Chapter IV: Part 4

"'Tis the Mexican!" exclaimed the pirate, gnashing his teeth with fury, and firing a brace of pistols at the boat. A hollow laugh replied to the shots. The pirates looked around them, saw that their boats had disappeared, and for a moment stood thunderstruck, but speedily recovering themselves, they reloaded their muskets, and, firm as rocks, awaited a fresh assault. They had not long to wait. A volley from the river warned them of the proximity of a new foe; a second, still better directed, stretched a third of them upon the ground. And now once more the terrible war-cry resounded along the shore, and the Indians, roused to madness by their previous repulses, rushed for a third time upon their enemy. Another volley from the boats, and then the Mexican and his companions sprang like tigers upon the terrified pirates. The struggle was short. Unable to resist the furious attack upon their front and rear, the pirates threw away their weapons, and flung themselves headlong into the river to escape the tomahawks of their raging foes.

Lafitte was the only one who stood firm, and seemed determined to sell his life dearly. His back against the bank, his sabre in his right hand, a pistol in his left, he parried a blow dealt him by an Oconee, who fell, the next instant, with his head nearly severed from his shoulders. A bullet finished another of his assailants, and he was raising his sabre for the second time, when a lasso was flung over his head, and he fell helpless to the ground. The long and terrible yell that now rang along the shore, and was re-echoed from the adjacent forest, proclaimed the complete and bloody triumph of the Red men.

The bullet that grazed the arm of El Sol pierced the heart of Canondah, and the day subsequent to the sanguinary conflict above described, witnesses her interment, and that of the Indians who fell in the fight. At the funeral a difference of opinion arises between the Oconees and Comanches. The number of slain pirates is insufficient to furnish a scalp to be buried with each of the dead Indians, and, to supply the deficiency, the Oconees are anxious to immolate Lafitte and twelve of his companions who have fallen alive into their hands. To this El Sol and his warriors, free from many of the barbarous prejudices of their new brethren, object. Two of the pirates are sacrificed to an outbreak of Indian fury, but the others are saved by El Sol, and it then becomes a question how they are to be disposed of. It is proposed to deliver them over to the Americans, that they may deal with them according to their laws; but Tokeah, with a refinement of hatred towards the white men, devises an amendment upon this plan. Sooner or later, he says, they will come to the tree upon which they are to hang. Meanwhile let them go at large, and cause the blood of the palefaces to flow, as that of the Oconees has done.

This singular proposition at first startles the vindictive and bloodthirsty Oconees, but when they fully understand it, they receive it with a burst of applause. Lafitte and his companions are unbound, and allowed to depart.

The funeral over, the Indians set out for the hunting-grounds of the Comanches, but Tokeah does not accompany them. He has had a dream, enjoining him to disinter his father's bones, which lie buried several hundred miles within the limits of the United States, in a district formerly possessed by the Oconees. He wishes Rosa to accompany the tribe to their new residence; but the young girl, mindful of her promise to Canondah, insists upon encountering with him the perils of the long and wearisome journey he is about to undertake. Whilst the main body of the Indians set off in a westerly direction, Rosa, a young Indian girl, Tokeah, El Sol, and four warriors, turn their steps towards the country of the white men. Thither we will now precede them.

It was a bright cool December morning, and the sunbeams had just sufficient power to disperse the fog and mist which at that season frequently hang for a week together over the rivers and lakes of Louisiana. In the county town of Opelousas there was a great and unusual crowd. It seemed astonishing how so many people could have been got together in that thinly populated neighbourhood, and a person who had suddenly arrived in the midst of the concourse would have been sorely puzzled to conjecture its occasion. To judge from the drinking, dancing, fighting, and pranks of all sorts that went on, a sort of festival was celebrating; but weapons were also to be seen; men were formed up by companies and nearly every body had something more or less military in his equipment. Some wore uniforms that had served in the revolutionary war, and were consequently more than thirty years old; others, armed with rifles, ranged themselves in rank and file, and, by a lieutenant of their own election, were manoeuvred into a corner, out of which no word of command that he was acquainted with was sufficient to bring them. Another corps had got a band of music, consisting of one fiddler, who marched along at the side of the captain, sawing his catgut with might and main. Those individuals who had not yet attached themselves to any particular corps, shouldered rifles, fowling-pieces, or, in some instances, an old horse-pistol, with nothing wanting but the lock; and the few who had no fire-arms, had provided themselves with stout bludgeons.

These, however, were merely the outposts. In the centre of the town the flower of the citizens was assembled, divided into two groups. One of them, consisting of the younger men, had fixed its headquarters in front of a tavern, the destination of which was indicated by a sign, whose hieroglyphics, according to our firm belief, neither Denon nor Champollion could have deciphered. Under these was written, for those who could read it, the customary announcement of "Entertainment for Man and Beast." In the interior of the establishment a second fiddle was to be heard; the performer upon which, of a less martial turn than his rival, was performing a lively jig for the benefit of a crowd of dancers.

The other group, more gravely disposed, had chosen a more respectable parade-ground, and established itself in front of a store, containing a miscellany of earthen jugs, rolls of chewing tobacco, felt hats, shoes, knives, forks, and spoons, and (the most essential of all) a cask of whisky and a keg of lead and powder. Above the door was a board, with the inscription, "New Shop--Cheap for Cash;" and on the wall of the crazy frame-house was written in chalk--"Whisky, Brandy, Tobacco, Post-office."

