Ammianus Marcellinus, Rerum Gestarum
John C. Rolfe, Ph.D., Litt.D., Ed.

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Julian recovers Cologne, which had been captured by the Franks, and there makes peace with the kings of the Franks.

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Accordingly, as after this no one offered resistance, Julian decided to go and recover Cologne, which had been destroyed before his arrival in Gaul. ¹ In all that region there is no city to be seen and no stronghold, except that at the Confluence, a place so called because there the river Moselle mingles with the Rhine, there is the town of Remagen ² and a single tower near Cologne itself. [2] So, having entered Cologne, he did not stir from there until he had overawed the Frankish kings and lessened their pugnacity, had made a peace with them which would benefit the state meanwhile, and had recovered that very strongly fortified city. [3] Pleased with these first-fruits of victory, he passed through the land of the Treveri, and went to winter at Sens, a town which was then convenient. There, bearing on his shoulders, as the saying is, the burden of a flood of wars, ³ he was distracted by manifold cares—how the soldiers who had abandoned their usual posts might be taken back to danger-points, how he might scatter the tribes that had conspired to the hurt of the Roman cause, and how to see to it that food should not fail his army as it was about to range in different directions.

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