Indians and from the restrictive laws, and encouraged by the
appointment of Parker, and the establishment of a
representative government. This produced a turn in the affairs
of Georgia. Trade revived, immigration was renewed, and
everything began to wear again a more hopeful look. Just at
this time, however, the original trust was on the point of
expiring by limitation.
{1427}
There was a party in the colony who desired a renewal of the
charter; but the Trustees felt that their scheme had failed in
every way, except perhaps as a defence to South Carolina, and
when the limit of the charter was reached, they turned the
colony over to the Crown. ... A form of government was
established similar to those of the other royal provinces, and
Captain John Reynolds was sent out as the first Governor." The
administration of Reynolds produced wide discontent, and in
1757 he was recalled, being "succeeded by Henry Ellis as
Lieutenant-governor. The change proved fortunate, and brought
rest to the colony. Ellis ruled peaceably and with general
respect for more than two years, and was then promoted to the
governorship of Nova Scotia. In the same year his successor
arrived at Savannah, in the person of James Wright, who
continued to govern the province until it was severed from
England by the Revolution. The feebleness of Georgia had
prevented her taking part in the union of the colonies, and
she was not represented in the Congress at Albany. Georgia
also escaped the ravages of the French war, partly by her
distant situation, and partly by the prudence of Governor
Ellis; and the conclusion of that war gave Florida to England,
and relieved the colony from the continual menace of Spanish
aggression. A great Congress of southern Governors and Indian
chiefs followed, in which Wright, more active than his
predecessor, took a prominent part. Under his energetic and
firm rule, the colony began to prosper greatly, and trade
increased rapidly; but the Governor gained at the same time so
much influence, and was a man of so much address, that he not
only held the colony down at the time of the Stamp Act, but
seriously hampered its action in the years which led to
revolution."
H. C. Lodge,
Short History of the English Colonies in America,
chapter 9.
GEORGIA: A. D. 1760-1775.
Opening events of the Revolution.
See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:
A. D. 1760-1775, to 1775.
GEORGIA: A. D. 1775-1777.
The end of royal government.
Constitutional organization of the state."
The news of the battle of Lexington reached Savannah on the
night of the 10th of May, 1775, and produced intense
excitement among all classes. On the night of the 11th, Noble
Wimberly Jones, Joseph Habersham, Edward Telfair, and a few
others, impressed with the necessity of securing all military
stores, and preserving them for colonial use, took from the
King's magazine, in Savannah, about 500 pounds of powder. ...
Tradition asserts that part of this powder was sent to Boston,
and used by the militia at the battle of Bunker Hill. ... The
activity of the Liberty party, and its rapid increase, ...
gave Governor Wright just cause for alarm; and he wrote to
General Gage, expressing his amazement that these southern
provinces should be left in the situation they are, and the
Governors and King's officers, and friends of Government,
naked and exposed to the resentment of an enraged people.' ...
The assistance so earnestly solicited in these letters would
have been promptly rendered, but that they never reached their
destination. The Committee of Safety at Charleston withdrew them
from their envelopes, as they passed through the port, and
substituted others, stating that Georgia was quiet, and there
existed no need either of troops or vessels." The position of
Governor Wright soon became one of complete powerlessness and
he begged to be recalled. In January, 1776, however, he was
placed under arrest, by order of the Council of Safety, and
gave his parole not to leave town, nor communicate with the
men-of-war which had just arrived at Tybee; notwithstanding
which he made his escape to one of the King's ships on the
11th of February. "The first effective organization of the
friends of liberty in the province took place among the
deputies from several parishes, who met in Savannah, on the
18th January, 1775, and formed what has been called 'A
Provincial Congress.' Guided by the action of the other
colonies, a 'Council of Safety' was created, on the 22d June,
1775, to whom was confided the general direction of the
measures proper to be pursued in carrying out resistance to
the tyrannical designs of the King and Parliament. William
Ewen was the first President of this Council of Safety, and
Seth John Cuthbert was the Secretary. On the 4th July, the
Provincial Congress (now properly called such, as every parish
and district was represented) met in Savannah, and elected as
its presiding officer Archibald Bulloch. This Congress
conferred upon the 'Council of Safety,' 'full power upon every
emergency during the recess of Congress.'" Soon finding the
need of a more definite order of government, the Provincial
Congress, on the 15th of April, 1776, adopted provisionally,
for six months, a series of "Rules and Regulations," under
which Archibald Bulloch was elected President and
Commander-in-chief of Georgia, and John Glen, Chief Justice.
After the Declaration of Independence, steps were taken toward
the settling of the government of the state on a permanent
basis. On the proclamation of President Bulloch a convention
was elected which met in Savannah in October, and which framed
a constitution that was ratified on the 5th of February, 1777.
W. B. Stevens,
History of Georgia,
book 4, chapter 2,
and book 5, chapter 1 (volume 2).
GEORGIA: A. D. 1776-1778.
The war in the North.
The Articles of Confederation.
The alliance with France.
See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:
A.D. 1776, to 1778.
GEORGIA: A. D. 1778-1779.
Savannah taken and the state subjugated by the British.
See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1778-1779.
GEORGIA: A. D. 1779.
Unsuccessful attack on Savannah by the French and Americans.
See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:
A. D. 1779 (SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER).
GEORGIA: A. D. 1780.
Successes of the British arms in South Carolina.
See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:
A. D. 1780 (FEBRUARY-AUGUST).
GEORGIA: A. D. 1780-1783.
Greene's campaign in the South.
Lafayette and Washington in Virginia.
Siege of Yorktown and surrender of Cornwallis.
Peace.
See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
A. D. 1780, to 1783.
GEORGIA: A. D. 1787-1788.
