sh within it some sort of order, and to
restore to the laws some sort of force. All failed, and nearly all died
a violent death, after a short-lived guardianship of a fabric that was
crumbling to pieces in every part, but still under the grand name of
Roman Empire. Gaul had her share in this series of ephemeral emperors
and tyrants; one of the most wicked and most insane, though issue of one
of the most valorous and able, Caracalla, son of Septimius Severus, was
born at Lyons, four years after the death of Marcus Aurelius. A hundred
years later Narbonne gave in two years to the Roman world three emperors,
Carus and his two sons, Carinus and Numerian. Amongst the thirty-one
tyrants who did not attain to the title of Augustus, six were Gauls; and
the last two, Amandus and AElianus, were, A.D. 285, the chiefs of that
great insurrection of peasants, slaves or half-slaves, who, under the
name of Bagaudians (signifying, according to Ducange, a wandering troop
of insurgents from field and forest), spread themselves over the north of
Gaul, between the Rhine and the Loire, pillaging and ravaging in all
directions, after having themselves endured the pillaging and ravages of
the fiscal agents and soldiers of the empire. A contemporary witness,
Lactantius, describes the causes of this popular outbreak in the
following words: "So enormous had the imposts become, that the tillers'
strength was exhausted; fields became deserts and farms were changed into
forests. The fiscal agents measured the land by the clod; trees,
vinestalks, were all counted. The cattle were marked; the people
registered. Old age or sickness was no excuse; the sick and the infirm
were brought up; every one's age was put down; a few years were added on
to the children's, and taken off from the old men's. Meanwhile the
cattle decreased, the people died, and there was no deduction made for
the dead."

It is said that to excite the confidence and zeal of their bands, the two
chiefs of the Bagaudians had medals struck, and that one exhibited the
head of Amandus, "Emperor, Caesar, Augustus, pious and prosperous," with
the word "Hope" on the other side.

When public evils have reached such a pitch, and nevertheless the day has
not yet arrived for the entire disappearance of the system that causes
them, there arises nearly always a new power which, in the name of
necessity, applies some remedy to an intolerable condition. A legion
cantoned amongst the Tungria