54

peace; a select band of valiant and robust slaves attended their masters to the field; 55 and the cities of Gaul were compelled to furnish their doubtful and reluctant aid. Theodoric, king of the Ostrogoths, who reigned in Italy, had laboured to maintain the tranquillity of Gaul; and he assumed, or affected for that purpose, the impartial character of a mediator. But the sagacious monarch dreaded the rising empire of Clovis, and he was firmly engaged to support the national and religious cause of the Goths.

The accidental, or artificial, prodigies, which adorned the expedition of Clovis, were accepted, by a superstitious age, as the manifest declaration of the Divine favour. He marched from Paris; and, as he proceeded with decent reverence through the holy diocese of Tours, his anxiety tempted him to consult the shrine of St. Martin, the sanctuary and the oracle of Gaul. His messengers were instructed to remark the words of the Psalm, which should happen to be chaunted at the precise moment when they entered the church. Those words most fortunately expressed the valour and victory of the champions of Heaven, and the application was easily transferred to the new Joshua, the new Gideon, who went forth to battle against the enemies of the Lord.56 Orleans

54 Quamvis fortitudini vestræ confidentiam tribuat parentum vestrorum innumerabilis multitudo; quamvis Attilam potentem reminiscamini Visigotharum viribus inclinatum; tamen quia populorum ferocia corda longâ pace mollescunt, cavete subito in aleam mittere, quos constat tantis temporibus exercitia non habere. Such was the salutary, but fruitless, advice of peace, of reason, and of Theodoric (Cassiodor. 1. iii. ep. 2).

55 Montesquieu (Esprit des Loix, 1. xv. c. 14) mentions and approves the law of the Visigoths (l. ix. tit. 2, in tom. iv. p. 425) which obliged all masters to arm, and send, or lead, into the field, a tenth of their slaves.

56 This mode of divination, by accepting as an omen the first sacred words, which in particular circumstances should be presented to the eye or ear, was derived from the Pagans; and the Psalter, or Bible, was substituted to the Poems of Homer and Virgil. From the fourth to the fourteenth century, these sortes sanctorum, as they are styled, were repeatedly condemned by the decrees of councils, and repeatedly practised by kings, bishops, and saints. See a curious dissertation of the Abbé du Resnel, in the Mémoires de l'Académie, tom. xix. p. 287–310.

secured to the Franks a bridge on the Loire; but, at the distance of forty miles from Poitiers, their progress was intercepted by an extraordinary swell of the river Vigenna, or Vienne; and the opposite banks were covered by the encampment of the Visigoths. Delay must be always dangerous to Barbarians, who consume the country through which they march; and, had Clovis possessed leisure and materials, it might have been impracticable to construct a bridge, or to force a passage, in the face of a superior enemy. But the affectionate peasants, who were impatient to welcome their deliverer, could easily betray some unknown, or unguarded, ford; the merit of the discovery was enhanced by the useful interposition of fraud or fiction; and a white hart, of singular size and beauty, appeared to guide and animate the march of the Catholic army. The counsels of the Visigoths were irresolute and distracted. A crowd of impatient warriors, presumptuous in their strength, and disdaining to fly before the robbers of Germany, excited Alaric to assert in arms the name and blood of the conqueror of Rome. The advice of the graver chieftains pressed him to elude the first ardour of the Franks, and to expect, in the southern provinces of Gaul, the veteran and victorious Ostrogoths, whom the king of Italy had already sent to his assistance. The decisive moments were wasted in idle deliberation; the Goths too hastily abandoned, perhaps, an advantageous post; and the opportunity of a sure retreat was lost by their slow and disorderly motions. After Clovis had passed the ford, as it is still named, of the Hart, he advanced with bold and hasty steps to prevent the escape of the enemy. His nocturnal march was directed by a flaming meteor, suspended in the air above the cathedral of Poitiers; and this signal, which might be previously concerted with the orthodox successor of St. Hilary, was compared to the column of fire that guided the Israelites in the desert. At the third hour of the day, about ten miles beyond Poitiers, Clovis overtook, and instantly attacked, the Gothic army; whose defeat was already

prepared by terror and confusion. Yet they rallied in their extreme distress, and the martial youths, who had clamorously demanded the battle, refused to survive the ignominy of flight. The two kings encountered each other in single combat. Alaric fell by the hand of his rival; and the victorious Frank was saved by the goodness of his cuirass, and the vigour of his horse, from the spears of two desperate Goths, who furiously rode against him to revenge the death of their sovereign. The vague expression of a mountain of the slain serves to indicate a cruel, though indefinite, slaughter; but Gregory has carefully observed that his valiant countryman Apollinaris, the son of Sidonius, lost his life at the head of the nobles of Auvergne. Perhaps these suspected Catholics had been maliciously exposed to the blind assault of the enemy; and perhaps the influence of religion was superseded by personal attachment or military honour.57

Such is the empire of Fortune (if we may still disguise our ignorance under that popular name), that it is almost equally difficult to foresee the events of war or to explain their various consequences. A bloody and complete victory has sometimes yielded no more than the possession of the field; and the loss of ten thousand men has sometimes been sufficient to destroy, in a single day, the work of ages. The decisive battle of Poitiers was followed by the conquest of Aquitain. Alaric had left behind him an infant son, a bastard com

