of those barbarians upon this spot, it is scarce credible, that any of
them should have either wished or endeavoured to settle in a country,
perhaps far less hospitable than that which they had just forsaken,
especially after they had opened to themselves a way into the fertile
plains of Lombardy.

Some stress must be laid upon this inference, as the history of what
befel this country after the decline of the Roman empire is so
intimately blended with that of Suabia, the Tyrolese, and the lower
parts of the Grisons, which are known to have fallen to the share of the
rising power of the Franks, that nothing positive can be drawn from
authors as to the interior state of this small tract. The victory gained
in the year 496 near Cologn, by Clovis I. king of the Franks, over the
Alemanni, who had wrested from the Romans all the dominions on the
northern side of the Alps; and the defeat of both Romans and Goths in
Italy, in the year 549, by the treacherous arms of Theodebert king of
Austrasia, whose dominions soon after devolved to the crown of France,
necessarily gave the aspiring Merovingian race a great ascendency over
all the countries surrounding the Grisons; and accordingly we find, that
this district also was soon after, without any military effort,
considered as part of the dominions of the reviving western empire. But
it does not appear that those monarchs ever made any other use of their
supremacy in these parts than, agreeably to the feudal system which they
introduced, to constitute dukes, earls, presidents, and bailiffs, over
Rhaetia; to grant out tenures upon the usual feudal terms; and
consequently to levy forces in most of their military expeditions.

It must, however, be observed, that these feudal substitutes were
seldom, if ever, strangers: those who are upon record to the latter end
of the eighth century, having all been chosen from among the nobility of