CHALONER, SIR THOMAS, the elder (1521-1565), Eng lish diplomatist and poet, the son of Roger Chaloner, a mercer of London, was educated at Oxford and Cambridge. In 1540 he went as secretary to Sir Henry Knyvett, to the court of Charles V., whom he accompanied in his expedition to Algiers in In Chaloner served in the expedition to Scotland, and was knighted after the battle of Pinckie, by the protector Somerset. He was a witness against Bishop Bonner, in 1549, and against Stephen Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, in 1551. Sent as a com missioner to Scotland three times (1551, 1552 and 1555-56), he was also employed both by Queen Mary and Elizabeth, as am bassador to France, Belgium and Spain. He returned home in 1564, and died at Clerkenwell on Oct. 14, 1565.
Chaloner's most important works are "Howe the Lorde Mowbray . was ... banyshed the Realme," printed in the 1559 edition of William Baldwin's Mirror for Magistrates (repr. in vol. ii., pt. 1 of J. Haslewood's ed., 1815) ; De Rep. Anglorum instauranda libri decem, published by W. Mallim (1579, 3 pts.) ; and The praise of folie, Moriae encomium ... by Erasmus ... Englished by Sir Thomas Chaloner, Knight ed. Janet E. Ashbee, 1991).
a town of north-eastern France, capital of the department of Marne, 107 m. E. of Paris on the main line of the Eastern railway to Nancy, and 25 m. S.E. of Reims. Pop. (1931), 26,887. The town proper is bordered on the west by the lateral canal of the Marne and is traversed by branches of the canal and by small streams.
Chalons-sur-Marne occupies the site of the chief town of the Catalauni and, on the plain between it and Troyes, Attila was defeated by the Romans in 451. In the loth and following cen turies it attained great prosperity under its bishops, who were ecclesiastical peers of France. In 1214 the militia of Chalons served at the battle of Bouvines; and in the 15th century the citizens twice repulsed the English from their walls. In the 16th century the town sided with Henry IV., king of France, who in 1589 transferred thither the parliament of Paris, which shortly afterwards burnt the bulls of Gregory XIV. and Clement VIII. The camp of Chalons, about 16 m. N. of the town, was established in 1856 by Napoleon III. and is a training-centre for troops. Chalons was occupied by the Germans in August, 1914, and was retaken by Foch in September, 1914. The cathedral of St. Etienne (chiefly 13th century) has a 17th century west facade. There are stained-glass windows of the 13th century in the north transept. Notre-Dame, of the 12th and 13th centuries, is con spicuous for its four Romanesque towers, two flanking the apse, two flanking the principal facade. The churches of St. Alpin, St. Jean and St. Loup date from various periods between the nth and 17th centuries. The hotel-de-vile (1771), the prefecture the college, once a Jesuit establishment, and a train ing college which occupies the Augustinian abbey of Toussaints (16th and 17th centuries), are noteworthy civil buildings. The houses are generally ill-built, but some old mansions remain. The town is the seat of a bishop and a prefect, has tribunals of first instance and of commerce, a chamber of commerce, a board of trade-arbitrators, a museum and a library. The principal industry is brewing, which is carried on in the suburb of Marne. Galleries hewn in a limestone hill are used as store-houses for beer. The preparation of champagne, the manufacture of boots, brushes, wire-goods and wall-paper also occupy many hands. There is trade in cereals. (X.) Battle of Chalons.—The battle of the Catalaunian Plains, "fierce, manifold, huge, stubborn, without its like in the history of times past" (Priscus), was fought between Attila and the Roman Aetius in 451 A.D.
The Huns had crossed the Danube in the first quarter of the fifth century. Uldin, their leader was driven back by the soldiers of Byzantium; but by 424 the Byzantine court was paying the Huns a tribute of 3501b. of gold. Some ten years later Attila, nephew of a king who had brought the Huns to some rough unity of predatory purpose, became joint ruler with his brother. Attila, a typical Kalmuck in appearance, thereupon began a career of plunder. In another ten years he had forced the eastern empire to multiply sixfold the annual tribute. In six more years he had become lord of the lands north of the middle and lower Danube, and wasted the northern Balkan country. He forbade his Huns and Germans subject to him to take service in the imperial armies. The western Roman armies had long ceased to find their soldiers from within the frontiers; therefore Attila could cut off one of the main supplies of men.
Aetius had been no enemy of the Huns, and had used them to make an end of the Burgundian kingdom about Worms (whence the Nibelungenlied). In 450 a good soldier, Marcian, became emperor of the East, and refused to pay the Hunnic tribute. A few months earlier a discontented Roman princess had given Attila a pretext for turning to that quarter of the world which he had not yet plundered. Justa Gratia Honoria, sister of the emperor Valentinian III. had plotted with a lover to take the throne. The plot was discovered; Honoria was married to a respectable and Harmless senator. Honoria boldly sent to Attila for help, with her ring to show from what quarter the message came. Attila took the ring to mean that Honoria would be his wife. The time was good for using this claim ; Gaiseric, king of the Vandals, fearing an attack from the Visigoths in southwest Gaul, had asked for Attila's alliance.
