in the face of a vanquished enemy.

The Goths, clashing their arms, elevated on a buckler his eldest son
Torismund, to whom they justly ascribed the glory of their success; and
the new King accepted the obligation of revenge as a sacred portion of
his paternal inheritance. Yet the Goths themselves were astonished by
the fierce and undaunted aspect of their formidable antagonist; and
their historian has compared Attila to a lion encompassed in his den and
threatening his hunters with redoubled fury. The kings and nations who
might have deserted his standard in the hour of distress were made
sensible that the displeasure of their monarch was the most imminent and
inevitable danger. All his instruments of martial music incessantly
sounded a loud and animating strain of defiance; and the foremost troops
who advanced to the assault were checked or destroyed by showers of
arrows from every side of the intrenchments. It was determined, in a
general council of war, to besiege the King of the Huns in his camp, to
intercept his provisions, and to reduce him to the alternative of a
disgraceful treaty or an unequal combat. But the impatience of the
barbarians soon disdained these cautious and dilatory measures; and the
mature policy of Aetius was apprehensive that, after the extirpation of
the Huns, the republic would be oppressed by the pride and power of the
Gothic nation.

The patrician exerted the superior ascendants of authority and reason to
calm the passions, which the son of Theodoric considered as a duty;
represented, with seeming affection and real truth, the dangers of
absence and delay; and persuaded Torismond to disappoint, by his speedy
return, the ambitious designs of his brothers, who might occupy the
throne and treasures of Toulouse. After the departure of the Goths and
the separation of the allied army, Attila was surprised at the vast
silence that reigned over the plains of Chalons: the suspicion of some
hostile stratagem detained him several days within the circle of his
wagons, and his retreat beyond the Rhine confessed the last victory
which was achieved in the name of the Western Empire. Meroveus and his
Franks, observing a prudent distance, and magnifying the opinion of
their strength by the numerous fires which they kindled every night,
continued to follow the rear of the Huns till they reached the confines
of Thuringia. The Thuringians served in the army of Attila: they
traversed, both in their march and