generally found already settled by other tribes, more civilized and
hence more peaceful, occupied in trade and agriculture, having
gradually turned to these pursuits from their former habits of hunting
and fighting. Sometimes these more civilized and peace-loving people
were able, by their better weapons and superior knowledge of the art
of fortifying, to beat back the invasion of the immigrating
barbarians. Oftener, though, the rougher, ruder tribes were the
victors, and settled down among the people they had conquered, to rule
them, doing no work themselves, but forcing the conquered ones to feed
and clothe them.

[Illustration: Movable Huts of Early Germans]

History is full of instances of such conquests, and they were taking
place, no doubt, ages before the times from which our earliest records
date. The best examples, however, are to be found in the invasions of
the Roman Empire by the Germanic tribes to which we have referred
above. The country between the Rhine River and the Pyrenees Mountains,
which had been called Gaul when the Gauls lived there, became France
when the Franks conquered the Gauls and stayed to live among them. In
like manner, two German tribes became the master races in Spain. The
Burgundians came down from the shores of the Baltic Sea and gave their
name to their new home in the fertile valley of the Sa䮥 (Sōn);
the Vandals came out of Germany to roam through Spain, finally
founding a kingdom in Africa; while the Lombards crossed the Alps to
become the masters of the Valley of the Po, whither the Gauls had gone
before them, seven hundred years earlier.

[Illustration: Goths on the March]