The Nervii, true to their vow, die, but not a man surrenders.  They fought upon that day till the ground was heaped with their dead, while, as the foremost fell thick and fast, their comrades, says the Roman, sprang upon their piled-up bodies, and hurled their javelins at the enemy as from a hill.  They fought like men to whom life without liberty was a curse.  They were not defeated, but exterminated.  Of many thousand fighting men went home but five hundred.  Upon reaching the place of refuge where they had bestowed their women and children, Caesar found, after the battle, that there were but three of their senators left alive.  So perished the Nervii.  Caesar commanded his legions to treat with respect the little remnant of the tribe which had just fallen to swell the empty echo of his glory, and then, with hardly a breathing pause, he proceeded to annihilate the Aduatici, the Menapii, and the Morini.

Gaul being thus pacified, as, with sublime irony, he expresses himself concerning a country some of whose tribes had been annihilated, some sold as slaves, and others hunted to their lairs like beasts of prey, the conqueror departed for Italy.  Legations for peace from many German races to Rome were the consequence of these great achievements.  Among others the Batavians formed an alliance with the masters of the world.  Their position was always an honorable one.  They were justly proud of paying no tribute, but it was, perhaps, because they had nothing to pay.  They had few cattle, they could give no hides and horns like the Frisians, and they were therefore allowed to furnish only their blood.  From this time forth their cavalry, which was the best of Germany, became renowned in the Roman army upon every battle-field of Europe.

It is melancholy, at a later moment, to find the brave Batavians distinguished in the memorable expedition of Germanicus to crush the liberties of their German kindred.  They are forever associated with the sublime but misty image of the great Hermann, the hero, educated in Rome, and aware of the colossal power of the empire, who yet, by his genius, valor, and political adroitness, preserved for Germany her nationality, her purer religion, and perhaps even that noble language which her late-flowering literature has rendered so illustrious—­but they are associated as enemies, not as friends.

Galba, succeeding to the purple upon the suicide of Nero, dismissed the Batavian life-guards to whom he owed his elevation.  He is murdered, Otho and Vitellius contend for the succession, while all eyes are turned upon the eight Batavian regiments.  In their hands the scales of empire seem to rest.  They declare for Vitellius, and the civil war begins.  Otho is defeated; Vitellius acknowledged by Senate and people.  Fearing, like his predecessors, the imperious turbulence of the Batavian legions, he, too, sends them into Germany.  It was the signal for a long and extensive revolt, which had well nigh overturned the Roman power in Gaul and Lower Germany.