Slavery in History

by Adam Gurowski

The whole of Gaul was occupied by tribes more or less consanguineous, and their internal social organization was in many respects similar. Cæsar, in his bird's-eye view, says that the two dominant classes were the druids and nobles, while under them were the "plebs, pœne servorem habetur loco, quæ per nihil audet et nullo adhibitur consiglio." This only explains the absence or perhaps dormancy of political rights. "Plerique (not all, it will be noticed, but many, and these mainly such as had suffered reverses of fortune) sesse in servitutem DICANT nobilibus—in hos eadem omnia sunt jura quæ dominis in servis." This latter phrase only means that certain relations between the chief and his dependents were similar to those of master and chattel—being the only form of servitude known to Cæsar, who did not understand the tribal organization on which the authority of the chief was based.

Parke Godwin, in his highly elaborate and valuable History of France, says very justly that "the Gallic society was a mere conglomeration of chieftains and followers." After giving a picture of Gallic family life and exhibiting the nature of the chieftain's power and functions, that eminent writer thus continues: "The other members of the clan consisted of a number of dependents in various degrees of subordination, and of adherents whose ties were more or less voluntary." Among the dependents were "bondmen (attached to the soil), debtor-bondmen, obaerati, strangers found in the country without a protector or lord, and slaves, captives of war or purchased in the open market." Thus far Parke Godwin.

Slaves, if indeed such existed among the Gauls at the time of Cæsar, were certainly exceedingly limited in number, and chattelhood was not an inherent condition of any part of the people. In his history of his long wars with the Gauls, Cæsar makes no allusion to a slave-element in the population—an omission which shows how insignificant it must have been.

The commercial relations of the Gauls with the Phœnicians and with the Greek colony of Massilia, or Marseilles, probably tended to encourage slavery among them. But although our knowledge of their internal relations and domestic economy is very scanty, there are a few facts which prove that domestic slavery was hardly even in an embryonic stage at the epoch when the Gauls, by their contact with Rome and Cæsar, entered the general current of history. The Massaliotes (or colonists established at Marseilles), trafficked in slaves. They also had them in their houses, but did not employ them on lands situated beyond the precincts of the city. For field laborers they hired the Ligurians, who, at given seasons, descended with their wives from the mountains and worked for wages. Lands belonging to Gallic clans or districts were no more worked by slave labor than were the fields of the Massaliotes. Even in the households of the chieftains or nobles, domestic slavery, if it existed, must have been hidden from sight. Possidonius, tutor of Pompey, Cicero, and other eminent Romans, gives a description of the mode of life and domestic customs of the Gauls, in whose country he travelled. He observed, that at their luxurious feasts the guests were served by the children of the family, instead of domestic slaves; which fact authorizes the conclusion that the number of chattels was very small, and that they had no place in family life.

Gallic slaves consisted of criminals, vagabonds, foreigners imported from Massilia, and prisoners of war principally made from nations beyond the Alps and the Rhine. Even after the invasion of the Kimbri and Belgæ, Gaul was inhabited by tribes more or less akin to each other. It was therefore the theatre of almost uninterrupted domestic war between tribes and federations. But when one tribe was conquered by another, the subject people and those who escaped the fury of battle were not reduced to slavery, but simply became tributary, and received their laws from the conqueror. Exceptions to this rule must have been exceedingly rare. If an invading tribe was subdued, it received lands and was obliged to settle among the conquerors. The founders of Rome, as we saw (see "Romans: Republicans"), acted in a similar manner. Prisoners of war were absorbed into the clan, and were held, perhaps exclusively by the chieftain, in the condition of serfs bound to the soil, but not as chattels or marketable objects; and they were neither deprived of personality nor the rights of family.

The arable lands, forests, and pasturages were owned by the clan collectively—the chiefs, of course, receiving the lion's share when distributed for cultivation; and each clan lived on its own lands. These agricultural clansmen it was who constituted the terrible armies which, under various Brenni (chiefs, leaders, kings), so often terrified and scourged almost the whole known world.

With the increase of the wealth and power of the chieftains, their relations with the poorer clansmen became more aggressive, and the lands were held by the latter under conditions more and more onerous. But when Cæsar invaded Gaul, no large estates (latifundia) existed, and the soil was in the hands of a numerous peasantry inspired with patriotism and love of independence. This peasantry flocked to the standard of Vercingetorix, and, to the last, sustained him in his deadly struggle against Cæsar.

The living acoustic telegraph used by the Gauls during the wars with Cæsar is another proof that great estates did not exist in Gaul, and that the soil was tilled by freemen possessed of homesteads: for each peasant, from the limit of his homestead, shouted the news to his next neighbor, he to the next, and so on; and thus intelligence was swiftly carried hundreds of miles even during the shortest day of the year. An important event occurring in any one tribe was thus spread in a twinkling all over Gaul. Now, if the country had been divided into large estates worked by slaves, such a mode of communication would of course have been impossible.

As the clans and their land were governed by chieftains and nobles, so also were the cities under oligarchic rule. The free population in the cities had no independent rights, and was obliged to have patrons. The poor, the defenceless, and even the artisans, willingly enrolled themselves for life under the clientship of the powerful nobility, depending on them as the rural clansmen depended upon the chieftains or rural nobles. But the condition of a client in the city was not hereditary or transmissible, as was clanship in the country. The family of the client held no relations of dependency upon the patron; and a son was not bound by obligations contracted by his father. When the patron died, the bonds of his clients were severed, and they were free to select another patron.

Such were the relations between the chieftains and clansmen, between the nobility and the people, between the soil and its tiller, between client and patron, when the Romans commenced the conquest of Gaul. Impoverishment, debts contracted to their chiefs, and exactions of one kind and another, may have transformed many independent clansmen into partial bondmen; but they always preserved their family and village rights.