village, in which was situated the palace of Attila. This dwelling was,
we were told, the finest building in all the country. It was made of
logs and smooth planks, and surrounded by wooden palisades, not for
safety but for ornament. Next to the King’s house, that of Onegesius
(his chief minister) was most conspicuous. It, too, was surrounded by a
palisading, but was not adorned with towers as Attila’s was. Not far from
this enclosure was a bath which Onegesius had built of stones brought
from Pannonian quarries, for the barbarians who dwell there have not a
stick nor a stone in their own country, but have to import all building
materials from a distance. The architect of this bath was carried captive
from Sirmium, and hoped to receive his freedom as the reward of his
ingenuity; but unconsciously he prepared for himself a worse lot than
that of ordinary slavery, for Onegesius made him his bath-man, and he had
to wait upon him and his retinue whenever they had a mind to bathe.’
THE BANQUET.
[Sidenote: _Attila’s banquet._]
‘When we returned to our tent, there came an invitation to us both from
Attila to be present at his banquet, which would take place about 3 P.M.
Punctually, at the time appointed, we went to the dinner and stood on
the threshold before Attila. According to the custom of the country,
the cup-bearer brought us a bowl of wine that we might pray for the
good-luck of the host before taking our seats. When this was done, and
we had just tasted the bowl, we came to the chairs of state on which
we were to sit at dinner-time. All the seats of the guests were ranged
along the walls on either side of the building. In the centre of all sat
Attila on a couch, with another couch behind him, behind which again a
flight of steps led up to his bed, hidden by curtains of white linen and
variegated stuffs, ornamentally arranged as the Greeks and Romans prepare
the nuptial couch.’ Then the order of precedence is described. The
Ambassadors, to their evident surprise, found that the seats of honour
were given, not to them, but to Hunnish nobles.
‘Opposite to Onegesius on a double chair sat two of the sons of Attila,
while his eldest son sat on Attila’s couch, not near to him but on its
extreme verge, and with eyes cast down upon the ground through awe of
his father. When all were thus arranged in order, the cup-bearer came in
and handed to Attila his ivy-wood drinking-cup filled with wine. When he
had received it, he saluted him who sat nearest him in rank. The guest
thus honoured stood up, and it was not etiquette for him to sit down
till he had sipped or drunk off the wine and returned the goblet to the
cup-bearer. In the same way all who were present showed their respect
to the King: he remaining seated all the while, they stood up, received
the cup, greeted him and tasted the wine. Behind each guest stood a
cup-bearer, whose business it was to go into the centre of the hall, each
in his proper order, and meet Attila’s cup-bearer coming out from beside
his master.
‘Then entered first Attila’s servant bearing a plate full of meat, and
after him came the general waiters who laid bread and other victuals on
the tables, of which there was one for every three or four guests, or
sometimes more. For all the rest of the barbarians and for us a costly
banquet had been prepared, which was served on silver dishes, but Attila
had plain meat on his wooden plate. He showed also simple tastes in all
his other surroundings. For the other banqueters had golden and silver
drinking-cups put beside them, but his was of wood. His raiment also was
quite plain, distinguished by its cleanness only from that of any of
his followers; and neither the sword which was hung up beside him, nor
the clasps of his barbaresque shoes, nor the bridle of his horse, was
adorned, as is the case with other Huns, with gold or precious stones or
anything else that is costly.’
Priscus then again describes the drinking of Attila’s health, which was
performed by all the guests, standing, between each of the courses.
‘When evening came on, torches were lighted, and two barbarians coming in
and standing opposite to Attila, recited songs previously composed, in
which they sang of his victories and his warlike virtues. The banqueters
gazed earnestly on the minstrels; some were delighted with the poems;
others, remembering past conflicts, felt their souls stirred within them;
while the old were melted into tears by the thought that their bodies
were grown weak through age and their hot hearts were compelled into
repose.
‘When the songs were ended a mad Hun came forward, who by his strange,
wild, incessant chatter moved all the guests to laughter. After him
entered Zercon the Moor’ [whom we know from another source[82] to have
been a hump-backed dwarf with ape-like nose]. ‘By his garb, his voice,
and his wild promiscuous jumble of Latin, Hunnish, and Gothic words,
he sent all present, except Attila, into fits of laughter. The King,
however, remained quite unmoved, changed not a line of his countenance,
and neither by word nor deed showed the slightest enjoyment of the joke,
except that when his youngest son, Ernak, came in and stood beside him
he gently pinched his cheek and looked upon him with kindly gaze. When I
expressed my wonder at his neglect of his other sons and the favour which
he showed to this one, the barbarian who sat beside me and who understood
the Italian language, after making me promise secrecy, assured me that
the prophets had foretold to Attila that his race should suffer reverses
and then be raised up again by this son.
