Since all these peoples entered the empire pellmell, they got in each other's way. And policy at that time consisted entirely in arming them against each other -- which, because of their ferocity and avarice, was easy. They destroyed each other for the most part before they were able to get settled, and this resulted in the eastern empire continuing for a time.

Moreover, the north exhausted itself, and those countless armies which appeared at first no longer emerged from it. After the early invasions of the Goths and the Huns, especially since the death of Attila, the Huns and the peoples following them attacked with less force.

When these nations which had gathered into a military body were dispersed as peoples, they weakened considerably. Spread out in the various places they conquered, they were themselves exposed to invasions.

It was in these circumstances that Justinian undertook to reconquer Africa and Italy, and did what our French carried out as successfully against the Visigoths, the Burgundians, the Lombards, and the Saracens.

When the Christian religion was brought to the barbarians, the Arian sect was practically dominant in the empire. Valens sent them Arian priests, who were their first apostles. But, in the interval between their conversion and their settlement, this sect was practically destroyed among the Romans. The Arian barbarians, finding the whole country orthodox, could never gain its good will, and it was easy for the emperors to disturb them.

Besides, these barbarians, whose art and genius hardly consisted in attacking cities, much less defending them, let their walls fall in ruins. Procopius informs us that Belisarius found the walls of Italy in this condition. Those of Africa had been pulled down by Genseric [1], just as those of Spain later were by Vitisa [2] [a], with the intention of making sure of their inhabitants.

Upon settling in the countries of the south, most of these northern peoples at once adopted their indolence and became incapable of enduring the hardships of war [3]. The Vandals languished in sensual pleasure; dainties, effeminate clothes, baths, music, dancing, gardens, and theaters had become necessities to them.

They no longer worried the Romans [4], says Malchus [5], once they had stopped maintaining the armies that Genseric always held ready, and with which he forestalled his enemies, amazing everyone by the facility of his enterprises.

The Roman cavalry was well trained in drawing the bow, but that of the Goths and the Vandals used only the sword and lance, and could not fight at a distance [6]. To this difference Belisarius attributed part of his success.

The Romans, especially under Justinian, made good use of the Huns -- peoples from whom the Parthians had come, and who fought like them. After losing their power through the defeat of Attila and the dissensions the large number of his children brought about, the Huns served the Romans as auxiliaries and formed their best cavalry.

All these barbarian nations were each distinguished by their particular method of fighting and arming [7]. The Goths and the Vandals were dangerous with the sword; the Huns were admirable archers; the Suevi, good infantrymen; the Alans were heavily armed, and the Herculi were a light troop. The Romans took from all these nations the various bodies of troops that suited their designs, and fought against any one of them with the advantages of all the others.

Oddly enough, the weakest nations were the ones that made the greatest settlements. We would be much deceived if we judged their strength by their conquests. In this long sequence of incursions, the barbarian peoples -- or rather the swarms emerging from them -- either destroyed or were themselves destroyed. Everything depended on circumstances, and while a great nation was fought or stopped, a troop of adventurers who found a country unguarded made frightful ravages there. The Goths, whose disadvantage in arms made them flee before so many nations, settled in Italy, Gaul, and Spain. The Vandals, leaving Spain because of their weakness, crossed over to Africa, where they founded a great empire.

Justinian could equip only fifty vessels against the Vandals, and when Belisarius disembarked, he had only five thousand soldiers [8]. It was a very bold enterprise. Leo, who had formerly sent against them a fleet composed of all the vessels of the East, carrying one hundred thousand men, had not conquered Africa, and had come close to losing the empire.

These great fleets, like great land armies, have hardly ever succeeded. Since they exhaust a state, they can be neither assisted nor repaired if the expedition is long or some misfortune strikes them. If a part is lost, what remains is useless because the vessels of war and transport, the cavalry, the infantry, the provisions -- in short, the various parts -- depend on the whole. The slowness of the enterprise always results in the enemy being found prepared. Besides, the expedition rarely occurs at a favorable time; more likely, it will fall in a stormy season, since so many different things are seldom ready until several months after the time for which they were promised.

Belisarius invaded Africa, and it helped him considerably to draw a large quantity of provisions from Sicily by virtue of a treaty with Amalasuntha, queen of the Goths. When he was sent to attack Italy, he began by conquering Sicily, seeing that the Goths drew their subsistence from it. He starved his enemies, and found himself with an abundance of all things.

Belisarius took Carthage, Rome, and Ravenna, and sent the kings of the Goths and the Vandals as captives to Constantinople, where, after so long a time, the old triumphs were renewed [9].

The main reasons for his successes can be found in the qualities of this great man [10]. With a general who followed all the maxims of the early Romans, an army much like the old Roman armies was formed.

In servitude the great virtues are usually hidden or lost; but the tyrannical government of Justinian could not crush the greatness of this soul or the superiority of this genius.

The eunuch Narses also served to make this reign illustrious. Because he was raised in the palace, the emperor had greater confidence in him, for princes always regard their courtiers as their most faithful subjects.