The formation and adoption of the Federal Constitution.
See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:
A. D. 1787, and 1787-1789.
GEORGIA: A. D. 1802.
Cession of Western land claims to the United States.
See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1781-1786
and MISSISSIPPI: A. D. 1798-1804.
GEORGIA: A. D. 1813-1814.
The Creek War.
See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:
A. D. 1813-1814 (AUGUST-APRIL).
GEORGIA: A. D. 1816-1818.
The First Seminole War.
See FLORIDA: A. D. 1816-1818.
{1428}
GEORGIA: A. D. 1861 (January).
Secession from the Union.
See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:
A. D. 1861 (JANUARY-FEBRUARY).
GEORGIA: A. D. 1861 (October-December).
Savannah threatened.
The Union forces in possession of the mouth of the river.
See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:
A. D. 1861 (OCTOBER-DECEMBER: SOUTH CAROLINA-GEORGIA).
GEORGIA: A. D. 1862 (February-April).
Reduction of Fort Pulaski and sealing up of the port of
Savannah by the National Forces.
See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:
A. D. 1862 (FEBRUARY-APRIL: GEORGIA-FLORIDA).
GEORGIA: A. D. 1864 (May-September).
Sherman's campaign against Atlanta.
The capture of the city.
See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1864 (MAY: GEORGIA),
and (MAY-SEPTEMBER: GEORGIA).
GEORGIA: A. D. 1864 (September-October).
Military occupation of Atlanta.
Removal of the inhabitants.
Hood's Raid to Sherman's rear.
See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:
A. D. 1864 (SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER: GEORGIA).
GEORGIA: A. D. 1864 (November-December).
Destruction of Atlanta.
Sherman's March to the Sea.
See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:
A. D. 1864 (NOVEMBER-DECEMBER: GEORGIA).
GEORGIA: A. D. 1865 (March-May).
Wilson's Raid.
Capture of Jefferson Davis.
End of the Rebellion.
See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1865 (APRIL-MAY).
GEORGIA: A. D. 1865-1868.
Reconstruction.
See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:
A. D. 1865 (MAY-JULY), and after, to 1868-1870.
----------GEORGIA: End----------
GEOUGEN, The.
See TURKS: SIXTH CENTURY.
GEPIDÆ, The.
See GOTHS: ORIGIN OF;
HUNS; LOMBARDS: EARLY HISTORY;
and AVARS.
GERALDINES, The.
The Geraldines of Irish history were descendants of Maurice
and William Fitzgerald, two of the first among the
Anglo-Norman adventurers to engage in the conquest of
Ireland, A. D. 1169-1170. Their mother was a Welsh princess,
named Nest, or Nesta, who is said to have been the mistress
of Henry I. of England, and afterwards to have married the
Norman baron, Gerald Fitz Walter, who became the father of
the Fitzgeralds. "Maurice Fitzgerald, the eldest of the
brothers, became the ancestor both of the Earls of Kildare
and Desmond; William, the younger, obtained an immense grant
of land in Kerry from the McCarthys, indeed as time went on
the lordship of the Desmond Fitzgeralds grew larger and
larger, until it covered nearly as much ground as many a
small European kingdom. Nor was this all. The White Knight,
the Knight of Glyn, and the Knight of Kerry were all three
Fitzgeralds, all descended from the same root, and all owned
large tracts of country. The position of the Geraldines of
Kildare was even more important, on account of their close
proximity to Dublin. In later times their great keep at
Maynooth dominated the whole Pale, while their followers
swarmed everywhere, each man with a 'G' embroidered upon his
breast in token of his allegiance. By the beginning of the
16th century their power had reached to, perhaps, the highest
point ever attained in these islands by any subject. Whoever
might be called the Viceroy in Ireland it was the Earl of
Kildare who practically governed the country."
Hon. E. Lawless,
The Story of Ireland,
chapter 14.
See, also,
IRELAND: A. D. 1515;
and for some account of the subsequent rebellion and fall
of the Geraldines, see
IRELAND: A. D. 1535-1553.
GERALDINES, League of the.
See IRELAND: A. D. 1559-1603.
GERBA, OR JERBA, The disaster at. (1560).
See BARBARY STATES: A. D. 1543-1560.
GEREFA.
"The most general name for the fiscal, administrative and
executive officer among the Anglosaxons was Gerefa, or as it
is written, in very early documents geroefa: but the peculiar
functions of the individuals comprehended under it were
further defined by a prefix compounded with it, as scirgerefa,
the reeve of the shire or sheriff: tungerefa, the reeve of the
farm or bailiff. The exact meaning and etymology of this name
have hitherto eluded the researches of our best scholars."
J. M. Kemble,
The Saxons in England,
book 2, chapter 5 (volume 2).
See, also, SHIRE; and EALDORMAN.
GERGESENES, The.
One of the tribes of the Canaanites, whose territory is
believed by Lenormant to have "included all Decapolis and even
Galilee," and whose capital he places at Gerasa, now Djerash,
in Perea.
F. Lenormant and E. Chevallier,
Manual of Ancient History,
book 6, chapter 1 (volume 2).
GERGITHIAN SIBYL.
See CUMÆ.
GERGITHIANS, The.
See TROJA;
and, ASIA MINOR: THE GREEK COLONIES.
GERGOVIA OF THE ARVERNI.
"The site of Gergovia of the Arverni is supposed to be a hill
on the bank of the Allier, two miles from the modern Clermont
in Auvergne. The Romans seem to have neglected Gergovia, and
to have founded the neighbouring city, to which they gave the
name Augustonemetum. The Roman city became known afterwards as
Civitas Arvernorum, in the middle ages Arverna, and then, from
the situation of its castle, clarus mons, Clermont."
