Prescott, William Hickling:
History of the Reign of Charles the Fifth

ISBN: 9780217935814, Preisentwicklung...

Taschenbuch

[ED: Softcover], [PU: Cambridge Scholars Publishing], Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: SECT. I.] DOWNFALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIBE. 5 settle in the countries which they had subdued. The sudden and short excursions in quest of booty, which had alarmed and disquieted the empire, ceased a more dreadful calamity impended. Great bodies of armed men, with their wives and children, and slaves and flocks, issued forth, like regular colonies, in quest of new settlements. People who had no cities, and seldom any fixed habitation, were so little attached to their native soil, that they migrated without reluctance from one place to another. New adventurers followed them. The lands which they deserted were occupied by more remote tribes of barbarians. These, in their turn, pushed forward into more fertile countries, and, like a torrent continually increasing, rolled on, and swept everything before them. In less than two centuries from their first irruption, barbarians of various names and lineage plundered and took possession of Thrace, Pannonia, Gaul, Spain, Africa, and at last of Italy, and Rome itself. The vast fabric of the Roman power, which it had been the work of ages to perfect, was in that short period overturned from the foundation. Many concurring causes prepared the way for this great revolution, and ensured success to the nations which invaded the empire. The Roman commonwealth had conquered the world by the wisdom of its civil maxims, and the rigour of its military discipline. But, under the emperors, the former were forgotten or despised, and the latter was gradually relaxed. The armies of the empire in the fourth and fifth centuries bore scarcely any resemblance to those invincible legions which had been victorious wherever they marched. Instead of freemen, who voluntarily took arms from the love of glory, or of their country, provincials and barbarians were br...Versandfertig in 6-10 Tagen, [SC: 0.00]