On the stump of a tree stood a man who, to judge from his new beaver hat, clean shirt-collar, and bran-new coat and breeches of a pompadour red, was a candidate for some one of the offices in the gift of the sovereign people. Near him were several other men of equally elegant exterior, to all appearance also aspirants to the vacant post, and who seemed to wait with some impatience for the termination of his harangue. Comparatively speaking, tranquillity and order reigned here, only excepting the noise of the dancers, and the occasional bellowing of some noisy toper stumbling about through the mud, with which the single street of the little town was covered knee-deep. Such interruptions, however, the orator seemed totally to disregard, and he continued in stentorian tones to inform his auditors how he would whip them damned British, whom he hated worse than skunks. This he was setting forth in the clearest possible manner, when the attention of his hearers was in some degree distracted by a loud "Hallo!" proceeding from two boon companions, who, after having for some time floundered about the street, had at last rambled towards the edge of the forest, and now suddenly began to shout violently, and to run as fast as their unsteady condition would allow. Amongst their vociferations, the words, "Stop, you cussed Redskin!" were clearly distinguishable--sounds far too interesting not to create a sensation amongst backwoodsmen. A dozen of the orator's audience slipped away, just to see "what was the matter with the d----d fools, and why they made such a devil of a row." The example found imitators, and presently not above thirty listeners remained collected round the speaker. Insubordination also broke out in the different corps that were exercising, and a full third of the men left their ranks and scampered towards the wood. Only the group in front of the chandler's store remained grave and steady in the midst of the general excitement.

From out of the dark cypress forest that stretches southwards from the shore of the Atchafalaya, a figure had emerged which judging from its dress, belonged to the Indian race. The savage had crept along the edge of the forest in order to get near the town; but alarmed perhaps by the crowd and noise in the latter, he had not ventured to take the road leading to it, but had struck into a side-path across a cotton field. He was about to climb over the fence, when he was descried by the two idlers already mentioned, who no sooner saw him than, although their heads were tolerably full of whisky, they commenced a rapid pursuit. One of the first took the precaution to place his pint glass in safety behind a hedge, and then followed his companion, a swift-footed son of the west, who already had the Indian in his clutches. The Redskin was so exhausted that he would evidently not have been able to proceed much further. The staggering and unsteady state of his captor, however, did not escape him, and he gave him a sudden push, which stretched him at full length in the mud.

"Stop!" shouted the backwoodsman, no way disconcerted by his fall; "Stop! or I will so maul your ugly face that you sha'n't be able to eat for a week."

The Indian seemed to understand, and stopped accordingly, at the same time assuming an attitude indicative of a firm resolution to defend himself. He grasped his knife, and boldly confronted his pursuers, who on their part examined him with looks of curiosity and of some suspicion. The appearance of an Indian in this neighbourhood was nothing very unusual, seeing that they had a village scarcely a hundred miles off to the north-west, and that they continually made excursions of several hundred miles into the States in all directions, and even to the capital. For a long time past their diminished numbers had not allowed then to attempt any thing hostile against their white neighbours, who each year drew nearer to them: and their increasing wants, particularly their insatiable greed after the precious fire-water, had reduced them to be, _de facto_, little better than slaves to fur-dealers and storekeepers, for whom they hunted, and who paid the poor wretches in whisky scarcely the tenth part of the value of their skins.

In the present instance the two backwoodsmen had no evil intention against the Indian; all they wanted was to give him a glass of Monongahela, and to amuse themselves a little at his expense. So at least it appeared from the words of the one who had been knocked down, and who, without taking his tumble at all in ill part, now roared out, that "he must drink a half-pint of whisky with him, or he would put him in his pocket."

"Come, young Redskin," cried the other; "come along. You shall help us to fight the cussed Britishers, and drink, ay, drink like a fish."

By this time the little group was surrounded by deserters from the parade-ground, examining the Indian with a rude and unceremonious, but not an ill-natured, curiosity. Without permission or apology they inspected his wardrobe, tried the edge of his scalping-knife, examined his mocassins, and one of them even made an attempt to remove the cap from his head. By these various investigations the stranger seemed more surprised than gratified. His exterior was, it must be confessed, somewhat singular. A foxskin cap covered his head and extended down over his ears, concealing his light brown hair, an attempt at disguise which the long fair down upon his upper lip rendered tolerably unsuccessful. His deerskin doublet denoted the Indian, but his trousers were those of a white man. One of his mocassins--the other he had left in some swamp--was of Indian workmanship; one of his cheeks was still daubed with the red and black war-paint, which had been nearly rubbed off the other; his hands, although burnt brown by the sun, were those of a white man. If any doubt could have remained, his features would have settled it; the bold blue eye could no more have belonged to an Indian than could the full rosy cheek and the well-formed mouth. The crowd stared at him with the same sort of stupefaction which they might have shown had they entered a thicket expecting to find a fat deer, and encountered in its stead a growling bear.

"I should think you've looked at me enough," said the stranger at last, in good English, and in a sort of half-humorous, half-petulant tone; at the same time delivering a blow, with the flat of his knife, upon the horny hand of a backwoodsman, who had again attempted to lift his cap with a view to examine his hair.

