ATTILA AND THE HUNS
BY
EDWARD HUTTON
AUTHOR OF “RAVENNA”
LONDON
CONSTABLE & COMPANY LTD.
1915
TO
BELOVED ITALY
WITH WHOM
IN THIS HOUR
OF RENEWED PERIL
ONCE MORE
WE FIGHT
THE BARBARIANS
A.D. 401-1915
INTRODUCTION
“There is a race on Scythia’s verge extreme
Eastward beyond the Tauris’ chilly stream.
The Northern Bear looks on no uglier crew;
Bare is their garb, their bodies foul to view,
Their souls are ne’er subdued to sturdy toil
Or Ceres’ webs. Their sustenance is spoil.
With horrid wounds they gash their brutal brows
And o’er their murdered parents bind their vows....”
In these words, Claudian the poet of the Decline and Fall of the Roman
Empire, describes the Huns of the fifth century, the brood of Attila to
whom the German Kaiser appealed before the whole world when he sent his
brother to China to meet the Boxers:--
“When you meet the foe you will defeat him. No quarter will be given,
no prisoners will be taken. Let all who fall into your hands be at
your mercy. Just as the Huns a thousand years ago under the leadership
of Attila gained a reputation in virtue of which they still live in
historic tradition, so may the name of Germany become known in such
a manner in China that no Chinaman will ever again dare even to look
askance at a German.”
These words will never be forgotten, for they have since been
translated into action not only upon the Chinese but upon the body of
Europe, upon the Belgians and the people of Northern France as upon the
long martyred people of Poland.
That appeal to the Hun startled Europe, and yet had we remembered the
history of Prussia, had we recalled the ethnology of that race we ought
not to have been surprised, for the Hun and the Prussian have certainly
much in common even racially, and Attila, or Etzel, as the Germans call
him, has ever played his part in the Nibelungenlied and the legends of
the Prussian people.
We know so little of the Huns of the fifth century: who they were,
whence indeed they came and whither they went, that it is impossible
definitely to assert or to deny that the Prussians of to-day are their
actual descendants. We must, it seems, give up the old theory which
Gibbon took from De Guignes that this savage people were identical with
the Hioung-nou whose ravages are recorded in the history of China; but
of this at least it seems we may be sure, that they were a Turanian
race, a race to which the Finns, Bulgarians and Magyars also belong as
well as the Croatians and the Turks. Can we with any certainty claim
that the Prussians also are of this family?
Quatrefages has demonstrated that the population of the Prussias is by
its ethnological origin essentially Finno-Slavian. In every respect, he
asserts, and history bears him out, Prussia is ethnologically distinct
from the peoples she now rules over under the pretence of a unity of
race with them. Identity of language may mask this truth, but it cannot
alter it, for the difference is real and fundamental.
Teutonic Germany has accepted Prussia as its sovereign, and no one can
question her right to do so; but being what she is, she has been led
astray by an anthropological error. Not content with subordinating
herself to these Finno-Slavs the real Germany has adopted their hatred
and worked out the brutal instincts of these strangers whose iron yoke
she has placed upon her nobler spirit. Her union with Prussia has been
founded by the sword and by blood, cemented by war and crowned by
spoliation. It is a crime not less than the crime of that Attila to
whom Prussia appeals as her true and original hero, and now, as then,
we have the right to believe in a divine Nemesis. What shall it profit
a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?
It would seem, then, that as well physically as spiritually the
Prussians in so far as they are Finnic[1] are of the same Turanian
stock to which the Huns belonged and if only thus related to them.
That the relationship is closer still a thousand things of which we
are witnesses to-day, as for many hundred years past, would lead us to
surmise. And if they are not the same Barbarians, their barbarism is
the same.
It was at any rate Attila’s name that Kaiser Wilhelm II flung across
an astonished world a decade ago as the French might cry out upon
Charlemagne or Blessed Joan of Arc or Napoleon. And since he has
appealed to the Huns, to the Huns let him go.
For us there remain these facts to be considered, if, as is so
difficult, we are to benefit from the lessons of History.
Rome always defeated the Barbarians, but never succeeded in destroying
their power to renew the attack. Stilicho defeated Alaric whenever
he met him, yet Alaric at last entered Rome. Aetius broke Attila
repeatedly, yet Attila at last was able to threaten Italy. Belisarius
and Narses broke Vitiges and Totila, yet these Barbarians ruined the
peninsula. In spite of defeat the attack was always renewed, because
Rome had never really broken the Barbarian power. And if we to-day
spare the Germanies the uttermost price and the last, if we fail to
push this war to the bitter and the necessary end, in twenty years or
in fifty they will fall upon us again and perhaps in an hour for us
less fortunate. Delenda est Carthago.
It was perhaps not within the power of Rome to break once and for all
the advance of the Barbarians. Time has been upon our side. To-day
if our courage and our endurance are strong enough, if we set our
face like a flint, we may once for all rid Europe of this Barbarian
peril, which, now as always intent on the destruction and the loot of
civilisation, pleads necessity, invokes its gods, and knows neither
justice nor mercy.
Rome could not mobilise: we can. In the old days the Barbarians could
break off first the point, as it were, of civilisation, then a little
more, and so on till the butt choked them. They can no longer do that.
The railway and the automobile, the telegraph and the telephone have
endowed us with such a power of mobilisation that we can compel the
Barbarians to meet the butt of civilisation first instead of last.
If we have the will we may destroy once and for all the power of the
Barbarians, who have attempted to destroy civilisation, not only under
Alaric, Attila, and Totila, but under Frederick of Hohenstaufen and
Luther, and having finally overcome them we may erect once more in
Europe the Pax Romana and perhaps--who knows?--even the old unity of
Christendom.
_May, 1915._
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Godron says with truth: “The Prussians are neither Germans nor
Slavs; the Prussians are the Prussians. But one must remember that they
were of Finno-Slavonic race, not Teutonic, and were subject to the King
of Poland till comparatively recent times. They remained heathen long
after the rest of Germany was Christianised.”
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
PAGE
THE EMPIRE AND THE BARBARIANS 3