Page:Cliff Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe.djvu/198

 supremacy. And as he had obtained the strongest and most numerous adhesions in Poitou he resolved there to strike a decisive blow.

He prepared his expedition with such secrecy and moved with such celerity that Alaric II., King of the Visigoths, did not become aware of his peril till the army of Clovis was on the confines of his realm. He threw himself into Poitiers, and assembled all the forces he was able to call together. Clovis crossed the Loire at Tours, and directed his march towards Poitiers; he passed over the Creusse at Port de Pilles, and reached the Vienne. The season was the end of September, and there had been so much and such continuous rain that the river was swollen, and he could not cross. Accordingly he and his army ascended it on the right bank seeking for a ford.

He reached Chauvigny, where was a ford, but this was now found impracticable. On the left hand of the present road to Lussac-le-Chateau is a stony, narrow, waterless valley, up which formerly ran the old Roman highway. At the 2½ kilometre stone is a dense thicket of oak coppice, clothing the steep side of the valley. By scrambling down this, clinging to the oak-branches, one reaches a bluff of chalk rock, hollowed out by Nature at the foot to the depth of 10 feet, and running horizontally to the length of from 32 to 34 feet, and terminating in a natural barrier of rock. It contracts in one place so as to form two chambers. Now this gallery is closed towards the valley by a screen of six huge slabs 8 and 9 feet long, 8 and 9 feet high, and 4 feet thick. They have apparently been slung down from above, and caught and planted so as to wall up the open side of the recess. And at the north end another block, now broken, was set at right angles so as to half close the gallery at the end, leaving a doorway for access to the interior. The attempt to plant these huge slabs on a steep slope was not in every case successful, for a couple slid down the