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or his conduct insufficient for the exigency, they CHAP. destroyed him, and elected Gratian, who is mentioned with the title of Municeps, in his room. Within four months afterwards he was murdered, and, induced by the flattering name, the British soldiery selected one Constantine from the ranks, and decorated him with the imperial garments." CONSTANTINE seems not to have been unworthy Constanof his station; he passed out of Britain into Gaul, stayed a short time at Boulogne, conciliated to his interest the soldiers scattered upon the continent, and defeated the terrible barbarians. 45

tine leaves

Britain.

406.

THE authority of Constantine was acknowledged 406-411. in Gaul, and he reduced Spain. His son Constans laid aside the cowl of a monk, which, previous to his father's elevation, he had assumed, and was created Cæsar. Honorius, to whom Constantine had respectfully stated, that his dignity had been forced upon him, appeared to acquiesce in his retaining it, and sent him the imperial robes. 47 The barbarians obtained reinforcements, but Constantine adopted the precautionary measure of placing troops to guard the passages into Gaul.48

DURING this division of the imperial power, Alaric again assembled a willing army, and appeared on the Roman frontier. The guilt of Stilicho had been detected and punished, and his death removed the last bulwark of the empire. The court of Honorius could furnish no other mind competent to

43 Zosimus, lib. vi. p. 373. and 371. Orosius, vii. 40.

4 Zosimus, ibid.

45 Marcellin. Com. p. 38. Orosius, vii. 40. Jornandes, c. 32. 46 Yet Frigeridus, cited by Gregory of Tours, characterises him as gulæ et ventri deditus, lib. i. c. 9. p. 35.

BOOK confront the Gothic conqueror. In 408, he overII. whelmed resistance, and besieged Rome. A ransom obtained a short security, but determined his superiority. In the next year he assailed it again, and condescended to accept from an emperor of his own nomination the title of master-general. Every doubt was now removed; he saw his irresistible power, and the succeeding summer was marked by the dismal catastrophe of a third siege and successful assault 49, whose ferocious cruelties we might notice with abhorrence, but that the generals of civilised ages choose yet to perpetrate them in violation of all moral principle or social benevolence, and in wilful contempt of the inevitable opinion of posterity!

Aug. 24.

410.

411.

AMONG the officers attached to the interest of Constantine was Gerontius, who had proceeded from Britain. The valour and services of this person on former occasions are stated by the historians; but, offended that Constans returned to Spain, on his second visit, with another as his general, the slighted Gerontius abandoned the interests of the emperor he had supported, and elevated a friend to dethrone him.50 He pursued his new purpose with a fatal alacrity, besieged and slew Constans at Vienne, and menaced the father with deposition. The troops of the legal emperor, Honorius, profited by the quarrel, and destroyed the competition. Constantine was taken at Arles, and Gerontius was pursued to the confines of Spain; his house was besieged, and the assailants set it on

49 Gibbon, iii. 24-1244.

50 Zosim. 371. 373–375.

51 Orosius, lib. vii. Olympiodorus ap. Photium, 183. Marcellin. Chron. 38. Eusebius Chronicon, 412.

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fire. His friend and wife received from his hands CHAP. the death they implored, and he joined them in the tomb. $2

rians at

AMID this complexity of rebellion and sub-rebel- The barbalion, the western provinces of the Roman state tack Briwere sacrificed to the revenge of the military com- tain. 409. petitors. The crime which degraded all the merit of Stilicho was, from the same motives of selfishness, repeated by Gerontius. He also, to diminish the danger of his revolt, by his incitements and advice influenced into hostile invasion the barbarians who hovered near the Celtic regions. 53 This

52 See the detail in Gibbon, iii. p. 259. I am tempted to imagine, that in drawing his Vortigern, Jeffry has copied and distorted the Gerontius of the imperialists. Some particulars are alike in both. He makes Constans a monk, and Vortigern --a British consul, — who rebelled against, and caused Constans to be destroyed. Vortigern being afterwards besieged in the place to which he fled, and his pursuers finding they could not get an entrance, it was set on fire, lib. vi. and lib. viii.- The facts from the Roman historians are, that Gerontius proceeded from Britain, and was a comes or count; that he revolted from Constans, who had been in a monastery and caused his death; that he fled for refuge afterwards, and prevented his pursuers from entering his house, who therefore applied flames. These coincidences would induce me to strike Vortigern entirely out of true history, but that I find a Gurthrigernus mentioned in Gildas, and a Gwrtheyrn in the Welsh remains. Their authority inclines me to believe, that Jeffry has confounded Gerontius, who died in Spain, with Gwrtheyrn, in England, and in his Vortigern has given us a fictitious medley of the history of both.

