fortifications; and Julian entertained some hopes that the Germans, whom
he had so often vanquished, might, in his absence, be restrained by the
terror of his name. Vadomair was the only prince of the Alemanni whom he
esteemed or feared; and while the subtle barbarian affected to observe
the faith of treaties, the progress of his arms threatened the State
with an unseasonable and dangerous war. The policy of Julian
condescended to surprise the prince of the Alemanni by his own arts: and
Vadomair, who, in the character of a friend, had incautiously accepted
an invitation from the Roman governors, was seized in the midst of the
entertainment, and sent away prisoner into the heart of Spain. Before
the barbarians were recovered from their amazement the Emperor appeared
in arms on the banks of the Rhine, and, once more crossing the river,
renewed the deep impressions of terror and respect which had been
already made by four preceding expeditions.
The ambassadors of Julian had been instructed to execute, with the
utmost diligence, their important commission. But, in their passage
through Italy and Illyricum, they were detained by the tedious and
affected delays of the provincial governors; they were conducted by slow
journeys from Constantinople to Cæsarea in Cappadocia; and when at
length they were admitted to the presence of Constantius, they found
that he had already conceived, from the despatches of his own officers,
the most unfavorable opinion of the conduct of Julian and of the Gallic
army. The letters were heard with impatience; the trembling messengers
were dismissed with indignation and contempt; and the looks, the
gestures, the furious language of the monarch expressed the disorder of
his soul. The domestic connection, which might have reconciled the
brother and the husband of Helena, was recently dissolved by the death
of that princess, whose pregnancy had been several times fruitless, and
was at last fatal to herself. The empress Eusebia had preserved, to the
last moment of her life, the warm, and even jealous, affection which she
had conceived for Julian; and her mild influence might have moderated
the resentment of a prince, who, since her death, was abandoned to his
own passions, and to the arts of his eunuchs.
But the terror of a foreign invasion obliged him to suspend the
punishment of a private enemy; he continued his march toward the
confines of Persia, and thought it sufficient to signify the conditions
which might entitle Julian and his guilty followers to the clemency of
their offended sovereign. He required that the presumptuous cæsar should
expressly renounce the appellation and rank of augustus, which he had
accepted from the rebels; that he should descend to his former station
of a limited and dependent minister; that he should vest the powers of
the State and army in the hands of those officers who were appointed by
the imperial court; and that he should trust his safety to the
assurances of pardon, which were announced by Epictetus, a Gallic
bishop, and one of the Arian favorites of Constantius. Several months
were ineffectually consumed in a treaty which was negotiated at the
distance of three thousand miles between Paris and Antioch; and, as soon
as Julian perceived that his modest and respectful behavior served only
to irritate the pride of an implacable adversary, he boldly resolved to
commit his life and fortune to the chance of a civil war.
He gave a public and military audience to the quæstor Leonas; the
haughty epistle of Constantius was read to the attentive multitude; and
Julian protested, with the most flattering deference, that he was ready
to resign the title of augustus, if he could obtain the consent of those
whom he acknowledged as the authors of his elevation. The faint proposal
was impetuously silenced; and the acclamations of "Julian Augustus,
continue to reign, by the authority of the army, of the people, of the
republic which you have saved," thundered at once from every part of the
field, and terrified the pale ambassador of Constantius. A part of the
letter was afterward read, in which the Emperor arraigned the
ingratitude of Julian, whom he had invested with the honors of the
purple; whom he had educated with so much care and tenderness; whom he
had preserved in his infancy, when he was left a helpless orphan.
"An orphan!" interrupted Julian, who justified his cause by indulging
his passions: "does the assassin of my family reproach me that I was
left an orphan? He urges me to revenge those injuries which I have long
studied to forget." The assembly was dismissed; and Leonas, who, with
some difficulty, had been protected from the popular fury, was sent back
to his master with an epistle, in which Julian expressed, in a strain of
the most vehement eloquence, the sentiments of contempt, of hatred, and
of resentment, which had been suppressed and imbittered by the
dissimulation of twenty years. After this message, which might be
considered as a signal of irreconcilable war, Julian, who, some weeks
before, had celebrated the Christian festival of the Epiphany, made a
public declaration that he committed the care of his safety to the
IMMORTAL GODS, and thus publicly renounced the religion as well as the
friendship of Constantius.
