The Ethnology of Europe

by R. G. Latham

α. The Belgic—

β. The proper Gallic—

γ. The Ligurian (?).

The history of the displacement and intermixture is complex. Along the Ibero-Gallic frontier, or in the parts north of the Garonne, and west of the Rhone, there must have been small and partial quarrels, sufficient to create intermixture, and a gradual change of the boundaries from the earliest times. Perhaps, too, it may be added that the Gauls encroached on the Iberians rather than the Iberians on the Gauls.

Along the valley of the Rhine, or the Germano-Gallic frontier, there was the same mutual encroachment, but to a far greater degree, and the wars, of which the conquest of Ariovistus is a sample, introduced German, and, perhaps Slavonic blood into Gaul in more quarters than one.

At present—

Alsatia contains the least amount of Keltic blood of all the provinces of France, inasmuch as it is German in language, and French in respect to its political relations only. The fifth century is the date of its conquest, and it was by Germans of the High German division from Suabia and Franconia that it was reduced. Before this it was Romanized. What was it before its reduction by Rome? Many at once answer “German,” because its occupants were the Triboci, whom Tacitus calls “haud dubie Germani.” For reasons given elsewhere,[6] I believe that they were Germanized Gauls rather than true Germans.

Lorraine, originally Keltic, and afterwards Romano-Keltic, is less German than Alsatia, but more so than Champagne. Its name, Hlothringen, is German. I cannot, however, say whether the German blood in Lorraine was introduced from the north or from the south; by the High Germans of Alsatia and Franche-Comté, or the Low-Germans of Clovis.

In Franche-Comté the particular descent is from the Sequani, the tribe which, of all others equally far from the German frontier, was most Germanized. For when Cæsar was in Gaul, the Sequani called in the Suevi and Marcomanni of Ariovistus, and gave up one-third of their land as the price of his tyrannical protection. Now the army of Ariovistus was mixed, and there is reason for believing that even Slavonians were to be found in it. At any rate it infused German blood into the Sequani more than into their neighbours. The process, however, of Romanizing went on all the same, until the fifth century, when the invasion that gave their names to the present province and to Burgundy took place. From which time forwards the ethnology of Franche-Comté, or the country of the Franks, is that of—

Burgundy.—Here the Kelts were the Sequani, and the Germans, certain High-Germans of Franconia. Sir James Stephen, in his valuable “Lectures on the History of France,” draws a broad distinction between the German blood introduced by the Burgundians, and the German blood introduced by the Franks of Clovis; exaggerating, however, in my mind, the rudeness of the latter, as well as the cultivation of the former. Speaking of the Germany of Tacitus, he says, that it better suited the author to “pourtray the more striking characteristics of the Teutonic tribes collectively, than to investigate the more minute peculiarities which distinguished them from each other. Yet we cannot doubt that, even in his day, they were far more widely discriminated in fact, than in his delineation of them, as, beyond all controversy, they were so in the age of Clovis.