It has been represented too often as a sort of meeting-place, where must always come the shock between what is called Latin civilization and the Germanic tribes. But this view is both pedantic and historically false. There never was here a shock or conflict between two national ideals. What is true is, that civilization spread far more easily up from the Gauls through that fertile land towards the forests of Germany, and that when the Roman Empire broke down, or rather when its central government broke down, the frontier garrisons could here depend upon wealthier and more numerous populations for the support of their local government. That body of auxiliary soldiers in the Roman army which was drawn from the Frankish tribes ruled here when Rome could no longer rule. It was from Tournai that the father of Clovis exercised his power; and in the resettlement of the local governments in the sixth century, the Belgian Plain was the avenue through which the effort of the civilized West was directed towards the Rhine. It has Roman Cologne for its outpost; later it evangelized the fringes of German barbarism, and later still conquered them with the sword. All through the succeeding centuries the ambitions of kings in France, or of emperors upon the Rhine, were checked or satisfied in that natural avenue of advance. Charlemagne's frontier palace and military centre facing the Pagans was rather at Aix than at Trèves or Metz; and though the Irish missionaries, who brought letters and the arts and the customs of reasonable men to the Germans, worked rather from the south, the later forced conversion of the Saxons, which determined the entry of the German tribes as a whole into Christendom, was a stroke struck northwards from the Belgian Plain. Cæsar's adventurous crossing of the Rhine was a northern crossing. The Capetian monarchy was saved on its eastern front at Bouvines, in that same territory. The Austro-Spanish advance came down from it, to be checked at St. Quentin. Louis XIV.'s main struggle for power upon the marches of his kingdom concentrated here. The first great check to it was Marlborough's campaign upon the Meuse; the last battle was within sound of Mons, at Malplaquet. The final decision, as it was hoped--the defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo--again showed what this territory meant in the military history of the West. It was following upon this decision that Europe, in the great settlement, decided to curb the chaos of future war by solemnly neutralizing the Belgian Plain for ever; and to that pact a seal was set not only by the French and the British, but also by the Prussian Government, with what results we know.