See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1845-1846.
----------HUNS: Start--------
HUNS, Gothic account of the.
"We have ascertained that the nation of the Huns, who
surpassed all others in atrocity, came thus into being. When
Filimer, fifth king of the Goths after their departure from
Sweden, was entering Scythia, with his people, as we have
before described, he found among them certain sorcerer-women,
whom they call in their native tongue Aliorumnas (or
Al-runas), whom he suspected and drove forth from the midst of
his army into the wilderness. The unclean spirits that wander
up and down in desert places, seeing these women, made
concubines of them; and from this union sprang that most
fierce people (of the Huns) who were at first little, foul,
emaciated creatures, dwelling among the swamps, and possessing
only the shadow of human speech by way of language. …
Nations whom they would never have vanquished in fair fight
fled horrified from those frightful—faces I can hardly call
them, but rather—shapeless black collops of flesh, with
little points instead of eyes. No hair on their cheeks or
chins gives grace to adolescence or dignity to age, but deep
furrowed scars instead, down the sides of their faces, show
the impress of the iron which with characteristic ferocity
they apply to every male child that is born among them. …
They are little in stature, but lithe and active in their
motions, and especially skilful in riding, broad-shouldered,
good at the use of the bow and arrows, with sinewy necks, and
always holding their heads high in their pride."
_Jornandes,
De Rebus Geticis,
translated by T. Hodgkin in Italy and Her Invaders,
book 1, chapter 1._
HUNS:
First appearance in Europe.
See GOTHS: A. D. 376.
HUNS: A. D. 433-453.
The empire of Attila.
After driving the Goths from Dacia, the terrible Huns had
halted in their march westward for something more than a
generation. They were hovering, meantime, on the eastern
frontiers of the empire "taking part like other barbarians in
its disturbances and alliances. Emperors paid them tribute,
and Roman generals kept up a politic or a questionable
correspondence with them. Stilicho had detachments of Huns in
the armies which fought against Alaric; the greatest Roman
soldier after Stilicho,—and, like Stilicho, of barbarian
parentage,—Aetius, who was to be their most formidable
antagonist, had been a hostage and a messmate in their camps.
… About 433, Attila, the son of Mundzukh, like Charles the
Great, equally famous in history and legend, became their
king. Attila was the exact prototype and forerunner of the
Turkish chiefs of the house of Othman. In his profound hatred
of civilized men, in his scorn of their knowledge, their arts,
their habits and religion, and, in spite of this, in his
systematic use of them as his secretaries and officers, in his
rapacity combined with personal simplicity of life, in his
insatiate and indiscriminate destructiveness, in the cunning
which veiled itself under rudeness, in his extravagant
arrogance, and audacious pretensions, in his sensuality, in
his unscrupulous and far-reaching designs, in his ruthless
cruelty joined with capricious displays of generosity, mercy,
and good faith, we see the image of the irreclaimable Turkish
barbarians who ten centuries later were to extinguish the
civilization of [eastern?] Europe. The attraction of Attila's
daring character, and his genius for the war which nomadic
tribes delight in, gave him absolute ascendency over his
nation, and over the Teutonic and Slavonic tribes near him.
Like other conquerors of his race, he imagined and attempted
an empire of ravage and desolation, a vast hunting ground and
preserve, in which men and their works should supply the
objects and zest of the chase."
_R. W. Church,
Beginning of the Middle Ages,
chapter 1._
{1688}
"He [Attila] was truly the king of kings; for his court was
formed of chiefs, who, in offices of command, had learned the
art of obedience. There were three brothers of the race of the
Amales, all of them kings of the Ostrogoths; Ardaric, king of
the Gepidæ, his principal confidant; a king of the Merovingian
Franks; kings of the Burgundians, Thuringians, Rugians, and
Heruli, who commanded that part of their nation which had
remained at home, when the other part crossed the Rhine half a
century before."
_J. C. L. de Sismondi,
Fall of the Roman Empire,
chapter 7 (volume 1)._
"The amount of abject, slavish fear which this little swarthy
Kalmuck succeeded in instilling into millions of human hearts
is not to be easily matched in the history of our race.
Whether he had much military talent may be doubted, since the
only great battle in which he figured was a complete defeat.