57 After correcting the text, or excusing the mistake, of Procopius, who places the defeat of Alaric near Carcassonne, we may conclude, from the evidence of Gregory, Fortunatus, and the author of the Gesta Francorum, that the battle was fought in campo Vocladensi, on the banks of the Clain [Vouillé, more than ten miles from the river; see Longnon, Géographie de la Gaule au vim siècle, 576 sqq.] about ten miles to the south [north] of Poitiers. Clovis overtook and attacked the Visigoths near Vivonne, and the victory was decided near a village still named Champagné St. Hilaire. See the Dissertations of the Abbé le Bœuf, tom. i. p. 304-331. [It is odd that Procopius should make Carcassonne the strategic object of the Franks and the scene of the battle. He says that the treasures of the Visigoths were there and seems to confound it with Tolosa. From what source did he draw? Kapkaσlah may have been besieged at a later stage of the war.]

petitor, factious nobles, and a disloyal people; and the remaining forces of the Goths were oppressed by the general consternation, or opposed to each other in civil discord. The victorious king of the Franks proceeded without delay to the siege of Angoulême. At the sound of his trumpets the walls of the city imitated the example of Jericho, and instantly fell to the ground: a splendid miracle which may be reduced to the supposition that some clerical engineers had secretly undermined the foundations of the rampart.58 At Bordeaux, which had submitted without resistance, Clovis established his winter quarters; and his prudent economy transported from Toulouse the royal treasures, which were deposited in the capital of the monarchy. The conqueror penetrated as far as the confines of Spain; 59 restored the honours of the Catholic church; fixed in Aquitain a colony of Franks; and delegated to his lieutenants the easy task of subduing, or extirpating, the nation of the Visigoths. But the Visigoths were protected by the wise and powerful monarch of Italy. While the balance was still equal, Theodoric had perhaps delayed the march of the Ostrogoths; but their strenuous efforts successfully resisted the ambition of Clovis; and the army of the Franks and their Burgundian allies was com

60

58 Angoulême is in the road from Poitiers to Bordeaux; and, although Gregory delays the siege, I can more readily believe that he confounded the order of history than that Clovis neglected the rules of war.

50 Pyrenæos montes usque Perpinianum subjecit, is the expression of Rorico, which betrays his recent date; since Perpignan did not exist before the tenth century (Marca Hispanica, p. 458). This florid and fabulous writer (perhaps a monk of Amiens; see the Abbé le Bœuf, Mém. de l'Académie, tom. xvii. p. 228-245) relates, in the allegorical character of a shepherd, the general history of his countrymen the Franks, but his narrative ends with the death of Clovis.

60 The author of the Gesta Francorum positively affirms, that Clovis fixed a body of Franks in the Saintonge and Bourdelois; and he is not injudiciously followed by Rorico, electos milites atque fortissimos, cum parvulis, atque mulieribus. Yet it should seem that they soon mingled with the Romans of Aquitain, till Charlemagne introduced a more numerous and powerful colony (Dubos, Hist. Critique, tom. ii. p. 215).

pelled to raise the siege of Arles, with the loss, as it is said, of thirty thousand men. These vicissitudes inclined the fierce spirit of Clovis to acquiesce in an advantageous treaty of peace. The Visigoths were suffered to retain the possession of Septimania, a narrow tract of sea-coast, from the Rhone to the Pyrenees; but the ample province of Aquitain, from those mountains to the Loire, was indissolubly united to the kingdom of France.61

After the success of the Gothic war, Clovis accepted the honours of the Roman consulship. The emperor Anastasius ambitiously bestowed on the most powerful rival of Theodoric the title and ensigns of that eminent dignity; yet, from some unknown cause, the name of Clovis has not been inscribed in the Fasti either of the East or West.62 On the

61 In the composition of the Gothic war, I have used the following materials, with due regard to their unequal value. Four epistles from Theodoric, king of Italy (Cassiodor. 1. iii. epist. 1–4, in tom. iv. p. 3-5 [cp. also the letter of Athalaric, Cassiodor. viii. 10]), Procopius (de Bell. Goth. 1. i. c. 12, in tom. ii. p. 32, 33), Gregory of Tours (l. ii. c. 35, 36, 37, in tom. ii. p. 181-183), Jornandes (de Reb. Geticis, c. 58, in tom. ii. p. 28), Fortunatus (in Vit. St. Hilarii, in tom. iii. p. 380), Isidore (in Chron. Goth. in tom. ii. p. 702), the Epitome of Gregory of Tours (in tom. ii. p. 401), the author of the Gesta Francorum (in tom. ii. p. 553-555), the Fragments of Fredegarius (in tom. ii. p. 463), Aimoin (l. i. c. 20, in tom. iii. p. 41, 42), and Rorico (1. iv. in tom. iii. p. 14-19). [Also for siege of Arles: Vita Cæsarii in Bouquet, vol. iii. Further, the Gallic Chronicle of A.D. 511, ed. Mommsen, Chron. Min. i. p. 665; and the Chron. of Maximus of Cæsaraugusta, ib. ii. p. 223.]

62 The Fasti of Italy would naturally reject a consul, the enemy of their sovereign; but any ingenious hypothesis that might explain the silence of Constantinople and Egypt (the Chronicle of Marcellinus, and the Paschal) is overturned by the similar silence of Marius, bishop of Avenche, who composed his Fasti in the kingdom of Burgundy. If the evidence of Gregory of Tours were less weighty and positive (1. ii. c. 38, in tom. ii. p. 183), I could believe that Clovis, like Odoacer, received the lasting title and honours of Patrician (Pagi Critica, tom. ii. p. 474, 492). [There is not the least probability in the theory, supported by Valesius, that Chlodwig was made a Patrician. Nor was he a consul. The solution of the difficulty is supplied by his title in the Prologue to the Lex Salica: proconsolis regis Chlodovechi; which harmonises with Gregory's tamquam consul. Thus Chlodwig received the title of proconsul. Perhaps he asked for the consulship and was refused. Gregory states that the Emperor sent him “a letter about the