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.

At least, this was the second Cannae, the death-wound of Rome. From
that day the end was certain, however slow. The Teuton had at last
tried his strength against the Roman. The wild forest-child had
found himself suddenly at death-grips with the Enchanter whom he had
feared, and almost worshipped, for so long; and behold, to his own
wonder, he was no more a child, but grown into a man, and the
stronger, if not the cunninger of the two. There had been a spell