Roman language was not unknown even before the conquest; although this knowledge was presumably still restricted to few, and even the men of rank in the allied canton of the Haedui had to be conversed with through interpreters.  Just as the traffickers in fire-water and the squatters led the way in the occupation of North America, so these Roman wine-traders and landlords paved the way for, and beckoned onward, the future conqueror of Gaul.  How vividly this was felt even on the opposite side, is shown by the prohibition which one of the most energetic tribes of Gaul, the canton of the Nervii, like some German peoples, issued against trafficking with the Romans.

Celts and Germans

Still more violent even than the pressure of the Romans from the Mediterranean was that of the Germans downward from the Baltic and the North Sea—­a fresh stock from the great cradle of peoples in the east, which made room for itself by the side of its elder brethren with youthful vigour, although also with youthful rudeness.  Though the tribes of this stock dwelling nearest to the Rhine—­the Usipetes, Tencteri, Sugambri, Ubii—­had begun to be in some degree civilized, and had at least ceased voluntarily to change their abodes, all accounts yet agree that farther inland agriculture was of little importance, and the several tribes had hardly yet attained fixed abodes.  It is significant in this respect that their western neighbours at this time hardly knew how to name any one of the peoples of the interior of Germany by its cantonal name; these were only known to them under the general appellations of the Suebi, that is, the roving people or nomads, and the Marcomani, that is, the land-guard(25)—­names which were hardly cantonal names in Caesar’s time, although they appeared as such to the Romans and subsequently became in various cases names of cantons.

The Right Bank of the Rhine Lost to the Celts

The most violent onset of this great nation fell upon the Celts.  The struggles, in which the Germans probably engaged with the Celts for the possession of the regions to the east of the Rhine, are wholly withdrawn from our view.  We are only able to perceive, that about the end of the seventh century of Rome all the land as far as the Rhine was already lost to the Celts; that the Boii, who were probably once settled in Bavaria and Bohemia,(26) were homeless wanderers; and that even the Black Forest formerly possessed by the Helvetii,(27) if not yet taken possession of by the German tribes dwelling in the vicinity, was at least waste debateable border-land, and was presumably even then, what it was afterwards called, the Helvetian desert The barbarous strategy of the Germans—­which secured them from hostile attacks by laying waste the neighbourhood for miles—­seems to have been applied here on the greatest scale.

German Tribes on the Left Bank of the Rhine