Amongst the thirty-one tyrants who did not attain to the title of Augustus, six were Gauls; and the last two, Amandus and AElianus, were, A.D.285, the chiefs of that great insurrection of peasants, slaves or half-slaves, who, under the name of Bagaudians (signifying, according to Ducange, a wandering troop of insurgents from field and forest), spread themselves over the north of Gaul, between the Rhine and the Loire, pillaging and ravaging in all directions, after having themselves endured the pillaging and ravages of the fiscal agents and soldiers of the empire.

A contemporary witness, Lactantius, describes the causes of this popular outbreak in the following words: "So enormous had the imposts become, that the tillers' strength was exhausted; fields became deserts and farms were changed into forests.

The fiscal agents measured the land by the clod; trees, vinestalks, were all counted.

The cattle were marked; the people registered.

Old age or sickness was no excuse; the sick and the infirm were brought up; every one's age was put down; a few years were added on to the children's, and taken off from the old men's.