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in the second century, does not recognise them under this more mo dern name, of which mention is first made in the historians of the third century. The tribes who composed this confederation were the Chauci, the Chamavi, the Cherusci, the Bructeri, the Chatti, &c. which, though united together for their common defence, had each their peculiar laws and governments, and their different chiefs. In the course of the fourth century, and of the beginning of the fifth, the country which they inhabited was called Francia.

No sooner had the German tribes established themselves in the different provinces of the empire, than they introduced the political institutions to which they had been subject in the countries whence they had migrated. Their governments were a sort of military democracies, under chiefs called kings. All important matters were decided in the general assemblies of the freemen who bore arms, and went to the wars. The succession of the crown was not de jure hereditary; and though it soon became so in fact, yet on occasion of accessions, the antient forms, which demonstrated the primitive right of election, were carefully observed.

The political divisions into counties, Gau, established in antient Germany, was introduced in all the conquered states, as necessary to their mode of administering justice. Each county was governed by an officer of justice called Grav, in Latin, comes, who held his court in the open air, assisted by a given number of asses. sors. This new division caused a total change to take place in the geography of the middle age; and new names were every where introduced, which have created endless embarrassments in the study of history and geography.'

M. KOCH considers the distributed lands as allodial property in the holders. The condition of military service, he contends, was not imposed on them: but war was the favourite and the only honorable occupation, as well as the birth-right of every freeman. Each freeman was a soldier, not because he was obliged but because he chose to be so, and because he despised every other condition of life. The whole nation was armed; it assembled in council, and marched to the wars.-The institution of fiefs, the author holds to have been posterior; and he traces it to the usage which had prevailed among the Germans, of the chiefs having a great number of young and brave men attached to their persons. The leaders, we learn from Tacitus, found them provisions, furnished them with horses and arms, and shared with them the booty which they made in battle. In their new settlements, the usage still continued; and lands, in a course of time, came to be bestowed in the same manner. They were first called benefices, and afterward fiefs.

The author notices the almost entire extinction of literature, which followed on the establishment of the barbarians. It is true, he says, that for a long time letters had been on the decline, and that all the Roman productions of genius

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and fancy were in bad taste: but still the state of letters subsequently to that epoch admits not of the slightest comparison with that in which it was seen previously to the downfall of the empire. War and the chase were the sole occupations of the victors. The fine monuments and libraries of the Romans were destroyed, and all their schools and places of instruction were annihilated. It is to christianity that we owe the preservation of the few traces of culture which remained after the general subversion. The clergy, whose province was to teach the Roman worship, and to explain the scriptures, were obliged to have some tincture of letters. They became in all the West the sole depositaries of learning; and persons of every other condition wholly neglected the sciences, not being instructed even to write. This distinction gave the clergy vast influence, and secured to them all the highest civil offices.

As to the origin of the secular power of the popes, it is observed that the basis of it was laid in the reign of Pepin the Short, the son and successor of Charles Martel.

At this time a violent contest existed between the western and eastern churches, respecting image worship. The Emperor Leo, the Isaurian, set himself to oppose it, proscribed it by an edict published in 726, and persisted in destroying the images and persecuting those who shewed themselves their partisans. This imprudent zeal, which the Roman pontiffs fanned, excited the people against the Greek emperors; and a revolt broke out in Italy against the Imperial officers who were charged with the execution of these orders. The Romans embraced this occasion to expel from their city the duke, or governor, who resided among then on behalf of the Greek emperor; they formed themselves into a republic, usurped the rights of sovereignty, and renewed the antient denominations of senate and people. The territory of the republic consisted of what had been formed out of the duchy of Rome, extended north and south from Viterbo to Terracina, and east and west from Narue to the mouth of the Tiber. Such was the weakness of the government of Constantinople, that all its attempts to reduce the Romans were ineffectual. In this low state of the Greek empire, the Lombards took occasion to extend their possessions, and reduced the Exarchate and the Pentapolis Thus encouraged, they carried their views farther, and required the submission of the city and du hy of Rome, as a dependency of the Exarchate; which occasioned the memorable and successful application to Pepin, who had lately been declared king of France, having deposed the lawful sovereign The pope sanctioned the usurpation of Pepin; and the new monarch in return wrested the Exarchate and the Pentapolis from the Lombard king, and made a present of both to the holy father. With the expul ion of the Greek governor, and this celebrated donation, commenced the secular power of the popes.'

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The account here given of the political system of Charlemagne will shew how closely it has been copied in our days:

His dominions comprehended the greater part of Europe, extending west and east from the Ebro to the Elbe and the Oder, and south and north from the duchy of Benevento and the Adriatic to the river Eyder. In considering this empire, care must be taken not to confound the incorporated states with those which were simply tributary. The first were governed by officers whom the emperor might recall at pleasure; the others were only connected with him by alliances, and by the tributes which they paid to him. Besides the marches or military governments which he established on his frontier towards Germany, Spain, and Italy, he had, in the different points of his empire, tributary nations under his protection, which formed a barrier against the barbarians of the east and north, who had been accustomed for a long time to make incursions in the western and southern counties of Europe. Thus the Dukes of Benevento were simple vassals and tributaries of the empire, who were to defend it against the Greeks and Arabs; so the Sclavonians. who inhabited Pannonia, Dalmatia, and Croatia, were likewise tributaries of the Franks, but governed by their own laws, and did not for the most part at this time even p:ofess the christian religion.'

