CHAPTER IX

ATTILA’S HOME-COMING 145

MAIN SOURCES

I. AMMIANI MARCELLINI RERUM GESTARUM,

LIBER XXXI 153

II. EX HISTORIA BYZANTINA PRISCI RHETORIS

ET SOPHISTAE 159

EX HISTORIA GOTHICA PRISCI RHETORIS ET

SOPHISTAE 170

III. JORNANDES: DE REBUS GETICIS 207

IV. EX VITA MS. SANCTI ANIANI EPISCOPI

AURELIANENSIS 225

I

THE EMPIRE AND THE BARBARIANS

At the opening of the fifth century of our era the Roman Empire had

long been not only the civilised world but Christendom. The four

centuries which had passed since the birth of Our Lord had seen in fact

the foundation of Europe, not as we know it to-day a mosaic of hostile

nationalities, but as one perfect whole in which all that is worth

having in the world lay like a treasure. There were born and founded

that they might always endure, the culture, the civilisation and the

Faith which we enjoy and by which we live. There were established for

ever the great lines upon which our art was to develop, to change and

yet not to die. There was erected the supremacy of the idea that it

might always renew our lives, our culture, and our polity, that we

might always judge everything by it and fear neither revolution, nor

defeat nor decay. There we Europeans were established in the secure

possession of our own souls; so that we alone in the world develop

from within to change but never to die, and to be, alone in the world,

Christians.

The outward and visible sign of the Empire, which above everything else

distinguished it from the world which surrounded it, as an island is

surrounded by an unmapped sea, was the Pax Romana. This was domestic

as well as political. It ensured a complete and absolute order, the

condition of civilisation, and, established through many generations,

it seemed immutable and unbreakable. Along with it went a conception

of law and of property more fundamental than anything we are now able

to appreciate, while free exchange was assured by a complete system of

communication and admirable roads. There is indeed scarcely anything

that is really fundamental in our lives and in our politics that was

not there created. It was there our religion, the soul of Europe, was

born and little by little became the energy and the cause of all that

undying but changeful principle of life and freedom which rightly

understood is Europe. Our ideas of justice, our ideas of law, our

conception of human dignity and the structure of our society were there

conceived, and with such force that while we endure they can never

die. In truth, the Empire which it had taken more than a millennium

to build was the most successful and perhaps the most beneficent

experiment in universal government that has ever been made.

The Empire fell. Why?

We cannot answer that question. The causes of such a catastrophe,

spiritual and material, are for the most part hidden from us in the

darkness that followed the catastrophe, in which civilisation in the

West all but perished. All we can do is to note that the administration

of this great State became so expensive that when Alaric came over

the Alps in 401 it was probably already bankrupt and in consequence

the population was declining; and that the military problem before

the Empire, the defence of its frontiers against the outer welter

of barbarism, was so expensive and so naturally insecure that it

was difficult to ensure and impossible with due economy. Finally we

ought to be sure that though the Empire decayed and fell, it was not

overthrown by the Barbarians. As in this book we are concerned not

indeed with the Barbarian invasions as a whole but nevertheless with

the most frightful and perhaps the most destructive among them, we

shall do well to consider more particularly here for a moment one of

the causes of that fall, though not the chief one as we have said; the

insecurity of the frontiers, namely, and the problem this proposed

which the Empire was, alas, unable to solve.

The Empire was confined on the west by the ocean, on the south by

the desert of Africa, on the east by the Caspian Sea and the Persian

Gulf, on the north by the Rhine and the Danube, the Black Sea and the

Caucasus.

It was that northern frontier which was a fundamental weakness and

which at least from the middle of the third century continually

occupied the mind of the Roman administration. How to hold it?

Beyond that frontier lay a world largely unknown, a mere wilderness of

barbarians, tribes always restless, always at war, always pressing upon

the confines of civilisation. Within lay all that is worth having in

our lives, the hope of the world. It was this which, then as now, had

to be defended and against the same enemy--barbarism. For barbarism

does not become less barbarous when it becomes learned, a savage is a

savage even in professorial dress. For this cause it is written: change

your hearts and not your garments.

The defence, then, of the frontier had been the chief problem of

the Empire perhaps from its foundation by Augustus and certainly

for two hundred years before Alaric crossed the Alps. Its solution

was attempted in various ways, before, in the year 292, Diocletian

attempted to deal with it by the revolutionary scheme of dividing the

Empire. But the division he made was, and perhaps unavoidably, rather

racial than strategic, the two parts of the Empire met at a critical

point on the Danube and by force of geography the eastern part was

inclined to an Asiatic outlook and to the neglect of the Danube, while

the western was by no means strong enough to hold the tremendous line

of the two rivers. Nevertheless the West made an heroic attempt to

fulfil its too onerous duty. The capital of the vicariate of Italy was

removed from Rome to Milan. This tremendous act was purely strategical.

