The fourth century of our era and the first half of the fifth were
characterized by the spirit of migration among all the peoples beyond
the Rhine. Representatives of every German village and district went
to Rome, and each brought back stories of the wealth and luxury
that existed there. They had the keen perception and the strength
to recognize the increasing weakness of the government, and also to
despise the enervation and corruption of its citizens. The German was
ambitious and restless as daily he regarded Rome more and more as his
prey. The Romans themselves saw the danger of the Empire and lived in
apprehension of overwhelming incursions long before they came. In the
latter part of the fourth century the great impulse was given to the
people of northern and eastern Europe by successive invasions from
Asia; and a vast and general movement began among them which resulted
in the disintegration of the Roman Empire, and the transfer of the
principal arena of history from the shores of the Mediterranean Sea
to the countries in which the great powers of modern Europe afterward
grew up. The first impulse to this series of events was given by
disturbances and migrations in central Asia, of whose cause hardly
anything is known. Long before the Christian era there was a powerful
race of Huns in northeastern Asia who became so dangerous to the
Chinese that the great wall of China was built as a defense against
them (finished B. C. 244).[E]
* * * * *
These Huns, a Mongol race, had migrated from the center of Asia
westward three-quarters of a century previously (A. D. 375), carrying
death and devastation on their path. They had nothing in common with
the peoples of the West, either in facial features or habits of life.
Contemporary historians describe them as surpassing by their savagery
all that can be imagined. They were of low stature, with broad
shoulders, thick-set limbs, flat noses, high cheek-bones, small eyes
deeply sunk in the sockets, and yellow complexion. Ammianus Marcellinus
compares them, in their monstrous ugliness, to beasts walking on two
legs, or the grinning heads clumsily carved on the posts of bridges.
They had no beard, because from infancy their faces were hideously
scarred by being slashed all over, in order to hinder its growth.
Accustomed to lead a wandering life in their native country, these wild
hordes traversed the Steppes, or boundless plains which lie between
Russia and China, in huge chariots, or on small hardy horses, changing
their stations as often as fresh pasture was required for their cattle.
Except constrained by necessity, they never entered any kind of house,
holding them in horror as so many tombs. They were accustomed from
infancy to endure cold, hunger, and thirst. As the great boots they
wore deprived them of all facility in marching, they never fought on
foot; but the skill with which they managed their horses and threw
the javelin, made them more formidable to the Germans than even the
disciplined, but less ferocious, legions of Rome.
This was the rude race which, bursting into Europe in the second half
of the fourth century, shook the whole barbarian world to its center,
and precipitated it upon the Roman Empire. The Goths fled before them,
when they passed the Danube, the Vandals when they crossed the Rhine.
After a halt of half a century in the center of Europe, the Huns put
themselves again in motion.
Attila, the king of this people, constrained all the tribes wandering
between the Rhine and the Oural to follow him. For some time he
hesitated upon which of the two empires he should carry the wrath of
heaven. Deciding upon the West, he passed the Rhine, the Moselle, and
the Seine, and marched upon Orleans. The populations fled before him in
indescribable terror, for the _Scourge of God_, as he was called, left
not one stone upon another wheresoever he passed. Metz and twenty other
cities had been destroyed. Troyes alone had been saved by its bishop,
Saint Loup. He wished to seize upon Orleans, the key of the southern
provinces; and his innumerable army surrounded the city. Its bishop,
St. Aignan, sustained the courage of the inhabitants by promising them
a powerful succor. Ætius, in fact, arrived with all the barbarian
nations encamped in Gaul, at the expense of which the new invasion was
made. Attila for the first time fell back; but in order to choose a
battle-field favorable for his cavalry, he halted in the Catalaunian
plains near Méry-sur-Seine. There the terrible shock of battle took
place. In the first onset the Franks, who formed the vanguard of Ætius,
fought with such animosity that 15,000 Huns strewed the plain. But
next day, when the great masses on both sides encountered, the bodies
of 165,000 combatants were left on that field of carnage. Attila was
conquered. The allies, however, not daring to drive the wild Huns to
despair, suffered Attila to retreat into Germany (451). In the year
following he made amends for his defeat by an invasion of northern
Italy, ravaging Aquileia, Milan, and other cities in a frightful
manner, but died of an apoplectic stroke (453), soon after his return,
and his empire fell with him, but not the terrible remembrance of his
name and of his cruelties. The Visigoths, whose king had perished in
the fight, and the Franks of Meroveus, had had, with Ætius, the chief
honor of that memorable day in the Catalaunian plains. For it had
become a question whether Europe should be German or Mongolian, whether
the fierce Huns or the Germans should found an empire on the ruins of
that which was then crumbling.[F]
FALL OF THE WESTERN EMPIRE—MANNERS AND MORALS OF THE GERMANS IN THIS
AGE.
