From very early times the shore where the Gallic quadrilateral touches the Mediterranean had been colonized by the merchants of the East Greek and Semitic; and indeed the aspect of this fringe, its climate and produce, apart from its exceptionally political history, differ entiated it from the rest of the country. Again, the Gallic hordes had overflowed the Alps and largely occupied the valley of the Po. Again, there were presumably spots (as the Plain of Alsace) where the quadrilateral was intercepted by invaders of another stock. But as we have seen in the preliminary essay, the quadrilateral of Gaul is the permanent habitation of the population with the history of which these notes deal, and that population first attains historical importance with the invasion and con quest of Julius Cagan This conquest occupied eight years, from 58 to 50 B.C. It was marked by many vicissitudes, the climax of which was the great revolt of Vercingetorix, which was finally crushed at Alesia. Had Caesar failed in this attempt one cannot say that the Roman power would have been diminished or that of the Gauls extended; it was fundamentally never more than a struggle between civilization and barbarism, corresponding to the struggle undertaken later less thoroughly and with less success by Charlemagne against the Germanic tribes.
As it was, the conquest of Gaul affords such a field for the extension of civilization as has never before or since been afforded to its ex tension in the history of the Western world. For, first, the ((Hinterland" thus acquired was in every way suited to the extension of civilizing power, with a perfect climate, a very fertile soil, a numerous and highly intelligent popu lation; secondly, by an accident without which the Roman Empire could never have come into existence, the Gaul was not only suited to the reception of Roman civilization, but avid of it. Within three generations of Caesar's great ex periment, the whole vast territory was Roman, and more thoroughly penetrated by Roman laws, tongue, feelings and manner than any alien territory has been before or since, with the habits of the conqueror.
Indeed there are but two examples in all history of a success of this kind: that of the Spaniards in the New World, and this of the Romans in Gaul. But the Spanish success, remarkable as it is, does not compare with the Romanization of France. It has achieved a less complete civilization; it was effected at too great a distance from the metropolis.
Other military adventures of this sort have either spread a language or veneered a district with a governing class, without changing its daily customs. Such was the Hel lenic conquest of the Near East and such was the Roman conquest of northern Africa, in neither of which were the local dialects extin guished or the local religions uprooted. As
for the commercial empires, the Carthaginian, the Venetian or the English, it is not in their genius to impose their will upon subject peo ples or to transform these into something after their own image; nor have they commonly made the error of attempting a task so uncon genial to their forces.
This Romanization of Gaul, the most com plete, and, in a manner, the most miraculous•f historical revolutions, endures in its effect plainly to the present day, and upon it more than upon any other one historical phenomenon, the pattern of western Europe has been based: its bishoprics, its ritual, its law, its philosophy and its social organization. The municipality, with its elected council, European kingship, the legal class, the village with its lord and its praxlial serfs— all these proceed from the Romanized town and the Roman agricultural estate, not so much as they appear in their original Italian, but rather as they appear in their later Gallic form.
Some 200 years after the Roman pacification was complete, the preaching of the Christian religion in Gaul began to achieve its remark able success. Legend, and even to some extent recorded history, shows us the leaven of this new philosophy at work much earlier; thus the famous martyrdom at Lyons took place as early as the middle of the 2d century, and the saints who there suffered were, through Irenmus their priest, in touch with the apostolic period, for lrenseus was the disciple of Polycarp, and Polycarp of Saint John. But it was from the middle of the 3d to the middle of the 4th' cen tury that the true revolution • in Gallic thought as distinguished from these sporadic origins was effected. And from the middle of the 4th century Gaul becomes, as it has since remained, the chief scene of the struggle between the Faith and its opponents.
The Monastic Institution, Eastern in origin, was then established by the efforts of Saint Martin in the West, to produce, after centuries, the university upon one hand and upon the other the representative system. Again, it was then in the middle of the 4th century that the municipalities identical with the sees of the bishops begin to take on a social importance which has made them ever since pivots upon which French development has turned. And it is significant that about the same time the old tribal names of districts reappear, attached to these municipalities. By far the greater part of French towns to-day bear, not their Roman, but their second tribal name.