It was thought, and rightly, that the frontier would be more readily

secured from Milan, which held, as it were, all the passes of the Alps

in its hands, than from Rome in the midst of the long peninsula of

Italy. It was a change more amazing than the removal of the capital

of the British Empire from London to Edinburgh would be; but it was

not enough. In 330, seventeen years after Christianity had become the

official religion of the Empire, Constantine the Great for the same

reasons of defence removed the seat of the Empire to Byzantium, the new

Rome on the Bosphorus, which he renamed Constantinople.

That move, which has been so strongly condemned, would seem in any

right apprehension of what followed to have saved what could be saved

out of the foreseen and perhaps inevitable _débâcle_. Constantinople

remained till 1453 the secure capital of the Eastern Government and of

a Roman civilisation; it endured, and in more than one critical period

held up the citadel of the West--Italy--in its hands.

It may be that nothing could have secured the West; that the foundation

of Constantinople saved the East is certain. Because the West was the

weaker and the richer, because the name of Rome was so tremendous, the

West, as we know, bore the full brunt of the Barbarian assault. That

assault was a much looser and more haphazard affair than we have been

wont to believe. The West was rather engulfed than defeated. For a time

it was lost in a sea of barbarism; that it emerged, that it rearose,

and that we are what we are, we owe to the foundation of Constantinople

and to the Catholic Church.

I say that the Empire was rather engulfed than defeated. Let us

consider this.

In the year 375 the frontiers were secure; nevertheless before then the

defence had failed. Long before then it had become obvious that the

vast hordes of Barbarians beyond the Rhine and the Danube could not be

held back if anything should occur to drive them on. If they came on

they would have to be met, not beyond, or even upon the rivers, but

within the Empire itself.

If anything should occur to drive them on.... In the year 375 this

befell. Ammianus Marcellinus, the contemporary Roman historian, writing

of the incursions of the Barbarians, asserts that all the evils which

befell the Empire at that time were due to one people--the Huns. In the

year 375 the Huns were finally victorious over the Goths who in 376 in

utter despair appealed to the Eastern Emperor Valens for protection.

“Suppliant multitudes of that warlike nation,” we read of the Goths,

“whose pride was now humbled in the dust, covered a space of many miles

along the banks of the Danube. With outstretched arms and pathetic

lamentations they loudly deplored their past misfortunes and their

present danger; acknowledged that their only hope of safety was in the

clemency of the Roman Government; and most solemnly protested that if

the gracious liberality of the Emperor would permit them to cultivate

the waste lands of Thrace they would ever hold themselves bound by

the strongest obligations of duty and gratitude to obey the laws and

guard the tenets of the republic.” Their prayers were granted and their

service was accepted by the Imperial Government. They were transported

over the Danube into the Roman Empire. In some ways this act and its

date 376 are among the most momentous in the history of Europe.

Undisciplined and restless this nation of near a million Barbarians

suddenly introduced into civilisation was a constant anxiety and

danger. Ignorant of the laws they had sworn to keep, as well as of

the obligations and privileges of civilisation, the Goths were at

the mercy of their masters, who exploited them without scruple, till

driven to madness they revolted and began the fatal march through

Moesia, entering Thrace at last not as the guests of the Empire but

as its victorious enemy. They encamped under the walls of Hadrianople

which presently they besieged, laying waste the provinces; and it was

not till Theodosius had ascended the Imperial throne that they were

successfully dealt with, forced to submit, and settled in Thrace and

Asia Minor.

But such a result could not endure. The Barbarians but awaited a

leader, and when he appeared, as he did in the person of Alaric, after

the death of Theodosius, they turned on Constantinople itself, which

they were able to approach but not to blockade. In 396 Alaric marched

southward into Greece; from Thermopylae to Sparta he pursued his

victorious way, avoiding Athens rather from superstition than from fear

of any mortal foe. Early in 396, however, Stilicho, who was later to

win such fame in the Italian campaign, set sail from Italy, met Alaric

in Arcadia, turned him back and seemed about to compel his surrender

in the prison of the Peloponnesus. In this, however, he was not

successful. Alaric was able to cut his way out and by rapid marches to

reach the Gulf of Corinth and to transport his troops, his captives and

his spoil to the opposite shore. There he succeeded in negotiating a

treaty with Constantinople whereby he entered its pay and was declared

Master General of Eastern Illyricum. This befell in 399.

The intervention of Stilicho, successful though it had been, had

proved one thing before all others; the political separation of the

East and the West. The sailing of Stilicho and his army was the

intervention of the West to save the East, for it was the East that was

then in danger. The West was betrayed. The East made terms with the

Barbarian and employed him. It behoved the West to look to itself, for

it was obvious that the East would save itself at last by sacrificing

the West.

The West was ready. A scheme of defence had been prepared which, as

we shall see, was the best that could in the circumstances have been

devised. With a directness and a clarity worthy of Rome the advisers of

Honorius, then in Milan, determined to sacrifice everything if need be

to the defence of the European citadel, of Italy that is; and, after

all, considering the position of Alaric in Illyricum, it was that which

was chiefly threatened. If it fell it was certain that the whole of the

West must collapse.

