Nor was he to escape without battle. The Imperial armies pressing on behind him gained upon him daily, a sufficient comment upon his state, and it was really in despair that he reached at last the city of Troyes, more than a hundred miles from Orleans, an open city which there might, he hoped, be time to loot, and so to restore to some extent the confidence and the condition of his people. That he was not able to loot Troyes is the best evidence we could have of the energy of the Imperial pursuit; but here again we meet with one of those almost incredible interpositions of the spiritual power that we have already seen at Tongres, at Rheims, at Paris, and not least at Orleans. It must have meant almost everything to Attila on his hurried and harassed road north-east out of Gaul to be able to feed and to rest his army at Troyes, where the great road by which he had come crossed the Seine. That he was not able to do this was doubtless due fundamentally to the pressure of Aetius upon his flanks, but there was something more, we are told. Just as Anianus of Orleans had by his prayers saved his city, so Lupus of Troyes defended his town in the same way. He, the Bishop, and now perhaps the governor, of Troyes went forth to Attila, faced and outfaced him, and indeed so impressed and even terrified the superstitious Barbarian that he left Troyes alone and passed on, taking only the Bishop himself with him a prisoner in his train. “For,” said he, mocking him even in his fear, “if I take a man so holy as you with me I cannot fail of good luck even to the Rhine.” Attila passed on; he had crossed the Seine; before him lay the passage of the Aube, and it was here that the advance guard of the Imperial armies first got into touch with their quarry. It was night. Attila had left the Gepidae to hold the crossing, and it was they who felt the first blows of Aetius whose advance guard was composed of Franks; the fight endured all night and at dawn the passage was won and some 15,000[12] dead and wounded lay upon the field. Attila had crossed into Champagne, but the Imperial army was already at his heels; he would have to fight. The battle which followed, one of the most famous as it is one of the most important in the history of Europe, whose future was there saved and decided, would seem to have been fought all over that wide and bare country of Champagne between the Aube and the Marne, and to have been finally focussed about the great earthwork still called the Camp of Attila by Châlons; it is known to history as the battle of the Catalaunian plains. It may well be that the fight at the passage of the Aube had given Attila time to reach that great earthwork, one of the most gigantic and impressive things in Europe, which rises out of that lost and barren country of Champagne like something not wholly the work of man. There he halted; convinced at last that he could not escape without battle, he encamped his army and made ready for the conflict.