‘When we had sat at the banquet till far into the night, we departed, not
wishing to persist in drinking any longer.’
From this single picture we may imagine the scenes which frequently
occurred when the Ambassadors of Theodosius and Valentinian came, with
fearful hearts, into the presence of Attila, striving, yet striving in
vain, to keep up the traditions of the majesty of Rome. We may imagine,
too, the reception which would be accorded to the Teutonic under-kings,
Gepid, Herul, Ostrogoth, when they came, as assuredly they would come, at
least once a year, into the presence of their supreme lord.
[Sidenote: _Deaths of Placidia and Theodosius II, 450._]
[Sidenote: _Marcian, the new Eastern Emperor, will not truckle to
Attila._]
The years from 441 to 450, the era of embassies, came to an end. In
450 death wrought great changes in the palaces both of Ravenna and
Constantinople. In the West, Placidia died, and the functions as well as
the show of governing had to be assumed by Valentinian III, who still for
a time gave his confidence loyally to Aetius. In the East, Theodosius
II died of injuries received by a fall from a runaway horse, and the
sovereign power became vested in his sister Pulcheria and her husband,
the brave old soldier, Marcian. The next Ambassador sent by Marcian’s
orders to the Court of Attila took a higher and more manly tone than
the Hun had heard during the whole reign of Theodosius. It was clear
that there would be no more chance of sending oppressive embassies, of
doubling and quadrupling the ‘tribute,’ or of worrying about the return
of refugees. Any further advantages that were to be gained from the East
must be gained at the point of the sword: and upon a survey of the whole
situation, Attila decided that since the time had come for war it should
be war, not with the East but with the West, not with the grim Marcian
but with the soft and indolent Valentinian.
There is thus a certain correspondence between the careers of Alaric and
Attila. Each took up a position on the confines of the two Empires. Each
at first spent some years in making war or threatening war on the Eastern
Empire, and each finally devoted his whole energies to war with the
Empire of the West.
[Sidenote: _Attila prepares for war with the Western Empire._]
Pretexts for war were of course easily found. The great question of
the vases of Sirmium was probably still unsettled. Honoria’s dowry had
certainly not been handed over to the affianced Hun. Aetius, warring in
Gaul, had seated on one of the Frankish thrones a young prince (possibly
Meroveus), whose supplanted rival claimed the assistance of Attila.
Above all, the Huns and their allies yearned to burn, to plunder, to
slay, and the Western provinces alone could at the moment satiate this
desire. Attila did not, however, entirely neglect the prudent precautions
of a statesman. He concluded an alliance, offensive and defensive, with
Gaiseric, the Vandal conqueror of Carthage, an alliance which, had it
been followed up by a well-timed Vandal attack on Rome, might probably
have ended the life of the Western Empire.
[Sidenote: _Alliance between that Empire and the Visigoths. 451._]
On the other hand, Aetius, at this crisis of the fortunes of Gaul,
concluded an alliance which was of infinite importance, both for its
immediate results and for the rearrangement of parties to which it
pointed in the not distant future. Theodoric the Visigoth, successor of
Walia, reigned at Toulouse over a well-compacted monarchy which had been
rapidly growing in strength and in civilisation. We are now speaking of
a time forty-one years after Alaric’s sack of Rome: and the days when
the Visigoths were a wandering horde of _foederati_, seeking on almost
any terms for a recognised position within the Empire, are already far
below the horizon. Theodoric is the acknowledged lord of one of the
fairest portions of Gaul; his people have become a dominant caste of
warriors, whose ascendancy the Provincials do not dream of disputing; but
Aetius has been for years struggling, sometimes with the aid of Hunnish
auxiliaries, to prevent him from extending his dominion yet further over
Gaul.
