ed a peaceful territory they were
prohibited from touching a blade of grass. The justice of Clovis was
inexorable; and his careless or disobedient soldiers were punished
with instant death. It would be superfluous to praise the valour of a
Frank; but the valour of Clovis was directed by cool and consummate
prudence. In all his transactions with mankind he calculated the
weight of interest, of passion, and of opinion; and his measures were
sometimes adapted to the sanguinary manners of the Germans,
and sometimes moderated by the milder genius of Rome, and
Christianity.

46. "But the savage conqueror of Gaul was incapable of examining the
proofs of a religion, which depends on the laborious investigation of
historic evidence, and speculative theology. He was still more
incapable of feeling the mild influence of the Gospel, which persuades
and purifies the heart of a genuine convert. His ambitious reign was a
perpetual violation of moral and Christian duties: his hands were
stained with blood, in peace as well as in war; and, as soon as Clovis
had dismissed a synod of the Gallican Church, he calmly assassinated
_all_ the princes of the Merovingian race."

47. It is too true; but rhetorically put, in the first place--for we
ought to be told how many 'all' the princes were;--in the second
place, we must note that, supposing Clovis had in any degree "searched
the Scriptures" as presented to the Western world by St. Jerome, he
was likely, as a soldier-king, to have thought more of the mission of
Joshua[19] and Jehu than of the patience of Christ, whose sufferings he
thought rather of avenging than imitating: and the question whether
the other Kings of the Franks should either succeed him, or, in envy
of his enlarged kingdom, attack and dethrone, was easily in his mind
convertible from a personal danger into the chance of the return of
the whole nation to idolatry. And, in the last place, his faith in the
Divine protection of his cause had been shaken by his defeat before
Aries by the Ostrogoths; and the Frank leopard had not so wholly
changed his spots as to surrender to an enemy the opportunity of a
first spring.

[Footnote 19: The likeness was afterwards taken up by legend, and the
walls of Angouleme, after the battle of Poitiers, are said to have
fallen at the sound of the trumpets of Clovis. "A miracle," says
Gibbon, "which may be reduced to the supposition that some clerical
engineer had secretly undermined the founda