It was written in the book of fate that Gaul should become a great nation; but not until fused and interpenetrated with two other nationalities.  She must first be humanized and civilized by the Roman, and then energized and made free from the Roman by the Teuton.

The instrument chosen for the former was Julius Caesar, and for the latter—­five centuries later—­Clovis, the Frankish leader.

It is safe to affirm that no man has ever so changed the course of human events as did Julius Caesar.  Napoleon, who strove to imitate him 1800 years later, was a charlatan in comparison; a mere scene-shifter on a great theatrical stage.  Few traces of his work remain upon humanity to-day.

Caesar opened up a pathway for the old civilizations of the world to flow into Western Europe, and the sodden mass of barbarism was infused with a life-compelling current.  This was not accomplished by placing before the inferior race a higher ideal of life for imitation, but by a mingling of the blood of the nations—­a transfusion into Gallic veins of the germs of a higher living and thinking—­thus making them heirs to the great civilizations of antiquity.

Was any human event ever fraught with such consequences to the human race as the conquest of Gaul by Julius Caesar?

The Gallic wars had for centuries drained the treasure and taxed the resources of Rome.  Caesar conceived the audacious idea of stopping them at their source—­in fact, of making Gaul a Roman province.

It was a marvellous exhibition, not simply of force, but of force wielded by supreme intelligence and craft.  He had lived many years among this people and knew their sources of weakness, their internal jealousies and rivalries, their incohesiveness.  When they hurled themselves against Rome, it was as a mass of sharp fragments.  When the Goths did the same, it was as one solid, indivisible body.  Caesar saw that by adroit management he could disintegrate this people while conquering them.

By forcibly maintaining in power those who submitted to him, being by turns gentle and severe, ingratiating here, terrifying there, he established a tremendous personal force; and during nine years carried on eight campaigns, marvels in the art of war, as well as in the subtler methods of negotiation and intrigue.  He had successively dealt with all the Keltic tribes, even including Great Britain, subjugating either through their own rivalries, or by his invincible arm.

Equally able to charm and to terrify, he had all the gifts, all the means to success and empire, that can be possessed by man.  Great in politics as in war, as full of resource in the forum as on the battle-field, he was by nature called to dominion.

It was not as a patriot, simply intent upon freeing Rome of an harassing enemy, that he endured those nine years in Gaul; not as a great leader burning with military ardor that he conducted those eight campaigns.  The conquest of Gaul meant the greater conquest of Rome.  The one was accomplished; he now turned his back upon the devastated country, and prepared to complete his great project of human ascendency.