provinces of the empire there was fighting against Caesar, the newly-acquired country alone remained continuously obedient to its conqueror.  Even the Germans did not during those decisive years repeat their attempts to conquer new settlements on the left bank of the Rhine.  As little did there occur in Gaul any national insurrection or German invasion during the crises that followed, although these offered the most favourable opportunities.  If disturbances broke out anywhere, such as the rising of the Bellovaci against the Romans in 708, these movements were so isolated and so unconnected with the complications in Italy, that they were suppressed without material difficulty by the Roman governors.  Certainly this state of peace was most probably, just as was the peace of Spain for centuries, purchased by provisionally allowing the regions that were most remote and most strongly pervaded by national feeling—­Brittany, the districts on the Scheldt, the region of the Pyrenees—­ to withdraw themselves de facto in a more or less definite manner from the Roman allegiance.  Nevertheless the building of Caesar—­ however scanty the time which he found for it amidst other and at the moment still more urgent labours, however unfinished and but provisionally rounded off he may have left it—­in substance stood the test of this fiery trial, as respected both the repelling of the Germans and the subjugation of the Celts.

Organization
Roman Taxation

As to administration in chief, the territories newly acquired by the governor of Narbonese Gaul remained for the time being united with the province of Narbo; it was not till Caesar gave up this office (710) that two new governorships—­Gaul proper and Belgica—­were formed out of the territory which he conquered.  That the individual cantons lost their political independence, was implied in the very nature of conquest.  They became throughout tributary to the Roman community.  Their system of tribute however was, of course, not that by means of which the nobles and financial aristocracy turned Asia to profitable account; but, as was the case in Spain, a tribute fixed once for all was imposed on each individual community, and the levying of it was left to itself.  In this way forty million sesterces (400,000 pounds) flowed annually from Gaul into the chests of the Roman government; which, no doubt, undertook in return the cost of defending the frontier of the Rhine.  Moreover, the masses of gold accumulated in the temples of the gods and the treasuries of the grandees found their way, as a matter of course, to Rome; when Caesar offered his Gallic gold throughout the Roman empire and brought such masses of it at once into the money market that gold as compared with silver fell about 25 per cent, we may guess what sums Gaul lost through the war.

Indulgences towards Existing Arrangements