For no
beneficial purpose to mankind could the dominion of the seven-hilled
city have been restored or prolonged. But it was all-important to
mankind what nations should divide among them Rome's rich inheritance of
empire. Whether the Germanic and Gothic warriors should form states and
kingdoms out of the fragments of her dominions, and become the free
members of the Commonwealth of Christian Europe, or whether pagan
savages, from the wilds of central Asia, should crush the relics of
classic civilization and the early institutions of the Christianized
Germans in one hopeless chaos of barbaric conquest. The Christian
Visigoths of King Theodoric fought and triumphed at Chalons side by side
with the legions of Aetius. Their joint victory over the Hunnish host
not only rescued for a time from destruction the old age of Rome, but
preserved for centuries of power and glory the Germanic element in the
civilization of modern Europe.
In order to estimate the full importance to mankind of the battle of
Chalons we must keep steadily in mind who and what the Germans were, and
the important distinctions between them and the numerous other races
that assailed the Roman Empire; and it is to be understood that the
Gothic and Scandinavian nations are included in the German race.
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