It was, as the reader will already have conjectured, our young Englishman, who, having been guided by the Indian runner into the path to the Coshattoes, had at last succeeded in making his way over and through the innumerable swamps, rivers, and forests with which that district is so superabundantly blessed. The comparative coolness of the season, and the shallowness of the swamps and rivers, of the former of which many were entirely dried up and converted into meadows, had favoured his journey, or else he would scarcely have succeeded in reaching the banks of the Atchafalaya. For the preceding three weeks he had lived upon wild-geese and ducks, which he had killed and roasted as the Indians had taught him. He had now just emerged from the wilderness, and, however great his wish undoubtedly was to find himself once more in civilized society, the grim aspect of the Goliath-like backwoodsmen, their keen eyes and sunburnt visages, and long horn-handled knives, were so uninviting, that he was almost tempted to wish himself back again. Nevertheless, he seemed rather amused than disconcerted by the frank, forward familiarity of the people he had come amongst.

"And d--n it!" exclaimed one of the men after a long pause, during which Hodges had been the observed of all eyes, "who, in the devil's name, are you? You are no Redskin?"

"No, that I'm not," replied the young man, laughing; "I am an Englishman."

He spoke the last words in the short decided tone, and with all the importance of a baron or count, who, having condescended to arrive in disguise amongst his dependents, on a sudden thinks proper to lay aside his incognito. There was in his look and manner, as he glanced over the crowd, a degree of self-satisfaction, and a curiosity to see the impression made by the announcement, mingled with the feeling of superiority which John Bull willingly entertains, and which he at that time was wont to display towards Brother Jonathan, but which has since entirely disappeared, and given place to a sort of envious uneasiness--a certain proof, in spite of the scorn in which it disguises itself, of his consciousness of the superiority of the detested Brother Jonathan, aforesaid.

"An Englishman!" repeated twenty voices.

"A Britisher!" vociferated fifty more, and amongst these a young man in a grass-green coat, who had just come up with an air of peculiar haste and importance.

"A Britisher!" repeated the gentleman in green; "that's not your only recommendation, is it?"

The person addressed glanced slightly at the speaker, who was measuring him with a pair of lobster-eyes of no very friendly expression, and then carelessly replied--

"For the present, it is my only one."

"And d--n it, what has brought you to Opelousas?" demanded the green man.

"My legs!" replied Hodges. But the joke was not well taken.

"Young man," said an elderly American, "you are in Louisiana state, and see before you citizens of the United States of America. That man there"--he pointed to green-coat--"is the constable. Jokin' is out of place here."

"I come from on board my ship, if you must know."

"From on board his ship!" repeated every body, and every brow visibly knit, and a low murmur ran through the crowd.

The news of the landing of British troops had just reached the town, and the same courier had brought the unwelcome intelligence of the capture of the American gunboats on the Mississippi. Trifling as this disaster was, compared with the brilliant victories achieved on Lakes Champlain and Erie, and on the ocean, at every meeting, by American ships over British, it had, nevertheless, produced a general feeling of exasperation.

The constable stepped aside with several other men, and talked with them in a low voice. When they returned, and again surrounded the Englishman, their conference had produced a marked change in their manner. Their rough familiarity and friendly inquisitiveness had given place to a repulsive coldness; the humorous cheerfulness of their countenances was exchanged for a proud, cold earnestness, and they measured Hodges with keen distrustful glances.

"Stranger," said the constable, in a tone of command, "you are a suspicious person, and must follow me."

"And who may you be, who take upon yourself to show me the way?" demanded the midshipman.

"You have already heard who I am. These men are citizens of the United States, presently at war with your country, as you probably know."

The green-clad functionary spoke these words with a certain emphasis, and even dignity, which caused the young man to look with rather less disdain at his shining beaver-hat, and verdant inexpressibles.

"I am ready to follow," said he; "but I trust I am in safety amongst you."

"That you will soon see," replied the constable, dryly.

And so saying, he, his prisoner, and the crowd, set off in the direction of the town.

If, as appears from the preceding extract, our author is ready enough to expose the peculiarities and failings of the English, whose foibles, in various parts of this book, he sets forth with at least as much severity as justice, he, on the other hand, and although his sympathies are evidently American, gives some curious specimens of their deficiency in military organization and discipline, and of the loose manner in which public affairs were carried on in the then newly formed state of Louisiana. The young midshipman is taken before our old acquaintance, Squire Copeland, who, with the restlessness characteristic of his countrymen, has emigrated some three years before from Georgia to the infant town of Opelousas, and holds the double office of justice of the peace and major of militia. Hodges is examined on suspicion of being an emissary from the British, sent to stir up the Indian tribes against the Americans. He scrupulously observes his promise, made to Tokeah and Canondah, not to reveal their place of abode; and, hampered by this pledge, is unable to give a clear account of himself. Suspicion is confirmed by his disguise, and by certain exclamations which he imprudently allows to escape him on hearing Major Copeland and his wife make mention of Tokeah, and of Rosa, their foster-child, of whom they now for seven years have heard nothing. The result of his examination, of which the good-natured and unsuspicious squire, having his hands full of business, and being less skilled in the use of the pen than the rifle, requests the prisoner himself to draw up the report, is, that Major Copeland, the constable, and Hodges, set off for a town upon the Mississippi, then the headquarters of the Louisianian militia. What occurs upon their arrival there, we will relate in a third and final notice of the book before us.