C. Merivale,
History of the Romans,
chapter 12 (volume 2, page 20, foot-note).
For an account of Cæsar's reverse at Gergovia of the Arverni,
See GAUL: B. C. 58-51.
GERGOVIA OF THE BOIANS.
See BOIANS.
GERIZIM.
"The sacred centre of the Samaritans is Gerizim, the 'Mount of
Blessings.' On. its summit a sacred rock marks the site where,
according to their tradition, Joshua placed the Tabernacle and
afterwards built a temple, restored later by Sanballat on the
return of the Israelites from captivity. On the slope of the
mountain the Feast of the Passover is still celebrated in
accordance with the injunctions of the Law."
C. R. Conder,
Syrian Stone Lore,
chapter 4.
GERMAN, High and Low.
The distinction, made between High German and Low German is
that resulting from differences of language, etc., between the
Germanic peoples which dwelt anciently in the low, flat
countries along the German Ocean and the Baltic, and those
which occupied the higher regions of the upper Rhine, Elbe and
Danube.
GERMAN EAST AFRICAN AND WEST AFRICAN ASSOCIATIONS.
See AFRICA: A. D. 1884-1889.
GERMAN EMPIRE, The Constitution of the new.
See CONSTITUTION OF GERMANY.
----------------------------------
A Logical Outline of German History
Ethnological
Social and political.
Intellectual, moral and religious.
Foreign.
IN WHICH THE DOMINANT CONDITIONS AND
INFLUENCES ARE DISTINGUISHED BY COLORS.
3d-5th Centurles. The Wanderinag of the nations.
Germany was slow in finding the definite place in geography
and history that belongs to it at the present day. It was no
more at first than a name, applied with large vagueness to the
country beyond the Rhine and the Danube, where many restless
tribes, of kindred language and character, were unstably
distributed. In time, the tribes crowded one another into wide
wandering movements, were pushed and pressed together into
confederacies and nations, and went swarming over the Danube
and the Rhine into Roman provinces, to take possession of them
and to be the new masters of the European world; but it was
the Germans, not Germany, who began then to be historic.
5th-9th Centuries--Empire of the Franks.
As a fact in history, Germany emerged first with the Franks,
out of the dust-clouds of the wandering time and the darker
clouds of the Gallic conquest. Fast seated on the great
dividing river, the Rhine, the Franks reached backward into
the land which gave them birth, and forward into the land
which took their name, and gathered a broad empire out of
both. But always the two parts of it refused to be held
together. Neither by Clovis, the first conqueror, nor by
Charlemagne, after three hundred years, were the Kingdom of
the East Franks and the Kingdom of the West Franks bound fast
into one. Under Charlemagne's successors, the Kingdom of the
East Franks began to be Germany, in the growing of the fact as
well as the name.
A. D. 962.--The Holy Roman Empire.
But no sooner had a Kingdom of Germany been created than it
was strangely deprived of the distinctness needful to the
making of a nation. The adventurous Otho, its second Saxon
king, who reclaimed Italy and revived the imperial sovereignty
of Charlemagne, diminished the weight and dignity of his
Germanic realm as much as he advanced himself and his
successors in title and rank. By that elevation of its kings
to a pseudo-Roman throne, Germany lost its own proper place in
history, and was obscured by the shadow of an empire which
soon existed as a shadow only. Its elective kings, forsaking
the title of Kings of Germany, and calling themselves Kings of
the Romans, even while they waited for an imperial coronation
at the hands of the Pope, made the nationalizing of Germany,
as France was being nationalized, by its monarchy, impossible.
10th-18th Centuries.--Contests In Italy.
For three centuries, the ambitions and the interests of the
imperialized monarchy were ultramontane. Its Teutonic seat was
a mere resting-place between Italian expeditions. Its quarrels
with the Popes cast all questions of German politics into the
background. It took no root in German feeling, rallied no
national sentiment, gathered no increase of authority, sent
out from itself no centralizing influences, judicial or
administrative, to resist the dissolving forces of feudalism.
And nowhere else in Europe was the action of those forces so
destructive of political unity. That great Fatherland of the
German peoples, where the slow solidification of a nation
should have been going on as surely as in France, was crumbled
by them into petty principalities, which time only hardened in
their separateness.
A. D. 1273-1440--Rise of the House of Hapsburg.
When, at last, the crown came to be settled in one fast-rooted
and enduring House, it was not fortunately placed. Territorially
the Hapsburgs were planted on the verge of the Teutonic land,
where they fronted the Hungarians and the Svavs and were
threatened by the approaching Turks. Speaking figuratively,
they stood with their backs to Germany, facing their greater
dangers and their greater opportunities, east and south.
Their personal dominions were acquired for the most part
outside of the Teutonic line. Their immediate subjects were of
many alien races, with a few of Greman blood. Their kingship
of Hungary was more substantial in its political weight than
any Germanic sovereignty that they held. From the beginning of
its remarkable dynastic career, the House of Austria was in
all respects quite at one side of the great people whose crown
had unhappily passed to its keeping. The emperor-kings, throned
with less reality at Vienna than at Presburg and Prague, lost
more and more their German character, receded more and more
from the range of German influence. Thus Germany was robbed
again of the centralizing constraints which a vigorous, rising
monarchy of the true stamp, not falsified by a fictitious
imperialization, would have brought to bear upon it, for the
unifying of a great nation.
