CHAPTER VI.
THE BATTLE OF CHALONS, A.D. 451.
The discomfiture of the mighty attempt of Attila to found a new Anti-Christian dynasty upon the wreck of the temporal power of Rome, at the end of the term of twelve hundred years, to which its duration had been limited by the forebodings of the heathen. — Herbert.
A broad expanse of plains, the Campi Catalaunici of the ancients, spreads far and wide around the city of Châlons, in the north-east of France. The long rows of poplars, through which the river Marne winds its way, and a few thinly-scattered villages, are almost the only objects that vary the monotonous aspect of the greater part of this region. But about five miles from Châlons, near the little hamlets of Chape and Cuperly, the ground is indented and heaped up in ranges of grassy mounds and trenches, which attest the work of man's hands in ages past; and which, to the practised eye, demonstrate that this quiet spot has once been the fortified position of a huge military host.