The situation of Julian required a vigorous and immediate resolution. He
had discovered, from intercepted letters, that his adversary,
sacrificing the interest of the State to that of the monarch, had again
excited the barbarians to invade the provinces of the West. The position
of two magazines, one of them collected on the banks of the Lake of
Constance, the other formed at the foot of the Cottian Alps, seemed to
indicate the march of two armies; and the size of those magazines, each
of which consisted of six hundred thousand quarters of wheat, or rather
flour, was a threatening evidence of the strength and numbers of the
enemy who prepared to surround him. But the imperial legions were still
in their distant quarters of Asia; the Danube was feebly guarded; and if
Julian could occupy, by a sudden incursion, the important provinces of
Illyricum, he might expect that a people of soldiers would resort to his
standard, and that the rich mines of gold and silver would contribute
to the expenses of the civil war.
He proposed this bold enterprise to the assembly of the soldiers;
inspired them with a just confidence in their general and in themselves;
and exhorted them to maintain their reputation of being terrible to the
enemy, moderate to their fellow-citizens, and obedient to their
officers. His spirited discourse was received with the loudest
acclamations, and the same troops which had taken up arms against
Constantius, when he summoned them to leave Gaul, now declared with
alacrity that they would follow Julian to the farthest extremities of
Europe or Asia. The oath of fidelity was administered; and the soldiers,
clashing their shields, and pointing their drawn swords to their
throats, devoted themselves, with horrid imprecations, to the service of
a leader whom they celebrated as the deliverer of Gaul and the conqueror
of the Germans. This solemn engagement, which seemed to be dictated by
affection rather than by duty, was singly opposed by Nebridius, who had
been admitted to the office of prætorian prefect.
That faithful minister, alone and unassisted, asserted the rights of
Constantius in the midst of an armed and angry multitude, to whose fury
he had almost fallen an honorable but useless sacrifice. After losing
one of his hands by the stroke of a sword, he embraced the knees of the
prince whom he had offended. Julian covered the prefect with his
imperial mantle, and, protecting him from the zeal of his followers,
dismissed him to his own house, with less respect than was perhaps due
to the virtue of an enemy. The high office of Nebridius was bestowed on
Sallust; and the provinces of Gaul, which were now delivered from the
intolerable oppression of taxes, enjoyed the mild and equitable
administration of the friend of Julian, who was permitted to practise
those virtues which he had instilled into the mind of his pupil.
The hopes of Julian depended much less on the number of his troops than
on the celerity of his motions. In the execution of a daring enterprise,
he availed himself of every precaution, as far as prudence could
suggest; and where prudence could no longer accompany his steps, he
trusted the event to valor and to fortune. In the neighborhood of Basel
he assembled and divided his army. One body, which consisted of ten
thousand men, was directed under the command of Nevitta, general of the
cavalry, to advance through the midland parts of Rhætia and Noricum. A
similar division of troops, under the orders of Jovius and Jovinus,
prepared to follow the oblique course of the highways, through the Alps
and the northern confines of Italy. The instructions to the generals
were conceived with energy and precision: to hasten their march in close
and compact columns, which, according to the disposition of the ground,
might readily be changed into any order of battle; to secure themselves
against the surprises of the night by strong posts and vigilant guards;
to prevent resistance by their unexpected arrival; to elude examination
by their sudden departure; to spread the opinion of their strength and
the terror of his name; and to join their sovereign under the walls of
Sirmium.
For himself Julian had reserved a more difficult and extraordinary part.
