2: Chapter II
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It can never be satisfactorily ascertained who were the aboriginal
inhabitants. The record does not reach beyond Caesar's epoch, and he
found the territory on the left of the Rhine mainly tenanted by tribes of
the Celtic family. That large division of the Indo-European group which
had already overspread many portions of Asia Minor, Greece, Germany, the
British Islands, France, and Spain, had been long settled in Belgic Gaul,
and constituted the bulk of its population. Checked in its westward
movement by the Atlantic, its current began to flow backwards towards its
fountains, so that the Gallic portion of the Netherland population was
derived from the original race in its earlier wanderings and from the
later and refluent tide coming out of Celtic Gaul. The modern
appellation of the Walloons points to the affinity of their ancestors
with the Gallic, Welsh, and Gaelic family. The Belgae were in many
respects a superior race to most of their blood-allies. They were,
according to Caesar's testimony, the bravest of all the Celts. This may
be in part attributed to the presence of several German tribes, who, at
this period had already forced their way across the Rhine, mingled their
qualities with the Belgic material, and lent an additional mettle to the
Celtic blood. The heart of the country was thus inhabited by a Gallic
race, but the frontiers had been taken possession of by Teutonic tribes.
When the Cimbri and their associates, about a century before our era,
made their memorable onslaught upon Rome, the early inhabitants of the
Rhine island of Batavia, who were probably Celts, joined in the
expedition. A recent and tremendous inundation had swept away their
miserable homes, and even the trees of the forests, and had thus rendered
them still more dissatisfied with their gloomy abodes. The island was
deserted of its population. At about the same period a civil dissension
among the Chatti--a powerful German race within the Hercynian forest--
resulted in the expatriation of a portion of the people. The exiles
sought a new home in the empty Rhine island, called it "Bet-auw," or
"good-meadow," and were themselves called, thenceforward, Batavi, or
Batavians.
These Batavians, according to Tacitus, were the bravest of all the
Germans. The Chatti, of whom they formed a portion, were a pre-eminently
warlike race. "Others go to battle," says the historian, "these go to
war." Their bodies were more hardy, their minds more vigorous, than
those of other tribes. Their young men cut neither hair nor beard till
they had slain an enemy. On the field of battle, in the midst of carnage
and plunder, they, for the first time, bared their faces. The cowardly
and sluggish, only, remained unshorn. They wore an iron ring, too, or
shackle upon their necks until they had performed the same achievement,
a symbol which they then threw away, as the emblem of sloth. The
Batavians were ever spoken of by the Romans with entire respect. They
conquered the Belgians, they forced the free Frisians to pay tribute, but
they called the Batavians their friends. The tax-gatherer never invaded
their island. Honorable alliance united them with the Romans. It was,
however, the alliance of the giant and the dwarf. The Roman gained glory
and empire, the Batavian gained nothing but the hardest blows. The
Batavian cavalry became famous throughout the Republic and the Empire.
They were the favorite troops of Caesar, and with reason, for it was
their valor which turned the tide of battle at Pharsalia. From the death
of Julius down to the times of Vespasian, the Batavian legion was the
imperial body guard, the Batavian island the basis of operations in the
Roman wars with Gaul, Germany, and Britain.
Beyond the Batavians, upon the north, dwelt the great Frisian family,
occupying the regions between the Rhine and Ems, The Zuyder Zee and the
Dollart, both caused by the terrific inundations of the thirteenth
century and not existing at this period, did not then interpose
boundaries between kindred tribes. All formed a homogeneous nation of
pure German origin.
Thus, the population of the country was partly Celtic, partly German.
Of these two elements, dissimilar in their tendencies and always
difficult to blend, the Netherland people has ever been compounded.
A certain fatality of history has perpetually helped to separate still
more widely these constituents, instead of detecting and stimulating the
elective affinities which existed. Religion, too, upon all great
historical occasions, has acted as the most powerful of dissolvents.
Otherwise, had so many valuable and contrasted characteristics been early
fused into a whole, it would be difficult to show a race more richly
endowed by Nature for dominion and progress than the Belgo-Germanic
people.