The problem before the advisers of Honorius was not an easy one. To

solve it with certainty enormous sacrifices were necessary, but to

solve it meant the salvation of the world. It was therefore determined

to abandon the Rhine and the Danube, for already Alaric was within

those lines. It was determined--and this was the decisive thing--to

abandon the Alps, to make, that is to say, Cisalpine Gaul, or as we say

the Lombard Plain, the battlefield, and to hold Italy proper along the

line of the Apennines. I have examined and explained this strategy at

length elsewhere;[2] here it is only necessary to say that its amazing

success justified a policy so realistic.

The theory of the commanders of Honorius was that the Apennines were

by nature impregnable save at one place, the narrow pass between them

and the Adriatic, which they had long designed Ravenna to hold. Their

intention to hold this line was determined not only by this theory,

but by this, too, that they were something more than uncertain of the

attitude of the Eastern Empire. Their strategy meant the abandonment

of the richest province south of the Alps, the richest and the most

ancient; but if the military theory which regarded the Apennines as

impassable were right it meant the certain and immediate salvation of

the soul of the West and the eventual salvation of the whole.

Honorius and his ministers had not long to wait. Having looted the

provinces of Europe within the dominion of the Eastern Emperor, Alaric

“tempted by the power, the beauty and the wealth of Italy ... secretly

aspired to plant the Gothic standard on the walls of Rome, and to

enrich his army with the accumulated spoils of an hundred triumphs.”

In November, 401, Alaric entered Venetia by the Julian Alps and passed

by Aquileia without taking it, intent on the spoil of the South. As

he came on Honorius retired from Milan to Ravenna; the gates of Italy

were barred. Then came Stilicho over the Cisalpine Plain, met Alaric,

who had crossed the Po, at Pollentia, and defeated him and, following

his retreat, broke him at Asta so that he compelled him to recross the

Alps. In 403 Alaric again entered Venetia. Stilicho met him at Verona

and once more hurled him back. The barred gates of Italy had scarce

been questioned.

It was not Alaric, after all, but another Barbarian, Radagaisus,

who was first to demand an entrance. In 405 he traversed the same

Alpine passes as Alaric had used, passed Aquileia, crossed the Po and

shunning the Via Emilia, which led through the pass Ravenna barred,

adventured over the Apennines which the Roman generals had conceived

as impassable by a Barbarian army. They were right. When Radagaisus saw

the South he was starving. Stilicho found him at Fiesole and cut him to

pieces. But the remnant of his army escaped as Alaric had done, it was

not annihilated; it returned through Cisalpine Gaul and fell upon Gaul

proper. Then in 408 Stilicho was murdered in Ravenna by order of the

Emperor.

This last disaster was the cause of what immediately followed. When

in 408 Alaric invaded Venetia he looted and destroyed as he wished,

for there was no one to meet him. He took the great road southward

and found the gate open; passed Ravenna without opposition, marched

to Rome and after three sieges entered and pillaged it and was on his

way southward to enjoy and to loot the South and Sicily, Placidia, the

Emperor’s sister, a captive in his train, when he died at Cosenza in

410. His brother-in-law Adolphus, erected as king upon the shields of

the Goths--there by the monstrous grave of his predecessor--concluded

a peace with Honorius similar to that which years before Alaric had

made with Constantinople. He was received into the Imperial service,

consented to cross the Alps, and, what was to become a precedent

for a yet more outrageous demand, received the hand of Placidia, the

Emperor’s sister, in marriage. Thus the retreat of the Barbarian was

secured, the peace of Italy restored and a repose obtained which

endured for some forty-two years.

It is interesting to observe the extraordinary likeness between

Alaric’s attack upon the East and his invasion of the West. Indeed, the

only difference between them is the fact that Constantinople was never

really in danger, whereas Rome was entered and looted. The intention

of both invasions was the same--loot; the result of both was the

same--tribute and service in return for the evacuation of the immediate

provinces by the Barbarian.

The Imperial failure East and West was a failure in morale and in

politics; it was not rightly understood a military failure: Alaric had

always been defeated when he was attacked. It was the failure of the

West to attack him that gave him Rome at last. The Imperial advisers

perhaps thought they had solved the question he had propounded to

them, when, after Alaric’s death, they had obtained the retreat of the

Barbarian across the Alps--a retreat he was as glad to carry out as

they to order, for he was in a sort of trap--and had secured at least

his neutrality by admitting him into the service of the Empire. But

the peace of more than a generation which followed their act was as

illusory as it was contemptible.

The whole Empire had received from Alaric a moral blow from which it

was never really to recover. It is true that much which happened in the

years that immediately followed the retreat of Adolphus was fortunate.

Placidia the spoil and the bride and later the fugitive widow of

Alaric’s successor returned in triumph to Ravenna to be the unwilling

bride of her deliverer Constantius. Largely through her influence,

after the death of Honorius, when she ruled in Ravenna with the title

of Augusta as the guardian of her son, the young Cæsar Valentinian,

between East and West, a new, if unsubstantial, cordiality appeared.

