352 THE DECLINE AND FALL allegiance and military service. The title of Honorius and his successors, their laws, and their civil magistrates, were still re- spected in the provinces of (jaul of which they had resigned the possession to the Barbarian allies ; and the kings, who exercised a supreme and independent authority over their native subjects, ambitiously solicited the more honourable rank of master- generals of the Imperial armies.^"" Such was the involuntary reverence which the Roman name still impressed on the minds of those warriors who had borne away in triumph the spoils of the Capitol. Briuiii°a d Whilst Italy was ravaged by the Goths and a succession of Araiorixa. feeble tyrants oppressed the provinces beyond the Alps, the British island separated itself from the body of the Roman em- pire. The regular forces, which guarded that remote province, had been gradually withdrawn ; and Britain was abandoned, without defence, to the Saxon pirates and the savages of Ireland and Caledonia. The Britons, reduced to this extremity, no longer relied on the tardy and doubtful aid of a declining monarch. They assembled in arms, repelled the invaders, and rejoiced in the important discovery of their own strength. ^"^ Afflicted by similar calamities and actuated by the same spirit, the Armorican provinces (a name which comprehended the maritime countries of Gaul between the Seine and the Loire ^'■') resolved to imitate the example of the neighbouring island. They expelled the Roman magistrates who acted under the authority of the usurper Constantine ; and a free government was established among a people who had so long been subject to the arbitrary will of a master. The independence of Britain and Armorica was soon confirmed by Honorius himself, the law- ful emperor of the West; and the letters, by which he committed to the new states the care of their own safety, might be inter- preted as an absolute and perpetual abdication of the exercise and rights of sovereignty. This interpretation was, in some measure, justified by the event. After the usurpers of Gaul had ^'^ This important truth is established by the accuracy of Tillemont (Hist, des Emp. torn. V. p. 641) and by the ingenuity of the .Abbt^ Dubos (Hist, de I'Etab- lissement de la Monarchie Franfoise dans les Gaules, torn. i. p. 259). i™ Zosimus (1. vi. p. 376, 383 [5 and 10]) relates in a few words the revolt of Britain and Armorica. Our antiquarians, even the great Cambden himself, have been betrayed into many gross errors by their imperfect knowledge of the history of the continent. i"9 The limits of Armorica are defined by two national geographers, Messieurs de Valois and d'Anville, in their iWotitias of Ancient Gaul. The word had been used in a more extensive, and was afterwards contracted to a much narrower, signification.
