Some Frankish tribes allied themselves more or less fleetingly with the imperial government, at the same time that they preserved their independence; others pursued, throughout the empire, their life of incursion and adventure. From A.D. 260 to 268, under the reign of Gallienus, a band of Franks threw itself upon Gaul, scoured it from northeast to southeast, plundering and devastating on its way; then it passed from Aquitania into Spain, took and burned Tarragona, gained possession of certain vessels, sailed away, and disappeared in Africa, after having wandered about for twelve years at its own will and pleasure. There was no lack of valiant emperors, precarious and ephemeral as their power may have been, to defend the empire, and especially Gaul, against those enemies, themselves ephemeral, but forever recurring; Decius, Valerian, Gallienus, Claudius Gothicus, Aurelian, and Probus gallantly withstood those repeated attacks of German hordes. Sometimes they flattered themselves they had gained a definitive victory, and then the old Roman pride exhibited itself in their patriotic confidence. About A.D. 278, the emperor Probus, after gaining several victories in Gaul over the Franks, wrote to the senate: "I render thanks to the immortal gods, conscript fathers, for that they have confirmed your judgment as regards me. Germany is subdued throughout its whole extent; nine kings of different nations have come and cast themselves at my feet, or rather at yours, as suppliants with their foreheads in the dust. Already all those barbarians are tilling for you, sowing for you, and fighting for you against the most distant nations. Order ye, therefore, according to your custom, prayers of thanksgiving, for we have slain four thousand of the enemy; we have had offered to us sixteen thousand men ready armed; and we have wrested from the enemy the seventy most important towns. The Gauls, in fact, are completely delivered. The crowns offered to me by all the cities of Gaul I have submitted, conscript fathers, to your grace; dedicate ye them with your own hands to Jupiter, all-bountiful, all-powerful, and to the other immortal gods and goddesses. All the booty is retaken, and, further, we have made fresh captures, more considerable than our first losses; the fields of Gaul are tilled by the oxen of the barbarians, and German teams bend their necks in slavery to our husbandmen; divers nations raise cattle for our consumption, and horses to remount our cavalry; our stores are full of the corn of the barbarians--in one word, we have left to the vanquished naught but the soil; all their other possessions are ours. We had at first thought it necessary, conscript fathers, to appoint a new governor of Germany; but we have put off this measure to the time when our ambition shall be more completely satisfied, which will be, as it seems to us, when it shall have pleased divine Providence to increase and multiply the forces of our armies."