holding the district of Rheims and
Soissons. "Campum sibi praeparari jussit--he commanded his antagonist
to prepare him a battle-field"--see Gibbon's note and reference, chap.
xxxviii. (6, 297). The Benedictine abbey of Nogent was afterwards
built on the field, marked by a circle of Pagan sepulchres. "Clovis
bestowed the adjacent lands of Leuilly and Coucy on the church of
Rheims."[20]

[Footnote 20: When?--for this tradition, as well as that of the vase,
points to a friendship between Clovis and St. Remy, and a singular
respect on the King's side for the Christians of Gaul, though he was
not yet himself converted.]

A.D. 485. The Battle of Soissons. Not dated by Gibbon: the subsequent
death of Syagrius at the court of (the younger) Alaric, was in
486--take 485 for the battle.

50. A.D. 493. I cannot find any account of the relations between Clovis
and the King of Burgundy, the uncle of Clotilde, which preceded his
betrothal to the orphan princess. Her uncle, according to the common
history, had killed both her father and mother, and compelled her sister
to take the veil--motives none assigned, nor authorities. Clotilde
herself was pursued on her way to France,[21] and the litter in which
she travelled captured, with part of her marriage portion. But the
princess herself mounted on horseback, and rode with part of her escort,
forward into France, "ordering her attendants to set fire to everything
that pertained to her uncle and his subjects which they might meet with
on the way."

[Footnote 21: It is a curious proof of the want in vulgar historians of
the slightest sense of the vital interest of anything they tell, that
neither in Gibbon, nor in Messrs. Bussey and Gaspey, nor in the
elaborate 'Histoire des Villes de France,' can I find, with the best
research my winter's morning allows, what city was at this time the
capital of Burgundy, or at least in which of its four nominal
capitals,--Dijon, Besancon, Geneva, and Vienne,--Clotilde was brought
up. The evidence seems to me in favour of Vienne--(called always by
Messrs. B. and G., 'Vienna,' with what effect on the minds of their
dimly geographical readers I cannot say)--the rather that Clotilde's
mother is said to have been "thrown into the _Rhone_ with a stone
round her neck." The author of the introduction to 'Bourgogne' in the
'Histoire des Villes' is so eager to get his little spiteful snarl at
anything like religion anywhere, that he entirely forgets the
ex