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 chap, xxxviii] OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE 179 iron which they possessed into strong and serviceable weapons. But this superiority insensibly declined with their laws and manners ; and the feeble policy of Constantine and his suc- cessors armed and instructed, for the ruin of the empire, the rude valour of the Barbarian mercenaries. The military art has been changed by the invention of gunpowder; which en- ables man to command the two most powerful agents of nature, air and fire. Mathematics, chymistry, mechanics, architecture, have been applied to the service of war ; and the adverse parties oppose to each other the most elaborate modes of attack and of defence. Historians may indignantly observe that the pre- parations of a siege would found and maintain a flourishing colony ; 9 yet we cannot be displeased that the subversion of a city should be a work of cost and difficulty, or that an industri- ous people should be protected by those arts, which survive and supply the decay of military virtue. Cannon and fortifications now form an impregnable barrier against the Tartar horse ; and Europe is secure from any future irruption of Barbarians ; since, before they can conquer, they must cease to be barbarous. Their gradual advances in the science of war would always be accom- panied, as we may learn from the example of Kussia, with a proportionable improvement in the arts of peace and civil policy ; and they themselves must deserve a place among the polished nations whom they subdue. Should these speculations be found doubtful or fallacious, there still remains a more humble source of comfort and hope. The discoveries of ancient and modern navigators, and the domestic history, or tradition, of the most enlightened nations, represent the human savage, naked both in mind and body, and destitute of laws, of arts, of ideas, and almost of language. 10 9 On avoit fait venir (for the siege of Turin) 140 pieces de canon ; et il est a reniarquer que chaque gros canon monte revient a environ 2000 ecus ; il y avoit 110,000 boulets ; 106,000 cartouches d'une facon, et 300,000 d'une autre ; 21,000 bombes ; 27,700 grenades, 15,000 sacs a terre, 30,000 instruments pour le pionnage ; 1,200,000 livres de poudre. Ajoutez a ces munitions, le plornb, le fer, et le fer blanc, les cordages, tout ce qui sert aux mineurs, le souphre, le 6alpetre, les outils de toute espece. II est certain que les frais de tous ces pr^paratifs de destruction suffiroient pour fonder et pour faire fleurir la plus nombreuse colonic Voltaire, Siecle de Louis XIV. c. xx. in his Works, torn. xi. p. 391. 10 It would be an easy though tedious task to produce the authorities of poets, philosophers, and historians. I shall therefore content myself with appealing to the decisive and authentic testimony of Diodorus Siculus (torn. i. l.ii. p. 11, 12 [c. 8], 1. iii. p. 184, &c. [c. 14, 15], edit. Wesseling). The Ichthyophagi, who in his time wandered along the shores of the Ked Sea, can only be compared to the