When the victorious Roman legions reached this outpost of Gaul, they found themselves opposed by men of two different races--the fishermen of the coast and the hunters of the hills and valleys further inland. In the first shock of battle, it was only the personal bravery of Cæsar that saved the legionaries from defeat, and eight years of campaigning were required before the Roman general could report the province subdued. The warlike tribes of the south were well-nigh destroyed. Those, on the other hand, who lived on the sand dunes or in hovels raised on piles above the tides, were more fortunate. Cæsar himself with five legions finally reduced these men of the swamps to merely nominal submission. Transalpine Gaul was, by its conqueror, formed into a single province, of which the land of the Belgae was the northern part, but under Augustus it was divided into three provinces, the most distant one named Belgica. The people of southern Belgica, being nearer to the Roman civilization of Gaul, lost their primitive customs, their energy and courage. The people of the north, less under the influence of the conquerors, kept their love of independence, their frugal, industrious habits, added trade with England to their fisheries as a means of livelihood, and developed a strong stock, to which the future growth of the country was due. Three hundred years after Cæsar's conquest, the Salian Franks, a confederacy of German tribes, invaded the country and settled between the Rhine and the Waal. They were resisted by most of the Gauls but welcomed by the Menapians of the Belgic coast. There was, however, no real bond of union between the peaceful, hard-working people of the lowlands and the warlike Franks. The shore dwellers north of the Rhine formed with the tribes on the coasts of the German Ocean the Saxon League, which after a time renewed the warfare between Frank and Saxon, a warfare destined to endure till the twentieth century and to be waged then as fiercely as in the fourth. Driven by the Saxons from the coast districts, the Franks gradually made themselves masters of southern Belgica and northern Gaul, and the Romanized people of that section were submerged. Finally, toward the end of the fifth century, Clovis, King of the Franks, succeeded in extending his rule over the greater part of Gaul.