Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1827) Vol 2.djvu/402

 384 THE DECLINE AND FALL CHAP, five flourishinor cities, Tongves, Colof^ne, Treves, 1_ Worms, Spires, Strasburgh, etc. besides a far greater number of towns and villages, were pillaged, and for the most part reduced to ashes. The bai'barians of Germany, still faithful to the maxims of their ancestors, abhorred the confinement of walls, to which they ap- plied the odious names of prisons and sepulchres ; and fixing their independent habitations on the banks of rivers, the Rhine, the Moselle, and the Meuse, they secured themselves against the danger of a surprise, by a rude and hasty fortification of large trees, which were felled and thrown across the roads. The Ale- manni were established in the modern countries of Alsace and Lorraine ; the Franks occupied the island of the Batavians, together with an extensive district of Bra- bant, which was then known by the appellation of Toxandria', and may deserve to be considered as the original seat of their Gallic monarchy". From the sources to the mouth of the Rhine, the conquests of the Germans extended above forty miles to the west of that river, over a country peopled by colonies of their own name and nation ; and the scene of their de- vastations was three times more extensive than that of their conquests. At a still greater distance the open towns of Gaul were deserted ; and the inhabitants of the fortified cities, who trusted to their strength and vigilance, were obliged to content themselves with such supplies of corn as they could raise on the vacant land within the enclosure of their walls. The diminished ' Ammianus, xvi. 8. This name seems to be derived from the Tox- andri of Pliny, and very frequently occurs in the histories of the middle age. Toxandria was a country of woods and morasses, which extended from the neiglibourhood of Tongres to the conflux of the Vahal and the Rhine. See V^alesius, Notit. Galliar. p. 558. " The paradox of P. Daniel, that the Franks never obtained any perma- nent settlement on this side of the Rhine before the time of Clovis, is re- futed with much learning and good sense by M. Biet, who has proved, by a chain of evidence, their uninterrupted possession of Toxandria one hun- dred and thirty years before the accession of Clovis. The dissertation of M. Biet was crowned by the Academy of Soissons, m the year 1736 ; and seems to have been justly preferred to the discourse of his more celebrated competitor, the abbe le Boeuf, an antiquarian whose name was happily expressive of his talents.