ches to relieve Orleans, and
to give battle to the innumerable host of Attila. [38]

[Footnote 36:

Vix liquerat Alpes
Aetius, tenue, et rarum sine milite ducens
Robur, in auxiliis Geticum male credulus agmen
Incassum propriis praesumens adfore castris.
---Panegyr. Avit. 328, &c.]

[Footnote 37: The policy of Attila, of Aetius, and of the Visigoths, is
imperfectly described in the Panegyric of Avitus, and the thirty-sixth
chapter of Jornandes. The poet and the historian were both biased
by personal or national prejudices. The former exalts the merit and
importance of Avitus; orbis, Avite, salus, &c.! The latter is anxious
to show the Goths in the most favorable light. Yet their agreement when
they are fairly interpreted, is a proof of their veracity.]

[Footnote 38: The review of the army of Aetius is made by Jornandes,
c. 36, p. 664, edit. Grot. tom. ii. p. 23, of the Historians of France,
with the notes of the Benedictine editor. The Loeti were a promiscuous
race of Barbarians, born or naturalized in Gaul; and the Riparii, or
Ripuarii, derived their name from their post on the three rivers,
the Rhine, the Meuse, and the Moselle; the Armoricans possessed the
independent cities between the Seine and the Loire. A colony of Saxons
had been planted in the diocese of Bayeux; the Burgundians were settled
in Savoy; and the Breones were a warlike tribe of Rhaetians, to the east
of the Lake of Constance.]

On their approach the king of the Huns immediately raised the siege, and
sounded a retreat to recall the foremost of his troops from the pillage
of a city which they had already entered. [39] The valor of Attila was
always guided by his prudence; and as he foresaw the fatal consequences
of a defeat in the heart of Gaul, he repassed the Seine, and expected
the enemy in the plains of Chalons, whose smooth and level surface
was adapted to the operations of his Scythian cavalry. But in this
tumultuary retreat, the vanguard of the Romans and their allies
continually pressed, and sometimes engaged, the troops whom Attila had
posted in the rear; the hostile columns, in the darkness of the night
and the perplexity of the roads, might encounter each other without
design; and the bloody conflict of the Franks and Gepidae, in which
fifteen thousand [40] Barbarians were slain, was a prelude to a
more general and decisive action. The Catalaunian fields [41] spread
themselves round Chalons, and extend, accord