The Western Empire had now but a short time to live. The dastardly
emperor Valentinian III., suspicious of the independent position of
Ætius, recalled the conqueror of Attila from Gaul, and slew him with
his own hand (A. D. 454). He was himself murdered soon after, and his
widow, Eudoxia, though forced to marry the assassin, determined to
avenge her husband. She invited the Vandals, for this purpose, from
Africa across the sea to Rome. This German tribe, still ruled by the
aged Genseric, was the only one which possessed a fleet; and by this
means the Vandals had already made themselves masters of the great
islands of the Mediterranean, of Sicily, Sardinia, and Corsica. The
“sea-king” eagerly obeyed the summons (A. D. 455), and now “golden
Rome” was given up for fourteen days to his soldiers, and was sacked
with such horrors that the name of Vandal has ever since been a proverb
for barbarity and destruction. Yet the mediation of Leo the Great, then
Bishop of Rome, saved the city from utter ruin. From this time onward
the emperors, who followed one another in quick succession, were mere
tools of the German generals, and symbols of power before the common
people; for the whole imperial army now consisted of the remnants of
various German nations, who had sought service for pay. These too, at
last, like their kindred in the provinces, demanded lands in Italy, and
would have no less than one-third of the soil. When this was refused,
Odoacer, at the head of his soldiers—Heruli, Sciri, Turcilingi, and
Rugii, who forced their way thither from the Danube—put an end to the
very name of the Roman Empire, stripping the boy Romulus Augustulus,
the last emperor, of the purple, and ruling alone in Italy, as German
general and king. Thus the Western Empire fell by German hands, after
they had already wrested from it all its provinces, Africa, Spain, Gaul
and Britain. This occurred in the year 476. Ancient history ends with
this event; but in the history of the Germans it is merely an episode.
At the time of the great migrations, the German tribes were barbarians,
in that they were destitute alike of humanity toward enemies and
inferiors, and of scientific culture. Neither the pursuit of learning
nor the practice of mercy to the vanquished could seem to them other
than unmanly weakness. Their ferocity spread misery and ruin through
the whole arena of history, and made the fifth and sixth centuries of
our era the crowning epoch in the annals of human suffering; while
their active, passionate contempt for learning destroyed the existing
monuments of intelligence and habits of inquiry and thought, almost
as completely as they swept away the wealth, prosperity, and social
organization of the Roman world. Their ablest kings despised clerical
accomplishments. Even Theodoric the Great could not write, and his
signature was made by a black smear over a form or mould in which his
name was cut. Nevertheless these nations were not what we mean by
savages. Their originally beautiful and resonant language was already
cultivated in poetical forms, in heroic songs. There was intercourse
and trade among the several nations. Minstrels, especially, passed
from one royal court to another, and the same song which was sung to
Theodoric in Ravenna could be heard and understood by the Vandals
in Carthage, by Clovis in Paris, and by the Thuringians in their
fastnesses. A common language was a strong bond of union among these
nations. Messengers, embassies, and letters were sent to and fro
between their courts; gifts were exchanged, and marriages and alliances
entered into. Thus the nations were informed concerning one another,
and recognized their mutual relationship. It was this international
intercourse that gave rise to the heroic minstrelsy—a faithful relation
of the great deeds of German heroes during the migrations; but the
minstrel boldly transforms the order of events, and brings together
things which in reality took place at intervals of whole generations.
