Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1827) Vol 2.djvu/410

 S92 THE DECLINE AND FALL CHAP, the fate of their chieftain. Juhan received him with ' mihtary pomp in the council of his officers ; and ex- pressing a generous pity for the fallen state, dissembled his inward contempt for the abject humiliation, of his captive. Instead of exhibiting the vanquished king of the Alemanni as a grateful spectacle to the cities of Gaul, he respectfully laid at the feet of the emperor this splendid trophy of his victory. Chnodomar ex- perienced an honourable treatment : but the impatient barbarian could not long survive his defeat, his con- finement, and his exile '. Juhan sub- After Julian had repulsed the Alemanni from the dues the. c i ^ • Franks. provmces of the Upper Rhine, he turned his arms A.D. 358. against the Franks, who were seated nearer to the ocean on the confines of Gaul and Germany; and who, from their numbers, and still more from their inti*epid valour, had ever been esteemed the most formidable of the barbarians''. Although they were strongly ac- tuated by the allurements of rapine, they professed a disinterested love of war; which they considered as the supreme honour and felicity of human nature; and their minds and bodies were so completely hard- ened by perpetual action, that, according to the lively expression of an orator, the snows of winter were as pleasant to them as the flowers of spring. In the month of December, which followed the battle of Stras- burgh, Julian attacked a body of six hundred Franks, who had thrown themselves into two castles on the Meuse In the midst of that severe season they sus- tained, with inflexible constancy, a siege of fifty-four days; till at length, exhausted by hunger, and satisfied that the vigilance of the enemy, in breaking the ice of the river, left them no hopes of escape, the Franks ' Ammian. xvi. 12 ; Libanius, Oral. x. p. 27G. '' Libanius (Oral. iii. p. 137.) draws a very lively picture of the manners of the Franks. ' Ammianus, xvii. 2 ; Libanius, Orat. x. p. 278. The Greek orator, by misapprehending a passage of Julian, has been induced to represent the Franks as consisting of a tliousand men ; and as his head was always full of the Peloponnesian war, he compares them to the Lacedasmonians, who were besieged and taken in the island of Sphacteria.