CHAPTER V .-- --GAUL UNDER ROMAN DOMINION.
From the conquest of Gaul by Caesar, to the establishment there of the Franks under Clovis, she remained for more than five centuries under Roman dominion; first under the pagan, afterwards under the Christian empire.

In her primitive state of independence she had struggled for ten years against the best armies and the greatest man of Rome; after five centuries of Roman dominion she opposed no resistance to the invasion of the barbarians, Germans, Goths, Alans, Burgundians, and Franks, who destroyed bit by bit the Roman empire.

In this humiliation and, one might say, annihilation of a population so independent, so active, and so valiant at its first appearance in history, is to be seen the characteristic of this long epoch.

It is worth while to learn and to understand how it was.
[Illustration: Gaul subjugated by the Romans----83] Gaul lived, during those five centuries, under very different rules and rulers.

They may be summed up under five names, which correspond with governments very unequal in merit and defect, in good and evil wrought for their epoch: 1st, the Caesars from Julius to Nero (from 49 B.C.to A.D.