The impression left upon us by what history records of him is
that of a gigantic bully, holding in his hands powers
unequalled in the world for ravage and spoliation. … Some
doubt has recently been thrown on the received accounts of the
wide extent of Attila's power. … The prince who felt China
on his left, who threatened Persepolis, Byzantium, Ravenna in
front, who ruled Denmark and its islands in his rear, and who
ultimately appeared in arms on the soil of Champagne on his
right, was no minor monarch, and had his empire been as deep
as it was widespread, he might worthily have taken rank with
Cyrus and Alexander. At the same time it is well to remember
that over far the larger part of this territory Attila's can
have been only an over-lordship, Teutonic, Slavonic, and
Tartar chieftains of every name bearing rule under him. His
own personal government, if government it can be called, may
very likely have been confined nearly within the limits of the
modern Hungary and Transylvania."
_T. Hodgkin,
Italy and Her Invaders,
book 2, chapter 2 (volume 2)._
"As far as we may ascertain the vague and obscure geography of
Priscus, this [Attila's] capital appears to have been seated
between the Danube, the Theiss [Teyss] and the Carpathian
hills, in the plains of Upper Hungary, and most probably in
the neighbourhood of Jazberin, Agria, or Tokay. In its origin
it could be no more than an accidental camp, which, by the
long and frequent residence of Attila, had insensibly swelled
into a huge village."
_E. Gibbon,
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,
chapter 34._
HUNS: A. D. 441-446.
Attila's attack on the Eastern Empire.
Attila's first assault upon the Roman power was directed
against the Eastern Empire. The court at Constantinople had
been duly obsequious to him, but he found a pretext for war.
"It was pretended that the Roman bishop of Margus had
surreptitiously introduced himself into the sepulchre of the
Hunnic kings and stolen from it the buried treasure. The Huns
immediately fell upon a Roman town during the time of a fair,
and pillaged everything before them, slaying the men and
carrying off the women. To all complaints from Constantinople
the answer was, "The bishop, or your lives.' The emperor
thought, and with reason, that to give up an innocent man to
be massacred would be displeasing to Heaven, would alienate
the clergy, and only appease for a moment the demands of his
merciless enemy. He refused, though timidly and in vague
terms. The Huns replied by scouring Pannonia, laying Sirmium,
its capital, in ruins, and extending their ravages far south
of the Danube to the cities of Naissa and Sardica, upon both
of which they wrought the extremity of their vengeance. A
truce of four years only increased their fury and aggravated
its effects. The war was suddenly recommenced. This time they
reached Thessaly, and renewed with a somewhat similar result
the far-famed passage of Thermopylæ by the hordes of Xerxes.
Two Roman armies were put to complete rout, and seventy cities
levelled to the ground. Theodosius purchased the redemption of
his capital by the cession of territory extending for fifteen
days' journey south of the Danube, by an immediate payment of
6,000 pounds of gold, and the promise of 2,000 more as an
annual tribute."
_J. G. Sheppard,
Fall of Rome,
lecture 4._
HUNS: A. D. 451.
Attila's invasion of Gaul.
In the spring of the year 451 Attila moved the great host
which he had assembled in the Hungarian plains westward toward
the Rhine and the provinces of Gaul. He hesitated, it was
said, between the Eastern and Western Empires as the objects
of his attack. But the East had found an emperor, at last, in
Marcian, who put some courage into the state,—who refused
tribute to the insolent Hun and showed a willingness for war.
The West, under Valentinian III. and his mother Placidia, with
the Goths, Vandals, Burgundians and Franks in the heart of its
provinces, seemed to offer the most inviting field of
conquest. Hence Attila turned his horses and their savage
riders to the West. "The kings and nations of Germany and
Scythia, from the Volga perhaps to the Danube, obeyed the
warlike summons of Attila. From the royal village in the
plains of Hungary his standard moved towards the West, and
after a march of seven or eight hundred miles he reached the
conflux of the Rhine and the Neckar, where he was joined by
the Franks who adhered to his ally, the elder of the sons of
Clodion. … The Hercynian forest supplied materials for a
bridge of boats, and the hostile myriads were poured with
resistless violence into the Belgic provinces." At Metz, the
Huns "involved in a promiscuous massacre the priests who
served at the altar and the infants who, in the hour of
danger, had been providently baptized by the bishop; the
flourishing city was delivered to the flames, and a solitary
chapel of St. Stephen marked the place where it formerly
stood. From the Rhine and the Moselle, Attila advanced into
the heart of Gaul, crossed the Seine at Auxerre, and, after a
long and laborious march, fixed his camp under the walls of
Orleans."
