THE BARBARIAN INVASIONS Despite the benefits of the Pax Romana, the strongest bond uniting Gaul and Roman was their common fear of the Bar barians who thrust themselves unceasingly against the eastern frontier. Many times already the storm had burst over Gaul. It had required a Marius to stem the torrent of the Cimbri and Teutoni (102 B.e.), a Caesar to hurl back the Helvetii into their mountain fastnesses (53 B.c.) . Then the western horizon bright ened until the disaster to Varus wounded cruelly the pride of an Augustus. Abandoning the conquest of Germany, the Romans for two centuries entrenched themselves behind the fortified frontier line that ran from Cologne to Ratisbon, affording a pro tection to which the Gauls gratefully acquiesced. But under the pressure of migrating tribes upon those already settled, the Ger man invasion gradually penetrated across the frontier, now in the guise of colonization, now in that of war. Suddenly, at the begin ning of the 5th century, owing to a violent forward-thrust of the German tribes, themselves subjected to the pressure of the Huns, the Rhine frontier, denuded of guards by civil wars, was swept away. For 7o years (405-475) the tempest raged over Gaul.
The Barbarians were a group of tribes and not a single nation. For them there was so little ques tion of substituting a Barbarian empire for that of Rome (for which they entertained a superstitious reverence) that their con quests seemed to them illegitimate without imperial ratification. When the first storm had passed, the Visigoths had established a powerful kingdom from the Loire to Andalusia; the Burgundians set up another in the valleys of the Rhone and Saone; finally, the Franks, divided into two groups, settled in northern Gaul; the Ripuarians round Cologne and the upper Moselle; the Salians round Cambrai and the Somme. For a last time all the Bar barians, auxiliaries of Rome, ranged themselves under Aetius in
to overthrow near Chalons the hordes of Attila. Then the empire of the West retreated over the Alps to die.
The Roman Church, which survived the Empire, inherited to some extent the Imperial attitude towards Barbarian Europe. Gradually the City of God came to take the place of the Roman State as the guardian of civilization. That they might re-establish order, and maintain it, the bishops—"defenders of cities"—sought from the Barbarian kings the support they had hitherto received from the empire in their contest with the Arian heresy (which denied the divinity of Christ and the Holy Trinity) and all the survivals of paganism. But the Visigothic and Burgundian kings were infected with Arianism, and to them the Bishops were inevitably opposed. The Franks, who were to give to the land its permanent designation, and who were to play so great a role in its history, seemed as yet far from such pre-eminence: they were less civilized than the Visigoths and Burgundians, and they were pagans, and by a double paradox, it was this that helped them. Their strength as fighters enabled them to extend their power and keep out fresh invaders, and further, the Church has always preferred pagans to heretics. The conversion of Clovis to the orthodox faith was a masterstroke: at one and the same time, it made his fortune and that of the Franks. A common faith was to become the token of a unified State and the foundation-stone of Christian France.
