e was occasion for swimming, putting
their shields under them like canoes, reached a neighbouring island, and
having landed, killed every one they found on it, men and women, without
distinction of age, like so many sheep. And having found some empty
boats, though they were not very safe, they crossed in them, forcing
their way into many places of the same land. When they were weary of
slaughter, and loaded with a rich booty, some of which, however, they
lost through the violence of the river, they returned back to the camp
without losing a man.

10. And when this was known, the rest of the Germans, thinking they
could no longer trust the garrisons left in the islands, removed their
relations, and their magazines, and their barbaric treasures, into the
inland parts.

11. After this Julian turned his attention to repair the fortress known
by the name of Saverne, which had a little time before been destroyed by
a violent attack of the enemy, but which, while it stood, manifestly
prevented the Germans from forcing their way into the interior of the
Gauls, as they had been accustomed to do; and he executed this work with
greater rapidity than he expected, and he laid up for the garrison which
he intended to post there sufficient magazines for a whole year's
consumption, which his army collected from the crops of the barbarians,
not without occasional contests with the owners.

12. Nor indeed was he contented with this, but he also collected
provisions for himself and his army sufficient for twenty days. For the
soldiers delighted in using the food which they had won with their own
right hands, being especially indignant because, out of all the supplies
which had been recently sent them, they were not able to obtain
anything, inasmuch as Barbatio, when they were passing near his camp,
had with great insolence seized on a portion of them, and had collected
all the rest into a heap and burnt them. Whether he acted thus out of
his own vanity and insane folly, or whether others were really the
authors of this wickedness, relying on the command of the emperor
himself, has never been known.

13. However, as far as report went, the story commonly was, that Julian
had been elected Caesar, not for the object of relieving the distresses
of the Gauls, but rather of being himself destroyed by the formidable
wars in which he was sure to be involved; being at that time, as was
supposed, inexperienced in war, and not likely to endure e