_E. Gibbon,
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,
chapter 35._
Meantime the energy of the unscrupulous but able Count Aetius,
who ruled the court and commanded the resources of the Western
Empire, had brought about a general combination of the
barbarian forces in Gaul with those of the Romans. It
included, first in importance, the Goths of the kingdom of
Toulouse, under their king Theodoric, and with them the
Burgundians, the Alans, a part of the Franks, and detachments
of Saxons, Armoricans and other tribes. There were Goths, too,
and Franks and Burgundians in the host of the Hun king. The
latter laid siege to Orleans and the walls of the brave city
were already crumbling under his battering rams when the
banners of Aetius and Theodoric came in sight. Attila
retreated beyond the Seine and took a position somewhere
within the wide extent of what were anciently called the
Catalaunian fields, now known as the Champagn country
surrounding Chalons. There, in the early days of July, A. D.
451, was fought the great and terrible battle which rescued
Europe from the all-conquering Tartar.
{1689}
The number of the slain, according to one chronicler, was 162,000;
according to others 300,000. Neither army could claim a
victory; both feared to renew the engagement. The Goths, whose
king Theodoric was slain, withdrew in one direction, to their
own territory; the Huns retreated in the other direction and
quitted Gaul forever. The wily Roman, Aetins, was probably
best satisfied with a result which crippled both Goth and Hun.
As for the battle, its latest historian says: "Posterity has
chosen to call it the battle of Chalons, but there is good
reason to think that it was fought fifty miles distant from
Chalons-sur-Marne, and that it would be more correctly named
the battle of Troyes, or, to speak with complete accuracy, the
battle of Mery-sur-Seine."
_T. Hodgkin,
Italy and Her Invaders,
book 2, chapter 3 (volume 2)._
"It was during the retreat from Orleans that a Christian
hermit is reported to have approached the Hunnish king, and
said to him, 'Thou art the Scourge of God for the chastisement
of Christians.' Attila instantly assumed this new title of
terror, which thenceforth became the appellation by which he
was most widely and most fearfully known."
_Sir E. Creasy,
Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World,
chapter 6._
HUNS: A. D. 452.
Attila's invasion of Italy.
In the summer of 451 Attila, retreating from the bloody plain
of Chalons, recrossed the Rhine and returned to his quarters
in Hungary. There, through the following autumn and winter, he
nursed his chagrin and his wrath, and in the spring of 452 he
set his host in motion again, directing its march to the
Julian Alps and through their passes into Italy. The city of
Aquileia, then prominent in commerce, and prosperous and rich,
was the first to obstruct the savage invasion. The defence of
the city proved so obstinate that Attila was at the point of
abandoning his siege, when a flight of storks, which his
shrewdness construed favorably as an omen, encouraged the Huns
to one more irresistible assault and the doomed town was
carried by storm. "In proportion to the stubbornness of the
defence was the severity of the punishment meted out to
Aquileia. The Roman soldiers were, no doubt, all slain. Attila
was not a man to encumber himself with prisoners. The town was
absolutely given up to the rage, the lust, and the greed of
the Tartar horde who had so long chafed around its walls. …
When the barbarians could plunder no more, they probably used
fire, for the very buildings of Aquileia perished, so that, as
Jornandes tells us, in his time, a century later than the
siege, scarcely the vestiges of it yet remained. A few houses
may have been left standing, and others must have slowly
gathered round them, for the Patriarch of Aquileia retained
all through the middle ages considerable remains of his old
ecclesiastical jurisdiction, and a large and somewhat stately
cathedral was reared there in the eleventh century. But the
City of the North Wind never really recovered from the blow.
