of uniting it
in consequence of their particular class-interests, and, on the other
hand, sufficiently powerful to allow no king and no canton to accomplish
the work of union. Attempts at this work were not wanting;
they followed, as the cantonal constitution suggested,
the system of hegemony. A powerful canton induced a weaker
to become subordinate, on such a footing that the leading canton
acted for the other as well as for itself in its external relations
and stipulated for it in state-treaties, while the dependent canton
bound itself to render military service and sometimes also to pay
a tribute. In this way a series of separate leagues arose;
but there was no leading canton for all Gaul--no tie, however
loose, combining the nation as a whole.

The Belgic League
The Maritime Cantons
The Leagues of Central Gaul

It has been already mentioned(20) that the Romans
at the commencement of their Transalpine conquests found in the north
a Britanno-Belgic league under the leadership of the Suessiones,
and in central and southern Gaul the confederation of the Arverni,
with which latter the Haedui, although having a weaker body
of clients, carried on a rivalry. In Caesar's time we find the Belgae
in north-eastern Gaul between the Seine and the Rhine still forming
such an association, which, however, apparently no longer extends
to Britain; by their side there appears, in the modern Normandy
and Brittany, the league of the Aremorican or the maritime cantons:
in central or proper Gaul two parties as formerly contended
for the hegemony, the one headed by the Haedui, the other by the Sequani
after the Arvernians weakened by the wars with Rome had retired.
These different confederacies subsisted independently side by side;
the leading states of central Gaul appear never to have extended
their clientship to the north-east nor, seriously, perhaps even
to the north-west of Gaul.

Character of Those Leagues

The impulse of the nation towards freedom found doubtless a certain
gratification in these cantonal unions; but they were in every
respect unsatisfactory. The union was of the loosest kind, constantly
fluctuating between alliance and hegemony; the representation
of the whole body in peace by the federal diets, in war
by the general,(21) was in the highest degree feeble. The Belgian
confederacy alone seems to have been bound together somewhat
more firmly; the national enthusiasm, from which the successful
repulse of t