When Lucius Manlius attacked the Gauls, b.c. 181, the latter carried long flat shields, too narrow to protect the body.[971] They were soon left without other weapons but their Swords, and these they had no opportunity of using, as the enemy did not come to close quarters. Phrensied with the smart of missiles raining upon their large persons, the wounds appearing the more terrible from the black blood contrasting with the white skin; and furious with shame at being put hors de combat by hurts apparently so small, they lost many by the Swords of the Velites. These ‘light bobs’ in those days were well armed; they had shields three feet long, pila for skirmishing, and the Gladius Hispanus, which they drew after shifting the javelins to the left hand. With these handy blades they rushed in and wounded faces and breasts, whilst the Gallic Swords could not be wielded without space.
Passing from books to monuments, we see on an Urban medal of Rimini, dating from the domination of the Senones, a long-haired and moustachio’d Gaul, and on the reverse a broad Spatha, with scabbard and chain. This is repeated on another coin of the same series, where a naked Gaul, protected by an oblong shield, assails with the same kind of Sword. A third shows the Gaul with two gladii, one shorter than the other.[972] The scabbards and chains were of bronze or iron.
According to Diodorus,[973] the Gauls advanced to battle in war-chariots (carpentum, covinus, essedum). They also had cavalry;[974] but during their invasions of Italy they mostly fought on foot. They had various kinds of missiles, javelins, and the Cateia or Caia (boomerang, or throwing-club), slings, and bows and arrows, poisoned as well as unpoisoned. They then rushed to the attack with unhelm’d heads, and their long locks knotted on the head-top. In many fights they stripped themselves, probably for bravado, preserving only the waistcloth and ornaments, torques, leglets, and armlets. They cut off the heads of the fallen foes; slung them to their shields or saddlebows, and kept them at home as trophies, still the practice of the Dark Continent. Their girls and women fought as bravely as the men; especially with the contus or wooden pike, sharpened and fire-hardened. The waggons ranged in the rear formed a highly efficient ‘lager.’ The large Keltic stature, their terrible war-cries, and their long Swords wielded by doughty arms and backed by stout hearts, enabled them more than once to triumph over civilised armies.
Divus Cæsar, who is severe upon Gallic nobilitas, levitas, and infirmitas animi, employed nine years in subduing Gaul (b.c. 59–50). Before a century elapsed, the people had given up their old barbarous habits and costume, their fur-coats, like the Slav and Afghan postín, with sleeves opening in front; their saga-cloaks or tartan-plaids[975] which were probably imitations of the primæval tattoo;[976] their copper torques and their rude chains and armlets. Gallia Comata shore her limed and flowing locks, and Gallia Bracchata (Provincia, Provence) doffed the ‘truis’ (trews or trowsers) which were strapped at the waist and tied in at the ankles.[977] Their women adopted Roman fashions, and forgot all that Ammianus Marcellinus had said of them: ‘A whole troop of foreigners could not withstand a single Gaul, if he called to aid his wife, who is usually very strong and blue-eyed, especially when, swelling her neck, gnashing her teeth, and whirling her sallow arms of enormous bulk, she begins to strike blows, mingled with kicks, as if they were so many missiles sent from the string of a catapult.’ Of their old and rugged virtue we may judge by the tale of Ortiagon’s gallant wife and the caitiff centurion.[978] Thus Gaul was thoroughly subdued by Roman civilisation and the Latin tongue; she contributed to literature her quotum of poets and rhetoricians; her cities established schools of philosophy, and she saw nothing to envy in Gallia Togata—Upper Italy.[979]
THE OLD GERMAN SWORD.
Fig. 288.—Found at Augsburg (66 centimètres long. In Sigmaringen Museum).
The Alemanni or Germans (Germani) cast of the Rhine inhabited, at the time of the Roman conquests, a dismal land of swamps and silvæ: even in the present day a run from Hamburg to Berlin explains the ancient exodus of tribes bent upon conquering the ‘promised lands’ of the south, and the modern wholesale emigration to America. These ‘warmen’ were formerly surpassed by the Gauls in bravery,[980] but they had none of the Keltic levity or instability. The national characteristic was and is the steadfast purpose. Till lately the German Empire was a shadowy tradition; yet the Germans managed to occupy every throne in Europe save two. They never yet made a colony, yet cuckoo-like they hold the best of those made by others; and their sound physical constitution, strengthened by gymnastics, enables them to resist tropical and extreme climates better than any European people save the Slavs and the Jews. In the great cities of the world they occupy the first commercial place, the result of an education carefully adapted to its end and object; and their progress in late years seems to promise ‘Germanism’ an immense future based upon the ruins of the neo-Latin races.
We have the authority of Tacitus for the fact that the Germans of his day did not (like the Kelts)[981] affect the short straight sword: ‘rari ... gladiis utuntur.’[982] The national weapon was the spear[983] of a peculiar kind; ‘hastas vel ipsorum vocabulo frameas gerunt angusto et brevi ferro.’ The derivation of the word and the nature of the weapon are still undetermined.[984] Modern authorities hold the oldest framée to have been a long spear, with a head of stone, copper, bronze, or iron, shaped like a Palstab or an expanding ‘Celt;’ and Demmin[985] shows the same broad shovel-shaped base in the Abyssinian lance. It was either thrown or thrust, and the weapon must not be confounded with the enormous hastæ of Tacitus,[986] in whose day the Roman spear was fourteen feet long. It was a formidable weapon; those who knew it spoke with awe of ‘illam cruentam victricemque frameam’; and the Germans long preserved the saying ‘one spear is worth two Swords.’ Yet, strange to say, it is rarely found in graves, where the throwing-axe of stone and bronze, pierced or unpierced, one-edged or two-headed (πέλεκυς ἀμφιστόμος, bipennis), is so common.