THE FALL OF ROME.

ITS CAUSES AT WORK IN THE BRITISH EMPIRE.

The Rise and Fall of the Roman empire is by far the most remarkable and memorable event which has occurred in the whole history of mankind. It is hard to say whether the Rise or the Fall is most worthy of profound study and anxious examination. The former has hitherto most strongly attracted the attention of men, from the extraordinary spectacle it exhibited of human fortitude triumphing over every obstacle, and human perseverance at length attaining universal dominion. It was the spectacle most likely to rivet the attention of strenuous and growing nations--of men in that stage of existence when national ambition is strong and the patriotic passions ardent, and the selfish interests have not yet become so powerful as to have generally extinguished the generous affections. But it may be doubted whether the events that occurred in the later stages of the Roman empire, are not fraught with more valuable and important information than those of its earlier annals. Less interesting to the soldier, less animating to the citizen, less heart-stirring to the student, they are more instructive to the philosopher, more pregnant with warning to the statesman. They contain the only instance yet exhibited among men of a nation sinking from no external shock, but from the mere influence of internal decay; and point alone, of all passages in the annals of the species, to the provision made by nature, in the passions and selfishness of men, against the possibility of universal dominion.

To any one who attentively considers this all-important subject, two things must be apparent, of the very highest consequence in arriving at correct ideas on it. The first is, that the Roman empire did not sink under the external violence of the barbarians, but under the weakness and decline which had arisen in its own bosom. The second, that the causes hitherto assigned by historians and philosophers for this internal decay, are either vague generalities, having no definite meaning, and incapable of any practical application, or can be easily shown, even to the most superficial reader, not to have been the real causes of the phenomenon.

There can be no doubt that some of the irruptions of the barbarians--particularly those of the Goths into Romelia, which led to the fatal battles of Thessalonica and Adrianople; and of Alaric into Italy, which terminated in the capture of the Eternal City--were very formidable inroads, and might, in the best days of the empire, have taxed its strength and resolution to repel. But a little consideration must be sufficient to show, that, formidable as these invasions were, they could without much difficulty have been withstood, if the empire had possessed the strength which it did in the days of the republic, or in the first two centuries of the Caesars. The Cimbri and Teutones, whom Marius combated and destroyed on the Rhone and in the north of Italy, were at least as formidable a body of barbarians as those which four centuries afterwards overturned the western empire. The forces whom Caesar conquered in Gaul, Trajan on the Danube, were to the full as powerful as those which carried the standards of the Goths and Vandals to Athens and Carthage. AEtius, in the decline of the empire, and with the mingled Roman and barbarian force of Gaul alone, defeated Attila in the plenitude of his power, at the head of three hundred thousand men, on the field of Chalons.

Belisarius, with fifteen thousand men, recovered Africa from the Vandals; thirty thousand legionary soldiers did the same by Italy under Narses, and overthrew the whole power of the Goths. So high did the Roman soldiers still stand even in the estimation of their enemies, that Totila, the warlike monarch of the Goths, strove to bribe them into his service by offers of high pay. None had yet been approved equal to these legionary soldiers in battle; and the manner in which, with infinitely inferior forces, they repelled the barbarians on all sides, decisively demonstrates this superiority. The vigour and ability of Heraclius so restored the empire, when wellnigh sinking under the might of its enemies, that for a century it was regarded with awe by the barbarous nations all round its immense frontier. The five provinces beyond the Euphrates were conquered by the Romans from the Parthians during the decline of the empire. Nothing is so remarkable, in the last three centuries of Roman history, as the _small number_ of the forces which combated around the Eagles, and the astonishing victories which, when led by ability, they gained over prodigious bodies of their enemies. The legions had dwindled into battalions, the battalions into cohorts. The four hundred and fifty thousand men who under Augustus guarded the frontiers of the empire, had sunk to one hundred and fifty thousand in the time of Justinian.[3] But this hundred and fifty thousand upheld the Eastern empire for a thousand years. So feeble were the assaults of the barbarians, that for above two centuries of that time the single city of Constantinople, with the aid of the Greek fire, defended itself with scarce any territory from which to draw support. It was not the strength of its enemies, therefore, but the weakness of itself, which, after an existence in the West and East of _two thousand years_, at length extinguished the Roman empire.

What, then, were the causes of decay which proved fatal at length to this immense and enduring dominion? Philosophers in all ages have pondered on the causes; but those hitherto assigned do not seem adequate to explain the phenomenon. Not that the causes of weakness are baseless or imaginary; on the contrary, many of them were most real and substantial sources of evil. But what renders them inadequate to explain the fall of Rome is, that they had _all existed, and were in full operation, at the time when the commonwealth and empire were at their highest point of elevation_, and centuries before either exhibited any symptoms of lasting decay. For example, the ancient historians, from Sallust downwards, are loud in their denunciation of the corruption of public morals, and the selfish vices of the patrician classes of society, as being the chief source of the decay which was going forward, while the growth of the republic had been mainly owing to the extraordinary virtue and energy of a small number of individuals.[4] But the very circumstance of these complaints having been made by Sallust in the time of Augustus, and the fact of the empire of the West having existed for four hundred, that of the East for fourteen hundred years afterwards, affords decisive evidence that this cause cannot be considered as having been mainly instrumental in producing their fall. How is the unexampled grandeur and prosperity of the empire under Nero, Adrian, Trajan, and the two Antonines, whose united reigns extended over eighty years, to be explained, if the seeds of ruin two centuries before had been sown in the vices and corruption of the rich patricians? In truth, so far was general luxury or corruption from being the cause of the ruin of the empire, the cause of its fall was just the reverse. It was the excessive _poverty_ of its central provinces, and their inability to pay the taxes, which was the immediate cause of the catastrophe. The nobles and patricians often were luxurious, but they were not a thousandth part of the nation. The people was miserably poor, and got more indigent daily, in the later stages of its decay.