Italy at least was restored to prosperity, while in Aetius she

possessed a general as great as the great Stilicho. But if Italy was

safe the provinces were in peril and she herself saw Africa betrayed by

Boniface and ravaged by and lost to the Vandals under Genseric. Nor was

the domestic state of her household and court such as to inspire her

with confidence in the future. If her son Valentinian was a foolish

and sensual boy, her daughter Honoria was discovered in a low intrigue

with a chamberlain of the palace, and when in exile at Constantinople

sent, perhaps longing for the romantic fate of her mother, her ring to

the new and youthful King of the Huns, soon to be famous as Attila,

inviting him to carry her off as Adolphus, the Goth, had carried off

Placidia.

Such was the condition of things in the royal household of the West. In

Constantinople things were not more promising. Theodosius, the young

Emperor, called the Calligrapher, was a dilettante of the fine arts,

not a statesman. Those who surrounded him were mediocrities intent

rather on theological controversies than on the safety of the State,

or sunk in a cynical corruption in which everything noble was lost. No

one East or West seemed able to grasp or to realise that there was any

danger. Had the Imperial Governments failed altogether to understand

the fundamental cause of the Gothic advance, the Vandal attack, indeed

of all their embarrassments? Had they failed to remember what was there

beyond the Rhine and the Danube? Had they forgotten the Huns?

FOOTNOTES:

[2] See my “Ravenna” (Dent, 1913), pp. 1-10.

II

THE HUNS AND ATTILA

The people called the Huns, “scarcely mentioned in other records,”

are fully described by that Ammianus Marcellinus[3] whom I have

already quoted. He lived at the end of the fourth century, was a Roman

historian born of Greek parents at Antioch, and after fighting in

Gaul, in Germany and the East, settled in Rome and devoted himself to

history. He describes the Huns as “living beyond the Sea of Azov on

the borders of the Frozen Ocean.” And adds that they were a people

“savage beyond all parallel.” He then gives us the following careful

description of them:--

“In their earliest infancy deep incisions are made in the cheeks of

their boys[4] so that when the time comes for the beard to grow the

sprouting hairs may be kept back by the furrowed scars, and therefore

they grow to old age as beardless as eunuchs. At the same time all have

strong and well-built limbs and strong necks; they are indeed of great

size, but so short-legged that you might fancy them to be two-legged

beasts, or the figures which are hewn out in a rude manner with an axe

on the posts at the end of bridges.[5]

“They do, however, just bear the likeness of men (horribly ugly though

they be), but they are so little advanced in civilisation that they

make no use of fire, nor of seasoned food, but live on roots which they

find in the fields, or on the half raw flesh of any animal which they

merely warm a little by placing it between their own thighs and the

backs of their horses.

“They do not live under roofed houses but look upon them as tombs and

will only enter them of necessity. Nor is there to be found among them

so much as a cabin thatched with reed; but they wander about over the

mountains and through the woods training themselves to bear from their

infancy the extremes of frost and hunger and thirst.

“They wear linen clothes or else the skins of field mice sewn

together, and this both at home and abroad. When once such a tunic is

put on, it is never changed till from long decay it falls to pieces.

Their heads are covered with round caps and their hairy legs with goat

skins and their shoes which are ignorant of any last are so clumsy as

to hinder them in walking.

“For this cause they are not well suited for infantry; but, on the

other hand, they are almost one with their horses, which are poorly

shaped but hardy; often they sit them like women. In truth they can

remain on horseback night and day; on horseback they buy and sell, they

eat and drink, and bowed on the narrow neck of their steeds they even

sleep and dream. On horseback too they discuss and deliberate. They are

not, however, under the authority of a king, but are content with the

loose government of their chiefs.

“When attacked they sometimes engage in regular battle formed in a

solid body and uttering all kinds of terrific yells. More often,

however, they fight irregularly, suddenly dispersing, then reuniting

and after inflicting huge loss upon their enemy will scatter over

the plains hither and thither, avoiding a fortified place or an

entrenchment. It must be confessed that they are very formidable

warriors....

“None of them ploughs or even touches a plough-handle; for they have

no settled abode, but are alike homeless and lawless, continually

wandering with their waggons which indeed are their homes. They seem to

be ever in flight.... Nor if he is asked can any one tell you where he

was born; for he was conceived in one place, born in another far away,

and bred in another still more remote.

“They are treacherous and inconstant and like brute beasts are utterly

ignorant of the distinction between right and wrong. They only express

themselves with difficulty and ambiguously, have no respect for any

religion or superstition, are immoderately covetous of gold, and are so

fickle and cantankerous that many times in a day they will quarrel with

their comrades without cause and be reconciled without satisfaction.”[6]

Such were the people who according to Ammianus were “the original cause

of all the destruction and manifold calamities” which descended upon

the Roman Empire, in the fifth century of our era.