He selected three thousand brave and active volunteers, resolved, like
their leader, to cast behind them every hope of a retreat: at the head
of this faithful band he fearlessly plunged into the recesses of the
Marcian, or Black Forest, which conceals the sources of the Danube; and,
for many days, the fate of Julian was unknown to the world. The secrecy
of his march, his diligence and vigor, surmounted every obstacle; he
forced his way over mountains and morasses, occupied the bridges or swam
the rivers, pursued his direct course, without reflecting whether he
traversed the territory of the Romans or of the barbarians, and at
length emerged, between Ratisbon and Vienna, at the place where he
designed to embark his troops on the Danube. By a well-concerted
stratagem, he seized a fleet of light brigantines as it lay at anchor;
secured a supply of coarse provisions sufficient to satisfy the
indelicate but voracious appetite of a Gallic army; and boldly committed
himself to the stream of the Danube.
The labors of his mariners, who plied their oars with incessant
diligence, and the steady continuance of a favorable wind, carried his
fleet above seven hundred miles in eleven days; and he had already
disembarked his troops at Bononia, only nineteen miles from Sirmium,
before his enemies could receive any certain intelligence that he had
left the banks of the Rhine. In the course of this long and rapid
navigation, the mind of Julian was fixed on the object of his
enterprise; and though he accepted the deputations of some cities, which
hastened to claim the merit of an early submission, he passed before the
hostile stations, which were placed along the river, without indulging
the temptation of signalizing a useless and ill-timed valor. The banks
of the Danube were crowded on either side with spectators, who gazed on
the military pomp, anticipated the importance of the event, and diffused
through the adjacent country the fame of a young hero, who advanced with
more than mortal speed at the head of the innumerable forces of the
West. Lucilian, who, with the rank of general of the cavalry, commanded
the military powers of Illyricum, was alarmed and perplexed by the
doubtful reports, which he could neither reject nor believe.
He had taken some slow and irresolute measures for the purpose of
collecting his troops, when he was surprised by Dagalaiphus, an active
officer, whom Julian, as soon as he landed at Bononia, had pushed
forward with some light infantry. The captive general, uncertain of his
life or death, was hastily thrown upon a horse, and conducted to the
presence of Julian; who kindly raised him from the ground, and dispelled
the terror and amazement which seemed to stupefy his faculties. But
Lucilian had no sooner recovered his spirits than he betrayed his want
of discretion, by presuming to admonish his conqueror that he had rashly
ventured, with a handful of men, to expose his person in the midst of
his enemies. "Reserve for your master Constantius these timid
remonstrances," replied Julian, with a smile of contempt: "when I gave
you my purple to kiss, I received you not as a counsellor, but as a
suppliant." Conscious that success alone could justify his attempt, and
that boldness only could command success, he instantly advanced, at the
head of three thousand soldiers, to attack the strongest and most
populous city of the Illyrian provinces.
As he entered the long suburb of Sirmium, he was received by the joyful
acclamations of the army and people, who, crowned with flowers, and
holding lighted tapers in their hands, conducted their acknowledged
sovereign to his imperial residence. Two days were devoted to the
public joy, which was celebrated by the games of the Circus; but, early
on the morning of the third day, Julian marched to occupy the narrow
pass of Succi, in the defiles of Mount Hæmus; which, almost in the
midway between Sirmium and Constantinople, separates the provinces of
Thrace and Dacia, by an abrupt descent toward the former, and a gentle
declivity on the side of the latter. The defence of this important post
was intrusted to the brave Nevitta; who, as well as the generals of the
Italian division, successfully executed the plan of the march and
junction which their master had so ably conceived.
The homage which Julian obtained, from the fears or the inclination of
the people, extended far beyond the immediate effect of his arms. The
prefectures of Italy and Illyricum were administered by Taurus and
Florentius, who united that important office with the vain honors of the
consulship; and, as those magistrates had retired with precipitation to
the court of Asia, Julian, who could not always restrain the levity of
his temper, stigmatized their flight by adding, in all the Acts of the
Year, the epithet of _fugitive_ to the names of the two consuls.