Modern writers, to whom the philosophy of history for the first time in the annals of mankind has become known, and who were aware of the important influence of general causes on social prosperity, independent of the agency of individual men, have assigned a different set of causes more nearly approaching the truth. Montesquieu says, the decay of the Roman empire was the natural consequence of its extension. This sounds well, and looks like an aphorism: but if the matter be considered with attention, it will be found that it is _vox et praeterea nihil_. Those who, with so much complacency, rest in the belief that the fall of the Roman empire was the natural result of its extension, forget that its _greatest prosperity was coexistent with that very extension_. It is impossible to hold that the decay of the empire was the consequence of its magnitude, when the glorious era of the Antonines, during which it numbered a hundred and twenty millions of inhabitants under its rule, and embraced nearly the whole known habitable globe within its dominion, immediately succeeded its greatest extension by the victories, unhappily to us so little known, of Trajan.

More recent writers, seeing that Montesquieu's aphorism was a vague proposition which meant nothing, have gone a step further, and approached much nearer to the real explanation of the phenomenon. Guizot, Sismondi, and Michelet have concurred in assigning as the real cause of the decay of the Roman empire, the prevalence of slavery among its working population, and the great and increasing weight of taxes to support the imperial government. There can be no doubt that these were most powerful causes of weakness; and that they stand prominently forth from the facts recorded by contemporary annalists, as the immediate and _visible_ causes of the decline of the empire. The history of these melancholy periods is full of eternal complaints, that men could not be got to fill the legions, nor taxes to replenish the treasury; that the army had to be recruited from the semi-barbarous tribes on the frontier; and that vast tracts of fertile land in the heart of the empire relapsed into a state of nature, or were devoted only to pasturage, from the impossibility of finding cultivators who either would till the land, or could afford to pay the taxes with which it was charged. Doubtless the large proportion--at least a half, perhaps nearly two-thirds--of the people who were slaves, must have weakened the elements of strength in the empire; and the enormous weight of the direct taxes, so grievously felt and loudly complained of,[5] must have paralysed, to a very great degree, both the industry of the people and the resources of government. But a very little consideration must be sufficient to show, that these were not the real sources of the decline of the empire; or rather, that if they had not been aided in their operation by other causes, which truly undermined its strength, it might have been great and flourishing to this hour.

Slavery, it must be recollected, was _universal_ in antiquity, and is so over two-thirds of the human race at this hour. Much as we may feel its evils and deprecate its severities, we ourselves, till within these three centuries, were entirely fed by serfs; and a few years only have elapsed since the whole of our colonial produce was raised by slave labour. America and Russia--the two most rising states in existence--are, the former in part, the latter wholly, maintained by slaves. It was an army, in a great measure composed of men originally serfs, which repelled Napoleon's invasion, survived the horrors of the Moscow retreat, and carried the Russian standards to Paris, Erivan, and Adrianople. Alexander the Great conquered Asia with an army of freemen wholly fed by slaves. The Athenians, in the palmy days of their prosperity, had only 21,000 freemen, and 400,000 slaves. Rome itself, in its great and glorious periods, when it vanquished Hannibal, conquered Gaul, subdued the East--in the days of Scipio, Caesar, and Trajan--was to the full as dependent on slave labour as it was in those of its decrepitude under Honorius or Justinian. Cato was a great dealer in slaves; the Sabine farm was tilled by the arms of slaves; Cincinnatus and Regulus worked their little freeholds entirely by means of slaves. Rome was brought to the verge of destruction, nearer ruin than it had been by the arms of the Carthaginians, by the insurrection of the slaves shortly after the third Punic contest, so well known under the appellation of the Servile war. It is perfectly ridiculous, therefore, to assign as a cause of the destruction of Rome, a circumstance in the social condition of its people which coexisted with their greatest prosperity, which has prevailed in all the most renowned nations of the earth in a certain stage of their progress, and is to be found, in our own times, in states the most powerful, and the most likely to attain vast and long-continued dominion.

Equally futile is it to point to the weight of the taxes as the main cause of the long decline and final overthrow of Rome. Taxes no doubt are an evil; and if they become excessive, and are levied in a direct form, they may come in the end to ruin industry, and weaken all the public resources to such an extent as to render a nation incapable of defending itself. But a very little consideration must be sufficient to show that it was not, in the case of Rome, the increase of the taxes taken as a whole, _but the decline in the resources of those who paid them_, which rendered them so oppressive. If, indeed, the national establishment of the Roman empire had gone on increasing as it advanced in years, until at length their charges became excessive and crushing to industry, the theory would have been borne out by the fact, and afforded perhaps satisfactory explanation of the phenomenon. But the fact was _just the reverse_. The military establishment of the Roman empire was so much _contracted_ as it advanced in years that whereas it amounted to 450,000 men in the days of Augustus, in those of Justinian it had sunk, as already noticed to 150,000.[6] So far were the forces of Rome from being excessive in the later stages of the empire or disproportioned to an empire still, after all its losses, holding so large and fair a portion of the earth under its dominion, that on the other hand they were miserably small; and the disasters it underwent were mainly owing to the government of the Caesars never being able to equip an adequate army to repel the attacks of the barbarians. The force with which Belisarius reconquered Africa and recovered Italy, never mustered _seventeen thousand men_; and the greater part of his successes were achieved by _six thousand_ legionary followers. It was not the weight of the national establishments, therefore, but the diminished resources of those who were to pay them, which really occasioned the destruction of the empire.

