THE HISTORY OF OLD ROME

V. The Establishment of the Military Monarchy

From: The History of Rome, by Theodor Mommsen
Translated with the sanction of the author by William Purdie Dickson

Chapter VII - The Subjugation of the West

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Page 134

Gaul Subdued

Thus was Gaul--or, in other words, the land west of the Rhine and north of the Pyrenees--rendered subject after only eight years of conflict (696-703) to the Romans. Hardly a year after the full pacification of the land, at the beginning of 705, the Roman troops had to be withdrawn over the Alps in consequence of the civil war, which had now at length broken out in Italy, and there remained nothing but at the most some weak divisions of recruits in Gaul. Nevertheless the Celts did not again rise against the foreign yoke; and, while in all the old provinces of the empire there was fighting against Caesar, the newly-acquired country alone remained continuously obedient to its conqueror. Even the Germans did not during those decisive years repeat their attempts to conquer new settlements on the left bank of the Rhine.

As little did there occur in Gaul any national insurrection or German invasion during the crises that followed, although these offered the most favourable opportunities. If disturbances broke out anywhere, such as the rising of the Bellovaci against the Romans in 708, these movements were so isolated and so unconnected with the complications in Italy, that they were suppressed without material difficulty by the Roman governors. Certainly this state of peace was most probably, just as was the peace of Spain for centuries, purchased by provisionally allowing the regions that were most remote and most strongly pervaded by national feeling--Brittany, the districts on the Scheldt, the region of the Pyrenees-- to withdraw themselves de facto in a more or less definite manner from the Roman allegiance. Nevertheless the building of Caesar-- however scanty the time which he found for it amidst other and at the moment still more urgent labours, however unfinished and but provisionally rounded off he may have left it--in substance stood the test of this fiery trial, as respected both the repelling of the Germans and the subjugation of the Celts.

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