Читать книгу Belgium: From the Roman Invasion to the Present Day - Émile Cammaerts - Страница 6

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It is usually assumed that, while human conditions alter throughout the ages, natural surroundings remain sensibly the same. This may be true with regard to people whose history is only affected by the streams which cross their land and the hills and mountains which protect them by natural barriers. When dealing with a country like Belgium however, widely open on all sides, we cannot be content with such wide generalizations. We must ask ourselves if some important physical features have not been altered by the work of man and if some natural obstacles, which have since disappeared, did not affect the earlier stage of Belgian history.

The traveller who crosses the country to-day from Ostend to Arlon will at once recognize its main features: first a low-lying plain, between the sea and Brussels, then a district of smooth hills, as far as Namur, and finally, beyond the Meuse, the deeply cut valleys and high plateaux of the Ardennes, reaching an average of 1,500 feet above sea-level. In this last region only will the aspect of the country suggest to him the idea of some natural obstacle to free communications, though it could in no way appear forbidding when compared to the mountains of Scotland and Wales.

But at the time of the Roman conquest (57 B.C.), Belgium, that is to say the country peopled by various tribes designated by Julius Cæsar under the name of "Belgæ," was very different from what it is to-day. The flat coast, unprotected against the incursions of the sea, was bordered by wide marshes, while all the southern part of the country was covered by a thick forest, the "Silva Carbonaria," which merged in the wild plateaux of the Ardennes and formed, at the time, a serious obstacle to any incursion coming from the north or the east.

These physical conditions must have favoured the guerrilla warfare waged for four years by the various Celtic tribes against the Roman invader, and it is no doubt partly to them that the old "Belgæ" owed their reputation of courage and fortitude. These tribes, occupying the Scheldt and Meuse valleys, formed the rearguard of the Celtic wave of invasion which, coming from the East, had spread across Western Europe. At the time of the Roman conquest they were already closely pressed by a vanguard of Germanic tribes which had settled in Zeeland and on the left bank of the Rhine, so that even at this early stage of Belgium's history we find the dualistic character of Belgian civilization marked in the division of the country into two Roman provinces, "Belgica Secunda," in the west, and "Germania Inferior," in the east.

ROMAN INFLUENCES

The immediate effect of the Roman conquest, which was far more rapid than in Britain, was to stop for a time the influx of German tribes by the establishment of a solid barrier along the Rhine. The colonists of German origin were soon absorbed by the old inhabitants of the country, and were subjected with them to the powerful influence of Roman culture. Celts and Germans alike became Belgo-Romans, and adopted the trade and the institutions of their conquerors.

As far as we can make out from the scanty documents at our disposal, Roman civilization moved along the Rhine towards Cologne, whence a great Roman highway was built towards the West, crossing the Meuse at Maestricht and, following the edge of the Coal Wood, through Tongres and Cambrai to Boulogne. This road, known through the early Middle Ages as the "Road of Brunehaut," was for a long time the main way running from east to west in a country where all the important streams, such as the Meuse, the Scheldt and their tributaries, ran from south to north. The extent of Roman influence may be gauged by the position which the various parts of the country occupied towards this highway. Tongres and Tournai still possess Roman remains. The foundations of Roman villas are found in the provinces of Namur, Hainault and Artois, while all traces of Roman occupation have disappeared from Flanders. The sandy and marshy nature of the soil in Northern Belgium may to a certain extent account for this fact, and we know that, in some instances, the stones provided by old Roman structures were used, in the Middle Ages, for the construction of new buildings. But it can nevertheless be assumed that, generally speaking, communications remained the principal factor of Roman civilization in these far-away marches of the Empire, and that Roman influence, so strongly felt on the Rhine and along the Meuse, became gradually less important as the distance increased. The country was almost exclusively agricultural, but it is interesting to note, in view of later developments, that, even at this remote period, the Menapii, who dwelt in Flanders, had acquired a reputation for cattle breeding and manufactured woollen mantles which, under the name of "birri," were exported beyond the Alps.

Though strongly influenced by Rome in their trade and methods of agriculture, the Belgo-Romans had retained their language and religion. Romanization, in the full meaning of the word, only began during the last years of the third century, under the influence of Christianity. During the third century, the bishopric of Trèves included the whole of "Germania Inferior." A special bishopric was established subsequently at Cologne, and, about the middle of the fourth century, at Tongres. Others appeared later at Tournai, Arras and Cambrai. This gradual spread of Christianity, which moved along the same roads as Roman civilization, from Cologne towards the West, only reached Flanders half a century later.

The Christianization of the country must have been far from complete when the incursions of the Germanic tribes, greatly encouraged by the gradual decline of the Roman Empire, brought a sudden and dramatic change in the life and development of the two Roman provinces.