A. D. 1477-1496.--Burgundian and Spanish marriages.
The marriagcs which linked the Austrian House with the
sovereign families of Burgundy and Spain only drew it still
farther away, and made it more alien than before to the people
of the German North. The imperial government was brought then
under influences from Spain which opposed every tendency of
their feeling and thought. While the strong Teutonic mind
worked its slow way towards personal freedom,--towards
fearless inquiry and independent belief,--a contrary movement
went on in the Austrian court. Between Germany at large and
the circle in which Vienna stood really a center and a
capital, a widening inteliectual breach began when the
Hapsburg brain was narrowed by the astringent blood of
Castile. This appeared, not alone in the rupture of the
religious Reformation, but in all the advances that were made,
from the sixteenth century down, in science, philosophy,
literature and art.
Some advance was always made; but the modern impulses which
woke early in the German race were wastefully spent, during
many generations, for want of any national concentration. No
large channel opened to them; no worthy spirit directed them.
The pettiness of petty politics and courts belittled in most
ways, for a lamentable time, the workings of German energy and
genius.
A. D. 1618.--Brandenburg—Prussia.
The Thirty Years War made chaos in Germany complete. No
semblance of substance in the empire remained. The Kaiser had
become a sovereign less honored than the King of France,
and Vienna a capital less considered than Paris. But the
first nucleus of nationality took form in that chaos, when
Brandenburg drew Prussia to itself, in the union which
produced a new kingdom at the North. The rise of Prussia was
the rise of German nationality. It brought to bear on the
German people the first centralizing influence that had acted
upon them since their kings took the crown of Rome. For the
first time in their history they felt the pull of a force
which drew them towards common lines of action.
A. D. 1740-1786.--Frederick the Great.
A. D. 1800-1813.--Struggle with Napoleon.
The aggrandizement of Prussia by Frederick the Great, though
iniquitous when considered in itself, was splendid work for
Germany. It prepared, for the perils of the next generation, a
power which Napoleon could humble at the moment, but which he
could not crush. It gave footing for the great heroic rally of
the Germanic people, whereby they conquered their place in the
world and secured their future.
A. D. 1866.--The Seven Weeks War
A. D. 1870-1871.--The Franco-German War.
A. D. 1871.--The Empire.
In all that has come to pass since Leipsic and Waterloo, the
logical sequence is plainer than history is wont to show it.
From men of the first decade in this century, who put the
school and the camp side by side in Prussian training, there
came more than from Bismarck or Moltke of the power which
triumphed at Sadowa and Sedan, which has constructed a new and
true Empire of Germany, with its capital at Berlin, and which
has dismissed Austria from German reckonings as mistress or as
rival, but to make of her an ally and a friend.
Within the last third of the nineteenth century, the Germans
may be said to have opened a great national career, such as
the English, their kinsmen, had entered upon nearly two
hundred years before. The energies of their powerful race have
been centered at last, and are acting with new potency, in
commerce and colonization, abroad, and in all modes of human
advancement, at home.
----------End: A Logical Outline of German History ------
{1429}
GERMAN FLATS: A. D.1765.
Treaty with the Indians.
See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1765-1768.
GERMAN FLATS: A. D. 1778.
Destruction by Brant.
See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:
A. D. 1778 (JUNE-NOVEMBER).
GERMAN NATIONS, The wandering of.
See GOTHS; FRANKS; ALEMANNI; MARCOMANNI;
QUADI; GEPIDÆ; SAXONS; ANGLES; BURGUNDIANS;
VANDALS; SUEVI; LOMBARDS.
GERMAN UNIVERSITIES.
See EDUCATION, MEDIÆVAL: GERMANY.
GERMANIA.
"On the origin of the name Germania see Waitz D. V. G. i. 24;
he rejects all German derivations and concludes that it is
originally Gallic, the name given (as Tacitus indicates) by
the Gauls first to the Tungri, and afterwards to all the
kindred tribes. The meaning may be either 'good shouters'
(Grimm), or, according to other writers, 'East-men,' or
'neighbours.'"
W. Stubbs,
Constitutional History of England,
volume 1, page 17, note.
GERMANIANS, The.
See CARMANIANS.
GERMANIC CONFEDERATION,
The First.
See GERMANY: A. D. 1814-1820.
The Second.
See GERMANY: A. D. 1870 (SEPTEMBER-DECEMBER).
GERMANIC DIET, The.
See DIET, GERMANIC.
GERMANIC PEOPLES OF THE ALEMANNIC LEAGUE.
See ALEMANNI: A.-D. 213.
GERMANICUS, Campaigns of.
See GERMANY: A. D. 14-16.
GERMANTOWN, Battle of.
See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:
A. D. 1777 (JANUARY-DECEMBER).
GERMANY:
The national name.
"The nations of the Germania had no common name recognised by
themselves, and were content, when, ages after, they had
realised their unity of tongue and descent, to speak of their
language simply as the Lingua Theotisca, the language of the
people (theod). ... Whence the name 'Deutsch.' Zeuss derives
it rather from the root of 'deuten,' to explain, so that
'theotisc' should mean 'significant.' But the root of 'theod'
and 'deuten' is the same. ... The general name by which the
Romans knew them [Germani] was one which they had received
from their Gallic neighbours."
W. Stubbs,
Constitutional History of England,
volume 1, chapter 3, and foot-note.
"In Gothic we have 'thiuda,' people; 'thiudisks,' belonging to
the people. ... The High-German, which looks upon Sanskrit 't'
and Gothic 'th' as 'd,' possesses the same word, as 'diot,'
people; 'diutisc,' popularis; hence Deutsch, German, and
'deuten,' to explain, literally to Germanize."
F. Max Müller,
Lectures on the Science of Language,
2d series, lecture. 5.
