red hordes of
sanguinary, grotesque savages pushed from their own homes, and hovering
with vague purposes upon the Roman frontier, constantly repelled and
perpetually reappearing in ever-increasing swarms, guided thither by a
fierce instinct, or by mysterious laws--such are the well known phenomena
which preceded the fall of western Rome. Stately, externally powerful,
although undermined and putrescent at the core, the death-stricken empire
still dashed back the assaults of its barbarous enemies.

During the long struggle intervening between the age of Vespasian and
that of Odoacer, during all the preliminary ethnographical revolutions
which preceded the great people's wandering, the Netherlands remained
subject provinces. Their country was upon the high road which led the
Goths to Rome. Those low and barren tracts were the outlying marches of
the empire. Upon that desolate beach broke the first surf from the rising
ocean of German freedom which was soon to overwhelm Rome. Yet, although
the ancient landmarks were soon well nigh obliterated, the Netherlands
still remained faithful to the Empire, Batavian blood was still poured
out for its defence.

By the middle of the fourth century, the Franks and Allemanians,
alle-mannez, all-men, a mass of united Germans are defeated by the
Emperor Julian at Strasburg, the Batavian cavalry, as upon many other
great occasions, saving the day for despotism. This achievement, one of
the last in which the name appears upon historic record, was therefore as
triumphant for the valor as it was humiliating to the true fame of the
nation. Their individuality soon afterwards disappears, the race having
been partly exhausted in the Roman service, partly merged in the Frank
and Frisian tribes who occupy the domains of their forefathers.

For a century longer, Rome still retains its outward form, but the
swarming nations are now in full career. The Netherlands are successively
or simultaneously trampled by Franks, Vandals, Alani, Suevi, Saxons,
Frisians, and even Sclavonians, as the great march of Germany to
universal empire, which her prophets and bards had foretold, went
majestically forward. The fountains of the frozen North were opened, the
waters prevailed, but the ark of Christianity floated upon the flood. As
the deluge assuaged, the earth had returned to chaos, the last pagan
empire had been washed out of existence, but the dimly, groping,
faltering, ignorant infancy of Christian Europe