The Ethnology of EuropeLatham, R. G. (Robert Gordon)
History
The Ethnology of Europe
Latham, R. G. (Robert Gordon)
Ethnology -- Europe
_Alsatia_ contains the least amount of Keltic blood of all the provinces
of France, inasmuch as it is German in language, and French in respect
to its political relations only. The fifth century is the date of its
conquest, and it was by Germans of the High German division from Suabia
and Franconia that it was reduced. Before this it was Romanized. What
was it before its reduction by Rome? Many at once answer “German,”
because its occupants were the _Triboci_, whom Tacitus calls “_haud
dubie Germani_.” For reasons given elsewhere,[6] I believe that they
were Germanized Gauls rather than true Germans.
_Lorraine_, originally Keltic, and afterwards Romano-Keltic, is less
German than Alsatia, but more so than Champagne. Its name,
_Hlothringen_, is German. I cannot, however, say whether the German
blood in Lorraine was introduced from the north or from the south; by
the High Germans of Alsatia and Franche-Comté, or the Low-Germans of
Clovis.
In _Franche-Comté_ the particular descent is from the Sequani, the tribe
which, of all others equally far from the German frontier, was most
Germanized. For when Cæsar was in Gaul, the Sequani called in the Suevi
and Marcomanni of Ariovistus, and gave up one-third of their land as the
price of his tyrannical protection. Now the army of Ariovistus was
mixed, and there is reason for believing that even Slavonians were to be
found in it. At any rate it infused German blood into the Sequani more
than into their neighbours. The process, however, of Romanizing went on
all the same, until the fifth century, when the invasion that gave their
names to the present province and to Burgundy took place. From which
time forwards the ethnology of _Franche_-Comté, or the country of the
_Franks_, is that of--
_Burgundy._--Here the Kelts were the Sequani, and the Germans, certain
High-Germans of Franconia. Sir James Stephen, in his valuable “Lectures
on the History of France,” draws a broad distinction between the German
blood introduced by the Burgundians, and the German blood introduced by
the Franks of Clovis; exaggerating, however, in my mind, the rudeness of
the latter, as well as the cultivation of the former. Speaking of the
Germany of Tacitus, he says, that it better suited the author to
“pourtray the more striking characteristics of the Teutonic tribes
collectively, than to investigate the more minute peculiarities which
distinguished them from each other. Yet we cannot doubt that, even in
his day, they were far more widely discriminated in fact, than in his
delineation of them, as, beyond all controversy, they were so in the age
of Clovis.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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