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chap, xxxvni] OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE 151 The Franks, after they mingled with their Gallic subjects, Anarchy of i -i».L • '1 the Pranks might have imparted the most valuable of human gifts, a spirit and system of constitutional liberty. Under a king hereditary but limited, the chiefs and counsellors might have debated, at Paris, in the palace of the Csesars ; the adjacent field, where the emperors reviewed their mercenary legions, would have admitted the legislative assembly of freemen and warriors ; and the rude model, which had been sketched in the woods of Germany, 126 might have been polished and improved by the civil wisdom of the Komans. But the careless Barbarians, secure of their per- sonal independence, disdained the labour of government; the annual assemblies of the month of March were silently abolished ; and the nation was separated and almost dissolved by the con- quest of Gaul. 127 The monarchy was left without any regular establishment of justice, of arms, or of revenue. The successors of Clovis wanted resolution to assume, or strength to exercise, the legislative and executive powers which the people had abdicated ; the royal prerogative was distinguished only by a more ample privilege of rapine and murder ; and the love of freedom, so often invigorated and disgraced by private ambition, was reduced, among the licentious Franks, to the contempt of order and the desire of impunity. Seventy-five years after the death of Clovis, his grandson, Gontran, king of Burgundy, sent an army to invade the Gothic possessions of Septimania, or Languedoc. The troops of Burgundy, Berry, Auvergne, and the adjacent territories were excited by the hopes of spoil. They marched, without discipline, under the banners of German, or Gallic, counts; their attack was feeble and unsuccessful; but the friendly and hostile provinces were desolated with indis- criminate rage. The corn fields, the villages, the churches themselves were consumed by fire ; the inhabitants were mas- sacred or dragged into captivity ; and, in the disorderly retreat, five thousand of these inhuman savages were destroyed by hunger or intestine discord. When the pious Gontran reproached the guilt, or neglect, of their leaders, and threatened to inflict, not a legal sentence, but instant and arbitrary execution, they 126 Ce beau systeine a ele" trouve" dans les bois. Montesquieu, Esprit des Loix, 1. xi. c. 6. 127 See the Abbe de Mably, Observations, &e. torn. i. p. 34-36. It should seem that the institution of national assemblies, which are coeval with the French nation, have never been congenial to its temper.