Gratian, Valens' colleague and nephew, son of Valentinian the bear-ward, had just won a great victory over the Allemanni at Colmar in Alsace; and Valens was jealous of his glory. He is said to have been a virtuous youth, whose monomania was shooting. He fell in love with the wild Alans, in spite of their horse-trappings of scalps, simply because of their skill in archery; formed a body-guard of them, and passed his time hunting with them round Paris. Nevertheless, he won this great victory by the help, it seems, of one Count Ricimer ('ever-powerful'), Count of the Domestics, whose name proclaims him a German. Valens was jealous of Gratian's fame; he was stung by the reproaches of the mob of Constantinople; and he undervalued the Goths, on account of some successes of his lieutenants, who had recovered much of the plunder taken by them, and had utterly overpowered the foul Taifalae, transporting them to lands about Modena and Parma in Italy. He rejected Count Ricimer's advice to wait till Gratian reinforced him with the victorious western legions, and determined to give battle a few miles from Adrianople. Had he waited for Gratian, the history of the whole world might have been different. For on the ninth of August, A.D. 378, the fatal day, the second Cannae, from which Rome never recovered as from that first, the young world and the old world met, and fought it out; and the young world won. The light Roman cavalry fled before the long lances and heavy swords of the German knights. The knights turned on the infantry, broke them, hunted them down by charge after charge, and left the footmen to finish the work. Two-thirds of the Roman army were destroyed; four Counts of the Empire; generals and officers without number. Valens fled wounded to a cottage. The Goths set it on fire, and burned him and his staff therein, ignorant that they had in their hands the Emperor of Rome. Verily there is a God who judgeth the earth. So thought the Catholics of that day, who saw in the fearful death of Valens a punishment for his having forced the Goths to become Arians. 'It was just,' says one, 'that he should burn on earth, by whose counsels so many barbarians will burn in hell for ever.' There are (as I have shewn) still darker counts in the conduct of the Romans toward the Goths; enough (if we believe our Bibles) to draw down on the guilty the swift and terrible judgments of God.