The account which Tacitus gives of the origin of the name
Germany is this: "The name Germany ... they [the Germans] say,
is modern and newly introduced, from the fact that the tribes
which first crossed the Rhine and drove out the Gauls, and are
now called Tungrians, were then called Germans. Thus what was
the name of a tribe, and not of a race, gradually prevailed,
till all called themselves by this self-invented name of
Germans, which the conquerors had first employed to inspire
terror."
Tacitus,
Germany;
translated by Church and Brodribb, chapter 2.
"It is only at the mouth of the Elbe that the Germany of the
really historical period begins: and this is a Germany only in
the eyes of scholars, antiquarians, and generalizing
ethnologists. Not one of the populations to whom the name is
here extended would have attached any meaning to the word,
except so far as they had been instructed by men who had
studied certain Latin writers. There was no name which was, at
one and the same time, native and general. There were native
names, but they were limited to special populations. There was
a general name, but it was one which was applied by strangers
and enemies. What this name was for the northern districts, we
know beforehand. It was that of Saxones and Saxonia in Latin;
of Sachsen and Sachsenland in the ordinary German. Evidence,
however, that any German population ever so named itself is
wholly wanting, though it is not impossible that some
unimportant tribe may have done so: the only one so called
being the Saxons of Ptolemy, who places them, along with
several others, in the small district between the Elbe and the
Eyder, and on three of the islands off the coast. ... The
Franks gave it its currency and generality; for, in the eyes
of a Frank, Saxony and Friesland contained all those parts of
Germany which, partly from their difference of dialect, partly
from their rudeness, partly from their paganism, and partly
from the obstinacy of their resistance, stood in contrast to
the Empire of Charlemagne and his successors. A Saxon was an
enemy whom the Franks had to coerce, a heathen whom they had
to convert. What more the term meant is uncertain."
R. G. Latham,
Introduction to Kemble's "Horæ Ferales."
See, also, TEUTONES.
GERMANY: As known to Tacitus.
"Germany is separated from the Galli, the Rhæti, and Pannonii,
by the rivers Rhine and Danube; mountain ranges, or the fear
which each feels for the other, divide it from the Sarmatæ and
Daci. Elsewhere ocean girds it, embracing broad peninsulas and
islands of unexplored extent, where certain tribes and
kingdoms are newly known to us, revealed by war. The Rhine
springs from a precipitous and inaccessible height of the
Rhætian Alps, bends slightly westward, and mingles with the
Northern Ocean. The Danube pours down from the gradual and
gently rising slope of Mount Abnoba, and visits many nations,
to force its way at last through six channels into the Pontus;
a seventh mouth is lost in marshes. The Germans themselves I
should regard as aboriginal, and not mixed at all with other
races through immigration or intercourse. For, in former
times, it was not by land but on shipboard that those who
sought to emigrate would arrive; and the boundless and, so to
speak, hostile ocean beyond us, is seldom entered by a sail
from our world. And, besides the perils of rough and unknown
seas, who would leave Asia, or Africa, or Italy for Germany,
with its wild country, its inclement skies, its sullen manners
and aspect, unless indeed it were his home?
{1430}
In their ancient songs, their only way of remembering or
recording the past, they celebrate an earth-born god, Tuisco,
and his son Mannus, as the origin of their race, as their
founders. To Mannus they assign three sons, from whose names,
they say, the coast tribes are called Ingævones; those of the
interior, Herminones; all the rest, Istævones. Some, with the
freedom of conjecture permitted by antiquity, assert that the
god had several descendants, and the nation several
appellations, as Marsi, Gambrivii, Suevi, Vandilii, and that
these are genuine old names. The name Germany, on the other
hand, they say, is modern and newly introduced."
Tacitus,
Germany:
translated by A. J. Church and W. J. Brodribb,
chapters 1-2.
GERMANY: B. C. 12-9.
Campaigns of Drusus.
The first serious advance of the Roman arms beyond the Rhine
was made in the reign of Augustus, by the emperor's step-son,
Drusus. Cæsar had crossed the river, only to chastise and
terrify the tribes on the right bank which threatened Gaul.
Agrippa, some years later, repeated the operation, and
withdrew, as Cæsar had done. But Drusus invaded Germany with
intentions of conquest and occupation. His first campaign was
undertaken in the spring of the year 12 B. C. He crossed the
Rhine and drove the Usipetes into their strongholds; after
which he embarked his legions on transport ships and moved
them down the river to the ocean, thence to coast northwards
to the mouth of the Ems, and so penetrate to the heart of the
enemy's country. To facilitate this bold movement, he had
caused a channel to be cut from the Rhine, at modern Arnheim,
to the Zuyder Zee, utilizing the river Yssel. The expedition
was not successful and retreated overland from the Frisian
coast after considerable disaster and loss. The next year,
Drusus returned to the attack, marching directly into the
German country and advancing to the banks of the Weser, but
retreating, again, with little to show of substantial results.
He established a fortified outpost, however, on the Lippe, and
named it Aliso. During the same summer, he is said to have
fixed another post in the country of the Chatti. Two years
then passed before Drusus was again permitted by the emperor
to cross the Rhine. On his third campaign he passed the Weser
and penetrated the Hercynian forest as far as the Elbe,--the
Germans declining everywhere to give him battle. Erecting a
trophy on the bank of the Elbe, he retraced his steps, but
suffered a fall from his horse, on the homeward march, which
caused his death. "If the Germans were neither reduced to
subjection, nor even overthrown in any decisive engagement, as
the Romans vainly pretended, yet their spirit of aggression
was finally checked and from thenceforth, for many
generations, they were fully occupied with the task of
defending themselves."
C. Merivale,
History of the Romans,
chapter 36.
GERMANY: B. C. 8-A. D. 11.
Campaigns of Tiberius.