There are two other facts of vital importance in considering the real causes of the gradual decay and ultimate ruin of the dominion of the legions.

The first of these is, that the extent of the decay was, in the latter stages of Rome, _very unequal_ in the different provinces of the empire; and that while the central provinces, and those in the neighbourhood of the metropolis, were in the most wretched state of decrepitude, the remote districts were _in the highest state of affluence and prosperity_. This important fact is abundantly proved by unquestionable authority, and it sheds a flood of light on the real causes of the ruin which ultimately overtook them all.

The state of agriculture in the Italian plains under the Caesars, is thus set forth by Gibbon:--

"Since the age of Tiberius, _the decay of agriculture had been felt
in Italy_; and it was a just subject of complaint that the life of
the Roman people depended on the accidents of the winds and the
waves. In the division and decline of the empire, the _tributary
harvests of Egypt and Africa_ were withdrawn; the numbers of the
inhabitants continually diminished with the means of subsistence;
and the country was exhausted by the irretrievable losses of war,
pestilence, and famine. Pope Gelasius was a subject of Odoacer, and
he affirms, with strong exaggeration, that in Emila, Tuscany, and
the adjacent provinces, the human species was almost
extirpated."[7]

Of the progress and extent of this decay, Gibbon gives the following account in another part of his great work:--

"The agriculture of the Roman provinces was _insensibly ruined_;
and in the progress of despotism, which tends to disappoint its own
purpose, the emperors were obliged to derive some merit from the
forgiveness of debts, or the remission of tributes, which their
subjects were utterly incapable of paying. According to the new
division of Italy, the fertile and happy province of Campania, the
scene of the early victories and of the delicious retirements of
the citizens of Rome, extended between the sea and the Apennines,
from the Tiber to the Silarius. Within sixty years after the death
of Constantine, and on the evidence of an actual survey, an
exemption was granted in favour of 330,000 English acres _of desert
and uncultivated land, which amounted to one-eighth of the whole
surface of the province_. As the footsteps of the barbarians had
not yet been seen in Italy, the cause of this amazing desolation,
which is recorded in the laws, (Cod. Theod. lxi. t. 38, l. 2,) can
be ascribed only to the administration of the Roman emperors."[8]

Michelet observes, in his late profound and able History of France:--

"The Christian emperors could not remedy the growing depopulation
of the country, any more than their heathen predecessors. All their
efforts only showed the impotence of government to arrest that
dreadful evil. Sometimes, alarmed at the depopulation, they tried
to mitigate the lot of the farmer, to shield him against the
landlord; upon this the proprietor exclaimed he could no longer pay
the taxes. At other times they abandoned the farmer, surrendered
him to the landlord, and strove to chain him to the soil; but the
unhappy cultivators perished or fled, _and the land became
deserted_. Even in the time of Augustus, efforts were made to
arrest the depopulation at the expense of morals, by encouraging
concubinage. Pertinax granted an immunity from taxes to those who
could _occupy the desert lands of Italy, to the cultivators of the
distant province and the allied kings_. Aurelian did the same.
Probus was obliged to transport from Germany men and oxen to
cultivate Gaul.[9] Maximian and Constantius transported the Franks
and Germans from Picardy and Hainault into Italy; but the
depopulation in the towns and the country alike continued. The
people surrendered themselves in the fields to despair, as a beast
of burden lies down beneath his load and refuses to rise. In vain
the emperor strove, by offers of immunities and exemptions, to
recall the cultivator to his deserted fields. Nothing, could do so.
_The desert extended daily._ At the commencement of the fifth
century there was, _in the Happy Campania, the most fertile
province of the empire, 520,000 jugera_ (320,000 acres) in a state
of nature."[10]

So general, indeed, was the depopulation of the empire in the time of Justinian, that it suggested to many of the emperors the project of repeopling those favoured districts by a fresh influx of inhabitants. "Justinian II. had a great taste for these emigrations. He transported half the population of Cyprus to a new city near Cyzicus, called Justinianopolis after its founder. But it was all in vain. The desolation and ruin of the provinces continued, and up to the very gates of Constantinople, which was maintained entirely by grain _imported at a low price from Egypt, and cattle from the Tauric Chersonesus_."[11]

As a natural consequence of this entire or principal dependence of Rome on foreign or provincial raising of grain, there was, on any interruption of these foreign supplies, the greatest scarcity and even famine in the metropolis. All the vigilance of the emperors, which was constantly directed to this object, could not prevent this from taking place. Tacitus says, that in the scarcity under Claudius, there only remained a supply of fifteen days for the city.[12] Famine in Rome was frequent under Augustus, Tiberius, Claudius, and Nero. Claudian laments, that after Egypt had been assigned to Constantinople, Rome had come to derive its subsistence solely from Lybia, and depended on the _double_ chances of the seasons and the winds.

