Coincident with the conversion of Gaul and its organization as a complex and highly effi cient clerical hierarchy (which beginning in the 4th century, became within a hundred years the framework of the whole community and the only structure capable of outlasting the dissolution of the Roman world) came the phenomenon loosely and accurately called 'the invasion of the Barbarians." There was in fact but one true invasion, and that, to the honor of Europe, was utterly defeated. It was the Mongolian invasion under Attila. Even this was provoked by the use of Mongolian soldiers in the Roman armies. He penetrated with his enormous host to within sight of the walls of Orleans; fell back to the great dusty plains north and east of Chalons — probably much where the camp now stands, He had with him and was joined by every ele ment of disorder and of chaos: German tribes, and, we may presume, the fugitive, the criminal and the broken men of that declining period. Opposed to them were , all the forces of order and they were victorious.' But it was the last, organized effort of Rome; and within 50 years a local chieftain was to assume power in northern Gaul without so much as assuming the titles of Roman officialdom.
The wealthier and the more self-conscious the Roman Empire grew, the more defined its • social opportunities, the more ancient and fixed its customs and the more beneficent the religion which its civilization had to offer,, the more did it attract the perpetual infiltration of bar barians from beyond the pale. The process may ' be compared to the increase of potential is created by the storing up of a head of water, or any other contrast of positive with negathe in physical forces. With every succeeding gen eration there was less and less temptation or need for the Roman to seek adventure outside the Roman pale. The towns were growing magnitude, the Roman order had existed so long and with such 'splendid success as to be. apparently eternal. . Conversely, there was not a barbarian' within a months march of the border who was not by an irrestible gravita tion drawn toward the enjoyment of such•: privileges. Some small proportion,of the more abject savages were attracted by the mere opportunity to loot. defeated, , though a watch against them was a constant care and harassment. They included the few pirates of the North Sea and the cannibal in habitants of Scotland. The vast majority of the • barbarians were not of this kind. They were men thoroughly acquainted with the advantages of Roman citizenship, men many of whom (in the case of some groups the majority of whom) had served in the Roman armies and who desired the privilege of being Roman rather than the fruits of destroying the only civili zation they could conceive. Moreover, the total number was small, and especially small were the numbers of those who achieved political success. First of these in the history of Gaul come the Salim tribe of whose confederation was that limited and fairly definite race which still inhabits the district immediately to the north and west of the Waloon belt of French and Belgian Flanders. The social and even the
military organization of northern Gaul was in dissolution when in .481 a lad whom history calls. Clovis and whose actual name may have been spelled in any one of 20 barbaric fashions inherited the leadership of this little clan. Five years later as a boy of 20 he led them across the border, defeated another body of barbarians, organized as Roman soldiery, and through the organization of the Church.— • notably of the great see of Rheims, was' per mitted to occupy executive ,rank. It must not be imagined that this, more than any other of the numerous small incursions of the time, violently struck the imagination of contempo raries, still less that it affected the general life of the people. Writs were issued, taxes col- lected, civil and religious ceremonies performed in the same Way, whether the man nominally at the head of the executive in a province or a district happened to have been born within or without the Roman pale. For quite two cen turies this distinction .had, been of little import ance. The new features accompanying the end of the 5th and the beginning of the 6th cen turies were, merely, first, the advent of a certain though small number of independent, warriors .
who could not be fitted into any known part of the Roman organization (and who were not technically legionaries nor technically Roman officials), and, secondly, the breakdown of the provincial system. City, in the lack of a cen• tral power, stood apart from city, each looking to its own affairs. And chieftain, such as Clovis was, would claim to gather taxes, issue writs, enjoy the luxuryof the palace, not as the governor of one definite traditional dis trict, but of just so many municipalities as he had troops under him to occupy. It goes with out saying that these newcomers at once ac cepted the religion of the civilization they found as they did every other of its habits. There was however, one feature, which seems to us of supreme importance, and which the Roman civ ilization of that date seems to have regarded with indifference: this was the feature of popu lar language. Semitic dialects lingered unmo lested in northern Africa at this time. And it was a matter of regret to no one or even of curiosity to the learned, whether such a man as Clovis or Theodoric could or could not express himself in Latin. Latin was the only possible tongue for the work of government, for the law courts and for literature. A thousand dialects, Celtic in Britain, Iberian in the Pyr enees, Teutonic in the Rhine Valley, Punic in Africa, which diversified popular speech, played no greater part in the life of the time than private tastes in reading or in cooking do to day. Yet the existence of such dialects has warped and distorted the history, especially of Gaul, in that many historians of imperfect information, reading every sentiment of their own time into the past, have seen in language the test of a society and as we shall discover in a moment, have even made of such a figure as Charlemagne a sort of modern German nobleman.