Now, in the presence of this vaster danger, this thunder-cloud rolling up
from the plains of Hungary, which threatens to overwhelm Goth and Roman
in one common ruin, all these bickerings cease. The Visigoth no doubt is
yet barbarous, but he is rapidly becoming civilised; while the Hun is an
utter savage. The Visigoth, though an Arian, is a Christian; the Hun is
a brutal Pagan. The Visigoth desires, it is true, to rule in Gaul; but
the Hun will utterly destroy it. The result of these considerations was
that Aetius and Theodoric formed an alliance against the invader, and,
notwithstanding some delays and some misunderstandings, they seem on the
whole to have both, honourably observed its obligations.
[Sidenote: _Attila enters Gaul, 451._]
[Sidenote: _Siege of Orleans._]
[Sidenote: _Attila retreats._]
At Eastertide, 451, the waters of the great deep were broken up. The
motley host, said to number half a million of men, marshalled by ‘a mob
of kings[83],’ but all trembling at the nod of Attila, moved westward,
hewed down trees in the Thuringer Wald, and, on the rude boats and
rafts which they thus constructed, crossed the Rhine. All the towns in
Belgic Gaul—Tongres, Metz, Rheims—yielded to their savage onslaught.
Everywhere flew the red banner of fire. The citizens were slain on their
hearth-stones; the priests, against whom the invaders had an especial
hatred, were murdered before the altars, on which glittered the coveted
silver and gold. Paris escaped destruction; whether saved by the prayers
of Sainte Geneviève or guarded by its own comparative insignificance it
is not for us to decide. So the savage host, having rolled on through
Belgic and Lugdunensian Gaul, reached the great river Loire, which
circled the kingdom of the Visigoths. Here they laid siege to Orleans,
that city so memorable for her sieges. The battering-rams (for Attila
possessed these engines of war) were shaking the walls of the city, and
the inhabitants feared that only ruin was before them. But their Bishop,
Anianus, bade them be of good courage, and foretold that deliverance
would reach them on the 24th of June. On that day, while they were
praying in the church, Anianus sent a messenger to mount the ramparts
and see if help were approaching. The messenger went once, twice, in
vain. The third time he brought word that a cloud of dust was seen upon
the horizon. It was caused by the troops of Aetius and Theodoric, who,
after some delay and wavering of purpose, had joined forces and were
approaching to deliver the city. Attila, for some reason with which we
are not acquainted, declined to await their attack, and began to retrace
his steps towards the Rhine. Doubtless his vast army was difficult to
feed, and difficult to keep together, in the country which they had
so ruthlessly ravaged; and probably Attila foresaw great danger in
attempting to cross the broad Loire in the face of a large army, which
united Gothic courage to Roman science of war. Whatever the cause, he
retreated, and reached the city of Troyes, which he consented to exempt
from pillage on condition that the Bishop, St. Lupus, whose saintly
appearance awed and impressed him, should accompany him as far as the
Rhine. On the Mauriac plain, some five miles from Troyes, the pursuing
armies came up with him; and here was fought that ‘cruel, manifold,
monstrous, and stubborn battle[84]’ to which historians have given, not
quite correctly, the name of the Battle of Châlons.
[Sidenote: _Battle of Châlons. July? 451._]
Before the fight began, Attila consulted the rude auguries of his nation,
drawn from the inspection of the bowels of a sheep and the markings of
some bones. The soothsayers predicted ‘ill fortune to the Huns,’ but
qualified it with the assurance that the leader of their foes should
fall. The hope that Aetius, the one great Roman champion, would perish,
seemed to console Attila for the presage of his own defeat.
It was indeed a battle of many nations. Under the standards of the king
of the Huns marched Ostrogoths, Gepidae, Heruli, and a host of less-known
nationalities, Teutonic, Slavonic, and Turanian. The three kings of the
Ostrogoths, and especially the eldest of them, Walamir, and Ardaric,
king of the Gepidae, were Attila’s chief advisers and lieutenants on the
battle-field.
The allied army, on the other hand, contained not only Visigoths, who
were posted on the right wing, and Romans, who were on the left, but
Franks, Saxons, Bretons, Burgundians, and a number of other tribes
settled in Gaul. Chief among these lesser nationalities were the Alans,
who were settled at Valence on the Rhone. They were near of kin to the
Huns, and their king, Sangiban, was suspected of intending to desert to
them on the battle-field. He was therefore placed in the centre of the
allied line, tightly wedged in between Romans and Visigoths, both of whom
watched his movements narrowly and prevented him from accomplishing the
meditated treachery.
