CHAPTER VII .-- --THE GERMANS IN GAUL .-- THE FRANKS AND CLOVIS.
About A.D.241 or 242 the sixth Roman legion, commanded by Aurelian, at that time military tribune, and thirty years later, emperor, had just finished a campaign on the Rhine, undertaken for the purpose of driving the Germans from Gaul, and was preparing for Eastern service, to make war on the Persians.

The soldiers sang,-- We have slain a thousand Franks and a thousand Sarmatians; we want a thousand, thousand, Thousand Persians.
[Illustration: Germans invading Gaul----129] That was, apparently, a popular burden at the time, for on the days of military festivals, at Rome and in Gaul, the children sang, as they danced,-- We have cut off the heads of a thousand, thousand, thousand, Thousand; One man hath cut off the heads of a thousand, thousand, thousand, Thousand, thousand; May he live a thousand, thousand years, he who hath slain a thousand, thousand! Nobody hath so much of wine as he hath of blood poured out.
Aurelian, the hero of these ditties, was indeed much given to the pouring out of blood, for at the approach of a fresh war he wrote to the senate,-- "I marvel, Conscript Fathers, that ye have so much misgiving about opening the Sibylline books, as if ye were deliberating in an assembly of Christians, and not in the temple of all the gods.

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