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1.: THE BATTLE OF MAURICA, COMMONLY CALLED THE BATTLE OF CHÂLONS — ( P. 59 ) - Edward Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, vol. 6 [1776]

Edition used:

The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, ed. J.B. Bury with an Introduction by W.E.H. Lecky (New York: Fred de Fau and Co., 1906), in 12 vols. Vol. 6.

Part of: The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, 12 vols.

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1.

THE BATTLE OF MAURICA, COMMONLY CALLED THE BATTLE OF CHÂLONS — (P. 59)

The scene of the battle by which the invasion of Attila was checked has been the subject of some perplexity. The statements which have to be considered are the following: —

1. Idatius: in campis Catalaunicis haud longe de civitate quam effregerant Mettis.

2. An insertion in the text of Prosper, found in the Codex Havniensis, and doubtless representing an entry in the Chronica Italica. Mommsen, Chron. Min. i. p. 302 and 481: pugnatum est in quinto milliario de Trecas, loco numcupato Maurica in Campania.

3. Chron. 511 (see above, vol. iv. Appendix 5), Mommsen, Chron. Min. i. p. 663: Tricassis pugnat loco Mauriacos.

4a. Jordanes c. 36: convenitur itaque in campos Catalaunicos, qui et Mauriaci nominantur, centum leuvas ut Galli vocant in longum tenentes et septuaginta in latum. (A Gallic leuva or league = 1½ Roman miles.)

4b. Gregory of Tours, 2, 7: Mauriacum campum adiens se præcingit ad bellum [Attila]. The accounts of the episode in Jordanes and Gregory are not independent; cp. Mommsen, Pref. to Jordanes, p. xxxvi.

The traditional view that the battle was fought near Duro-Catalaunum or Châlons on Marne is not borne out by the data. That town is not mentioned, and the notice of Jordanes shows that its proximity is not implied by the name “Catalaunian Plains,” for Maurica might have been at the other extremity. Setting aside Idatius, whose statement is discredited by the words “not far from Metz,” we find the other notices agreeing in the designation of the battlefield as the Mauriac Plain, or a place named Maurica, and one of them gives the precise distance from Troyes. The name Maurica, Mauriac, has been identified with great probability with Mery (on Seine), about twenty miles from Troyes. There seems therefore every likelihood that the battle was fought between Troyes and Mery, and the solution, for which Mr. Hodgkin well argues (Italy, i. p. 143-5), is confirmed, as he observes, by the strategical importance of Troyes, which was at the centre of many roads.

An interesting discovery was made in 1842 at the village of Pouan, about 10 miles from Mery-on-Seine. A skeleton was found with a two-edged sword and a cutlass, both adorned with gold, and a number of gold ornaments, one of them a ring with the inscription HEVA. They are the subject of a memoir by M. Peigné Delacourt (1860), who claimed the grave as the tomb of the Visigothic king Theodoric. See Hodgkin (ib. p. 140). In any case the remains may well be connected with the great battle.