[Sidenote: _Hunnish defeat._]
Beyond this statement as to the Alans, and Attila’s orders to his troops
to neglect the Romans and strike hardest at the Visigoths, we hear little
or nothing as to the tactics of the day. The battle began at three in
the afternoon, and raged on, upon a line of immense length, till the
end of the July day. Theodoric, the Visigothic king, was thrown from
his horse and accidentally trampled to death by his own countrymen. His
men, however, rushed forward and broke the Hunnish line. Attila himself
fled and took shelter behind his rampart of waggons. Thorismund, son of
Theodoric, and Aetius both lost their way in the darkness which had now
come on, and nearly fell victims to their rashness, having actually
wandered into the quarters of the foe.
[Sidenote: _Results of the battle._]
The next morning dawned upon a ghastly sight. It is said that 177,000
men were slain in the ‘manifold and monstrous battle.’ This number
represents a slaughter nearly twice as great as that at Leipsic, with all
the improvements in the machinery of destruction which fifteen centuries
have wrought. It is doubtful whether we ought to listen with perfect
faith to calculations which were probably very hasty and fragmentary.
But it is not doubtful that the slaughter on the Mauriac plain was one
of the greatest ever witnessed on any battle-field before the invention
of gunpowder. And, measured by its results, the battle was even greater
than when we take account of the carnage. For this was pre-eminently one
of ‘the decisive battles of history,’ since it settled the question of
supremacy in Europe against the Hun, the squalid, unprogressive heathen
Tartar, and kept the ground clear for the Romance, the Teutonic, and the
Slavic peoples.
[Sidenote: _Attila retreats from Gaul. 451-2._]
The expectations of both armies that the battle would be renewed on the
morrow were not fulfilled. Attila, behind his entrenchments, bade his
trumpets sound, and feigned a fresh attack, but all the time he knew
himself beaten, and had a pyre of Hunnish saddles prepared, into which,
had his entrenchments been stormed, he would have cast himself headlong,
that living or dead he might escape the insults of his foes. Meanwhile
the Goths, having at length found their old king’s body, buried him on
the battle-field to the music of their rough war-songs. Thorismund then
marched rapidly to Toulouse to claim his father’s throne. Aetius also
quitted the field, and Attila was saved from utter destruction, whether
owing to the too great prudence of the allies or to a want of perfect
harmony between them, it is impossible now to determine. The Hunnish
king reached the Rhine without further molestation, and thence sent the
venerable Bishop Lupus back to Troyes, asking him to pray to the Almighty
for the welfare of his late entertainer.
[Sidenote: _Attila’s invasion of Italy, 452._]
[Sidenote: _Siege of Aquileia._]
[Sidenote: _Aquileia taken and destroyed._]
The next year (452) Attila determined to wipe out the shame of his defeat
by an invasion, not this time of Gaul, but of Italy. He crossed the
Julian Alps, entered Venetia by the well-known route, trodden of late by
so many armies, and invested the great, the hitherto impregnable city of
Aquileia. In two stubborn sieges at least, probably in more, this city
had shown herself the unconquerable bulwark of North-east Italy; and now,
so long was the investment by the Huns vainly protracted, that it seemed
as if she would once more prove her title to that name. Attila was about
to abandon the siege in despair, when suddenly looking up, he beheld the
storks collecting their young broods about them and preparing to fly
from the city. The omen struck him. He pointed it out to his soldiers,
and in a short, inspiriting speech, urged them to renew their attack on
a city which, as the heaven-guided instinct of the birds told them, was
doomed to ruin. The appeal was fatally successful. The fierce Huns once
more moved their engines against the walls; they effected a practicable
breach; they swarmed in; they slew, they pillaged, they ravished. The
rage of Attila at his long detention before the walls made the usual
savagery of Tartar destruction more savage; and soon there was nothing
left of Aquileia—its Mint, its Baths, its Theatres—but a smoking heap of
ruins. Tradition says that Attila caused a mound to be raised at Udine,
twenty miles distant, and stood on the top of it to see the flames ascend
from the burning city.