But Justinian's misconduct, his prodigality, harassment and plundering, his passion for building, changing and reforming, his inconstancy in his design, his severity and weakness in a reign made more disagreeable by a protracted old age -- all these were real misfortunes, mixed with useless successes and fruitless glory.

These conquests, resulting from certain peculiar circumstances rather than from the strength of the empire, ruined everything. While the armies were occupied with them, new peoples crossed the Danube and desolated Illyria, Macedonia, and Greece. And the Persians, in four invasions, inflicted incurable wounds on the East [11].

The more rapid these conquests were, the less solidly were they established; Italy and Africa were scarcely conquered before it was necessary to reconquer them.

From the theater Justinian had taken a wife who had long debased herself there [12]. The power she exerted over him was unexampled in history, and by incessantly intruding the passions and fancies of her sex into public affairs, she corrupted the greatest victories and successes.

In the East the number of wives has always been multiplied so as to remove the prodigious ascendancy they have over us in those climates. But in Constantinople, the law requiring a single wife gave dominion to this sex -- which sometimes weakened the government.

The people of Constantinople had always been divided into two factions: the blues and the greens. These originated from a partiality formed in the theaters for some actors over others. In circus games, the chariots whose drivers were dressed in green vied with those dressed in blue, and everyone took an interest in them approaching frenzy.

These two factions were spread out in all the cities of the empire, and the frenzy animating them grew in proportion to the size of the cities -- that is, to the idleness of a large part of the people.

But the dissensions that are always necessary for maintaining republican government must be fatal to imperial rule, their only effect being a change of sovereign rather than the reestablishment of laws and the cessation of abuses.

Justinian, who favored the blues and refused all justice to the greens [13], embittered relations between the two factions and consequently strengthened both.

They went so far as to destroy the authority of the magistrates. The blues did not fear the laws, because the emperor protected them against the laws; the greens stopped respecting the laws, because the laws could no longer protect them [14].

All the bonds of friendship, kinship, duty, and gratitude were stripped away. Families destroyed themselves; every scoundrel who wanted to commit a crime belonged to the faction of the blues, and every man who was robbed or murdered belonged to the greens.

This government was even more cruel than it was unintelligent. Not content with doing a general injustice to his subjects by overwhelming them with excessive taxes, the emperor desolated them in their private affairs by all sorts tyrannical acts.

I would not naturally be inclined to believe everything Procopius tells us on this subject in his Secret History, because the magnificent praises he has heaped on this prince in his other works weaken his testimony in this one, where he depicts him to us as the most stupid and cruel of tyrants.

But I confess that two things put me on the side of the Secret History. The first is that it fits in better with the amazing weakness of the empire at the end of this reign and in those following.

The other is a monument that still exists among us -- the laws of this emperor -- in which jurisprudence shows more changes in the course of a few years than it has in the last three hundred years of our monarchy.

These changes are mostly in things of such little importance [15] that one sees no reason why a legislator should have been induced to make them -- unless one accepts the Secret History's explanation charging Justinian with selling his judgments and his laws alike.

But what did the most harm to the political condition of the government was his scheme for reducing all men to the same opinion in matters of religion, in circumstances which made his zeal entirely indiscreet.

Just as the old Romans strengthened their empire by permitting every kind of religion in it, so was it subsequently reduced to nothing by amputating, one after the other, the sects which were not dominant.

These sects were entire nations. After being conquered by the Romans, some, like the Samaritans and Jews, had preserved their old religion. Others had spread out, like the sectarians of Montanus into Phrygia, or the Manicheans, Sabbatarians, and Arians into other provinces. Besides, a larger number of the rural population were still idolaters obstinately attached to a religion as crude as themselves.

Justinian destroyed these sects by the sword and by his laws; forcing them to revolt, he was forced to exterminate them, with the result that many provinces were left uncultivated. He believed he had increased the number of the faithful; he had only diminished the number of men.

Procopius tells us that with the destruction of the Samaritans, Palestine became deserted. And what makes this a striking fact is that the empire was weakened by this zeal for religion in the very place where, some reigns later, the Arabs penetrated and destroyed it.

While the emperor carried intolerance to such lengths, it was exasperating that he himself did not agree with the empress on the most essential points. He followed the council of Chalcedonia, and the empress favored those who opposed it, whether -- Evagrius tells us -- they did so in good faith or for some ulterior motive [16].

When we read Procopius on the buildings of Justinian, and see the strongholds and forts this prince erected everywhere, we constantly get the impression -- the very false impression -- of a flourishing state.

At first the Romans did not have any strongholds. They placed all their confidence in their armies, which they located along the rivers, building towers at certain intervals to lodge the soldiers.

But when they had nothing but weak armies, or often none at all, the frontier no longer defended the interior, and it was necessary to fortify it. And then they had more strongholds and less strength, more places of refuge and less security [17]. Since the countryside was no longer habitable except around fortified places, these were built on all sides. It was like France in the time of the Normans [18] -- never so weak as when all its villages were surrounded by walls.

Thus all those lists of the names of forts Justinian built, with which Procopius covers entire pages, only testify to the empire's weakness.