53 Zosimus, lib. vi. p. 375. There was a severe imperial law in existence, made A. D. 323, which was applicable to these crimes of Gerontius and Stilicho: "Si quis barbaris scelerata factione facultatem depredationis in Romanos dederit, vel si quo alio modo factam deviserit, vivus amburatur." Cod. Theod. lib. vii. tit. i. But ambition is always blind to its punishment, and as heedless of laws as of morality.

54

BOOK desperate act of ambition was unfortunate for II. Rome. Constantine could not repel the torrent, because the flower of his army was in Spain. Britain and Gaul experienced all its fury. The cities even of England were invaded. To whatever quarter they applied for help, the application was vain. Honorius was trembling before Alaric, and Constantine could not even save Gaul.

409.

In this extremity the Britons displayed a magnanimous character; they remembered the ancient independence of the island, and their brave ancestors, who still lived ennobled in the verses of their bards they armed themselves, threw off the foreign yoke, deposed the imperial magistrates, proclaimed their insular independence, and, with the successful valour of youthful liberty and endangered existence, they drove the fierce invaders from their cities. 55 The sacred flame of national independence passed swiftly over the channel, and electrified Armorica. This maritime state, and its immediate neighbours, in the same crisis and from the same necessity, disclaimed the authority of a foreign emperor, and by their own exertions achieved their own deliverance.

THUS the authentic history from 407, is, that the barbarians, excited by Gerontius, assailed both Gaul and Britain; that Constantine could give no help, because his troops were in Spain; that Honorius could send none, because Alaric was overpowering Italy; that the Britons thus abandoned, armed themselves, declared their country independent, and drove the barbaric invaders from

54 Zosimus, lib. vi. p. 375.

55 Zosimus, p. 376.; and see Nennius, s. 25-27.

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their cities; that Honorius sent letters to the Bri- CHA P. tish states, exhorting them to protect themselves 5; and that the Romans never again recovered the possession of the island. 57

To these facts, which we know to be authentic, it is with much distrust that we endeavour to adapt the vague lamentations of Gildas, which Bede has abridged. The account which he has left us of men sitting on the wall to be pulled down; of the British nation cut up by the Picts and Scots, like sheep by butchers; of the country becoming but the residence of wild animals; of the antithetical letter to Etius in Gaul, "the barbarians drive us to the sea, and the sea drives us back to the barbarians; so that between the two we must be either slaughtered or drowned;" of part of the natives enslaving themselves to the barbarians, to get victuals; and of the remainder turning robbers on

56 Zosimus, lib. vi. p. 381. puλátlera. The silver ingot discovered in 1777, in digging among the old foundations of the Ordnance office of the Tower, marked "ex officio Honorii," implies that the authority of Honorius was at first respected in the island.

57 The Abbé Du Bos, Hist. Crit. 211.; and Mr. Gibbon, iii. 275. agree in placing the defection and independence of Britain in 409. The words of Procopius are express, that the Romans never recovered Britain, lib. i. p. 9. Grot.— Prosper, in his Chronicon, intimates as much. In the year before the fall of Constantine, he says, Hac tempestate, præ valetudine Romanorum, vires funditur attenuatæ Britanniæ, p. 50. Scal. Euseb.- Bede, though he afterwards copies Gildas with mistaken chronology, yet, lib. i. c. 11. after mentioning the capture of Rome by Alaric, adds, ex quo tempore Romani in Britannia regnare cessarunt, after having reigned in it 470 years since Cæsar. Now in c. 2. he says, Cæsar came 60 ant. Chr.; therefore according to Bede, in this passage, the Romans lost the government of Britain by the year 410.