Physically the two races resembled each other. Both were of vast
stature. The gigantic Gaul derided the Roman soldiers as a band of
pigmies. The German excited astonishment by his huge body and muscular
limbs. Both were fair, with fierce blue eyes, but the Celt had yellow
hair floating over his shoulders, and the German long locks of fiery red,
which he even dyed with woad to heighten the favorite color, and wore
twisted into a war-knot upon the top of his head. Here the German's love
of finery ceased. A simple tunic fastened at his throat with a thorn,
while his other garments defined and gave full play to his limbs,
completed his costume. The Gaul, on the contrary, was so fond of dress
that the Romans divided his race respectively into long-haired, breeched,
and gowned Gaul; (Gallia comata, braccata, togata). He was fond of
brilliant and parti-colored clothes, a taste which survives in the
Highlander's costume. He covered his neck and arms with golden chains.
The simple and ferocious German wore no decoration save his iron ring,
from which his first homicide relieved him. The Gaul was irascible,
furious in his wrath, but less formidable in a sustained conflict with a
powerful foe. "All the Gauls are of very high stature," says a soldier
who fought under Julian. (Amm. Marcel. xv. 12. 1). "They are white,
golden-haired, terrible in the fierceness of their eyes, greedy of
quarrels, bragging and insolent. A band of strangers could not resist
one of them in a brawl, assisted by his strong blue-eyed wife, especially
when she begins, gnashing her teeth, her neck swollen, brandishing her
vast and snowy arms, and kicking with her heels at the same time, to
deliver her fisticuffs, like bolts from the twisted strings of a
catapult. The voices of many are threatening and formidable. They are
quick to anger, but quickly appeased. All are clean in their persons;
nor among them is ever seen any man or woman, as elsewhere, squalid in
ragged garments. At all ages they are apt for military service. The old
man goes forth to the fight with equal strength of breast, with limbs as
hardened by cold and assiduous labor, and as contemptuous of all dangers,
as the young. Not one of them, as in Italy is often the case, was ever
known to cut off his thumbs to avoid the service of Mars."
The polity of each race differed widely from that of the other. The
government of both may be said to have been republican, but the Gallic
tribes were aristocracies, in which the influence of clanship was a
predominant feature; while the German system, although nominally regal,
was in reality democratic. In Gaul were two orders, the nobility and the
priesthood, while the people, says Caesar, were all slaves. The knights
or nobles were all trained to arms. Each went forth to battle, followed
by his dependents, while a chief of all the clans was appointed to take
command during the war. The prince or chief governor was elected
annually, but only by the nobles. The people had no rights at all, and
were glad to assign themselves as slaves to any noble who was strong
enough to protect them. In peace the Druids exercised the main functions
of government. They decided all controversies, civil and criminal. To
rebel against their decrees was punished by exclusion from the
sacrifices--a most terrible excommunication, through which the criminal
was cut off from all intercourse with his fellow-creatures.
With the Germans, the sovereignty resided in the great assembly of the
people. There were slaves, indeed, but in small number, consisting
either of prisoners of war or of those unfortunates who had gambled away
their liberty in games of chance. Their chieftains, although called by
the Romans princes and kings, were, in reality, generals, chosen by
universal suffrage. Elected in the great assembly to preside in war,
they were raised on the shoulders of martial freemen, amid wild battle
cries and the clash of spear and shield. The army consisted entirely of
volunteers, and the soldier was for life infamous who deserted the field
while his chief remained alive. The same great assembly elected the
village magistrates and decided upon all important matters both of peace
and war. At the full of the moon it was usually convoked. The nobles
and the popular delegates arrived at irregular intervals, for it was an
inconvenience arising from their liberty, that two or three days were
often lost in waiting for the delinquents. All state affairs were in the
hands of this fierce democracy. The elected chieftains had rather
authority to persuade than power to command.
The Gauls were an agricultural people. They were not without many arts
of life. They had extensive flocks and herds; and they even exported
salted provisions as far as Rome. The truculent German, Ger-mane,
Heer-mann, War-man, considered carnage the only useful occupation,
and despised agriculture as enervating and ignoble. It was base, in his
opinion, to gain by sweat what was more easily acquired by blood. The
land was divided annually by the magistrates, certain farms being
assigned to certain families, who were forced to leave them at the
expiration of the year. They cultivated as a common property the lands
allotted by the magistrates, but it was easier to summon them to the
battle-field than to the plough. Thus they were more fitted for the
roaming and conquering life which Providence was to assign to them for
ages, than if they had become more prone to root themselves in the soil.
