The Goths, one of the fierce German nations, had conquered a large part of Gaul after it had become a Roman province, and in the year 451, the Huns, a more terrible nation still, whose chief was the famous Attila, who called himself the “Scourge of God,” invaded Gaul with his army,—horrible looking men, whose faces had been gashed by their savage parents in their infancy, that they might look more dreadful. The poor Gauls thought rightly, that it was more fearful to fall into their hands than into those of the Franks; but the Huns came no further than Orleans, where an army, composed of Gauls, Franks, Goths, Burgundians, all under the Roman general Ætius, attacked the Huns at Châlons-sur-Marne, beat them, and drove them back. Châlons was the last victory in Gaul, won under the Roman banners, and now the poor Gauls were obliged to meet their enemies alone. The chief tribes of those warlike races, who swarmed over Europe, both north and south, were the Goths who conquered Rome, and settled in Spain; the Longbeards or Lombards, who spread over the north of Italy; the Burgundians, or town-livers, who held all the country around the Alps; the Swabians and Germans, who stayed in the middle of Europe; the Saxons, who dwelt south of the Baltic, and finally conquered South Britain; the Northmen, who found a home in Scandinavia; and the Franks, who had been long settled on the rivers Sale, Meuse, and Rhine. Their name meant freemen, and they were noted for using an axe, called after them. Of the Franks there were two noted tribes,—the Salian, from the river Sale, and the Ripuarian. They were great horsemen, and the Salians had a family of kings, who were supposed to have descended from one of their warlike gods, called Odin. Although the Franks were a ferocious and sometimes cruel race, they were in some respects superior to the other barbaric tribes, and were liked better by the Gauls than any other of those various nations. [Illustration: THE HUNS AT CHÂLONS.]