was not accomplished by placing
before the inferior race a higher ideal of life for imitation, but by a
mingling of the blood of the nations--a transfusion into Gallic veins
of the germs of a higher living and thinking--thus making them heirs to
the great civilizations of antiquity.

Was any human event ever fraught with such consequences to the human
race as the conquest of Gaul by Julius Caesar?

The Gallic wars had for centuries drained the treasure and taxed the
resources of Rome. Caesar conceived the audacious idea of stopping
them at their source--in fact, of making Gaul a Roman province.

It was a marvellous exhibition, not simply of force, but of force
wielded by supreme intelligence and craft. He had lived many years
among this people and knew their sources of weakness, their internal
jealousies and rivalries, their incohesiveness. When they hurled
themselves against Rome, it was as a mass of sharp fragments. When the
Goths did the same, it was as one solid, indivisible body. Caesar saw
that by adroit management he could disintegrate this people while
conquering them.

By forcibly maintaining in power those who submitted to him, being by
turns gentle and severe, ingratiating here, terrifying there, he
established a tremendous personal force; and during nine years carried
on eight campaigns, marvels in the art of war, as well as in the
subtler methods of negotiation and intrigue. He had successively dealt
with all the Keltic tribes, even including Great Britain, subjugating
either through their own rivalries, or by his invincible arm.

Equally able to charm and to terrify, he had all the gifts, all the
means to success and empire, that can be possessed by man. Great in
politics as in war, as full of resource in the forum as on the
battle-field, he was by nature called to dominion.

It was not as a patriot, simply intent upon freeing Rome of an
harassing enemy, that he endured those nine years in Gaul; not as a
great leader burning with military ardor that he conducted those eight
campaigns. The conquest of Gaul meant the greater conquest of Rome.
The one was accomplished; he now turned his back upon the devastated
country, and prepared to complete his great project of human ascendency.

Rome was mistress of the world; he--would be master of Rome.

In the early days of the conquest of Gaul a small island lying in the
river Seine was chosen for the residence of the Roman Governors, and
called _Lu