Fifty-six years before they began directly to menace civilisation

and the Roman Empire, they had, as we have seen, in 376 A.D., driven

the Goths before them to the first of those famous assaults upon the

frontiers of the Roman world. They themselves, utter barbarians as they

were, attempted then no direct attack upon our civilisation, though in

396 they crossed the Caucasus, raided Armenia and as Claudius notes,

“laid waste the pleasant fields of Syria.” In 409, however, Alaric

being then intent on Italy, they crossed the Danube and pushed on into

Bulgaria, Uldis, their chief, boasting in true Barbarian fashion,

“All that the sun shines upon I can conquer if I will.” It was the

first claim of the Barbarian, vocal and explicit, to “a place in the

sun”--someone else’s place. Uldis’ boast, however, had been but the

prelude to his flight and fall. Amid the welter of Barbarians less

barbarous than he, Visigoths, Vandals, Suevi, Alani, the Hun in fact

was unable to do much more than drive them on. When they had passed

into the Empire, into Gaul and Spain and Africa, he, worse than them

all, was free at last to threaten Christendom and its capitals,

Constantinople and Rome.

It was not till the two brothers Attila and Bleda ascended the Hunnish

throne, if throne it can be called, in the year 423, that the Huns

really became immediately and directly dangerous to civilisation.

That civilisation already half bankrupt and in transition had, as we

have seen, been bewildered and wounded by the actual incursion of

Barbarian armies south of the Danube and the Rhine, nay within the

heart of the Empire, within reach of Constantinople, within the very

walls of Rome. It was now to be assaulted by a savage horde, wholly

heathen, intent on murder and rape, loot and destruction.

The contrast between the two attacks, the attack of Alaric and that

of Attila, is very striking. To admire Alaric, even to defend him, is

obviously not impossible, since so many historians have been found

ready to do both. No voice unless it be Kaiser Wilhelm’s has ever been

raised in behalf of Attila. Here was the Empire, Christendom; he fell

upon it like a wild beast. At least the Goths were Christian--though

Arian--the Huns were pagan heathen. At least Alaric had revered the

Roman name and sought to assume it; Attila despised and hated it and

would have destroyed it utterly. But if there is this moral contrast

between the Gothic and the Hunnish attacks upon the Empire, militarily

they are alike in this above all that both were directed first upon

the East and were only turned upon the West after a sort of failure.

Happily for us the attacks of Attila, while infinitely more damaging,

were not nearly so dangerous as those of Alaric. The Empire was

assaulted by an assassin; it was delivered.

The Roman system with regard to the Barbarians had long been

established when Theodosius II ascended the Eastern throne. It

consisted not only in employing Barbarians as auxiliaries--thus Uldis

and his Huns had fought under Stilicho against Radagaisus at the battle

of Fiesole; but in setting the different Barbarian tribes and races one

against another. The Huns especially had been favoured by the Empire in

this way, Stilicho knew them well and Aetius who was at last to defeat

them upon the Catalaunian plains owed them perhaps his life in the

crisis that followed the death of his rival Boniface in 433. But that

policy, always dangerous, and the more so if it were inevitable, was

already bankrupt. The dispersal through the provinces of the Goths,

the Vandals, the Alani, Suevi and other tribes left the Empire face to

face upon its northern frontier with the real force which had driven

them on. In 432 we find Roua, King of the Huns, in receipt of an annual

subsidy, scarcely to be distinguished from a tribute, of 350 pounds’

weight of gold. He it was who perhaps first broke the old Roman policy.

When the Empire, according to its custom, made alliances with certain

Barbarian tribes his neighbours, he claimed them as his subjects and

immediately swore that he would denounce all his treaties with the

Empire unless the Emperor broke off these alliances. Moreover, he

demanded that all those of his subjects then within the Empire should

be restored to him; for many had entered the Roman service to escape

his harsh rule. These demands could not be ignored or refused. In 433

Theodosius was on the point of sending an embassy to treat with Roua,

when he heard that he was dead and that his two nephews, still young

men, Attila and Bleda, had succeeded him. It was they who received the

Imperial ambassadors.

The conference met on the right bank of the Danube within the Empire,

that is near the Roman town of Margus or Margum, a city of Moesia,

where the Danube and the Morava meet. The place was known as the

_Margum planum_ on account of the character of the country, and was

famous as the spot where Diocletian had defeated Carinus.[7]

The Byzantine historian Priscus has left us an account of this strange

meeting. The Huns it seems came on horseback and as they refused to

dismount the Roman ambassadors also remained on their horses. It

was thus they heard the arrogant demands of the Hunnish kings: the

denunciation by Theodosius of his alliance with the Barbarians of the

Danube, the expulsion of all the Huns serving in the Imperial armies or

settled within the Empire, an undertaking not to assist any Barbarian

people at war with the Huns, and the payment by the Empire as tribute,

_tributi nomine_, of seven hundred pounds’ weight of gold instead of

the three hundred and fifty given hitherto. To all these demands the

ambassadors were forced to agree as Attila insisted either upon their

acceptance or upon war, and Theodosius preferred any humiliation to

war. The famous conference of Margus was thus a complete victory for

the Huns, a victory Attila never forgot.

That Theodosius was ready to accept any terms which Attila might insist

upon is proved by the fact that he immediately delivered up to him his

two guests, young princes of the Huns, and made no protest when Attila

crucified them before the eyes of his ambassadors.

