kings—first Pepin and then Charlemagne—to aid him against the Lombards. They had given such effectual aid that the Lombard kingdom was overthrown and Charlemagne himself was crowned with the Iron Crown which was the sign of the Lombard monarchy.

The name of Lombardy remained, and remains to this day, as that of a part of Northern Italy. It remains also in our Lombard Street, in London. This was so called from the Lombard merchants and goldsmiths and bankers who came thither from Lombardy. The arms of Lombardy were three balls, and you may sometimes see three balls now as a sign over the door of a pawnbroker's shop. The first banking operations of the Lombards in London were very like modern pawnbroking; for they would lend money to people who gave them security for its repayment by handing over jewels or golden chains or ornaments. Thus curiously is the richest street, as it has been reckoned, in the richest city in the world, called after those long-bearded barbarians, of unusually savage manners, who came away from somewhere near where the Elbe goes out into the sea and who founded a kingdom for a while in Italy. A strange story which you may recall whenever you see that sign of the three golden balls.

After the fall of Lombardy the Empire of Charlemagne included not only all Gaul, which had come to him by succession from Pepin, but also what we may describe as all Germany, and Italy as far down as the Tiber and southward of it again. The Pyrenees had for years formed the boundary between the Frankish Empire and the Visigoths' kingdoms. The Emperor would have had no authority over the Goths, had they still been there in 800 or so; but in the early half of the eighth century, beginning as early in that century as 710, that Visigothic kingdom had begun to go to pieces under the attacks of the fierce Arabs, inspired by the fighting religion of Mahomet, who in course of the previous century had fought their way to the mastery of Asia Minor and of Egypt.

The Saracens

They came, working eastward along that strip of Africa fringing the Mediterranean, along which we saw the Vandals working westward. And just as the Vandals, who conquered all that African strip, were invited into Africa, from Spain, in order to help the master, as he then was, of that Africa against his enemies, so now these Saracens and Moors were invited, in the early part of the eighth century, into Spain, from Africa, to help one of the rival parties who were disputing about the succession to the throne. They, like the Vandals, stayed a good deal longer than their hosts had intended, and with a far different position in the country than those hosts had designed for them. But they were a people so important in the making of this greatest of great stories that we must give them a new chapter to themselves and to their own particular story.

CHAPTER X

THE SARACENS

Both the name Saracen and the name Moor came to be used in a sense much wider than their first significance. At first the Romans knew as "Saraceni," a single tribe of Arabs living near Mount Sinai. Later, the name Saracen was used by Europeans to mean any followers of the religion of Mahomet. Moors, "Mauri" or "dark men," was a name at first used only for a tribe that was also called Berbers, living along the northern edge of the Sahara desert, in Africa. But they were not of black skin, like the negroes, nor had they woolly hair. Their complexion was darkened only by the sun's burning power, and their hair was smooth. There were many of them in the forces that invaded Spain and put an end to the Visigoths' kingdom there early in the eighth century; and after a time all the Moslems, or Mahommedans, in Spain came to be known as Moors.

Mahomet

The story of the rise of Mahomet and the spread of the religion that he preached and the success of the armies by whose victories it was so dispersed is one of the most wonderful, perhaps it is actually the most astonishing, of all those that go to make up the great story.

The maker and preacher of the religion that we call, after him, Mahommedanism, or Mohammedanism, began his preaching early in the seventh century. He was a poor man, of no eminent family in Arabia. Arabia had already come under Jewish influence in some parts, and under Christian influence in others. Mahomet took the Bible as the basis of his preaching, but it seems that he did not understand it very well, and he placed his own interpretation on much of it. He supposed himself to be the prophet, or apostle, chosen by the only God, whom he called Allah, to preach the true religion to the Arabians.