The work of Roman conquest in Germany, left unfinished by
Drusus, was taken up by his brother Tiberius (afterwards
emperor) under the direction of Augustus. Tiberius crossed the
Rhine, for the first time, B. C. 8. The frontier tribes made
no resistance, but offered submission at once. Tiberius sent
their chiefs to Augustus, then holding his court at Lugdunum
(Lyons), to make terms with the emperor in person, and
Augustus basely treated them as captives and threw them into
prison. The following year found the German tribes again under
arms, and Tiberius again crossed the Rhine; but it was only to
ravage the country, and not to remain. Then followed a period
of ten years, during which the emperor's step-son,
dissatisfied with his position and on ill terms with Augustus,
retired to Rhodes. In the summer of A. D. 4, he returned to
the command of the legions on the Rhine. Meantime, under other
generals,--Domitius and Vinicius,--they had made several
campaigns beyond the river; had momentarily crossed the Elbe;
had constructed a road to the outposts on the Weser; had
fought the Cherusci, with doubtful results, but had not
settled the Roman power in Germany. Tiberius invaded the
country once more, with a powerful force, and seems to have
crushed all resistance in the region between the lower Rhine
and the Weser. The following spring, he repeated, with more
success, the movement of Drusus by land and sea, sending a
flotilla around to the Elbe and up that stream, to a point
where it met and co-operated with a column moved overland,
through the wilderness. A single battle was fought and the
Germans defeated; but, once more, when winter approached, the
Romans retired and no permanent conquest was made. Two years
later (A. D. 6), Tiberius turned his arms against the powerful
nation of the Marcomanni, which had removed itself from the
German mark, or border, into the country formerly occupied, by
the Boii--modern Bohemia. Here, under their able chief Marbod,
or Maroboduus, they developed a formidable military
organization and became threatening to the Roman frontiers on
the Upper Danube. Two converging expeditions, from the Danube
and from the Rhine, were at the point of crushing the
Marcomanni between them, when news of the alarming revolt, in
Pannonia and Dalmatia, called the "Batonian War," caused the
making of a hasty peace with Maroboduus. The Batonian or
Pannonian war occupied Tiberius for nearly three years. He had
just brought it to a close, when intelligence reached Rome of
a disaster in Germany which filled the empire with horror and
dismay. The tribes in northwestern Germany, between the lower
Rhine and the Elbe, supposed to be cowed and submissive, had
now found a leader who could unite them and excite them to
disdain the Roman yoke. This leader was Arminius, or Hermann,
a young chief of the Cherusci, who had been trained in the
Roman military service and admitted to Roman citizenship, but
who hated the oppressors of his country with implacable
bitterness. The scheme of insurrection organized by Arminius
was made easy of execution by the insolent carelessness and
the incapacity of the Roman commander in Germany, L.
Quintilius Varus. It succeeded so well that Varus and his
army,--three entire legions, horse, foot and
auxiliaries,--probably 20,000 men in all,--were overwhelmed in
the Teutoburger Wald, north of the Lippe, and destroyed. Only
a few skulking fugitives reached the Rhine and escaped to tell
the fate of the rest. This was late in the summer of A. D. 9.
In the following spring Tiberius was sent again to the Rhine
frontier, with as powerful a levy of men and equipments as the
empire could collect. He was accompanied by his nephew,
Germanicus, son of Drusus, destined to be his successor in the
field of German conquest.
{1431}
But dread and fear were in the Roman heart, and the campaign
of Tiberius, delayed another twelve months, until A. D. 11,
was conducted too cautiously to accomplish any important
result. He traversed and ravaged a considerable region of the
German country, but withdrew again across the Rhine and left
it, apparently, unoccupied. This was his last campaign.
Returning to Rome, he waited only two years longer for the
imperial sovereignty to which he succeeded on the death of
Augustus, who had made him, by adoption, his son and his heir.
C. Merivale,
History of the Romans,
chapters 36-38.
ALSO IN:
T. Mommsen,
History of Rome,
book 8, chapter 1.
Sir E. Creasy,
Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World,
chapter 5.
T. Smith,
Arminius, part 1,
chapters 4-6.
GERMANY: A. D. 14-16.
Campaigns of Germanicus.
Germanicus--the son of Drusus--was given the command on the
Rhine at the beginning of the year 13 A. D. The following
year, Augustus died and Tiberius became emperor; whereupon
Germanicus found himself no longer restrained from crossing
the river and assuming the offensive against Arminius and his
tribes. His first movement, that autumn, was up the valley of
the Lippe, which he laid waste, far and wide. The next spring,
he led one column, from Mentz, against the Chatti, as far as
the upper branches of the Weser, while he sent another farther
north to chastise the Cherusci and the Marsi, surprising and
massacring the latter at their feast of Tanfana. Later in the
same year, he penetrated, by a double expedition,--moving by
sea and by land, as his father had done before,--to the
country between the Ems and the Lippe, and laid waste the
territory of the Bructeri, and their neighbors. He also
visited the spot where the army of Varus had perished, and
erected a monument to the dead. On the return from this
expedition, four legions, under Cæcina, were beset in the same
manner that Varus had been, and under like difficulties; but
their commander was of different stuff and brought them safely
through, after punishing his pursuers severely. But the army
had been given up as lost, and only the resolute opposition of
Agrippina, the wife of Germanicus, had prevented the Roman
commander at Vetera, on the Rhine, from destroying the bridge
there, and abandoning the legions to their supposed fate. In
the spring of A. D. 16, Germanicus again embarked his army,
80,000 strong, at the mouth of the Rhine, on board transports,
and moved it to the mouth of the Ems, where the fleet
remained. Thence he marched up the Ems and across to the
Weser, and was encountered, in the country of the Cherusci, by
a general levy of the German tribes, led by Arminius and
Inguiomerus. Two great battles were fought, in which the
Romans were victorious. But, when returning from this
campaign, the fleet encountered a storm in which so much of it
perished, with the troops on board, that the disaster threw a
heavy cloud of gloom over the triumph of Germanicus. The young
general was soon afterwards recalled, and three years later he
died,--of poison, as is supposed,--at Antioch. "The central
government ceased from this time to take any warm interest in
the subjugation of the Germans; and the dissensions of their
states and princes, which peace was not slow in developing,
attracted no Roman emissaries to the barbarian camps, and
rarely led the legions beyond the frontier, which was now
allowed to recede finally to the Rhine."
