superseded by personal attachment or military honor.

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 competitor, 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 Angouleme. 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. At Bordeaux, which had submitted without resistance, Clovis
established his winter quarters; and his prudent economy transported
from Thoulouse the royal treasures, which were deposited in the capital
of the monarchy. The conqueror penetrated as far as the confines of
Spain; restored the honors 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 compelled 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.

After the success of the Gothic war, Clovis accepted the honors of the
Roman consulship. The emperor Anastasius ambitiously bestow