Abraham, as we saw in the first volume of this great story, was patriarch, or head, of a clan that came up out of the desert at first to Ur of the Chaldees. Mahomet seems to have claimed to preach the religion of Abraham. Moreover, there was a tradition that the Arabians were descended from that Ishmael of whom the Bible tells us, the son of Hagar, sent out into the wilderness, "whose hand was against every man and every man's hand against him." If we accept this story we shall perhaps wonder less that Mahommedanism was such a martial, such a fighting religion. Mahomet preached that its followers should fight to carry it over all the world.

You are not to understand from this, however, that it was a religion which set out to make proselytes, as we call them; that is, to convert others to the same way of thinking. In later days we shall find that the Saracens were not very eager that the Christians of the countries that they conquered should become Mahommedans, because it was their custom to tax, at a certain sum, every one not of their religion. They seem to have looked on this financial side of the affair as being of more importance to them than any salvation of the Christian people's souls.

But at the beginning of his preaching—or prophesying—Mahomet had hard work to make his doctrine accepted, and himself acknowledged as the prophet of the one and only God, even among his own people. He had to fly from his native city of Mecca to the neighbouring Medina. After a while he found supporters there, and by degrees they became so many that he was able to go back and take Mecca. Then, again by degrees, he was joined by so many of the Arabian tribes that he was able to send armies beyond the bounds of Arabia, into Syria northward. They suffered defeat and check at times; but on the whole they were extraordinarily victorious.

For their success there were several causes, all quite easy to understand. They were a hardy people, accustomed to meagre fare and to hard living in the desert. They were very fine horsemen. The religion which their prophet preached to them promised untold joys in Paradise for those who died fighting against the enemies of Islam. (Islam was the prophet's name for the faith which he preached.) An intense belief in this happy future, after death, made them fearless in battle. Then they were a very poor people, and those against whom Mahomet sent them were far richer, and to the Moslem soldier loot from the enemy never was forbidden. They seem to have had a certain sense that some justice and mercy were due to the conquered, for the rule was that only four-fifths of the loot taken became the property of the conquerors. The conquered were left with a fifth.

And most of those against whom they went at first were weak, owing to lack of discipline and absence of strong government. The forces of the Eastern Empire in Asia Minor and of the Persians had been weakened by continuous fighting against each other. Syria had been so hammered between the two that it had little strength of its own. Egypt was feebly held. But it was not till after the death of the prophet that the armies carried the green flag of Islam east and west; and for a while after his death the succession to his religious leadership was much disputed.

It may occur to you to ask what need there was for a successor to such a position as that of Mahomet. He had preached his gospel. He had laid down the laws that were to be followed. Was not that enough? Why did he need a successor?

The explanation is that while Mahomet was a great preacher, or prophet, he also held a position of leadership over the Arabs which we have no one word to express. Perhaps it can be stated best by saying simply that the Arabs did what he told them to do. It also looks as if he was wise enough to tell them to do things that they were not likely to object to doing. I suppose we may state that he was a ruler with the limits of his authority not very clearly defined. But his influence was very powerful, because he gave out, and probably believed, that whatever he told the people was put into his mouth by Allah, the only God, whose prophet he claimed to be.

This "only God" was a phrase that was often repeated by the Mahommedans in opposition to the "Trinity" of the Christians, to whom the Deity was revealed as being "three Persons and one God."

The caliphs

Therefore, if Mahomet had died without a successor to an authority in some part like his own, the people would have been quite at a loss for a guide and ruler. He was in fact succeeded by "caliphs," as they were, and as they still are, called, the word caliph actually meaning "successor" or "representative." The caliphs were supposed to be "representative" of Mahomet, to succeed to some of his authority, rather as the Popes of Rome were deemed to succeed to and be representative of the authority of St. Peter. They did not pretend to receive messages from Allah, as Mahomet had received them, but they would uphold the teaching of Mahomet; and their explanations of doubtful points in his teaching were likely to be accepted by all Mahommedans. And although they were not held in the same honour as Mahomet, they were regarded as rulers of the nation whom all men should obey for the sake of their good fortune both in this world and in the next.