… The terrible invaders, made more wrathful and more
terrible by the resistance of Aquileia, streamed on through
the trembling cities of Venetia." Patavium (modern Padua),
Altinum and Julia Concordia, were blotted out of existence. At
Vicenza, Verona, Brescia, Bergamo, Pavia and Milan, the towns
were sacked, but spared destruction, and the inhabitants who
did not escape were carried away into captivity. Many of the
fugitives from these towns escaped the Huns by hiding in the
islands and fens of the neighboring Adriatic coast, and out of
the poor fishing villages that they formed there grew, in
time, the great commercial city and republic of Venice. "The
valley of the Po was now wasted to the heart's content of the
invaders. Should they cross the Appennines and blot out Rome
as they had blotted out Aquileia from among the cities of the
world? This was the great question that was being debated in
the Hunnish camp, and strange to say, the voices were not all
for war. Already Italy began to strike that strange awe into
the hearts of her northern conquerors which so often in later
ages has been her best defence. The remembrance of Alaric, cut
off by a mysterious death immediately after his capture of
Rome, was present in the mind of Attila, and was frequently
insisted upon by his counsellors." So, the grim Hun was
prepared by his superstitions to listen to the embassy from
Rome which met him at the Ticino, praying for peace. At the
head of the embassy was the venerable bishop of Rome, Leo
I.—the first of the great Popes. To his influence the pacific
disposition into which Attila was persuaded has been commonly
ascribed. At all events, the king of the Huns consented to
peace with the Romans, and withdrew beyond the Danube in
fulfilment of the treaty, leaving Italy a desert to the
Appennines, but not beyond.
_T. Hodgkin,
Italy and Her Invaders,
book 2, chapter 4 (volume 2)._
ALSO IN:
_E. Gibbon,
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,
chapter 35._
See, also,
VENICE: A. D. 452.
HUNS: A. D. 453.
Death of Attila and fall of his empire.
Attila died suddenly and mysteriously in his sleep, after a
drunken debauch, some time in the early months of the year
453, and his death was the end of the "reign of terror" under
which he had reduced half the world. "Immediately after his
death, the Germans refused to submit to the divided rule of
his sons. The army of Attila split up into two great camps; on
the one side were the Gepidæ and Ostrogoths, with the majority
of the Teutonic nations; on the other the Huns, the Alans, the
Sarmatians or Slavonians, and the few Germans who still owned
allegiance to the memory of Attila. A vast plain between the
Drave and the Danube was selected to decide this vital
struggle, known as the battle of Netad, which, though less
famous in history, may perhaps claim equal importance with
that of Chalons, as an arbiter of the destinies of
civilization. … Fortune at first seemed to favour the Huns;
but German steadfastness prevailed; Goths and Gepidæ scattered
the less-disciplined bands of Asia; and Ardaric, the king of
the latter tribe for the time, established himself in the
royal residence of Attila, and assumed the leading position in
the barbarian world."
_J. G. Sheppard,
Fall of Rome,
lecture 4._
"Thirty thousand of the Huns and their confederates lay dead
upon the field, among them Ellak, Attila's first-born. … The
rest of his nation fled away across the Dacian plains, and
over the Carpathian mountains to those wide steppes of
Southern Russia in which at the commencement of our history we
saw the three Gothic nations taking up their abode. Ernak,
Attila's darling, ruled tranquilly under Roman protection in
the district between the lower Danube and the Black Sea, which
we now call the Dobrudscha, and which was then 'the lesser
Scythia.'
{1690}
Others of his family maintained a precarious footing higher up
the stream. … There is nothing in the after-history of these
fragments of the nation with which anyone need concern
himself. … Dacia, that part of Hungary which lies east and
north of the Danube, and which had been the heart of Attila's
domains, fell to the lot of the Gepidae, under the wise and
victorious Ardaric. Pannonia, that is the western portion of
Hungary, with Sclavonia, and parts of Croatia, Styria and
Lower Austria, was ruled over by the three Amal-descended
kings of the Ostrogoths."
_T. Hodgkin,
Italy and Her Invaders,
book 3, chapter 1 (volume 2)._
HUNS:
Attila in Teutonic legend.
"Short as was the sway of Attila (from 434 to 453), the terror
it had inspired and the great commotion it had brought over
the whole Teuton and Roman world, were, not … soon
forgotten. … The memory of the great chieftain hovered for a
long time, like a bloody phantom, in the Roman annals and in
the German sagas. … When we compare the historical Attila,
before whose piercing glance Rome and Constantinople trembled,
with Etzel of the Nibelungen Lied, we find that the latter
bears but a slight resemblance to the former. It is true that
Attila's powerful sway is still reflected in the Nibelungen
Lied, as Kriemhild at her arrival in the land of the Huns is
surprised at seeing so many nations submitted to his sceptre.
