Upon the breaking and shivering of a great state and empire, you may be sure to have wars. For great empires, while they stand, do enervate and destroy the forces of the natives which they have subdued, resting upon their own protecting forces; and then when they fail also, all goes to ruin, and they become a prey. So was it in the decay of the Roman empire; and likewise in the empire of Almaigne,[1] after Charles the Great,[2] every bird taking a feather; and were not unlike to befal[3] to Spain, if it should break. The great accessions and unions of kingdoms do likewise stir up wars: for when a state grows to an over-power,[4] it is like a great flood, that will be sure to overflow. As it hath been seen in the states of Rome, Turkey, Spain and others. Look when the world hath fewest barbarous peoples, but such as commonly, will not marry or generate, except they know means to live, (as it is almost everywhere at this day, except Tartary,) there is no danger of inundations[5] of people: but when there be great shoals
- ↑ Almaigne. Germany.
- ↑ Charles the Great, Carolus Magnus, Charlemagne, lived from 742 or 747 to 814, King of the Franks, and Emperor of the Romans.
- ↑ Befall. To fall out in the course of events, to happen, to occur (with 'to,' 'unto,' or 'upon'). Archaic.
"Say, goddess, what ensu'd when Raphael,
The affable archangel, had forewarn'd
Adam by dire example to beware
Apostasy, by what befel in Heaven
To those apostates."
Milton. Paradise Lost. VII. 40–44.
- ↑ Over-power. A superior, or supreme power.
- ↑ Inundation. An overspreading or overwhelming in superfluous abundance; superabundance. "What inundation of life and thought is discharged from one soul into another through them! The glance [of the eyes] is natural magic." Emerson. Conduct of Life. Behavior.