C. Merivale,
History of the Romans,
chapter 42.
ALSO IN:
T. Mommsen,
History of Rome,
book 8, chapter 1.
T. Smith,
Arminius,
part 1, chapter 7.
GERMANY: 3d Century.
Beginning of the "Wandering of the Nations."
"Towards the middle of the third century, ... a change becomes
perceptible in the relations and attitude of the German
peoples. Many of the nations, which have been celebrated in
the annals of the classical writers, disappear silently from
history; new races, new combinations and confederacies start
into life, and the names which have achieved an imperishable
notoriety from their connection with the long decay and the
overthrow of the Roman Empire, come forward, and still
survive. On the soil whereon the Sigambri, Marsi, Chauci, and
Cherusci had struggled to preserve a rude independence, Franks
and Saxons lived free and formidable; Alemanni were gathered
along the foot of the Roman wall which connected the Danube
with the Rhine, and had, hitherto, preserved inviolate the
Agri decumates; while eastern Germany, allured by the hope of
spoil, or impelled by external pressure, precipitated itself
under the collective term of Goths upon the shrinking
settlements of the Dacia and the Danube. The new appellations
which appear in western Germany in the third century have not
unnaturally given rise to the presumption that unknown peoples
had penetrated through the land, and overpowered the ancient
tribes, and national vanity has contributed to the delusion.
As the Burgundians ... were flattered by being told they were
descendants of Roman colonists, so the barbarian writers of a
later period busied their imaginations in the solitude of
monastic life to enhance the glory of their countrymen, by the
invention of what their inkling of classical knowledge led
them to imagine a more illustrious origin. ... Fictions like
these may be referred to as an index of the time when the
young barbarian spirit, eager after fame, and incapable of
balancing probabilities, first gloated over the marvels of
classical literature, though its refined and delicate beauties
eluded their grosser taste; but they require no critical
examination; there are no grounds for believing that Franks,
Saxons, or Alemanni, were other than the original inhabitants
of the country, though there is a natural difficulty arising
from the want of written contemporary evidence in tracing the
transition, and determining the tribes of which the new
confederacies were formed. At the same time, though no
immigration of strangers was possible, a movement of a
particular tribe was not unfrequent. The constant internal
dissensions of the Germans, combined with their spirit of
warlike enterprise, led to frequent domestic wars; and the
vanquished sometimes chose rather to seek an asylum far from
their native soil, where they might live in freedom, than
continue as bondmen or tributaries to the conqueror. Of such a
nature were the wanderings of the Usipites and Teuchteri
[Tenchteri] in Cæsar's time, the removal of the Ubii from
Nassau to the neighbourhood of Cöln and Xanthen; and to this
must be ascribed the appearance of the Burgundians, who had
dwelt beyond the Oder, in the vicinity of the Main and the
Necker. Another class of national emigrations, were those
which implied a final abandonment of the native Germany with
the object of seeking a new settlement among the possessions
of the sinking empire.
{1432}
Those of the Goths, Vandals, Alans, Sueves, the second
movement of the Burgundians, may be included in this category;
the invasions of the Franks, Alemanni, and Saxons, on the
contrary, cannot be called national emigrations, for they
never abandoned, with their families, their original
birthplace; their outwanderings, like the emigrations of the
present day, were partial; their occupation of the enemy's
territory was, in character, military and progressive; and,
with the exception of the Anglo-Saxon settlement in Britain,
their connection with the original stock was never
interrupted. In all the migrations of German peoples spoken of
from Cæsar downwards, the numbers of the emigrants appear to
be enormously exaggerated. The Usipites and Teuchteri are
estimated by Cæsar at 430,000 souls. How could such a
multitude find nourishment during a three years' wandering? If
80,000 Burgundian Wehrmen came to the Rhine to the assistance
of Valentinian, as Cassiodorius, Jerome, and other chroniclers
state, the numbers of the whole nation must have approached
400,000, and it is impossible to believe that such a mass
could obtain support in the narrow district lying between the
Alemanni, the Hermunduri, and the Chatti. In other cases,
vague expressions, and still more the wonderful achievements
of the Germans in the course of their emigrations, have led to
the supposition of enormous numbers; but Germany could not
find nourishment for the multitudes which have been ascribed
to it. Corn at that period was little cultivated; it was not
the food of the people, whose chief support was flesh. ... The
conquests of the barbarians may be ascribed as much to the
weakness of their adversaries, to their want of energy and
union, as to their own strength. There was, in fact, no enemy
to meet them in the field; and their domination was, at least,
as acceptable to the provincial inhabitants as that of the
imbecile, but rapacious ministers of the Roman government. ...
It was not the lust of wandering, but the influence of
external circumstances which brought them to the vicinity of
the Danube: at first the aggressions of the Romans, then the
pressure of the Huns and the Sclavonic tribes. The whole
intercourse of Germany with Rome must be considered as one
long war, which began with the invasion of Cæsar; which, long
restrained by the superior power of the enemy, warmed with his
growing weakness, and only ended with the extinction of the
Roman name. The wars of the third, fourth, and fifth
centuries, were only a continuance of the ancient hostility.
