rose in Gaul against society, in the first of the series of MiddleAge jacqueries, to plunder, burn, and murder. 550. The Approach of a Caste System. Thus society was crystallizing into castes. Not only had the peasantry become serfs, attached from generation to generation to the same plot of ground, but the principle of this rural serfdom was being applied to all social duties. The artisan was bound to his hereditary guild, and, just as truly, the curial and the noble were bound each to his hereditary order. All freedom of movement seemed lost. Society as well as government was becoming despotic and Oriental. C. TAXATION.1 551. The Empire was "a great tax-gathering and barbarianfighting machine." It collected taxes in order to fight barbarians. But the time came when the provincials began to dread the tax-collector more than the Goth. This was partly because of the decrease in ability to pay, and partly because the bureaucratic organization cost more and more. Says Goldwin Smith: "The earth swarmed with the consuming hierarchy of extortion, so that it was said that they who received taxes were more than they who paid them." The forms of taxation were manifold. The chief ones were the poll tax (paid mainly by the coloni), duties at the ports, legacy duties, taxes on sales of all kinds, and the land tax (which crushed the curials). As in France before her great Revolution, so in the Empire, the upper classes secured release by law from some of their proper burdens, and succeeded by unfair assessment in shifting most of the rest on to the classes less able to pay. Taxation yielded less; the revenue shrank; and at the same time the wealth-producing power of society was being dried up by the unfair distribution of burdens and by the 1 Dill, 266-281; Cunningham, Western Civilization, 182–195; Arnold, passim. 2 Advanced students may read Taine's Ancient Régime, bk. v. ch. ii., for the comparison. unproductive expenditure of the taxes that were drained from the land. The Empire suffered from a lack of wealth as well as from a lack of men. : D. SUMMARY OF THE DECLINE. 552. Economic Causes have been dealt with at some length. To review they fall chiefly under the heads of (a) decline of population, and (b) increase of taxation unwisely apportioned. Back of these conditions lay the absence of money,' the debasement of the coinage, the slave and caste system of society (see also § 513). 553. Political Causes. "The benefits of despotism are short-lived; it poisons the very springs which it lays open. . . . And when once this better hour has passed away, all the vices of its nature break forth with redoubled violence, and weigh down society in every direction." GUIZOT. It is perhaps hard to blame despotism, since only despotism had saved society from an earlier overthrow (§§ 441, 521). But it is important to see that at last its medicinal value was exhausted, and indeed that in the long run a bureaucratic despotism is always a weak government (cf. § 523). This is from two causes: a. It lacks support in popular enthusiasm; the people care little whether they live under one government or another. When the Teutons broke into the Empire (§ 562 ff.), they were resisted only by the regular Roman legions, not by the provincials except in Britain, which was less thoroughly Romanized. It seems probable that the secret of decay lay largely in the loss of political ideals and political enthusiasm. b. The machinery itself gets beyond the control of the rulers. This was made plain in these days of Roman decline. There were many emperors of noble purpose and of fair ability who did their best to correct the evils of the age; but they were helpless against the universal indifference, or passive resistance, 1 Cunningham's Western Civilization, 182-184. or seeret thwarting, of the whole body of nobles from whom the officials were drawn. The tone of the imperial laws waxes indignant or descends to urgent entreaty; but the purpose is hampered by a slow, negligent, or corrupt bureaucracy. The emperors had lost control of the vast machine, and in this most important respect government was reduced to a paralysis. Dill (Roman Society, 275-281), after a review of the efforts and failures of the emperors, says: "These are a few examples of the efforts of government to alleviate that mass of misery and social injustice which it was impotent to cure. To a sympathetic mind, there is no more painful reading than the Theodosian Code of the fifth century [§ 573]. The authors of these laws are generally loaded with the double opprobrium of weakness and corruption. "The unfortunate are always to blame.' The system of bureaucratic despotism, elaborated finally by Diocletian and Constantine, produced a tragedy in the truest sense, such as history has seldom exhibited; in which, by an inexorable fate, the claims of fancied omnipotence ended in a humiliating paralysis of administration; in which determined effort to remedy social evils only aggravated them till they became unendurable; in which the best intentions of the central powers were, generation after generation, mocked and defeated alike by irresistible laws of human nature and by the hopeless perfidy and corruption in the servants of government." 1 554. The Infusion of Barbarian Blood and Customs, before the Conquest. The only measure that actually helped to fill the gaps in Roman population was the introduction of barbarians. It is hard to realize on how large a scale this took place. The Teutonic conquest of the fifth century found the Roman army composed of Germans, and whole provinces settled mainly by them, while that same people furnished the great officers of the Empire and made everywhere a large part of the slave and serf class.2 This Germanization of the Empire, needful as it had been, helped of course to make later Germanic conquest easier. The wall of partition was lowered. The 1 Special reports for advanced students: the Constitutions of Majorian, and his reign. 2 Read Bury, I. 21-31; Adams' Civilization, 67; Dill, 291-298. Germans within had a friendly leaning to those without. It led to a more rapid fusion of the two peoples and cultures, and lessened the agony of the change; but, in reviewing the causes of the fall of Rome, we must count this introduction of conquered barbarians as one of the active elements of disintegration.1 FOR FURTHER READING. (In this chapter the references are given at the end of each section.) On the internal decay and the causes of the "Fall": Seeley's Imperialism, Lecture III.; Adams' Civilization during the Middle Ages, 76-88 (specially good); Bury, I. 25-36; Hodgkin, II. 532-613, and, if accessible, his article on The Fall of the Roman Empire in the Contemporary Review, January, 1898 (Mr. Hodgkin in this article does not even refer to moral causes); Dill, bk. iii. REVIEW EXERCISE FOR PART V. 1. Add the dates 9, 14, 69, 180, 324 A.D. to the list. 2. Extend list of terms and names for fact drill. 3. Memorize a characterization of the centuries of the Empire; i.e.,First and second centuries: good government, happy, peaceful, prosperous. Third century general decline, - material, political, and intellectual. Fourth century: revival of imperial power; victory of Christianity. Fifth and sixth centuries (in advance): barbarian invasions and conquests. 4. Review the growth of the Christian Church through the whole period. 1 Bury (I. 33-35) adds Christianity as a disintegrating factor- in no unfriendly spirit; and Hodgkin, a strong churchman, has an even more striking passage to the same effect. A good topic for special report by advanced students. PART VI. ROMANO-TEUTONIC EUROPE. The settlement of the Teutonic tribes was not merely the introduction of - it was also the introduction a new set of ideas and institutions, of fresh blood and youthful mind· future were to do the larger share of the world's work. — GEOrge Burton ADAMS. the muscle and brain which in the CHAPTER I. THE TEUTONS. 555. Early Home and Peoples. The Rhine and the Danube separated the Roman world from the barbarian Germanic world just as that line has continued to divide the Romance1 nations from the modern German and Slav peoples. In the fifth century the Germans were to burst across these rivers and occupy the Western Empire. The region from which they swarmed lay between the Danube and the Baltic, north and south, and between the Rhine and the Vistula, east and west. The tribes that had roamed hither and thither in this region for centuries were known to themselves by no single name, but the Romans called them all Germans. In the fifth century the more important groups were the Goths, Bur. gundians, Vandals, Alemanni, Suevi, Lombards, Franks, and Saxons. The Norsemen were to appear later. 556. Stage of Culture.-As contrasted with the Roman world, the Germans all had a strong family likeness in character and institutions, but among themselves they showed wide dif 1 Of mingled Roman and Teutonic elements. |