of the conquest of the Roman world, and of Gaul in particular, by Christianity.  No doubt the majority of the inhabitants were not as yet Christians; but it was clear that the Christians were in the ascendant and had command of the future.  Of the two grand elements which were to meet together, on the ruins of Roman society, for the formation of modern society, the moral element, the Christian religion, had already taken possession of souls; the devastated territory awaited the coming of new peoples, known to history under the general name of Germans, whom the Romans called the barbarians.

CHAPTER VII.——­THE GERMANS IN GAUL.—­THE FRANKS AND CLOVIS.

About A.D. 241 or 242 the sixth Roman legion, commanded by Aurelian, at that time military tribune, and thirty years later, emperor, had just finished a campaign on the Rhine, undertaken for the purpose of driving the Germans from Gaul, and was preparing for Eastern service, to make war on the Persians.  The soldiers sang,—­

     We have slain a thousand Franks and a thousand Sarmatians;
     we want a thousand, thousand, Thousand Persians.

[Illustration:  Germans invading Gaul——­129]

That was, apparently, a popular burden at the time, for on the days of military festivals, at Rome and in Gaul, the children sang, as they danced,—­

We have cut off the heads of a thousand, thousand, thousand, Thousand; One man hath cut off the heads of a thousand, thousand, thousand, Thousand, thousand; May he live a thousand, thousand years, he who hath slain a thousand, thousand!  Nobody hath so much of wine as he hath of blood poured out.

Aurelian, the hero of these ditties, was indeed much given to the pouring out of blood, for at the approach of a fresh war he wrote to the senate,—­

“I marvel, Conscript Fathers, that ye have so much misgiving about opening the Sibylline books, as if ye were deliberating in an assembly of Christians, and not in the temple of all the gods. . . .  Let inquiry be made of the sacred books, and let celebration take place of the ceremonies that ought to be fulfilled.  Far from refusing, I offer, with zeal, to satisfy all expenditure required, with captives of every nationality, victims of royal rank.  It is no shame to conquer with the aid of the gods; it is thus that our ancestors began and ended many a war.”

Human sacrifices, then, were not yet foreign to Pagan festivals, and probably the blood of more than one Frankish captive on that occasion flowed in the temple of all the gods.