s
and infants alike were slain, and the flourishing city was so utterly
destroyed that only a chapel of St. Stephen was left to mark its site.
Its able-bodied inhabitants were probably reserved to be sold as slaves.

And now, in the prosecution of his ruinous march, Attila fixed his camp
before the walls of Orleans, a city which he designed to make the
central post of the dominion which he hoped to establish in Gaul. It was
to be his fortified centre of conquest. Upon it rested the fate of the
whole great province.

Orleans lay behind its walls trembling with dread, as the neigh of the
Hunnish horses sounded in its ears, as the standards of the Hunnish host
floated in the air. Yet it was not quite defenceless. Its walls had been
recently strengthened. Behind them lay a force of soldiers, or of armed
citizens, who repelled the first assaults of the foe. An army was known
to be marching to its relief. All was not lost.

Forty years earlier Rome had fallen before Alaric, the Goth. The empire
was now in the last stages of decreptitude. Yet by fortunate chance it
had an able soldier at the head of its armies, AEtius, the noblest son of
declining Rome. "The graceful figure of AEtius," says a contemporary
historian, "was not above the middle stature; but his manly limbs were
admirably formed for strength, beauty, and agility; and he excelled in
the martial exercises of managing a horse, drawing the bow, and darting
the javelin. He could patiently endure the want of food or of sleep; and
his mind and body were alike capable of the most laborious efforts. He
possessed the genuine courage that can despise not only dangers but
injuries; and it was impossible either to corrupt, or deceive, or
intimidate the firm integrity of his soul."

When the Huns invaded Gaul, this skilled and valiant commander flew to
its relief. To his Roman army he added an army of the Visigoths of
Southern Gaul, under their King Theoderic, and marched to the rescue of
the land. But the gathering of this army took precious time, during
which the foe wrought ruin upon the land. The siege of Orleans had begun
by the time AEtius was fairly ready to begin his march.

In that seemingly doomed city all was terror and dismay. A speedy
capture, a frightful massacre, or a no less frightful enslavement to the
savage Huns, was the dread of the trembling inhabitants. They had no
saint to rescue them by his prayers. All their hope lay in the arms of
their feeble gar