A Short History of Germany

by Mary Platt Parmele

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 Upon the fall of the empire, the Roman legions were withdrawn, and the people, left defenseless, became the prey of their own northern barbarians, the Picts and Scots; the drama of Southern Europe and the Goths being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.