----"Nunquam secura futuri,
Semper inops, ventique fidem poscebat et anni."[13]

"When Africa revolted under Gildo, in the reign of Honorius, Rome," says Gibbon, "was on _the brink of starvation_, from which she was only saved by large importations _from Gaul_."[14] She still depended on her provinces; domestic agriculture was ruined. Claudian represents the genius of ancient Rome bewailing, in pathetic and eloquent terms, her dependence for food on the nations she had conquered, in words which all governments rendering their people dependent on foreign supplies would do well to bear in mind. "Formerly," says the poet, "my prayers used to be that my legions might triumph on the banks of the Araxes, or that the consul might display his eagles at Susa; _now all I ask is a supply of food to avert the extremities of hunger_. The province of Africa, which furnishes corn to my people, is under the power of Gildo. _He intercepts our supplies, and our food is at his mercy._ He sells the harvests which belong to the descendants of Romulus; he possesses the fields purchased by my blood. The warrior people which conquered the world, now dishonoured and in want, endures the miserable punishment of peace; _blockaded by no enemy, they are like the inhabitants of a besieged town_. Death impends at every moment; there remain only doubtful supplies for a few days. _My greatness has been my ruin_; I was safer when my territory was more limited; would that its boundaries were once more at my gates! But, if I am doomed to perish, at least let me have a different fate; let me be conquered by another Porsenna; let my city be burnt by a second Brennus. All things are more tolerable than hunger."[15]

Nor was the state of Greece, in the later stages of the empire, more favourable.

"No description could exaggerate the miseries of Greece in the later stages of the empire. The slave population, which had formerly laboured for the wealthy, had then disappeared, and the free labourer had sunk into a serf. The uncultivated plains were traversed by bands of armed Sclavonians, who settled in great numbers in Thessaly and Macedonia. The cities of Greece ceased to receive the usual supplies of agricultural produce from the country; and even Thessalonica, with _its fertile territory and abundant pastures, was dependent on foreign importation for relief from famine_. The smaller cities, destitute of the same advantages of situation, would naturally be more exposed to depopulation, and sink more rapidly to decay. The roads, after the seizure of the local funds of the Greek cities by Justinian, were allowed to go to ruin, and the transport of provisions by land became difficult. When the Byzantine writers, after the time of Heraclius, mention the Greeks and Peloponnesus, it is with feelings of aversion and contempt."[16]

Nor was Asia Minor in a more prosperous condition in the later stages of the empire. In Asia Minor the decline of the Greek race had been rapid. This decline, too, must be attributed rather to bad governments than to hostile invasions; for from the period of the Persian invasion, in the time of Heraclius, the greater part of that immense country had enjoyed almost a century of uninterrupted peace. The Persian invasions had never been very injurious to the sea-coast, where the _Greek cities were wealthy and numerous_; but the central provinces were entirely ruined. The fact that extensive districts, once populous and wealthy, _were already deserts_, is proved by the colonies which Justinian II. settled in various parts of the country. Population had disappeared even more rapidly than the agricultural resources of the country."[17]

But while this was the state of matters in Italy, Asia Minor, and Greece--that is, the heart of the empire--its remoter provinces, Spain, Lybia, and Egypt, not only exhibited no symptoms of similar decay, but were, down to the very close of the reigns of the Caesars, in the highest state of wealth, prosperity, and happiness. Listen to Gibbon on this subject in regard to Spain:--

"The situation of Spain, separated on all sides from the enemies of Rome by the sea, the mountains, and intermediate provinces, had secured the long tranquillity of that _remote and sequestered country_; and we may observe, as a sure symptom of domestic happiness, that in a period of four hundred years, Spain furnished very few materials to the history of the Roman empire. The cities of Merida, Cordova, Seville, and Tarragona, were numbered among the most illustrious of the Roman world. The various plenty of the animal, vegetable, and mineral kingdoms, was improved and manufactured by the skill of an industrious people; and the peculiar advantages of naval stores contributed to support an extensive and profitable trade. Many particulars concerning the fertility of Spain may be found in Huet's _Commerce of the Ancients_, c. 40."[18]

The state of Lybia was equally characteristic of the highest and most general prosperity, especially in relation to agricultural industry, at the time when Italy and Greece were thus languishing in the last stage of decrepitude and decay.

"The long and narrow tract," says Gibbon, "of the African coast was filled, when the Vandals approached its shores, with frequent monuments of Roman art and magnificence; and the respective degrees of improvement might be accurately measured by the distance from Carthage and the Mediterranean. A simple reflection will impress every thinking mind with the clearest idea of its fertility and cultivation. The country was _extremely populous_; the inhabitants reserved a liberal supply for their own use; _and the annual exportation, particularly of wheat_, was so regular and plentiful, that Africa _deserved the name of the common granary of Rome and of mankind_."[19]

