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Searchology Directory 09
Page 10
The consequence of this victory was, that Caesar's authority was established triumphantly over all that part of Gaul which he had thus freed from Ariovistus's sway. Other parts of the country, too, were pervaded by the fame of his exploits, and the people every where began to consider what action it would be incumbent on them to take, in respect to the new military power which had appeared so suddenly among them. Some nations determined to submit without resistance, and to seek the conqueror's alliance and protection. Others, more bold, or more confident of their strength, began to form combinations and to arrange plans for resisting him. But, whatever they did, the result in the end was the same. Caesar's ascendency was every where and always gaining ground. Of course, it is impossible in the compass of a single chapter, which is all that can be devoted to the subject in this volume, to give any regular narrative of the events of the eight years of Caesar's military career in Gaul. Marches, negotiations, battles, and victories mingled with and followed each other in a long succession, the particulars of which it would require a volume to detail, every thing resulting most successfully for the increase of Caesar's power and the extension of his fame.
Moreover, the Spaniards found their first American conquests too easy, and the rewards of these too great. This prevented all thought of developing the country through industry, concentrating expectation solely upon waiting fortunes, to be had from the natives by the sword or through forced labor in mines, Their treatment of the aborigines was nothing short of diabolical. Well has it been said: "The Spaniards had sown desolation, havoc, and misery in and around their track. They had depopulated some of the best peopled of the islands and renewed them with victims deported from others. They had inflicted upon hundreds of thousands of the natives all the forms and agonies of fiendish cruelty, driving them to self-starvation and suicide, as a way of mercy and release from an utterly wretched existence. They had come to be viewed by their victims as fiends of hate, malignity, and all dark and cruel desperation and mercilessness in passion. The hell which they denounced upon their victims was shorn of its worst terror by the assurance that these tormentors were not to be there. Las Casas, the noble missionary, the true soldier of the cross, and the few priests and monks who sympathized with him, in vain protested against these cruelties."
We will add this in general, touching the affection of envy; that of all other affections, it is the most importune and continual. For of other affections, there is occasion given, but now and then; and therefore it was well said, Invidia festos dies non agit: for it is ever working upon some or other. And it is also noted, that love and envy do make a man pine, which other affections do not, because they are not so continual. It is also the vilest affection, and the most depraved; for which cause it is the proper attribute of the devil, who is called, the envious man, that soweth tares amongst the wheat by night; as it always cometh to pass, that envy worketh subtilly, and in the dark, and to the prejudice of good things, such as is the wheat.
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