Now, in Syria and in Asia Minor generally, the population was probably far more nearly akin to the Arabians than to the Romans or the Greeks. It was from Arabia that the Semitic tribes had come into the country westward from the Euphrates and the Tigris and thence had spread over Syria and Palestine. The Saracens had little difficulty with them. The Persians had a stronger feeling of nationality and made more resistance, but before the middle of the seventh century Persia too was conquered.

The way of fighting of those early Arabian conquerors was to come sweeping down in cavalry charges on the enemy. Their weapons were the spear and the curved sword, called scimitar, with which they used to smite as they galloped. They were very quick in movement, and if they had a reverse they could withdraw and disappear over the desert so swiftly that it was almost impossible to deal them any really severe blows.

As they conquered lands where different methods of fighting were in use, they learned to adopt those that would be of value to them, but always their chief reliance was on the quick movement of their cavalry and on the cavalry charge, with the spear and scimitar; and even when they put on any defensive armour in addition to a light shield, it was of a fine mail, or steel network, only. It did not add greatly to their weight on horseback. The steel work of Damascus, the capital of Syria, and the edge that was set on the swordblades of that steel work, became famous very early.

They used the bow but little until the time when the Turk came into the story; but he is not there yet.

Perhaps the most wonderful testimony to the intelligence and enterprise of these children of the desert is that they fought a great and successful naval battle with the fleet of the Eastern Empire as early as 655. The Emperor himself was in command of the defeated fleet. In all likelihood most of the victors were seamen of the Syrian coast who had become Mahommedans.

In one particular the rise of the Moslem power in Arabia, and its northward and eastward expansion, were possibly more of a relief to the Emperor at Constantinople than a menace. The Persians had continually been threatening and giving trouble on his eastern border. The Saracens attacked the Persians and within a very few years completely conquered them so that the Persians troubled the Empire no more. The Saracens seized Irak, which was the most beautiful and richest province of all Persia. They pushed further east, still conquering, into India, Tibet, and even to the borders of China.

The Moors in Spain

This was the first direction of their expansion, but almost at the same time they gained, easily, possession of Egypt, and then proceeded westward along that fertile strip of Northern Africa between the Mediterranean and the Sahara desert. Here they encountered, conquered, and converted to Mahommedanism that tribe of Berbers who were called the Moors, as I told you, and who were the conquerors of Spain.

It was in 710, less than a hundred years after Mahomet became a power in his native Arabia, that they went over into Spain to help the King of the Visigoths, or one of the claimants to the Visigothic throne, against his rival.

The Gothic power was broken by these dissensions, and the conquerors had no great trouble in making good their conquest over the whole of Spain, always excepting those strong mountainous places in the Pyrenees where the Basques still live—a different people from any that have entered Spain within the knowledge of our historical records. Perhaps they are of the same race as the Celts—either as the Brythons or as that older branch called Goidels—of whom a remnant held out in Wales, Ireland, Cornwall, and Brittany.

The Saracens had this advantage—call it luck, if you please—that they came upon enemies whose government was weak, who were not united or brought together by any feeling of patriotism or love of their country or nation. The Roman soldiers, at the time when the legions were made up of free citizens who owned land, had been able to feel that they were fighting for their own property. But all that feeling had long passed from the armies of the seventh and eighth centuries. The Saracens had, in their religion, a sentiment which gave them union, and inspired them with the idea that they were all fighting for the same cause. We have seen how the prospect of joy in Paradise, if they should die in battle, gave them courage. Therefore, when we take these facts into consideration, their quick and extensive victories do not appear so incredible. Their hordes must have seemed almost invincible to the greatly alarmed people of Europe as they went so easily through Spain; but when they pushed up through the Pyrenees and came against a really strong and well-governed people in the Franks they made no further way; they were defeated. They were rolled back again across the Pyrenees and left to make good their Empire in Spain.