Yet upon the whole Etzel plays in the German epic the part of
a weak and sometimes even contemptible king, while glimpses of
his real might can be detected only at rare intervals,
fluttering as it were in the far-distant background of a
by-gone time. … The Eddas and the Volsunga Saga bear the
impress of the early Teutonic era, when the king was little
more than the chosen leader in war; and the Northern people
for a long time had in their political institutions nothing by
which the conception of a great monarchy, or still less of a
far-stretching realm like that of Attila, could be expressed."
_G. T. Dippold,
Great Epics of Mediæval Germany,
chapter 4._
----------HUNS: End--------
HUNS, The White.
"It was during the reign of this prince [Varahran V., king of
Persia, A. D. 420-440] that those terrible struggles commenced
between the Persians and their neighbours upon the north-east
which continued, from the early part of the fifth till the
middle of the sixth century, to endanger the very existence of
the empire. Various names are given to the people with whom
Persia waged her wars during this period. They are called
Turks, Huns, sometimes even Chinese; but these terms seem to
be used in a vague way, as 'Scythian' was by the ancients; and
the special ethnic designation of the people appears to be
quite a different name from any of them. It is a name the
Persian form of which is 'Haïthal,' or 'Haïtheleh,' the
Armenian 'Hephthagh,' and the Greek 'Ephthalites,' or
sometimes 'Nephthalites.' … All that we know of the
Ephthalites is, that they were established in force, during
the fifth and sixth centuries of our era, in the regions east
of the Caspian, especially in those beyond the Oxus river, and
that they were generally regarded as belonging to the Scythic
or Finno-Turkic population, which, at any rate from B. C. 200,
had become powerful in that region. They were called 'White
Huns' by some of the Greeks; but it is admitted that they were
quite distinct from the Huns who invaded Europe under Attila.
… They were a light-complexioned race, whereas the Huns were
decidedly swart; they were not ill-looking, whereas the Huns
were hideous; they were an agricultural people, while the Huns
were nomads; they had good laws, and were tolerably well
civilised, but the Huns were savages. It is probable that they
belonged to the Thibetic or Turkish stock."
_G. Rawlinson,
Seventh Great Oriental Monarchy,
chapter 14._
"We are able to distinguish the two great divisions of these
formidable exiles [the Huns], which directed their march
towards the Oxus and towards the Volga. The first of these
colonies established their dominion in the fruitful and
extensive plains of Sogdiana, on the eastern side of the
Caspian, where they preserved the name of Huns, with the
epithet of Euthalites [Ephthalites], or Nephthalites. Their
manners were softened, and even their features were insensibly
improved, by the mildness of the climate and their long
residence in a flourishing province; which might still retain
a faint impression of the arts of Greece. The White Huns, a
name which they derived from the change of their complexion,
soon abandoned the pastoral life of Scythia. Gorgo, which,
under the appellation of Carizine, has since enjoyed a
temporary splendour, was the residence of the king, who
exercised a legal authority over an obedient people. Their
luxury was maintained by the labour of the Sogdians."
_E. Gibbon.
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,
chapter 26._
The White Huns were subjugated by the Turks.
See TURKS: SIXTH CENTURY.
HUNTER, General David.
Command in Kansas.
See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1861 (JULY-NOVEMBER).
Emancipation Order.
See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1862 (MAY).
Command in the Shenandoah.
See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:
A. D.1864 (MAY-JUNE: VIRGINIA).
HUNTSVILLE, Capture of.
See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:
A. D. 1862 (APRIL-MAY: ALABAMA).
HUPAS, OR HOOPAHS, The.
See AMERICAN ABORIGINES: MODOCS.
----------HURON, Lake: Start--------
HURON, Lake:
Discovery.
See CANADA: A. D. 1611-1616; and 1634-1673.
HURON, Lake: A. D. 1679.
Navigated by La Salle.
See CANADA: A. D. 1669-1687.
----------HURON, Lake: End--------
HURONS, OR WYANDOTS, The.
See AMERICAN ABORIGINES: HURONS,
and IROQUOIS CONFEDERACY.
HURST CASTLE, King Charles at.
See ENGLAND: A. D. 1648 (NOVEMBER-DECEMBER).