The Gauls built towns and villages. The German built his solitary hut
where inclination prompted. Close neighborhood was not to his taste.
In their system of religion the two races were most widely contrasted.
The Gauls were a priest-ridden race. Their Druids were a dominant caste,
presiding even over civil affairs, while in religious matters their
authority was despotic. What were the principles of their wild Theology
will never be thoroughly ascertained, but we know too much of its
sanguinary rites. The imagination shudders to penetrate those shaggy
forests, ringing with the death-shrieks of ten thousand human victims,
and with the hideous hymns chanted by smoke-and-blood-stained priests to
the savage gods whom they served.
The German, in his simplicity, had raised himself to a purer belief than
that of the sensuous Roman or the superstitious Gaul. He believed in a
single, supreme, almighty God, All-Vater or All-father. This Divinity
was too sublime to be incarnated or imaged, too infinite to be enclosed
in temples built with hands. Such is the Roman's testimony to the lofty
conception of the German. Certain forests were consecrated to the unseen
God whom the eye of reverent faith could alone behold. Thither, at
stated times, the people repaired to worship. They entered the sacred
grove with feet bound together, in token of submission. Those who fell
were forbidden to rise, but dragged themselves backwards on the ground.
Their rules were few and simple. They had no caste of priests, nor were
they, when first known to the Romans, accustomed to offer sacrifice. It
must be confessed that in a later age, a single victim, a criminal or a
prisoner, was occasionally immolated. The purity of their religion was
soon stained by their Celtic neighborhood. In the course of the Roman
dominion it became contaminated, and at last profoundly depraved. The
fantastic intermixture of Roman mythology with the gloomy but modified
superstition of Romanized Celts was not favorable to the simple character
of German theology. The entire extirpation, thus brought about, of any
conceivable system of religion, prepared the way for a true revelation.
Within that little river territory, amid those obscure morasses of the
Rhine and Scheld, three great forms of religion--the sanguinary
superstition of the Druid, the sensuous polytheism of the Roman, the
elevated but dimly groping creed of the German, stood for centuries, face
to face, until, having mutually debased and destroyed each other, they
all faded away in the pure light of Christianity.
Thus contrasted were Gaul and German in religious and political systems.
The difference was no less remarkable in their social characteristics.
The Gaul was singularly unchaste. The marriage state was almost unknown.
Many tribes lived in most revolting and incestuous concubinage; brethren,
parents, and children, having wives in common. The German was loyal as
the Celt was dissolute. Alone among barbarians, he contented himself
with a single wife, save that a few dignitaries, from motives of policy,
were permitted a larger number. On the marriage day the German offered
presents to his bride--not the bracelets and golden necklaces with which
the Gaul adorned his fair-haired concubine, but oxen and a bridled horse,
a sword, a shield, and a spear-symbols that thenceforward she was to
share his labors and to become a portion of himself.
They differed, too, in the honors paid to the dead. The funerals of the
Gauls were pompous. Both burned the corpse, but the Celt cast into the
flames the favorite animals, and even the most cherished slaves and
dependents of the master. Vast monuments of stone or piles of earth were
raised above the ashes of the dead. Scattered relics of the Celtic age
are yet visible throughout Europe, in these huge but unsightly memorials,
The German was not ambitious at the grave. He threw neither garments nor
odors upon the funeral pyre, but the arms and the war-horse of the
departed were burned and buried with him.
The turf was his only sepulchre, the memory of his valor his only
monument. Even tears were forbidden to the men. "It was esteemed
honorable," says the historian, "for women to lament, for men to
remember."
The parallel need be pursued no further. Thus much it was necessary to
recall to the historical student concerning the prominent characteristics
by which the two great races of the land were distinguished:
characteristics which Time has rather hardened than effaced. In the
contrast and the separation lies the key to much of their history. Had
Providence permitted a fusion of the two races, it is, possible, from
their position, and from the geographical and historical link which they
would have afforded to the dominant tribes of Europe, that a world-empire
might have been the result, different in many respects from any which has
ever arisen. Speculations upon what might have been are idle. It is
well, however; to ponder the many misfortunes resulting from a mutual
repulsion, which, under other circumstances and in other spheres, has
been exchanged for mutual attraction and support.
It is now necessary to sketch rapidly the political transformations
undergone by the country, from the early period down to the middle of the
sixteenth century; the epoch when the long agony commenced, out of which
the Batavian republic was born.
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