At the head of his devotedly loyal veterans he crossed the Rubicon.  His rapid and successful advance caused Pompeius to abandon Italy and fall back on the Eastern Provinces.  The discipline preserved, and the moderation displayed by Caesar won him unexpected favour.  Having secured Italy, he turned next on Spain, and secured that.  Swift and decisive action was pitted against inertness.  When Caesar entered Epirus the odds against him on paper were enormous; but the triumphant victory of Phansalus shattered the Pompeian coalition.  Pompeius hurried to Egypt, but was assassinated while landing.  The struggle, however, was not over till after the battle of Thapsus nearly two years after Phansalus.

Caesar was now beyond question master of the whole Roman world.  He had made himself one of the mightiest of all masters of the art of war; but he was even more emphatically unsurpassed as a statesman.  In the brief time that was left him he laid the foundation of the new monarchy which replaced the ancient Republic of Rome.

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Mediaeval History

EDWARD GIBBON

The Holy Roman Empire

The third of Gibbon’s divisions of his great history was devoted to that period which is comprised between the establishment of the Holy Roman Empire in 800 and the final extinction of the Eastern Empire with the conquest of Constantinople by Mahomet II. in 1453.  Although this was the longest period, Gibbon devoted much less space to it than to the preceding parts of his history.  This fact was partly due to the gradual diminution of Roman interests, for the dominions of the empire became contracted to the limits of a single city, and also to the fact that the material which the most painstaking search placed at his disposal was distinctly limited.  But though the conquest of the Normans, to instance one section, has been dealt with inadequately in the light of modern research, the wonderful panorama that Gibbon’s genius was able to present never fails in its effect or general accuracy.  The Holy Roman Empire is, of course, properly classified under Mediaeval History, which accounts for its separation from the rest of Gibbon’s work.

I.—­Birth and Sway of the Empire

The Western Empire, or Holy Roman Empire, as it has been called, which was re-established by Charlemagne (and lasted in shadow until the abdication of Francis II. under the pressure of Napoleon in 1806), was not unworthy of its title.

The personal and political importance of Charlemagne was magnified by the distress and division of the rest of Europe.  The Greek emperor was addressed by him as brother instead of father; and as long as the imperial dignity of the West was usurped by a hero, the Greeks respectfully saluted the august Charlemagne with the acclamations of “Basileus” and “Emperor of the Romans.”  Lewis the Pious (814-840) possessed the virtue of his father but not the power.  When both power and virtue were extinct, the Greeks despoiled Lewis II. of his hereditary title, and with the barbarous appellation of Rex degraded him amongst the crowd of Latin princes.