[Sidenote: _Other Adriatic cities ruined._]
[Sidenote: _Founders of Venice._]
All the sister cities, beautiful and stately, which were mirrored in the
waters of the North-western Adriatic, shared the fate of Aquileia. The
Roman colony of Concordia; Altinum, with its fair white villas; Patavium,
the birthplace of Livy, were levelled with the ground. A few trembling
fugitives from all these cities, including, perhaps, some from Aquileia
herself, sought shelter in the wide lagoons at the mouths of the Piave
and the Brenta. These miserable refugees founded a gorgeous city, whose
fame spread far and wide over all lands, and whose merchandise was sold
even on those dreary plains of Central Asia over which Attila’s ancestors
once wandered. She was the affianced City of the Sea—Venice.
[Sidenote: _Attila at Milan._]
Attila marched westwards through the broad green plain which we now
call Lombardy, and as he went his fury somewhat abated. All the cities,
Verona, Pavia, Milan, and the rest opened their gates to him; and in
all, the Huns plundered at their will, but the lives of the inhabitants
were spared and the buildings were left unburned. At Milan, Attila
saw with contemptuous amusement a picture representing the Scythians
prostrate under the feet of the Eastern and Western Emperors. He allowed
the picture to remain, but ordered an artist to paint on the opposite
wall the King of the Huns seated on his throne, with Theodosius and
Valentinian emptying their sacks of _aurei_ at his feet.
[Sidenote: _Embassy of Pope Leo._]
During all this time abject terror reigned in the City of Rome, where,
and not at Ravenna, the Emperor appears to have been residing. Even the
stout heart of Aetius seems to have failed him, and he is said to have
counselled Valentinian to flee from Italy, probably to the Narbonensian
Gaul, almost the only Western province which was left to Rome. However,
it was decided to try what effect a humble embassy might have in
mitigating the wrath of the terrible Hun. Two of the highest officials
in the Empire were sent on this embassy, and with them went Pope Leo I,
greatest in character and mental gifts of all the men who had yet sat in
the chair of St. Peter, rightly named Leo, for a more lion-hearted man
had not been found even among the Consuls and Emperors of Rome.
[Sidenote: _Its success._]
The embassy found the Hunnish king by the banks of the Mincio, probably
not far from the city of Mantua. Strange to say, they won a peaceful and
easy victory. ‘[85]He laid aside his fury and excitement, and returning
by the way that he had come, that is to say beyond the Danube, he
departed with the promise of peace, uttering, however, this one warning
and threat above all others, that he would bring yet heavier calamities
upon Italy unless they sent to him Honoria, with the portion of the
Imperial treasure which was her due.’ We shall probably seek in vain for
any reasons of state-craft which could have induced Attila thus to forego
the supreme prize of barbarian conquest, the sack of Rome, when victory
lay ready to his hand. Apparently the reason assigned by contemporary
chroniclers is the true one. It was the influence exerted over him by
the saintly majesty of Leo, which induced him to sheathe the sword and
to be satisfied with promise of tribute when he might have grasped the
reality of plunder. There was in Attila’s character, with all its brutal
savageness, something almost like magnanimity, a certain readiness, when
his own greatness was acknowledged and when his enemy had humbled himself
in the dust before him, to accept his humiliation, and if he trampled,
not to trample him to death. There was also in his heathen soul some
capacity of being impressed by those whose spirits really rose above
the clash of the kingdoms of the world, into the serener air of the
Kingdom of God. There may possibly have been mingled with this feeling a
remembrance of the premature death of Alaric which followed so soon upon
his conquest of the Eternal City, and a fear that he too, if he sacked
Rome, might find his grave in Italy.
Whatever the cause, there can be no doubt that the success of Pope Leo,
when the Emperor and the Master of the Soldiery confessed that they saw
only ruin before them, profoundly stirred the hearts of the Roman people.
The events of the year 452 contributed enormously to raise the Vatican
above the Palatine, and to give the Pope the moral, if not yet the
political, sovereignty of Rome.
[Sidenote: _Death of Attila, 453._]
If Attila had planned for himself the luxury of another raid upon
Italy in 453, his schemes were suddenly and unexpectedly frustrated.
In addition to the many wives whom he already possessed, he married a
beautiful damsel named Ildico. At the wedding banquet he drank copiously,
and afterwards slept the sleep of intoxication. In the midst of it he was
attacked by a violent bleeding from the nose, which proved fatal to him
in his drunken stupor. That same night, it is said, the brave Emperor
Marcian had a dream, in which he saw the bow of Attila broken.
[Sidenote: _The Hunnish power broken. 454._]