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374
FRANCE.
Chap. VIII.

afterwards, in a second battle near Lyons, he expelled the legitimate government of the Romans from Gaul.[1] I also see no reason for doubting that he was accompanied by a British prince Conan Meriadec, who afterwards settled in the country with thousands of his emigrant countrymen, over whom he was enabled to establish his chieftainship on the ruins of the Roman power.

If this is so, the battle which destroyed the Roman power, and gave rise to the native dynasty, would be worthy of such a monument as that at Carnac; but so far as local traditions go, the place where Maximus and his British allies landed was near St. Malo, and the battle was fought at a place called Alleth, near St. Servan.[2] If this is so, it was too far off to have any connection with the Carnac stones. Two other wars seem to have been carried on by Conan, one in 410 against a people who are merely called barbarians,[3] a second against the Romans under Exuperantius in 416;[4] but we have no local particulars which would enable us to connect these wars with our stones. A war of liberation against Rome would be worthy of a national monument, and it may be that this is such a one, but I know of nothing to connect the two together, though local enquiries on the spot might remove this difficulty.

On the whole, however, I am more inclined to look among the events of the next reign for a key to the riddle. Grallon was engaged in two wars at least: one against the Roman consul Liberius in 439,[5] in which he succeeded in frustrating the attempts of that people to recover their lost power; the other against the "Norman pirates;"[6] and it is to this, as connecting the stone monuments with a Northern people, that I should be inclined to ascribe the erection of the Carnac alignments. From Grallon being the reputed founder of Landevenec, it might seem


  1. The authority for these events will be found at length in Gibbon, chap, xviii., and are too familiar to need quoting here.
  2. Daru's 'Histoire de la Bretagne,' vol. i. p. 58.
  3. Ibid. p. 112.
  4. Dom. Bouquet, 'Recueil des Hist. des Gaules,' i. p. 629. "Exuperantius anno circa 416 Armoricos qui a Romanis defecerunt ad officium reducere tentavit."
  5. Daru, i. p. 112.
  6. "Gradlonus gratia dei rex Britonum necnon ex parte Francorum."—Chartulaire de Landevenec, quoted by P. Lobineau, ii. 17. And further: "Pervenit Sancti (Wingaboei) fama ad Grallonum regem Occiduorum Cornubiensium, gloriosum ultorem Normannorum qui post devictas gentes inimicas sibi duces subduxerat.'—Gurdestan, Moine de Landevenec, 'Vie de St.-Wingabois.'"—Daru, i. p. 69.