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Attila directed it against Orleans, on the Loire, an important strategic position. Aetius went to meet him, bringing all the barbaric auxiliaries he could collect Britons, Franks, Burgundians, Sueves, Saxons, Visigoths. It was not so much Roman against barbarian, as Europe against Asia, which was now arrayed upon the plains of Champagne, for Orleans had fallen into the hands of the Huns.
With the coming of spring in the following year, 778, and with the full assent of his chief warriors, he began his march toward the Pyrenees, crossed the Loire, and halted at Casseneuil, at the confluence of the Lot and the Garonne, to celebrate there the festival of Easter, and to make preparations for his expedition thence.
Yet, far from being vanquished by the day appointed, they had crossed the Loire in great force, and, having traversed Brittany, were preparing to make an attack on Granville.
In the center the victory of Coulmiers, achieved on the 3d of November by the army of the Loire, had resuscitated for a moment the hopes of the country: Orleans was to be reoccupied, the Bavarians were to be put to flight, the movement by way of Etampes was to culminate in the relief of Paris; but on December 5 Prince Frederick Charles had retaken Orleans and cut in two the army of the Loire, of which three corps fell back on Bourges and Vierzon, while the remaining two, commanded by General Chanzy, retired to Mans, fighting and falling back alternately for a whole week, most gallantly.
Suffolk fled to the bridge which spanned the Loire: there he was captured. A soldier named William Regnault beat him to the ground, but Suffolk refused to yield to one so low in rank, and is said to have dubbed his victor knight before giving him up his sword. Besides Suffolk, a brother of his was taken, and four or five hundred men were killed or captured. The place was pillaged.
This wholesome and prudent diet, besides being good for his doubloons, kept him frisky and light as a greyhound, gave him a clear understanding and a warm heart for the water of the Loire is of all syrups the most strengthening, because having its course afar off it is invigorated by its long run, through many strands, before it reaches Tours.
Caesar ordered the Aedui to furnish his commissariat, sent word to the Boii that he was coming to their relief, swept through the Senones, that he might leave no enemy in his rear, and then advanced on Gien, where the Roman traders had been murdered, and which the Carnutes still occupied in force. There was a bridge there over the Loire, by which they tried to escape in the night.
At Nantes, where echoes of the Vendee insurrection were long heard, the brutal Jacobin deputy Carrier loaded unhappy victims on old hulks which were towed out into the Loire and sunk. The total number of those who perished in the provinces is unknown, but it may have reached ten thousand.
The empire of Charlemagne had been broken up and divided among his grandsons; and the fraction which was to be France, was then confined between the Loire and the Meuse. Here was a golden opportunity for Rollo the Ganger and his vikings. Meeting with no formidable opposition, they sailed up the Seine and cast anchor at the town of Jumièges, five leagues from Rouen.
"Through thy cornfields green, and sunny vines, O pleasant land of France." The lines which she had read in her youth came back to memory as the train crossed the broad waters of the Loire and sped through valleys of grapes and olives, surrounded by hills of smiling green.
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