The provinces which had been deserted by their first magistrates
acknowledged the authority of an emperor who, conciliating the qualities
of a soldier with those of a philosopher, was equally admired in the
camps of the Danube and in the cities of Greece. From his palace, or,
more properly, from his head-quarters of Sirmium and Naissus, he
distributed, to the principal cities of the empire, a labored apology
for his own conduct; published the secret despatches of Constantius, and
solicited the judgment of mankind between two competitors, the one of
whom had expelled, and the other had invited, the barbarians. Julian,
whose mind was deeply wounded by the reproach of ingratitude, aspired to
maintain, by argument as well as by arms, the superior merits of his
cause; and to excel, not only in the arts of war, but in those of
composition. His epistle to the senate and people of Athens seems to
have been dictated by an elegant enthusiasm; which prompted him to
submit his actions and his motives to the degenerate Athenians of his
own times, with the same humble deference as if he had been pleading,
in the days of Aristides, before the tribunal of the Areopagus. His
application to the senate of Rome, which was still permitted to bestow
the titles of imperial power, was agreeable to the forms of the expiring
republic. An assembly was summoned by Tertullus, prefect of the city;
the epistle of Julian was read; and, as he appeared to be master of
Italy, his claims were admitted without a dissenting voice.
His oblique censure of the innovations of Constantine, and his
passionate invective against the vices of Constantius, were heard with
less satisfaction; and the senate, as if Julian had been present,
unanimously exclaimed, "Respect, we beseech you, the author of your own
fortune"--an artful expression, which, according to the chance of war,
might be differently explained; as a manly reproof of the ingratitude of
the usurper, or as a flattering confession that a single act of such
benefit to the State ought to atone for all the failings of Constantius.
The intelligence of the march and rapid progress of Julian was speedily
transmitted to his rival, who, by the retreat of Sapor, had obtained
some respite from the Persian war. Disguising the anguish of his soul
under the semblance of contempt, Constantius professed his intention of
returning into Europe, and of giving chase to Julian; for he never spoke
of his military expedition in any other light than that of a hunting
party. In the camp of Hierapolis, in Syria, he communicated this design
to his army; slightly mentioned the guilt and rashness of the cæsar, and
ventured to assure them that if the mutineers of Gaul presumed to meet
them in the field they would be unable to sustain the fire of their eyes
and the irresistible weight of their shout of onset.
The speech of the Emperor was received with military applause, and
Theodotus, the president of the council of Hierapolis, requested, with
tears of adulation, that _his_ city might be adorned with the head of
the vanquished rebel. A chosen detachment was despatched away in
post-wagons, to secure, if it were yet possible, the pass of Succi; the
recruits, the horses, the arms, and the magazines, which had been
prepared against Sapor, were appropriated to the service of the civil
war; and the domestic victories of Constantius inspired his partisans
with the most sanguine assurances of success. The notary Gaudentius had
occupied in his name the provinces of Africa; the subsistence of Rome
was intercepted; and the distress of Julian was increased by an
unexpected event, which might have been productive of fatal
consequences. Julian had received the submission of two legions and a
cohort of archers, who were stationed at Sirmium; but he suspected with
reason the fidelity of those troops which had been distinguished by the
Emperor; and it was thought expedient, under the pretence of the exposed
state of the Gallic frontier, to dismiss them from the most important
scene of action.
They advanced, with reluctance, as far as the confines of Italy; but as
they dreaded the length of the way and the savage fierceness of the
Germans, they resolved, by the instigation of one of their tribunes, to
halt at Aquileia, and to erect the banners of Constantius on the walls
of that impregnable city. The vigilance of Julian perceived at once the
extent of the mischief, and the necessity of applying an immediate
remedy. By his order, Jovinus led back a part of the army into Italy;
and the siege of Aquileia was formed with diligence and prosecuted with
vigor. But the legionaries, who seemed to have rejected the yoke of
discipline, conducted the defence of the place with skill and
perseverance; invited the rest of Italy to imitate the example of their
courage and loyalty; and threatened the retreat of Julian, if he should
be forced to yield to the superior numbers of the armies of the East.
But the humanity of Julian was preserved from the cruel alternative
which he pathetically laments, of destroying or of being himself
destroyed; and the seasonable death of Constantius delivered the Roman
Empire from the calamities of civil war. The approach of winter could
not detain the monarch at Antioch; and his favorites durst not oppose
his impatient desire of revenge. A slight fever, which was perhaps
occasioned by the agitation of his spirits, was increased by the
fatigues of the journey; and Constantius was obliged to halt at the
little town of Mopsucrene, twelve miles beyond Tarsus, where he expired,
after a short illness, in the forty-fifth year of his age and the
twenty-fourth of his reign. Julian thus became master of the Roman
world.