This act seems to symbolise at the outset the character of Attila

and his reign. He was then, we may suppose, between thirty and forty

years old, and although the younger always the master of his brother

Bleda, whom he was soon to murder. Of the place of his birth we know

nothing,[8] but he grew up on the Danube and there learned the use of

arms, perhaps in the company of the young Aetius, who had been a Roman

hostage of Roua and who was one day to conquer Attila. If we look for

a portrait of him we shall unhappily not find it in any contemporary

writer; but Jornandes, probably repeating a lost passage of some

earlier writer, perhaps Priscus himself, tells us that he was short,

with a mighty chest, a large head, eyes little and deep-set, a scant

beard, flat nose and dark complexion. He thrust his head forward as

he went and darted his glances all about, going proudly withal, like

one destined to terrify the nations and shake the earth. Hasty and

quarrelsome, his words, like his acts, were sudden and brutal, but

though in war he only destroyed, and left the dead unburied in their

thousands for a warning; to those who submitted to him he was merciful,

or at least he spared them. He dressed simply and cleanly, ate as

simply as he dressed, his food being served on wooden dishes; indeed

his personal temperance contrasted with the barbaric extravagance he

had about him. Nevertheless he was a Barbarian with the instincts of a

savage. Constantly drunk he devoured women with a ferocious passion,

every day having its victim, and his bastards formed indeed a people.

He knew no religion but surrounded himself with sorcerers, for he was

intensely superstitious.[9] As a general he was seldom in the field, he

commanded rather than led and ever preferred diplomacy to battle.[10]

His greatest weapon was prevarication. He would debate a matter

for years and the continual embassies of Theodosius amused without

exhausting him and his patience. He played with his victims as a cat

does with a mouse and would always rather buy a victory than win it.

He found his threat more potent than his deed, and in fact played with

the Empire which had so much to lose, very much as Bismarck played with

Europe. Like Bismarck too his business was the creation of an Empire.

His idea, an idea that perhaps even Roua had not failed to understand,

was the creation of an Empire of the North, a Hunnish Empire, in

counterpoise against the Roman Empire of the South, to the south that

is of the Rhine and the Danube. For this cause he wished to unite the

various Barbarian tribes and nations under his sceptre, as Bismarck

wished to unite the tribes of the Germans under the Prussian sword. He

was to be the Emperor of the North as the Roman Emperors were Emperors

of the South. Had he lived in our day he would have understood that

famous telegram of the Kaiser to the Tsar of Russia--“the Admiral of

the Atlantic....”

It was the business of Theodosius to prevent the realisation of this

scheme, nor did he hesitate to break the treaty of Margus to achieve

this. His emissaries attempted to attach to the Empire the Acatziri,

a Hunnish tribe that had replaced the Alani on the Don. Their chief,

however, fearing for his independence, or stupidly handled, sent word

to Attila of the Roman plot. The Hun came down at the head of a great

army, and though he spared the Acatziri, for their chief was both wily

and a flatterer, he brought all the Barbarians of that part within his

suzerainty and, returning, soon found himself master of an Empire which

stretched from the North Sea to the Caucasus, and from the Baltic to

the Danube and the Rhine, an Empire certainly in extent comparable with

that of Rome.

It was in achieving this truly mighty purpose that Attila exhibits two

of his chief characteristics, his superstition and his cruelty.

It seems that the ancient Scythians on the plain to the east of the

Carpathians had for idol and perhaps for God a naked sword, its hilt

buried in the earth, its blade pointed skyward. To this relic the

Romans had given the name of the sword of Mars. In the course of ages

the thing had been utterly forgotten, till a Hunnish peasant seeing his

mule go lame, and finding it wounded in the foot, on seeking for the

cause, guided by the blood, found this sword amid the undergrowth and

brought it to Attila who recovered it joyfully as a gift from heaven

and a sign of his destined sovereignty over all the peoples of the

earth. So at least Jornandes relates.[11]

The other episode exhibits his cruelty. In founding his empire Attila

had certainly made many enemies and aroused the jealousy of those of

his own house. At any rate he could not remember without impatience

that he shared his royalty with Bleda. To one of his subtlety such

impatience was never without a remedy. Bleda was accused of treason,

perhaps of plotting with Theodosius, and Attila slew his brother or had

him assassinated; and alone turned to enjoy his Barbary and to face

Rome.

FOOTNOTES:

[3] In the thirty-first book of his History of Rome: see Appendix I.

[4] The Prussian student is even to-day famous for the scars on his

face inflicted in the duels at the Universities.

[5] Cf. the physique of the ordinary Prussian at its most

characteristic in Von Hindenberg, who really seems to have been hewn

out of wood.

[6] It was a modern and famous German who not long since declared that

the Prussians were such quarrelsome and disagreeable brutes that it was

only their propensity to drink beer and that continually that mollified

them sufficiently to be regarded as human beings.

[7] It is curious to remember that this first encounter of Attila with

the Imperial power took place in what is now Servia only fifty miles

further down the Danube than Belgrade.

[8] It has been suggested that his name Attila is that of the Volga in

the fifth century and that therefore he was born upon its banks; but as

well might one say that Roua was born there because one of the ancient

names of that river was Rha.

