CHAPTER III.
During the three centuries after Hermann had arrested the flood of Roman conquest, a civilization of the simplest sort was slowly developing in Germany, where society was divided into the free and the unfree classes.
The tribes in the south differed greatly from those in the north. They had no settled homes, nor ownership in land. This was divided among them every year by lot; one-half of the people remaining yearly at home to till the soil, and the other half giving their entire time to the wars which were as perennial as the growing crops of grain.
In the north, however, where lived the ancestors of the Anglo-Saxon race, conditions very different prevailed. There the lands were bestowed in perpetuity upon the most powerful members of the tribes, and by them handed down to their sons. The unfree class tilled the soil, and were thus the serfs of a ruling class, and only freemen could bear arms.
There were no cities in ancient Germany, only villages which were composed of rude huts. A collection of these villages formed a group which was called a Hundred. Every Hundred had its chief, who was elected by the people; and the one chosen by the combined will of all these Hundreds was the chief or King of the tribe.
The chiefs of the Hundreds formed a sort of advisory council to the King or tribal chief. But supreme over the will of these chiefs and their King was the will of the people. Every village had its meetings of the people, which all freemen were entitled to attend. The real governing power lay in these meetings, to which both chiefs of the Hundreds and the King were compelled to defer.
Was a new King to be elected, or were there grave questions concerning wars to be considered—they were discussed in advance by the chiefs and the King. But the ultimate decision lay with the people themselves; a general meeting of the whole tribe being required to elect a new King; the people clashing their arms in token of approval, or shouting their dissent.
As all freemen bore arms, there was no distinct military organization. Every man held himself ready at any moment to respond to a call, and the army was the people!
About the middle of the third century, numerous small German tribes became united into large confederacies. Conspicuous among these were the Allemani, the Franks, the Saxons, and the Goths.
The Allemani, in the south of Germany, it is said were so called because of the fact that all men held the land in common. If this be so, then the French name for Germany is essentially communistic, and it is not strange that communism has always found a congenial soil in that land.
The Franks occupied the banks of the Rhine and of the river Saal. The Saxons were spread over North Germany, and the Goths, on both sides of the river Dnieper, were divided into the Ostro-Goths and the Visi-Goths (or the East and West Goths).
It was these Visigoths under Alaric who inflicted the deadliest blows upon the Roman Empire. The sacking of Rome in 410, and the establishing of a Gothic kingdom in Spain, shook the very foundations of that power. Then the legions could no longer be spared in distant Britain, which was left to its fate. And that fate was of deepest import to us! The Saxons and the Angles overflowed and absorbed the land, and Keltic Britain was Teutonized.
So this untamed and untamable Teuton was being spread, like some coarse but renovating element, over the surface of old Europe. And with the occupation of Gaul by the Franks in 481, and the annexing of France to the Frankish kingdom under Clovis, the process was complete.
I cannot resist the temptation of saying a few words about the Anglo-Saxon occupation of Britain, which, as it virtually converted us from Kelts into Teutons, is not a digression.
From the time of Julius Cæsar the island of Britain had been occupied by the Romans, and in consequence had become partly civilized and Christianized. Upon the fall of the empire, the Roman legions were withdrawn, and the people, left defenseless, became the prey of their own northern barbarians, the Picts and Scots; the drama of Southern Europe and the Goths being re-enacted on a diminished scale. In the fourth century the Britons implored the Angles and Saxons to come and protect them from these savages. Invited as allies, they came as invaders, and remained as conquerors, implanting their habits, speech, and paganism upon the prostrate island. It was the extermination of this exotic paganism which impelled to those deeds of valor recited in the Round Table romances, and which made King Arthur and his knights the theme of poet and minstrel for centuries.
But the Saxon had come to stay, and Teuton and Kelt became merged, much as do the lion and lamb, after the former has dined! The Teutonic Saxon may be said to have dined on the Keltic Briton, and remained master of the island until the Normans came, six centuries later, and in turn dominated, and made him bear the yoke of servitude.
Nor was this French-speaking Norman French at all, except by adoption; being, in fact, the terrible Northman of two centuries before, on account of whose ravages the noble had intrenched himself in his strong castle, and the wretched serf had in mortal terror sold himself and all that he possessed, for the protection of its solid walls and moat; and thus had been laid the foundations of feudalism. He it was who, with longhair reeking with rancid oil, battle-ax, spear, and iron hook—with which to capture human and other prey—had held France in a state of unspeakable terror for centuries, but who had finally settled down as a respectable French citizen in the sea-board province of Normandy, and in two centuries had made such wonderful improvement in manners, apparel, and speech that the simple Saxon baron stood abashed before the splendid refinements of his conquerors.
The origin of this mysterious Northman is unknown; but whatever it was, or whoever he was, he certainly possessed Aryan germs of high potency.
So the Saxon had built the solid walls of the racial structure upon a foundation of Britons; and, though with no thought for beauty, had built well, with strong, true structural lines. It was the Norman who finished and decorated the structure, but he did not alter one of these lines; the speech, traits, institutions, and habits of England being at the core Saxon to-day, while there is a decorative surface only of Norman.
So when the Englishman calls himself, with swelling pride, a Briton, he speaks wide of the mark. The Keltic Briton was buried fathoms deep under seven centuries of Saxon rule, and then, to make the extinction more complete, was overlaid with this brilliant lacquer of Norman surface. And if that mixed product, the English people, have any race paternity, it is Teutonic, and herein may lie the impossibility of making the English and Irish a homogeneous people—the English Teuton and Irish Kelt being in the nature of things antagonistic, the particles refuse to combine chemically, and can only be brought together (to use the language of the chemist) in mechanical mixture.