CHAPTER II

FROM THE SETTLEMENT OF THE FRANKS TO THE SUBJUGATION OF FRIESLAND

A.D. 250—­800

From this epoch we must trace the progress of a totally new and distinct population in the Netherlands.  The Batavians being annihilated, almost without resistance, the low countries contained only the free people of the German race.  But these people did not completely sympathize together so as to form one consolidated nation.  The Salians, and the other petty tribes of Franks, their allies, were essentially warlike, and appeared precisely the same as the original inhabitants of the high grounds.  The Menapians and the Frisons, on the contrary, lost nothing of their spirit of commerce and industry.  The result of this diversity was a separation between the Franks and the Menapians.  While the latter, under the name of Armoricans, joined themselves more closely with the people who bordered the Channel, the Frisons associated themselves with the tribes settled on the limits of the German Ocean, and formed with them a connection celebrated under the title of the Saxon League.  Thus was formed on all points a union between the maritime races against the inland inhabitants; and their mutual antipathy became more and more developed as the decline of the Roman empire ended the former struggle between liberty and conquest.

The Netherlands now became the earliest theatre of an entirely new movement, the consequences of which were destined to affect the whole world.  This country was occupied toward the sea by a people wholly maritime, excepting the narrow space between the Rhine and the Vahal, of which the Salian Franks had become possessed.  The nature of this marshy soil, in comparison with the sands of Westphalia, Guelders, and North Brabant, was not more strikingly contrasted than was the character of their population.  The Franks, who had been for a while under the Roman sway, showed a compound of the violence of savage life and the corruption of civilized society.  They were covetous and treacherous, but made excellent soldiers; and at this epoch, which intervened between the power of imperial Rome and that of Germany, the Frank might be morally considered as a borderer on the frontiers of the Middle Ages.  The Saxon (and this name comprehends all the tribes of the coast from the Rhine as far north as Denmark), uniting in himself the distinctive qualities of German and navigator, was moderate and sincere, but implacable in his rage.  Neither of these two races of men was excelled in point of courage; but the number of Franks who still entered into the service of the empire diminished the real force of this nation, and naturally tended to disunite it.  Therefore, in the subsequent shock of people against people, the Saxons invariably gained the final advantage.