There might be partial truce, or occasional intermission; some
tribes might be almost extirpated by the sword; some, for a
time, bought off by money; but Rome was the universal enemy,
and much of the internal restlessness of the Germans was no
more than the natural movement towards the hostile borders. As
the invasion of northern Germany gave rise to the first great
northern union, so the conquest of Dacia brought Goths from
the Vistula to the south, while the erection of the giant wall
naturally gathered the Suevic tribes along its limits, only
waiting for the opportunity to break through. Step by step
this battle of centuries was fought; from the time of
Caracalla the flood turned, wave followed wave like the
encroaching tide, and the ancient landmarks receded bit by
bit, till Rome itself was buried beneath the waters. ... Three
great confederacies of German tribes, more or less united by
birth, position, interest, or language, may be discerned,
during this period, in immediate contact with the Romans---the
Alemanni, the Goths, and the Franks. A fourth, the Saxons, was
chiefly known from its maritime voyages off the coast of Gaul
and Britain. There were also many independent peoples which
cannot be enumerated among any of the political confederacies,
but which acted for themselves, and pursued their individual
ends: such were the Burgundians, the Alans, the Vandals, and
the Lombards."
T. Smith,
Arminius,
part 2, chapter 1.
ALSO IN:
R. G. Latham,
Nationalities of Europe,
volume 2, chapter 21.
See, also,
ALEMANNI; MARCOMANNI; QUADI; GOTHS;
GEPIDÆ; SAXONS; ANGLES, FRANKS;
BURGUNDIANS; VANDALS; SUEVI; LOMBARDS;
and, also, Appendix A, volume 1.
GERMANY: A. D. 277.
Invasion by Probus.
The vigorous emperor Probus, who, in the year 277, drove from
Gaul the swarms of invaders that had ravaged the unhappy
province with impunity for two years past, then crossed the
Rhine and harried the country of the marauders, as far as the
Elbe and the Neckar. "Germany, exhausted by the ill success of
the last emigration, was astonished by his presence. Nine of
the most considerable princes repaired to his camp and fell
prostrate at his feet. Such a treaty was humbly received by
the Germans as it pleased the conqueror to dictate." Probus
then caused a stone wall, strengthened at intervals with
towers, to be built from the Danube, near Neustadt and
Ratisbon, to Wimpfen on the Neckar, and thence to the Rhine,
for the protection of the settlers of the "Agri Decumates."
But the wall was thrown down, a few years afterwards, by the
Alemanni.
E. Gibbon,
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,
chapter 12.
GERMANY: 5th Century.
Conversion of the Franks.
See CHRISTIANITY: A. D. 496-800.
GERMANY: A. D. 481-768.
Acquisition of supremacy by the Franks.
The original dominions of Clovis, or Chlodwig--with whose
reign the career of the Franks as a consolidated people
began--corresponded nearly to the modern kingdom of Belgium.
His first conquests were from the Romans, in the neighboring
parts of Gaul, and when those were finished, "the king of the
Franks began to look round upon the other German nations
settled upon its soil, with a view to the further extension of
his power. A quarrel with the Alemanni supplied the first
opportunity for the gratification of his ambition. For more
than a century the Alemanni had been in undisturbed possession
of Alsace, and the adjoining districts; Mainz, Worms, Speyer,
Strasburg, Basel, Constanz, Bregenz, lay within their
territory. ... The Vosegen range was a bulwark on the side of
Gaul, waste lands separated them from the Burgundians, who
were settled about the Jura and in the south-west part of
Helvetia, and the Moselle divided them from the Ripuarian
Franks. It is unknown whether they formed a state distinct
from their brethren on the right of the Rhine; probably such
was the case, for the Alemanni, at all times, were divided
into separate tribes, between which, however, was generally a
common union; nor is it certain whether the Alsatian Alemanni
were under one or several Adelings; a single king is mentioned
as having fallen in the battle with Chlodwig, who may have
been merely an elected military leader.
{1433 and 1434 moved forward for continuity}
{1435}
Equally obscure is the cause of their war with Chlodwig,
though it has been assumed, perhaps too hastily, by all recent
historians, that the Frank king became involved in it as an
ally of the Ripuarians. The Ripuarian Franks were settled, as
the name imports, upon the banks of the Rhine, from the
Moselle downwards; their chief seat was the city of Cologne.
It is probable that they consisted of the remains of the
ancient Ubii, strengthened by the adventurers who crossed over
on the first invasion, and the name implies that they were
regarded by the Romans as a kind of limitanean soldiery. For,
in the common parlance of the Romans of that period, the tract
of land lying along the Rhine was called Ripa, in an absolute
sense, and even the river itself was not unfrequently
denominated by the same title. Ripuarii are Ripa-wehren,
Hreop, or Hrepa-wehren, defenders of the shore. About the
close of the fifth century these Ripuarii were under the
government of a king, named Sigebert, usually called 'the
lance.' The story told by modern writers is, that this
Sigebert, having fallen into dispute with the Alemanni, called
upon Chlodwig for assistance, a call which the young king
willingly listened to. The Alemanni had invaded the Ripuarian
territory, and advanced within a short distance of Cologne,
when Chlodwig and his Franks joined the Ripuarii; a battle
took place at Zülpich, about twenty-two English miles from
Cologne, which, after a fierce struggle, ended in the defeat
of the Alemanni. ... Chlodwig was following up his victory
over the Alemanni, perhaps with unnecessary ferocity, when he
was stopped in his course by a flattering embassy from the
great Theodorich. Many of the Alemanni had submitted, after
the death of their chief, on the field of battle. 'Spare us,'