Nor was the state of Egypt less prosperous in the last ages of the Roman empire; nor was its condition a less striking contrast to the miserable and languishing condition of the Italian and Grecian plains. It is thus described by Mr Finlay,[20] whose recent work has thrown so much light on the social condition of the inhabitants of the Roman empire in their later days:--"If the accounts of ancient historians can be relied on, the population of Egypt had suffered less from the vicious administration of the Roman empire, and from the Persian invasion, than any other part of their dominions; for at the time of its conquest by the Romans it contained seven millions and a half of inhabitants, exclusive of Alexandria; and in the last days of the empire it nourished almost as great a number. The Nile spread its fertilizing waters over the land; the canals were kept in a state sufficient for irrigation; and the vested capital of Egypt suffered little diminution, whilst war and oppression annihilated the accumulation of ages over the rest of the world. The immense wealth and importance of Alexandria, the only port which Egypt possessed for communicating with the empire, still made it _one of the first cities in the universe for riches and population_, though its strength had received a severe blow from the Persian conquest."[21]

Sicily was another exception from the general decrepitude and ruin of the Roman empire in the latter reigns of the Caesars. "In the island of Sicily, the great bulk of the population was Greek, and few portions of the Greek race _had succeeded so well in preserving their wealth and property uninjured_."[22]

But in the other parts of the empire, to the north of the Mediterranean, the agricultural population was, in the time of Heraclius, _absolutely destroyed_. "The imperial armies," says Finlay, "which, in the time of Maurice, had waged an active war in Illyria and Thrace, and frequently invaded the territories of the Avars, had melted away during the disorders of the reign of Phocas. The loss was irreparable; for in Europe _no agricultural population remained to supply the means of forming a body of local militia, or even a body of irregular troops_."[23]

It may readily be supposed, that so entire a destruction of the rural population in Europe, as thus took place under the Emperors in the Roman empire, must have been attended with the most fatal effects to their means of defence and national power. The inhabitants of towns, accustomed to sedentary occupations, and habituated to the luxury of baths, the excitement of theatres, the gratuitous distributions of food, could not endure the fatigue, privations, and hardships of the military life. Substitutes were almost universally sought for, and they, amidst the desolation of the country, could be found only in the semi-barbarous tribes on the frontier. Thus the defence of the empire came to be intrusted almost entirely to the arms of the barbarians, and it was hard to say whether they were most formidable to their friends or foes. Nothing could supply the place of the rural population on the shores of the Mediterranean. The legions gave a master to the Roman world, and the legions were recruited from Gaul, Germany, Britain, and Pannonia. Thus the dominion of the Capitol was really at an end long before it was formally subverted; and Rome had received a master from the barbarians long before the days of Alaric.

This continued splendour and population of the towns, amidst the ruin of the country, in the declining periods of the Roman empire, has attracted the particular notice of one of the greatest historians of modern times. "In the midst," says Sismondi, "of the general desolation of the country, the continued existence and splendour of the great towns is not so easily explained; but the same thing is now to be witnessed in Barbary and Turkey, and in the whole Levant. Wherever despotism oppresses insulated man, he seeks refuge from its outrages in crowds. The great Roman towns, in the first three centuries of the empire, were in great part peopled by artisans, and freedmen, and slaves; but they contained also a number far greater than in our days of men who, limiting their wants to the mere support of existence, spent their lives in indolence. All that population was alike unarmed, unpatriotic, incapable of defence against a foreign enemy; but as it was collected together, and at hand, it always inspired fear to domestic authority. Accordingly, to keep it quiet, there was always a regular gratuitous distribution of corn in the larger towns, and numerous spectacles in the theatres, the amphitheatres, and the circus, maintained at the public expense. The carelessness of the future, the love of pleasure and indolence, which have always characterised the inhabitants of great towns, characterised the Roman provincials even to the latest days of the empire, and in the midst of their greatest calamities. Treves, the capital of the northern prefecture of Gaul, was not the only city of the empire which was surprised and pillaged by the barbarians, at the moment when its citizens, their heads crowned with garlands, were applauding with enthusiasm the victors in the games of the circus."[24]

The frequent custom of recruiting the legions by means of slaves, in the later period of the empire, which was wholly unknown in the days of the Republic, reveals, in the clearest manner, the weakness to which, in respect of military resources, it had arrived, long before the external symptoms of decay were visible in its fortunes. Even in the time of Marcus Aurelius, the legions which were to combat the Quadi and Marcomanni, on the Danube, were recruited from the servile class. Justinian went so far as to declare, by a public edict, every slave free who had served in the army.[25] "At last the army came to be composed entirely," says Finlay, "of the rudest and most ignorant peasants, of _enfranchised slaves, and naturalised barbarians_. This increased the repugnance, already sufficiently great, felt by the better class of citizens to enter the military life. The mercenaries formed the most valued and brilliant portions of the army, and it became the fashion to copy and admire the dress and manners of the barbarian cavalry."[26]

All the ancient historians concur in representing this impossibility of finding native soldiers in its central provinces, as the main cause of the overthrow of the empire. And that this, and not the power of the barbarians, was the real cause of the destruction of the empire, is proved by the fact, that whenever they were well directed, the superiority of the legions was as clearly evinced as in the days of Marius or Caesar. "Whenever the invaders," says Finlay, "met with a steady and well-combined resistance, they were defeated without much difficulty. The victorious reigns of Claudius II., Aurelian, and Probus, prove the immense superiority of the Roman armies when properly commanded; but the custom which was constantly gaining ground, _of recruiting the legions from among the barbarians_, reveals the deplorable state of _depopulation and weakness_ to which three centuries of despotism and bad administration had reduced the empire."[27]