, sent an army to invade the Gothic possessions
of Septimania, or Languedoc. The troops of Burgundy, Berry, Auvergne,
and the adjacent territories, were excited by the hopes of spoil. They
marched, without discipline, under the banners of German, or Gallic,
counts: their attack was feeble and unsuccessful; but the friendly
and hostile provinces were desolated with indiscriminate rage. The
cornfields, the villages, the churches themselves, were consumed by
fire: the inhabitants were massacred, or dragged into captivity; and,
in the disorderly retreat, five thousand of these inhuman savages
were destroyed by hunger or intestine discord. When the pious Gontran
reproached the guilt or neglect of their leaders, and threatened to
inflict, not a legal sentence, but instant and arbitrary execution, they
accused the universal and incurable corruption of the people. "No one,"
they said, "any longer fears or respects his king, his duke, or his
count. Each man loves to do evil, and freely indulges his criminal
inclinations. The most gentle correction provokes an immediate tumult,
and the rash magistrate, who presumes to censure or restrain his
seditious subjects, seldom escapes alive from their revenge." It has
been reserved for the same nation to expose, by their intemperate vices,
the most odious abuse of freedom; and to supply its loss by the
spirit of honor and humanity, which now alleviates and dignifies their
obedience to an absolute sovereign.

The Visigoths had resigned to Clovis the greatest part of their Gallic
possessions; but their loss was amply compensated by the easy conquest,
and secure enjoyment, of the provinces of Spain. From the monarchy
of the Goths, which soon involved the Suevic kingdom of Gallicia, the
modern Spaniards still derive some national vanity; but the historian
of the Roman empire is neither invited, nor compelled, to pursue the
obscure and barren series of their annals. The Goths of Spain were
separated from the rest of mankind by the lofty ridge of the Pyrenaean
mountains: their manners and institutions, as far as they were common to
the Germanic tribes, have been already explained. I have anticipated,
in the preceding chapter, the most important of their ecclesiastical
events, the fall of Arianism, and the persecution of the Jews; and it
only remains to observe some interesting circumstances which relate to
the civil and ecclesiastical constitution of the Spanish kingdom.

After their conversio