OF THE HOMAN EMPIRE.

213

and lamented the difficulty of dismissing theseformidable allies, after they had tasted the rich-ness of the Roman soil. Regardless of the nicedistinction of loyalty and rebellion, these undis-ciplined robbers treated as their natural enemiesall the subjects of the empire, who possessedany property which they were desirous of ac-quiring. Forty-five flourishing cities, Tongres ,Cologne, Treves, Worms, Spires, Strasburg, &c.besides a far greater number of towns and vil-lages, were pillaged, and for the most part re-duced to ashes. The barbarians of Germany ,still faithful to the maxims of their ancestors,abhorred the confinement of walls, to whichthey applied the odious names of prisons andsepulchres; and fixing their independent habi-tations on the banks of rivers, the Rhine , theMoselle, and the Meuse , they secured them-selves against the danger of a surprise, by arude and hasty fortification of large trees, whichwere felled, and thrown across the roads. TheAlemanni were established in the modern coun-tries of Alsace and Lorraine; the Franks occu-pied the island of the Batavians, together withan extensive district of Brabant, which wasthen known by the appellation of Toxandria,'and may deserve to be considered as the origi-nal seat of their Gallic monarchy. 5 From the

1 Ammtanns (xvi, 8). This name seems to be derived from the Tox-andri of Pliny , and very frequently occurs in the histories of the mid-dle age. Toxandria was a country of woods and morasses, which ex-tended from the neighbourhood of Tongres to the conflux of the Vahaland the Rhine . See Valesius, Notit. Galliar. p. 558.

* The paradox of P. Daniel, that the Franks never obtained anypermanent settlement on this side of the Rhine before the time of Clo-

vi* #

CHAP

XIX