In 451 Attila led into Gaul a host of Huns, Alans and tributary Germans. Two parties were disputing the kingship of the Franks on the Rhine; one group joined the Huns, and thereby decided Attila's route. On April 7 this host plundered Metz, and thence moved slowly towards Orleans. Aetius had not crossed the Alps in time to hold the Rhine; nor could he do much without Visi gothic help. The fall of Orleans would leave the way open across the Loire to the Visigothic lands; therefore the Visigoths listened to Aetius' messengers. An army of Romans (that is, of Romanised Germans) and Visigoths marched to save Orleans. Legends of the prowess of a Christian bishop (the legend of St. Genevieve is of the same time) have clouded over the history of the attack upon Orleans. But the town was on the point of falling when Aetius and Theodoric, the Visigothic king, forced the Huns to retire.
Attila took the road northwards to Troyes and collected his forces on the plains well fitted for his cavalry. Chalons has been named as the chosen battlefield; but the campi Catalaunici in clude most of Champagne. The best chroniclers speak of a cer tain "Mauriac place." There was a Moirey west of Troyes, and there is a Mery-sur-Seine where bones, weapons and gold orna ments have been found. Here, about sixteen miles north-west of Troyes, some scholars think must be the "Mauriac place" and the tomb of Theodoric. On the night before the battle those Franks who favoured Aetius broke through to him after a slaughter of 15,00o men. Before the day began Attila took the voice of his augurs; the Huns would be beaten (a likely prophecy about a retreating tribal host), but the enemy leader would fall. Attila could get another army; the empire had not another Aetius, nor would anyone else be likely to keep together the Visigoths and Romans. By delaying until 3 P.M. Attila planned to secure his retreat in the darkness. The chroniclers say that on one side the field sloped towards a slight hill ; for this hill the armies fought. In the place of honour on the Roman right were the Visigoths; on the left Aetius, and with him as a hostage, Thoris mund son of Theodoric ; in the centre, enclosed by more trusted troops were the Alan auxiliaries of the Romans. Aetius hoped that the Huns might try to drive in this centre, for Attila kept in the midst of his Huns, and set the Ostrogoths and Gepidae on the left, and on his right the lesser German allies. Here was the decision. Aetius seized the hill ; his Alans were forced back, but now he could take the Huns on one flank, while on the other the Visigoths attacked. Thus the victory in this last great battle of western Roman power was won by the tactics which Hannibal had used at Cannae.
The Huns expected another attack, since in the immense slaughter Theodoric had been killed but Aetius was alive. Attila, within his ring of wagons, prepared for death ; but Aetius feared a camp of desperate men whose strength was in their archery. Nor was he willing to secure in Gaul a Visigothic predominance against which the Huns might yet be his allies. He persuaded Thorismund to hasten to Toulouse, lest his brothers should take his inheritance. Attila escaped to ravage Italy in 452, and to die, or be murdered in a drunken sleep in 453. Was this battle of the "Mauriac place," one of the world's decisive battles? The Huns showed nothing of the fruitfulness of the Germanic peoples who came within the Empire, and their power could scarcely have survived for long the death of a king who was as rare as a Saladin among the Kurds. A son of Attila and Honoria might have been another Aetius, if Attila's other sons had not put him to death; but the coming of the Huns was only an episode before the greater confusion of the dark ages, before the victory of Charles Martel, and the splendour and dominion of Charlemagne.
(E. L. W.) an industrial town of east-central France, capital of an arrondissement in the department of Saone et-Loire, 81 m. N. of Lyons by the P.L.M. railway. Pop. (1931) 28,470. It is a well-built town, with fine quays, situated on the right bank of the Saone at its junction with the Canal du Centre. A 15th century bridge with 18th century obelisks, leads to the suburb of St. Laurent on an island in the river. Chalon-sur-Saone is identified with the ancient Cabillonum, an important town of the Aedui. It was chosen in the 6th century by Gontram, king of Burgundy, as his capital. The bishopric, founded in the 4th century, was suppressed at the Revolution. In feudal times Chalon was the capital of a countship. In 1237 it was given in exchange for other fiefs in the Jura by Jean le Sage, whose descendants nevertheless retained the title. Hugh IV., duke of Burgundy, the other party to the exchange, gave the citizens a communal charter in 1256. The town resisted a division of the Austrian army in 1814.
The church of St. Vincent, once the cathedral, dates mainly from the 12th to the 15th centuries, and has a choir in the 13th century Burgundian style. The old bishop's palace dates from the 15th century. The church of St. Pierre, with two lofty steeples, is late 17th century. Chalon preserves remains of its ancient ramparts and a number of old houses. It is the seat of a sub-prefect and a court of assizes, and has tribunals of first instance and commerce and a chamber of commerce. Chalon ranks next to Le Creusot among the manufacturing towns of Bur gundy. Its position at the junction of the Canal du Centre and the Saone, and as a railway centre for Lyons, Paris, Dole, Lons le-Saunier and Roanne, brings it a large transit trade. The found ing and working of copper and iron are its main industries ; the large engineering works of Petite-Creusot, a branch of those of Le Creusot, construct bridges, tug-boats etc., and there are chem ical works, straw-hat factories, oil-works and tile-works. It is a busy corn-market and trades widely in wine, grain and timber.