SECT. love of glory, or of their country, provincials and barbarians were bribed or forced into service. These were too feeble, or too proud, to submit to the fatigue of military duty. They even complain-. ed of the weight of their defensive armour as intolerable, and laid it aside. Infantry from which the armies of ancient Rome derived their vigour and stability, fell into contempt; the effeminate and undisciplined soldiers of later times could hardly be brought to venture into the field but on horseback. These wretched troops, however, were the only guardians of the Empire. The jealousy of despotism had deprived the people of the use of arms; and subjects oppressed and rendered incapable of defending themselves, had neither spirit nor inclination to resist their invaders, from whom they had little to fear, because their condition could hardly be rendered more unhappy. At the same time that the martial spirit became extinct, the revenues of the Empire gradually diminished.. The taste for the luxuries of the East increased to such a pitch in the Imperial court, that great sums were carried into India, from which, in the channel of commerce, money never returns. By the large subsidies paid to the barbarous nations, a still greater quantity of specie was withdrawn from circulation. The frontier provinces, wasted by frequent incursions, became unable to pay the customary tribute; and the wealth of the world, which had long centered in the capital of the Empire, ceased to flow thither in the same abundance, or was diverted into other channels. The limits 1. of the Empire continued to be as extensive as ever, SECT. while the spirit requisite for its defence declined, and its resources were exhausted. A vast body, languid, and almost unanimated, became incapable of any effort to save itself, and was easily overpowered. The Emperors, who had the absolute direction of this disordered system, sunk in the softness of eastern luxury, shut up within the walls of a palace, ignorant of war, unacquainted with affairs, and governed entirely by women and eunuchs, or by ministers equally effeminate, trembled at the approach of danger, and under circumstances which called for the utmost vigour in counsel as well as in action, discovered all the impotent irresolution of fear, and of folly. cumstances tributed to barous na IN every respect, the condition of the barbarous The cir-nations was the reverse of that of the Romans. which cons Among the former, the martial spirit was in full vigour; their leaders were hardy and enterprising; of the barthe arts which had enervated the Romans weretions. unknown; and such was the nature of their military institutions, that they brought forces into the field without any trouble, and supported them at little expence. The mercenary and effeminate troops stationed on the frontier, astonished at their fierceness, either fled at their approach, or were routed on the first onset. The feeble expedient to which the Emperors had recourse, of taking large bodies of the barbarians into pay, and of employing them to repel new invaders, instead of retarding, hastened the destruction of the Empire. These mercenaries soon turned their arms against their masters, SECT. and with greater advantage than ever; for, by serving in the Roman armies, they had acquired all the discipline, or skill in war, which the Romans still retained; and, upon adding these to their native ferocity, they became altogether irresistible. The spirit with which on war. BUT though from these, and many other causes, they carried the progress and conquests of the nations which overran the Empire, became so extremely rapid, they were accompanied with horrible devastations, and an incredible destruction of the human species. Civilized nations, which take arms upon cool reflection, from motives of policy or prudence, with a view to guard against some distant danger, or to prevent some remote contingency, carry on their hostilities with so little rancour or animosity, that war among them is disarmed of half its terrors. Barbarians are strangers to such refinements. They rush into war with impetuosity, and prosecute it with violence. Their sole object is to make their enemies feel the weight of their vengeance; nor does their rage subside until it be satiated with inflicting on them every possible calamity. It is with such a spirit that the savage tribes in America carry on their petty wars. It was with the same spirit that the more powerful and no less fierce barbarians in the north of Europe, and of Asia, fell upon the Roman Empire. The desola tion which WHEREVER they marched, their rout was markthey ed with blood. They ravaged or destroyed all on Europe. around them. They made no distinction between brought up 1. what was sacred and what was profane. They re- SECT. spected no age, or sex, or rank. What escaped the fury of the first inundation, perished in those which followed it. The most fertile and populous provinces were converted into deserts, in which were scattered the ruins of villages and cities, that afforded shelter to a few miserable inhabitants, whom chance had preserved, or the sword of the enemy, wearied with destroying, had spared. The conquerors who first settled in the countries which they had wasted, were expelled or exterminated by new invaders, who, coming from regions farther removed from the civilized parts of the world, were still more fierce and rapacious. This brought fresh calamities upon mankind, which did not cease, until the north, by pouring forth successive swarms, was drained of people, and could no longer furnish instruments of destruction. Famine and pesti lence, which always march in the train of war, when it ravages with such inconsiderate cruelty, raged in every part of Europe, and completed its sufferings. If a man were called to fix upon the period in the historyof the world, during which the condition of the human race was most calamitous and afflicted, he would, without hesitation, name that which elapsed from the death of Theodosius the Great, to the establishment of the Lombards in Italy*. The contemporary authors, who beheld * Theodosius died A. D. 395, the reign of Alboinus in Lombardy began A. D. 571 ; so that this period was 176 years. 1. SECT. that scene of desolation, labour and are at a loss for expressions to describe the horror of it. The scourge of God, The destroyer of nations, are the dreadful epithets by which they distinguish the most noted of the barbarous leaders; and they compare the ruin which they had brought on the world, to the havock occasioned by earthquakes, conflagrations, or deluges, the most formidable and fatal calamities which the imagination of man can conceive. The univer which they BUT no expressions can convey so perfect an sal change idea of the destructive progress of the barbarians, occasioned as that which must strike an attentive observer, of Europe. when he contemplates the total change which he in the state will discover in the state of Europe, after it began to recover some degree of tranquillity, towards the close of the sixth century. The Saxons were by that time masters of the southern and more fertile provinces of Britain; the Franks, of Gaul; the Huns, of Pannonia; the Goths of Spain; the Goths and Lombards, of Italy and the adjacent provinces. Very faint vestiges of the Roman policy, jurisprudence, arts, or literature remained. New forms of government, new laws, new manners, new dresses, new languages, and new names of men and countries, were every where introduced. To make a great or sudden alteration with respect to of these, unless where the ancient inhabitants of a country have been almost totally exterminated, has proved an undertaking beyond the power of any |