THE HUNS AND THEIR WESTERN MIGRATION
A.D. 374-376
MARCELLINUS
The Huns, whose incursions into Europe constituted the first
"yellow peril," were a nomadic Mongolian race. In the fourth
century before Christ they successfully invaded China. From that
country, about A.D. 90, they were driven by Hiong-nu, and the Huns
then proceeded, joined by hordes of their fellows from the steppes
of Tartary, to make their way to the Caspian Sea.
Previous to the incursion of the Huns another Tartar tribe, the
Alani--the first of that race known to the Romans--had ravaged
Media and Armenia, A.D. 75, carrying off a vast number of prisoners
and an enormous booty. They later settled themselves in the country
between the Volga and the Tanais, at an equal distance from the
Black Sea and the Caspian. The Huns, having crossed the Volga,
drove the Alani before them to the Danube. Valens, the then Emperor
of the East, was a weak, incapable ruler; he failed to recognize
the peril by which his empire would ere long be threatened, and
permitted the Alani to find a refuge in his dominions. These were
in turn followed and absorbed by the Huns, and the whole Roman
Empire was finally faced by Mongol foes.
The historian Ammianus Marcellinus wrote racily of these events at
the time of their occurrence.
The swift wheel of fortune, which continually alternates adversity with
prosperity, was giving Bellona the Furies for her allies, and arming her
for war; and now transferred our disasters to the east, as many presages
and portents foreshowed by undoubted signs.
For after many true prophecies uttered by diviners and augurs, dogs were
seen to recoil from howling wolves, and the birds of night constantly
uttered querulous and mournful cries; and lurid sunrises made the
mornings dark. Also, at Antioch, among the tumults and squabbles of the
populace, it had come to be a custom for anyone who fancied himself
ill-treated to cry out, in a licentious manner: "May Valens be burned
alive." And the voices of the criers were constantly heard ordering
wood to be carried to warm the baths of Valens, which had been built
under the superintendence of the Emperor himself.
All which circumstances all but pointed out in express words that the
end of the Emperor's life was at hand. Besides all these things, the
ghost of the King of Armenia, and the miserable shades of those who had
lately been put to death in the affair of Theodorus, agitated numbers of
people with terrible alarms, appearing to them in their sleep, and
shrieking out verses of horrible import.
Last of all, when the ancient walls of Chalcedon were thrown down in
order to build a bath at Constantinople, and the stones were torn
asunder, on one squared stone which was hidden in the very centre of the
walls these Greek verses were found engraved, which gave a full
revelation of what was to happen:
"But when young wives and damsels blithe, in dances that delight,
Shall glide along the city streets, with garlands gayly bright;
And when these walls, with sad regrets, shall fall to raise a bath,
Then shall the Huns in multitude break forth with might and wrath,
By force of arms the barrier-stream of Ister they shall cross,
O'er Scythic ground and Moesian lands spreading dismay and loss;
They shall Pannonian horsemen brave, and Gallic soldiers slay,
And nought but loss of life and breath their course shall ever stay."
The following circumstances were the original cause of all the
destruction and various calamities which the fury of Mars roused up,
throwing everything into confusion by his usual ruinous violence: the
people called Huns, slightly mentioned in the ancient records, live
beyond the Sea of Azov, on the border of the Frozen Ocean, and are a
race savage beyond all parallel.
At the very moment of their birth the cheeks of their infant children
are deeply marked by an iron, in order that the usual vigor of their
hair, instead of growing at the proper season, may be withered by the
wrinkled scars; and accordingly they grow up without beards, and
consequently without any beauty, like eunuchs, though they all have
closely knit and strong limbs and plump necks; they are of great size,
and bow-legged, so that you might fancy them two-legged beasts, or the
stout figures which are hewn out in a rude manner with an axe on the
posts at the end of bridges.