[9] For all this see Appendix: Jornandes, _R. Get._, 35 and especially

for his dress and food, Priscus, _infra_.

[10] Cf. Jorn., _R. Get._, 36: “Homo subtilis antequam arma gereret,

arte pugnabat....”

[11] See Appendix, Jornandes, _R. Get._, 35.

III

ATTILA AND THE EASTERN EMPIRE

When Attila had achieved the hegemony of the North he turned his

attention upon the Empire; and it is curious for us at this moment

to note the coincidence that this first attack upon civilisation was

delivered at the very spot upon the Danube where the Germanic powers

in August, 1914, began their offensive. Attila directed his armies

upon the frontiers of modern Servia at the point where the Save joins

the Danube, where the city of Singidunum rose then and where to-day

Belgrade stands.

The pretext for this assault was almost as artificial and manufactured

as that which Austria put forward for her attack upon Servia. Attila

asserted that the Bishop of that same frontier town of Margus, on the

Morava, where he had made treaty with the Empire, had crossed the

Danube, and having secretly obtained access to the sepulchre of the

Hunnish kings had stolen away its treasures. The Bishop, of course,

eagerly denied this strange accusation, and it seemed indeed so

unlikely that he was guilty that Theodosius was exceedingly reluctant

to sacrifice him. The people of Moesia clamoured for a decision; if

the Bishop were guilty then he must be delivered to Attila, but if not

Theodosius must protect both him and them. For Attila had waited for

nothing; he had crossed the Danube before making his accusation and had

occupied Viminacium, one of the greater towns upon the frontier.

Meanwhile the Bishop, seeing the hesitation of Theodosius and expecting

to be sacrificed, made his way to the camp of the Huns and promised in

return for his life to deliver Margus to them, and this he did upon

the following night. Then, dividing his forces into two armies, Attila

began his real attack upon the Empire.

The first of these armies was directed upon Singidunum, the modern

Belgrade, which was taken and ruined, and when that was achieved it

proceeded up the Save to Sirmium, the ancient capital of Pannonia,

which soon fell into its hands. The second crossed the Danube further

eastward and besieged Ratiaria, a considerable town, the head-quarters

of a Roman Legion and the station of the fleet of the Danube.

[Illustration: THE ATTACK OF ATTILA UPON THE EAST.]

Having thus, with this second army, secured the flank, Attila marched

his first army from Singidunum up the Morava to Naissus (Nisch),

precisely as the Austrians tried to do but yesterday. They failed, but

he succeeded and Naissus fell. Thence he passed on to Sardica where

he was met by his second army which had taken Ratiaria. Sardica was

pillaged and burnt.

Attila thus possessed himself in the year 441 of the gateways of the

Balkans, almost without a protest from Theodosius. Five years later,

in 446, he was ready to advance again. In that year and the next he

destroyed two Roman armies, took and pillaged some seventy towns, and

pushed south as far as Thermopylae, and eastward even to Gallipoli;

only the walls of Constantinople saved the capital. Theodosius was

forced to buy a disgraceful peace at the price of an immediate payment

of 6000 pounds’ weight of gold, an annual tribute, no longer even

disguised, of 2000 pounds, and an undertaking that the Empire would

never employ or give refuge to any of those whom Attila claimed as his

subjects.

It was easier to agree to such terms than to fulfil them. The

provinces were ruined, the whole fiscal system of the East in

confusion, and even what wealth remained was, as Priscus tells us,

“spent not in national purposes, but on absurd shows and gaudy

pageants, and all the pleasures and excesses of a licentious society

such as would not have been permitted in any properly governed State,

even in the midst of the greatest prosperity.” Attila, who marked

the decay and the embarrassment of the Imperial Government, forewent

nothing of his advantage. He became more and more rapacious. When he

did not obtain all he desired he sent an embassy to Constantinople to

intimidate the government, and this became a regular means of blackmail

with him, a means more humiliating than war and not less successful.

The first of these embassies arrived in Constantinople immediately

after the terms of peace had been agreed upon. It made further demands,

and was treated with the most extravagant hospitality. Three times

within a single year other embassies arrived; they were a means of

blackmail and were assured of an ever-increasing success.

The most famous and the most important of these embassies was that

which arrived in Constantinople in 449. The ambassadors then employed

by Attila are worthy of notice, for in them we see not only the

condition of things at that time, but also the naive cunning of the

Hun. The two chief legates whom Attila dispatched to Constantinople

upon this occasion were Edecon and Orestes. Edecon was a Scythian or

Hun by birth, a heathen of course, and a Barbarian, the commander of

the guard of Attila, and the father of Odoacer, later to be so famous.

Orestes, on the other hand, who was one of Attila’s chief ministers,

was a Roman provincial of Pannonia, born at Petavium (probably Pettau

on the Drave), who had made a fortunate marriage as a young man when

he allied himself with Romulus, a considerable Roman personage of that

province. He had, however, deserted the Imperial service, certainly

open to him, for that of the Barbarians, and had made his fortune. Nor

was his part in history to be played out in the service of Attila,

for his son Romulus was to be the last of the Western Emperors,

contemptuously known to history as Romulus Augustulus.

