Annals of a Fortress

by Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc

The defences of the cité Juliana were just as Philostratus had left them; intact and massive, they defied all attack by main force. To take them a regular siege was necessary. The army of the Frank kings consisted of about forty thousand men when they had laid siege to Autun, and, deducting losses and desertions, it counted scarcely more than thirty-five thousand men on arriving before the city. It was, however, expecting to be reinforced. The body which presented itself on the northern plateau consisted of twenty thousand men, and that which appeared above the lower town of fifteen thousand. The lower town was nearly deserted; all the able-bodied men had taken refuge in the city, and had sent the women, children, and old men to the eastern hills.

The main body of the Franks was therefore able to enter the lower town without striking a blow, and naturally enough, began to pillage it. Clodoald observed from the ramparts the disorder thus occasioned. At nightfall he despatched a thousand men to the place d'armes at the south of the plateau, and reinforced the post that defended the tête de pont on the right bank. The Franks engaged in plundering the town had scarcely taken notice of the large tête de pont placed on the extreme right, but had given special attention to the smaller one opposite the wooden bridge. Towards the third hour of the night Clodoald had the gates opened, and led forth his men in silence. The Franks had scarcely kept a guard at this point. Surprised by Clodoald's attack, they went up again to the lower town, uttering cries of alarm.

Many had encamped between the Emporium[See [Fig. 16].] and the tête de pont; the Burgundians passed round them, and attacking them unawares, drove into the river those who were not massacred. At the same time Clodoald set fire to the whole quarter. The wind was blowing from the south, and the habitations situated on the banks of the river soon presented a mass of flames. When, the Franks having rallied, their forces were on the point of taking the offensive, the Burgundians had already re-entered the tête de pont, and were re-ascending the plateau. The Franks had lost from four to five hundred men in this skirmish, while of the besieged not more than twenty men had been put hors de combat. This commencement brought joy to the city, and those who from the top of the ramparts saw their houses in flames, endured their ill-fortune patiently, thinking of the vengeance they might reasonably anticipate.

Experienced in war as he was, Clodoald would not allow this ardour to cool. On the morning which followed this night so fatal to the Franks, he formed two bodies of two thousand men each, well armed with angons, francisques, and scamasaxes (for throughout Gaul at that time these weapons were common to the Franks, the Gauls, and the Burgundians, with some slight variations). He ordered a body of about five hundred men to issue by the eastern gate of the southern place d'armes, to cross the rivulet, and make a show of intending to pass the river below the stone bridge of the valley, by means of light boats which four men could carry on their shoulders. These boats had been stowed away in the place d'armes. At the same time, one of the two bodies was to assemble in the northern outpost, which had not yet been attacked, and make a vigorous sortie. Clodoald himself, with a body of a thousand men, was to pass the eastern gate of the city, skirt the ramparts and the outpost, and come to sustain the attack and take the enemy in flank. The five hundred men furnished with boats were to limit themselves to such a pretence of crossing over as would be sufficient to attract the Franks to the spot; then the second troop was to pass the great tête de pont and act as the occasion might suggest, either attacking the enemy on the march, if he followed the descent of the river, or keeping back the Franks coming from the lower town. A body of a thousand men were to fall upon the troop presenting itself on the banks of the river, and cut them to pieces or drown them.[see [Fig. 16].]

This plan well explained to his lieutenants, the movement commenced about the fourth hour of the day. The two Frank kings had taken the command: Childebert of the troops encamped on the north, Clotaire of the body encamped on the west in the lower town. A bridge of rafts had been early constructed five hundred paces above the isle of sand, to establish a communication between the two bodies.

It must be observed that after taking Autun, the two chiefs did not expect any serious resistance in the rest of Burgundy. On the strength of the reports that had reached them, they were persuaded that Gondomar had been killed, that the garrison of Autun constituted his best soldiers, and that the other strong towns would be defended, if at all, only by inexperienced men.

The event of the preceding night, however, caused them to reconsider their judgment; and at the moment when the sortie on the north was taking place, the two chiefs were planning to take the tête de pont by a vigorous effort, and at the same time to attack the northern outpost.

The Franks are inclined, even more than the Gauls, to take for truth what they desire to find so; and the two kings were under the persuasion that the garrison within the city was small in number, and would be disconcerted by these two simultaneous attacks. Things were in this position when the Frank chiefs received the news that the line of investment on the north was attacked.

By the term "line of investment" must not be understood a disposition of their forces presenting a complete analogy with the strategic arrangements of modern times. This line consisted of a body of men, one thousand strong, grouped somewhat confusedly behind a barricade of trees and brushwood, four hundred paces from the northern salient. A second body followed, consisting in great part of cavalry, dispersed in the woods at a hundred paces from the first line, and masking the encampment of Childebert, surrounded by the bulk of his troops.

At the first alarm the two kings mounted their horses, and, hurrying along with them those who were equipped for fight, hastened to the field of action. The cavalry of the second line dashed forwards to aid the first, separating into two squadrons to attack the enemy on his flanks.