find in Britain this double graft, and an
admirable literary development was to be the consequence. They set out
then to accomplish their work and follow their destiny, having doubtless
much to learn, but having also something to teach the enervated nations,
the meaning of a word unknown till their coming, the word "war"
(_guerre, guerra_). After the time of the invasions "bellicose,"
"belliqueux," and such words lost their strength and dignity, and were
left for songsters to play with if they liked; a tiny phenomenon, the
sign of terrible transformations.

The invaders bore various names. The boundaries of their tribes, as
regards population and territory, were vague, and in nowise resembled
those of the kingdoms traced on our maps. Their groups united and
dissolved continually. The most powerful among them absorb their
neighbours and cause them to be forgotten for a time, their names
frequently recur in histories; then other tribes grow up; other names
appear, others die out. Several of them, however, have survived: Angles,
Franks, Saxons, Burgundians, Lombards, Suevi, and Alemanni, which became
the names of great provinces or mighty nations. The more important of
these groups were rather an agglomeration of tribes than nations
properly so called; thus under the name of Franks were comprised, in the
third century, the Sicambers, the Chatti, the Chamavi; while the Suevi
united, in the time of Tacitus, the Lombards, Semnones, Angles, and
others. But all were bound by the tie of a common origin; their
passions, customs, and tastes, their arms and costumes were similar.[30]

This human multitude once put in motion, nothing was able to stop it,
neither the military tactics of the legions nor the defeats which it
suffered; neither rivers nor mountains, nor the dangers of unknown seas.
The Franks, before settling in Gaul, traversed it once from end to end,
crossed the Pyrenees, ravaged Spain, and disappeared in Mauritania.
Transported once in great numbers to the shores of the Euxine Sea, and
imprudently entrusted by the Romans with the defence of their frontiers,
they embark, pillage the towns of Asia and Northern Africa, and return
to the mouth of the Rhine. Their expeditions intercross each other; we
find them everywhere at once; Franks are seen at London, and Saxons at
Angers. In 406, Gaul is overrun with barbarians, Vandals, Saxons,
Burgundians, Alemanni; every point of the territory is in flames; the
noise of a falli