This plan of partial deportation and colonization characterized the Roman method of Romanization. Removal of the conquered from their native environment facilitated the process, while it weakened the spirit and power of revolt. The Romans met bitter opposition from the mountain tribes when trying to open up the northern passes of the Apennines. Consequently they removed the Ligurian tribe of the Apuanians, forty-seven thousand in number, far south to Samnium. When in 15 B.C. the region of the Rhaetian Alps was joined to the Empire, forty thousand of the inhabitants were transplanted from the mountains to the plain. The same method was used with the Scordisci and Dacians of the Danube. More often the mortality of war so thinned the population, that the settlement of Roman military colonies among them sufficed to keep down revolt and to Romanize the surviving fragment. The large area of Romance speech found in Roumania and eastern Hungary, despite the controversy about its origin,[162] seems to have had its chief source in the extensive Roman colonies planted by the Emperor Trajan in conquered Dacia.[163] In Iberian Spain, which bitterly resisted Romanization, the process was facilitated by the presence of large garrisons of soldiers. Between 196 and 169 B.C. the troops amounted to one hundred and fifty thousand, and many of them remained in the country as colonists.[164] Compare the settlement of Scotch troops in French Canada by land grants after 1763, resulting in the survival to-day of sandy hair, blue eyes, and highland names among the French-speaking _habitants_ of Murray Bay and other districts. The Turks in the fifteenth century brought large bodies of Moslem converts from Asia Minor to garrison Macedonia and Thessaly, thereby robbing the Anatolian Plateau of half its original population. Into the vacuum thus formed a current of nomads from inner Asia has poured ever since.[165] [Sidenote: Withdrawal and flight.]