By the treaty of Verdun, formed in the year 843, between the children of Louis le Debonnaire, it was settled that Charles the Bald should have all that part of Gaul which extended from the Scheldt, the Meuse, the Saone, and the Rhone, to the Pyrennees; and also the marches of Spain:

'Here,' observes the author, commences modern France, which was a limb of the antient empire of the Franks, or of the monarchy of Charlemagne. She preserved for a long time the limits assigned to her by the treaty of Verdun; and all that she possesses beyond them are conquests made since the fourteenth century. Charles the Bald was properly the first king of France, and it is from him that her kings ought to be reckoned. From his time the face of the government changed among the western Franks. Before this reign, the administration was Frank or Germanic, and the manners and usages of the conquerors of Gaul predominated: but from the period of which we are speaking, the Gauls having obtained the ascendancy in western France, the manners and language of that people were introduced at court, and influenced the government. This language, which was called Roman or Romance, was by degrees purified and improved, and in the course of time formed itself into the modern French language. At this epoch the western Franks became French.

It was at the same period that Germany was formed a separate kingdom, having its particular kings: it long bore the name of Eastern France, to distinguish it from the western; which at length assumed the name of France simply and exclusively.'

М.Косн

M. KOCH has now conducted his readers from the grand revolution of the fifth century to the final settlement of Europe, in nearly the form in which it remained to our times. We do not know so good a guide through the perplexing mazes of this part of history. None of his predecessors have so clearly and satisfactori y traced and described the pedigrees, migrations, settlements, and revolutions of the various tribes which overran the Roman Empire. No fancies are indulged by him, nor are any preposterous hypotheses obtruded. His Goths are rude ferocious barbarians, while his Celts are not the refuse of humanity, deficient even in personal courage: but his positions are every where. supported by authorities, which all the sources direct and indirect are made to furnish. The method is not less admirable than the matter is choice. The work presents traits that indicate a performance to the subjects of which the best part of an author's life has been devoted: it is a truly clasical production, and will long remain a fair monument of the ability, industry, good faith, and impartiality, of the writer. Not merely as exploring antiquity, and finding his way amid the confusion which pervades it and the darkness which overhangs it, does he claim pre-eminence; he presents to us the objects which occur in the more familiar paths of history, in an advantageous point of view and with a distinctness which have been rarely equalled, and which give them almost an air of novelty. Equally happy and apposite are the reflections with which he accompanies them, and of which we shall subjoin a few specimens:

The period which intervened from the accession of Henry I. to the death of Henry III, forms the most splendid era in the history of the German empire. In the reign of the latter. it embraced nearly two-thirds of the monarchy of Charlemagne. All Germany between the Rhine, the Eyder, the Oder, the Warta, and the Alps; Italy, to the confines of the Greeks in Apulia and Calabria; Gaul, from the Rhine to the Scheldt, the Meuse, the Saone, and the Rhone; acknowleged the supremacy of the German Emperors; and the Dukes of Bohemia and Poland were their tributaries.

This ascendancy of the Emperors gave birth to a political system, which the Popes at this time supported with the whole of their credit and authority. All christian nations within this system constituted one republic, of which the Pope was the spiritual head, and the Emperor the temporal. The latter, in the quality of Defender of the church, was required to see that nothing took place contrary to the general good of christendom; to guard the Roman church, to watch over its preservation, to convoke general councils; and as the chief of the christian armies against infidels, he exercised those nights which the nature of this trust and the interests of the christian commonwealth demanded. To the prevalence of this system the German Emperors owe the precedence which they take other sovereigns,

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with the exclusive right of creating kings, as well as the titles which were ascribed to them of masters of the world, and Lords of Lords. To them belonged the right, if not to chuse, at least to confirm the election of the Popes. Henry III in 1046 deprived them of their functions, and substituted a German Lord in their room, who took the name of Clement II., and afterward appointed some other German Popes.'

We have not room to admit the author's luminous statement of the causes of the decline of this formidable power.— If however the Popes, during the period of which we have ben speaking, scarcely aspired to be co-ordinate with the Emperors, we soon see them arrogate and establish a superiority over them and all temporal Princes. Great as the strides had been by which the Roman pastors had raised themselves to be great temporal sovereigns, with boundless spiritual prerogatives, they were inconsiderable compared with the vast space which intervened between their present elevation, and the giddy height on which the daring ambition of Hildebrand, or Pope Gregory VII., sought to place the successors of the Fisherman. M. KOCH, in his usual able manner,traces the steps by which the daring priest succeeded to so marvellous a degree in realizing his extravagant dreams.

Referring to the triumph of the papal power over that of the Emperors, the author states,

That the fabric, the curious mechanism of which is to this day the admiration of the most skilful politicians, was the work of the before-mentioned Pope; a man born for great enterprizes, equally distinguished for his genius and courage, for his austere manners and an ambition which knew no bounds. The son of a simple carpenter of Soane in Tuscany, he had prepared his way to greatness under the Pontiffs who preceded him. He prevailed on his predecessor Nicolas II. to ally himself with Robert Guiscard, to render the Norman Hero a vassal of the church, and to take advantage of the minority of Henry IV. to sap the claim of the Emperors to interfere in papal elections; and afterward he had a Pope chosen and established without the orders of the imperial court. No sooner was he elevated to the papal chair and fixed in it by the imperial confirmation, which he obtained by suppleness, than he conceived the design of forming to himself a new empire over the clergy, and over kings, by constituting himself a supreme judge of all affairs civil and ecclesiastical, the distributor of preferment, and the dispenser of

crowns.

His first step was to withdraw himself and the clergy from the authority of secular Princes. Previously to this period, the emperors named and confirmed the Popes, invested the prefects of Rome with their authority, and sent commissaries to levy the taxes due to them in that city: the acts of the Popes bore the dates of the years of the reign of the Emperors; the cein had their names engraved on it; and the high clergy, by means of investitures with the

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