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 112 THE DECLINE AND FALL [Chap, xxxviii protect an unfortunate fugitive ; the pusillanimous 20 Goths were intimidated by the menaces of Clovis ; and the Eoman king, after a short confinement, was delivered into the hands of the execu- tioner. The Belgic cities surrendered to the king of the Franks ; 21 and his dominions were enlarged towards the East by the ample diocese of Tongres, 22 which Clovis subdued in the tenth year of his reign. Defeat ana The name of the Alemanni has been absurdly derived from of the Aie- their imaginary settlement on the banks of the Leman lake. 23 a.d. 496 That fortunate district, from the lake to Avenche and Mount Jura, was occupied by the Burgundians. 24 The northern parts of Helvetia had indeed been subdued by the ferocious Ale- manni, who destroyed with their own hands the fruits of their conquest. A province, improved and adorned by the arts of Eome, was again reduced to a savage wilderness ; and some vestige of the stately Vindonissa may still be discovered in the fertile and populous valley of the Aar. 25 From the source of 20 The epithet must be confined to the circumstances ; and history cannot justify the French prejudice of Gregory (1. ii. c. 27, in torn. ii. p. 175), ut Gothorum pavere mos est. 21 [Gregory tells of the siege of Rheims after the victory over Syagrius. That victory extended the dominion of Chlodwig to the Seine ; in the following years he advanced by degrees to the Loire. This progress, indicated in the Liber historiae Francorum by the words usque Ligere fluvio occupavit (c. 14), is not clearly marked in earlier sources (Gregory passes it over), but it can be traced in the story told by Procopius (B. G. i. 12) of the dealings between the Franks and the Arboruchi (who are certainly the Armorici) ; in the siege of Paris in the Vita Genovefae ; and in the unsuccessful siege of Nantes in Gregory's De Gloria Martyrum, i. 60. Gibbon places this advance after a.d. 496 ; see below.] 22 Dubos has satisfied me (torn. i. p. 277-286) that Gregory of Tours, his tran- scribers, or his readers, have repeatedly confounded the German kingdom of Thuringia, beyond the Rhine, and the Gallic city of Tongria on the Meuse, which was more anciently the country of the Eburones and more recently the diocese of Liege. [Thoringis bellum intulit, Greg. ii. 27. The facts of the situation show that Gregory applied Thoringi and Thoringia to a people and land on the left bank of the Rhine. Waitz and others have supposed that it was near the sea and the river Wahal. Kurth (op. cit. 113 sqq.) argues strongly in favour of the opinion of Dubos. He thinks that Toringi was the genuine form of the name and Tongri a Latin metathesis.] 23 Populi habitantes juxta Lemannum lacum, Alemanni dicuntur. Servius, ad Virgil Georgic. iv. 278. Dom Bouquet (torn. i. p. 817) has only alleged the more recent and corrupt text of Isidore of Seville. 24 Gregory of Tours sends St. Lupicinus inter ilia Jurensis deserti secreta, quae, inter Burgundiam Alamanniamque sita, AventicaB adjacent civitati, in torn. i. p. 648. M. de Watteville (Hist, de la Confederation Helv^tique, torn. i. p. 9, 10) has accurately defined the Helvetian limits of the duchy of Alemannia and the Trans- jurane Burgundy. They were commensurate with the dioceses of Constance and Avenche, or Lausanne, and are still discriminated, in Modern Switzerland, by the use of the German or French language. 25 See Guilliman de Rebus Helveticis, 1. i. c. 3, p. 11, 12. Within the ancient walls of Vindonissa, the castle of Habsburg, the abbey of Konigsfeld, and the