Attila, the king of this people, constrained all the tribes wandering between the Rhine and the Oural to follow him. For some time he hesitated upon which of the two empires he should carry the wrath of heaven. Deciding upon the West, he passed the Rhine, the Moselle, and the Seine, and marched upon Orleans. The populations fled before him in indescribable terror, for the _Scourge of God_, as he was called, left not one stone upon another wheresoever he passed. Metz and twenty other cities had been destroyed. Troyes alone had been saved by its bishop, Saint Loup. He wished to seize upon Orleans, the key of the southern provinces; and his innumerable army surrounded the city. Its bishop, St. Aignan, sustained the courage of the inhabitants by promising them a powerful succor. Ætius, in fact, arrived with all the barbarian nations encamped in Gaul, at the expense of which the new invasion was made. Attila for the first time fell back; but in order to choose a battle-field favorable for his cavalry, he halted in the Catalaunian plains near Méry-sur-Seine. There the terrible shock of battle took place. In the first onset the Franks, who formed the vanguard of Ætius, fought with such animosity that 15,000 Huns strewed the plain. But next day, when the great masses on both sides encountered, the bodies of 165,000 combatants were left on that field of carnage. Attila was conquered. The allies, however, not daring to drive the wild Huns to despair, suffered Attila to retreat into Germany (451). In the year following he made amends for his defeat by an invasion of northern Italy, ravaging Aquileia, Milan, and other cities in a frightful manner, but died of an apoplectic stroke (453), soon after his return, and his empire fell with him, but not the terrible remembrance of his name and of his cruelties. The Visigoths, whose king had perished in the fight, and the Franks of Meroveus, had had, with Ætius, the chief honor of that memorable day in the Catalaunian plains. For it had become a question whether Europe should be German or Mongolian, whether the fierce Huns or the Germans should found an empire on the ruins of that which was then crumbling.[F] FALL OF THE WESTERN EMPIRE—MANNERS AND MORALS OF THE GERMANS IN THIS AGE.