THE FRANKS

During the third and fourth centuries, the pressure of the Germanic tribes, which had been considerably delayed by the Roman conquest, reasserted itself. The Rhine frontier was subjected to repeated assaults, which the depleted legions were no longer in a position to repulse effectively. The Franks attacked from the east and the north through Zeeland, while part of the Saxons who attacked Britain raided at the same time the Belgian coast. In spite of the military successes of the Emperors Constantine and Julian, the situation became so threatening that a second line of defences was fortified on the Meuse and along the great Roman highroad running from Tongres to Tournai. In 358, Julian authorized the Franks to settle in the sandy moors east of the Scheldt (Toxandria), and when, at the beginning of the fifth century, Stilicon recalled the legions in order to defend Italy against the Goths, the German tribes, finding themselves unopposed, invaded the country of the Scheldt and the Lys, reducing into serfdom the old inhabitants who had escaped massacre. The Rhine ceased henceforth to be the Empire's frontier. The latter ran now along the great highway from Tongres to Arras. Before their second line of defences the Romans, under Ætius, put up a last fight, but they were defeated by the Frankish king Clodion, who extended his kingdom along the coast as far as the Somme and established himself at Tournai (431), where his grave was discovered twelve centuries later.

LANGUAGE FRONTIER

It seemed as if the Franks, in their irresistible advance, were going to wipe out from Belgium and Gaul all trace of Roman civilization, and such a catastrophe would no doubt have occurred, if a natural obstacle had not broken their impetus. We mentioned above that, south of a line running from Dunkirk to Maestricht, the country was covered with a thick forest, the "Silva Carbonaria." This wall of wood did more to stop the invaders than the heroic efforts of Ætius. It sheltered the Celts from the Franks in Belgium as the mountains of Wales and the hills of Cornwall sheltered them from the Saxons in Great Britain. Conquests were pursued by the Frankish kings and their nobles, but the invasion stopped. The movement ceased to be ethnical and became political. The Franks reached the clearings of the forest and nominally subjected Gaul to their power, but they were now in a minority, and the conquered soon succeeded in absorbing the conquerors. It is significant that the "Lex Salica," the oldest document in which the name of the Coal Wood is mentioned, describes it as "the boundary of the territories occupied by the Frankish people." To the north of this boundary the country was entirely in the hands of the invaders; to the south, the "Wala," as the Franks called the Belgo-Romans, succeeded in maintaining themselves and in preserving to a certain extent the Roman language and civilization. The old limit, running in a northerly direction and dividing in the past "Germania Inferior" from "Belgica Secunda," had been bent under the pressure of the Frankish invasions, and ran now from east to west, but the dualism which we noted above had not disappeared. The Franks settled in the north, the romanized Celts or "Walas" occupied the south. The first are the ancestors of the Flemings of to-day, the second of the Walloons, and the limit of languages between the two sections of the population has remained the same. It runs to-day where it ran fourteen centuries ago, from the south of Ypres to Brussels and Maestricht, dividing Belgium almost evenly into two populations belonging to two separate races and speaking two different languages. The ancient forest has disappeared, but its edge is still marked on the map. We cross it to-day without noticing any alteration in the landscape, but the distant voices of the peasants working in the fields remind us of its ancient shadow and impassable undergrowth. The traveller wonders, one moment, at the change, then takes up the road again, adding one further unanswered question to his load of unsolved problems. The historian evokes the terrible years of the fifth century, when the fate of Europe hung in the balance and when the surging waves of Pagan Germanism spent their last energy along that leafy barrier which saved Christianity and Roman civilization, and incidentally gave the Belgian nation its most prominent and interesting character. The singsong of a Walloon sentence may thus suggest the rustling of the leaves and the piping of early birds, while the more guttural accents of a Flemish name remind us of the war-cry of wild hordes and the beating of "frameas."

The Frankish invasions of the fifth century may be considered the most important event of Belgium's early history. Whether the unity of the Belgian nation is questioned or upheld, we must inevitably go back to the cause of its real or apparent division. If such division, from being racial and linguistic, had become political or economic—that is to say, if the language boundary had coincided with some of the boundaries which divided the country at a later stage—the idea that Belgium was born in 1830 and constituted an "artificial creation of European diplomacy" might not be groundless. Here, as in many other countries of Europe, nationality would have been determined mostly by race and language. This, however, is not the case. At no period of Belgian history did any division follow the linguistic frontier. On the contrary, most of the political and ecclesiastical units created during the Middle Ages included both elements of the population, and, through frequent intercourse and common interests, these two people, speaking different languages, became gradually welded into one. When in the fifteenth century the various duchies and counties came under the sway of the dukes of Burgundy, national unity was realized, as it was realized in England or in France at the same time, through the increasing power and centralizing action of modern princes. A few prejudiced writers have vainly endeavoured to exaggerate the racial or linguistic factor, and contended that, in the eyes of science, Belgian nationality could not exist. The duty of a scientist is not to distort the manifestations of natural phenomena in the light of some more or less popular idea. His duty is to explain facts. The development and permanence of Belgian nationality, in spite of the most adverse conditions, is one of these facts. The existence of the Swiss nation, far more deeply divided than the Belgian, shows that it is not unique. But even if it were unique, it ought to be accounted for. It is far easier to indulge in broad generalizations than to devote oneself to a close study of nature or man. It is not the rules, it is the exceptions which ought to retain our attention, for only exceptions will teach us how imperfect are our rules.