Thus they sing of Hermanric, of Theodoric the Great (Dietrich the
Strong, of Berne), and of his faithful knight Hildebrand; then of
the fall of the Burgundian kings, of the far-ruling Attila, and of
Sigurd, or Siegfried, who was originally a Northern god of spring, but
here appears as a youthful hero, faithful and child-like, simple and
unsuspicious, yet the mightiest of all—the complete image of the German
character.
These wild times of warfare and wandering could not, of course,
favorably affect morals and character. They did much to root out of
the minds and lives of the people their ancient heathen faith and
practices. Their old gods were associated with places, scenes, features
of the country and the climate; and, with these out of sight, the gods
themselves were easily forgotten. Moreover, the local deities of other
places and nations were brought into notice. The people’s religious
habits were broken up, their minds confused, and thus they were better
prepared than before to embrace the new and universal doctrines of
Christianity. But the wanderings had a bad effect on morality in all
forms. The upright German was still distinguished by his self-respect
from the false, faithless, and cowardly “Welshman,” whose nature had
become deformed through years of servitude. But Germans, too, were
now often guilty of faithlessness and cruelty; and some tribes grew
effeminate and corrupt, especially the Vandals in luxurious Africa.
They imitated the style of the conquered in dress, arms, and manner
of life; and some adopted their language also. For instance, even
Theodoric the Great corresponded in Latin with foreign monarchs; and as
early as the sixth and seventh centuries, the Germans recorded their
own laws in Latin, the West Goths and Burgundians introducing the
practice, which was followed by the Franks, Alemanni, Bavarians, and
Langobards. These laws, and the prohibitions they contain, are the best
sources of information upon the manners of the time, and especially
upon the condition of the lower orders, the peasants, and the slaves.
The most frequent cases provided are of bodily injuries, murder,
wounds, and mutilations, showing that the warlike disposition had
degenerated into cruelty and coarseness. For all these injuries, the
weregeld, or ransom, was still a satisfaction. The life of a nobleman,
that of a freeman, of a slave, and the members of the body—the eye,
ear, nose, and hand—were assessed each at a fixed money valuation,
to be paid by the aggressor, if he would not expose himself to the
vengeance of the wronged man or his family. But crimes committed by
peasants and slaves were punished by death, sometimes at the stake,
where freemen might escape by paying a fine. The oaths of parties and
witnesses were heard; and they were sustained by the oaths of others,
their friends, relations, or partisans, who swore that they were to
be believed. If an accused party swore that he was innocent, it was
only necessary for him to obtain a sufficient number of compurgators,
or jurors, of his own rank to swear that they believed him, in order
to secure acquittal. But the number required was much larger for men
of low rank than for the nobles; and the freedmen and slaves had no
rights of the kind, but were tortured at will to compel them to confess
or testify. The slaves were often tried by an ordeal, and were held
guilty of any accusation if they could not put their hands into boiling
water without harm. For freemen, if no other evidence were accessible,
a trial by battle was adopted, as an appeal to God’s judgment. The
heathen tribes in Germany proper—the Frisi, Saxons, Thuringians, and
Alemanni—lived on in their old ways; yet they too failed to maintain
the spotless character assigned them by Tacitus. It was a time of
general ferment. The new elements of civilization had brought with them
new vices, and the simplicity of earlier days could not survive.[G]
[To be continued.]
* * * * *
RIGHT well I know that improvement is a duty, and as we see man strives
ever after a higher point, at least he seeks some novelty. But beware!
for with these feelings Nature has given us also a desire to continue
in the old ways, and to take pleasure in that to which we have been
accustomed. Every condition of man is good which is natural and in
accordance with reason. Man’s desires are boundless, but his wants are
few. For his days are short, and his fate bounded by a narrow span. I
find no fault with the man who, ever active and restless, crosses every
sea and braves the rude extremes of every clime, daring and diligent in
pursuit of gain, rejoicing his heart and house by wealth.—_Goethe._