In the second place, there were settlers of quite another grade--families of the conquered tribes of Germany, who were forcibly settled within the _limes_ of the Roman provinces, in order that they might repeople desolated districts or replace the otherwise dwindling provincial population--in order that they might bear the public burdens and minister to the public needs, _i.e._ till the public land, pay the [p281] public tribute, and also provide for the defence of the empire. They formed a semi-servile class, partly agricultural and partly military; they furnished corn for the granaries and soldiers for the cohorts of the empire, and were generally known in later times by the name of '_Læti_,' or '_Liti_'[402] They were somewhat in the same position as the Welsh '_taeogs_' or '_aillts_.' They were foreigners, without Roman blood, and hence a semi-servile class of occupiers distinct from, and without the full rights of, Roman citizens[403]--a class, in short, upon whom the full burden of taxation and military service could be laid. «Mostly deported Germans.» Probably this system had been followed from the time of Augustus, as a substitute for the earlier and more cruel course of sending tens of thousands of vanquished foes to the Roman slave market for sale; but it became a more and more important part of the imperial defensive policy of Rome during the later empire, as the inroads of barbarians became more and more frequent. «System of forced emigration from conquered districts.» There is clear evidence, from the third century, of the extension of this kind of colonisation over a wide district. It is important to realise both its extent and locality. «A German population already in Rhætia, the _Agri Decumates_, and in Elsass.» In order fully to comprehend the meaning and consequences of this German colonisation of Roman provinces, it must be borne in mind that the rich lands on the left bank of the Rhine, between the Vosges mountains and the river, had been settled [p282] by Germans before the time of Tacitus. Strabo[404] distinctly says that the Suevic tribes, who in his day dwelt on the east bank of the Rhine, had driven out the former German inhabitants, and that the latter had taken refuge on the west bank. Tacitus describes three German tribes as settled in this district (now Elsass).[405] Further, the large extent of country to the east of the Rhine, within the Roman lines, reaching from Mayence to Regensburg, included in the _Agri Decumates_ and the old province of Rhætia (_i.e._ what is now Baden, Wirtemberg, and Bavaria), had by the third century become filled with straggling offshoots from various German and mostly Suevic tribes who had crossed the 'Limes'--a mixed population of Hermunduri, Thuringi, Marcomanni, and Juthungi, with a sprinkling of Franks, Vandals, Longobards, and Burgundians,--some of them friendly, some of them hostile to the empire and gradually becoming absorbed in the greater group of the 'Alamanni.'