Its political dissolution had been completed by Caesar; its national dissolution was begun and in course of regular progress.

This was no accidental destruction, such as destiny sometimes prepares even for peoples capable of development, but a self-incurred and in some measure historically necessary catastrophe.

The very course of the last war proves this, whether we view it as a whole or in detail.

When the establishment of the foreign rule was in contemplation, only single districts-- mostly, moreover, German or half-German--offered energetic resistance.

When the foreign rule was actually established, the attempts to shake it off were either undertaken altogether without judgment, or they were to an undue extent the work of certain prominent nobles, and were therefore immediately and entirely brought to an end with the death or capture of an Indutiomarus, Camulogenus, Vercingetorix, or Correus.