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'We Lombards, says Bishop Luitprand, 'Saxons, Franks, Lorrainers, Bavarians, Sueves, Burgunds, consider it a sufficient insult to call our enemy a Roman; comprehending in that one name of Roman, whatever is ignoble, cowardly, avaricious, luxurious, false, in a word, every vice. If this was as it very probably was the feeling of the whole Teutonic race; and if it was repaid as it certainly was on the part of the Roman, by contempt for the 'barbarism' and 'ignorance' of the Teuton; what must have been the feeling between Roman and Lombard?
In that year, Childebert and Clotaire, sons of Clovis, fell upon the Burgunds, and, although these were of their own Germanic race, laid their country waste, enslaved both Burgunds and Gauls, and attached the territory to the domain of the Frankish kingdom." "What devastation! What bloodshed!"
The Goths, as they go down, murder every Roman they meet. The day of grace which Totila had given them is over. The Teutons in Narses' army do much the same. What matter to Burgunds and Herules who was who, provided they had any thing to be plundered of? Totila has allowed many Roman senators to live in Campania. They hear that Narses has taken Rome, they begin to flock to the ghastly ruin.
Working their way down from Gothland and Jutland, we know not why nor when, thrusting aside the cognate Burgunds, and the Sclavonic tribes whom they met on the road, they had spread themselves, in the third century, over the whole South of Russia, and westward over the Danubian Provinces, and Hungary. What manner of men they were it is hard to say, so few details are left to us.
Forget all that awhile; and put yourselves in Salvian's place, the gentleman of Gaul, while Franks and Goths, Burgunds and Vandals were sweeping, wave after wave, over that lovely land; and judge him rationally, and talk as little as possible of his superstition, and as much as possible of his human feeling, prudence, self-control, and common sense.
"It was a horrible spectacle I shall presently describe it to you, but I must first return to our own affairs. Faithful to our promise to Loysik, we drew nearer to the boundaries of Burgundy. That region, one of the first that was conquered before Clovis by other hordes of barbarians that preceded him from Germany and were called Burgunds, was full of heroic souvenirs of old Gaul.
They burst out of camp, turn their horses loose, after the fashion of German knights One hears of the fashion again and again in the middle age, and rush upon the enemy in deep solid column. The Romans have hardly time to form some sort of line; and then not the real Romans, I presume, but the Burgunds and Gepids, turn their horses loose like the Goths.
The larger number of the original inhabitants were either cut to pieces or led into slavery at the time of the first conquest in 355. Although held in slavery by the Burgunds, the lot of the surviving portion of the population was less wretched than that of their brothers in most of the other conquered provinces. Gondiok, Gondehaud and his son Sigismond succeeded one another as kings until 534.
At the time when the dynasty of the Capets had become firmly established at Paris, France was merely part of a country where Latinized Gauls and Basques were ruled by Latinized Franks, Goths, Burgunds, and Normans; but the people across the Channel then showed little trace of Celtic or Romance influence.
The history of Gaul for some centuries becomes henceforth a tissue of internecine horrors, which you must read for yourselves in the pages of M. Sismondi, or of Gregory of Tours. The Burgunds, the lands to the south- west of them, comprising the greater part of south-east Gaul.
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