At last the barbarians, in their impatience, having vainly attempted to storm the Roman camp, struck their own, and put themselves in motion towards the Alps.  For six whole days, it is said, their bands were defiling beneath the ramparts of the Romans, and crying, “Have you any message for your wives?  We shall soon be with them.”

Marius, too, struck his camp, and followed them.  They halted, both of them, near Aix, on the borders of the Coenus, the barbarians in the valley, Marius on a hill which commanded it.  The ardor of the Romans was at its height; it was warm weather; there was a want of water on the hill, and the soldiers murmured.  “You are men,” said Marius, pointing to the river below, “and there is water to be bought with blood.”  “Why don’t you lead us against them at once, then,” said a soldier, “whilst we still have blood in our veins?” “We must first fortify our camp,” answered Marius quietly.

The soldiers obeyed:  but the hour of battle had come, and well did Marius know it.  It commenced on the brink of the Coenus, between some Ambrons who were bathing and some Roman slaves gone down to draw water.  When the whole horde of the Ambrons advanced to the battle, shouting their war-cry of Ambra!  Ambra! a body of Gallic auxiliaries in the Roman army, and in the first rank, heard them with great amazement; for it was their own name and their own cry; there were tribes of Ambrons in the Alps subjected to Rome as well as in the Helvetic Alps; and Ambra!  Ambra! resounded on both sides.

The battle lasted two days, the first against the Ambrons, the second against the Teutons.  Both were beaten, in spite of their savage bravery, and the equal bravery of their women, who defended, with indomitable obstinacy, the cars with which they had remained almost alone, in charge of the children and the booty.  After the women, it was necessary to exterminate the hounds who defended their masters’ bodies.  Here again the figures of the historians are absurd, although they differ; the most extravagant raise the number of barbarians slain to two hundred thousand, and that of the prisoners to eighty thousand; the most moderate stop at one hundred thousand.  In any case, the carnage was great, for the battle-field, where all these corpses rested without burial, rotting in the sun and rain, got the name of Campi Putridi, or Fields of Putrefaction, a name traceable even nowadays in that of Pourrires, a neighboring village.

[Illustration:  The Women defending the Cars——­58]

As to the booty, the Roman army with one voice made a free gift of it to Marius; but he, remembering, perhaps, what had been lately done by the barbarians after the defeat of the consuls Manlius and Czepio, determined to have it all burned in honor of the gods.  He had a great sacrifice prepared.  The soldiers, crowned with laurel, were ranged about the pyre; their general, holding on high a blazing torch, was about to apply the light with his own hand, when suddenly, on the very spot, whether by design or accident, came from Rome the news that Marius had just been for the fifth time elected consul.  In the midst of acclamations from his army, and with a fresh chaplet bound upon his brow, he applied the torch in person, and completed the sacrifice.