Orestes was then an adventurer pure and simple, but in sending him with

the Barbarian Edecon, we see the system of Attila in his blackmail of

the Empire. The employment of a Roman provincial was a check upon the

Barbarian envoy. A bitter jealousy subsisted between them, each spied

on the other, and thus Attila was well served. The fact that the Hun

was able to command the services of such as Orestes is a sufficient

comment upon the condition of the frontier provinces.

It was these two jealous envoys that, in the early months of 449,

appeared in Constantinople bringing, of course, new demands. Their

mission, indeed, was the most insolent that Attila had so far dared

to send. It demanded three main things; first, that all the country

to the south of the Danube as far as Naissus should be regarded as a

part of the Hunnish Empire; second, that in future Theodosius should

send to the Hunnish court only the most illustrious ambassadors, but if

this were done Attila for his part would consent to meet them on the

frontier at Sardica; third, that the refugees should be delivered up.

This last demand was a repetition of many that had gone before it. As

before Attila threatened if his requests were not granted he would make

war.

The ambassadors Edecon and Orestes came to Constantinople where a

“Roman” named Vigilas acted as their guide and interpreter, an

indiscreet and vulgar fellow of whom we shall hear more presently.

Received in audience by Theodosius in the famous palace on the

Bosphorus, the ambassadors with the interpreter later visited the chief

minister, the eunuch Chrysaphius. On their way they passed through the

noble halls of Constantine decorated with gold and built of marble, the

whole a vast palace, perhaps as great as the Vatican. Edecon, the Hun,

was stupefied by so much splendour, he could not forbear to express

his amazement; Vigilas was not slow to mark this naive astonishment

nor to describe it to Chrysaphius, who presently proposed to put it to

good use. Taking Edecon apart from Orestes as he talked he suggested

to him that he also might enjoy such splendour if he would leave the

Huns and enter the service of the Emperor. After all it was not more

than Orestes had done. But Edecon answered that it would be despicable

to leave one’s master without his consent. Chrysaphius then asked what

position he held at the court of Attila, and if he was so much in the

confidence of his master as to have access freely to him. To which

Edecon answered that he approached him when he would, that he was

indeed the chief of his captains and kept watch over his person by

night. And when Chrysaphius heard this he was content and told Edecon

that if he were capable of discretion he would show him a way to grow

rich without trouble, but that he must speak with him more at leisure,

which he would do presently if he would come and sup with him that

evening alone without Orestes or any following. Already in the mind of

the eunuch a plan was forming by which he hoped to rid the Empire once

for all of the formidable Hun.

Edecon accepted the invitation. Awaiting him he found Vigilas with

Chrysaphius, and after supper heard apparently without astonishment the

following amazing proposal. After swearing him to secrecy, Chrysaphius

explained that he proposed to him the assassination of Attila. “If you

but succeed in this and gain our frontiers,” said he, “there will be no

limit to our gratitude, you shall be loaded with honours and riches.”

The Hun was ready in appearance at least to agree, but he insisted

that he would need money for bribery, not much, but at least fifty

pounds’ weight of gold. This he explained he could not carry back with

him as Attila was wont upon the return of his ambassadors to exact a

most strict account of the presents they had received, and so great

a weight of gold could not escape the notice of his own companion and

servants. He suggested then that Vigilas should accompany him home

under the pretext of returning the fugitives and that at the right

moment he should find the money necessary for the project. Needless to

say, Chrysaphius readily agreed to all that Edecon proposed. He does

not seem either to have been ashamed to make so Hunnish a proposal or

to have suspected for a moment that Edecon was deceiving him. He laid

all before Theodosius, won his consent and the approval of Martial his

minister.

Together they decided to send an embassy to Attila, to which the better

to mask their intentions Vigilas should be attached as interpreter.

This embassy they proposed to make as imposing as possible, and to

this end they appointed as its chief a man of a high, but not of

consular rank, and of the best reputation. In this they showed a

certain ability, for as it seemed to them if their plot failed they

could escape suspicion by means of the reputation of their ambassador.

The man they chose was called Maximin, and he fortunately chose as his

secretary Priscus, the Sophist, to whose pen we are indebted for an

account of all these things. He asserts, and probably with truth, that

neither Maximin nor he himself was aware of the plot of assassination.

They conceived themselves to be engaged in a serious mission and were

the more impressed by its importance in that its terms were far less

subservient to the Hun than had been the custom in recent times. Attila

was told that henceforth he must not evade the obligations of his

treaties nor invade at all the Imperial territories. And with regard

to the fugitives he was informed that beside those already surrendered

seventeen were now sent but that there were no more. So ran the letter.

But Maximin was also to say that the Hun must look for no ambassador of

higher rank than himself since it was not the Imperial custom towards

the Barbarians; on the contrary, Rome was used to send to the North

any soldier or messenger who happened to be available. And since he

had now destroyed Sardica his proposal to meet there any ambassador of

consular rank was merely insolent. If indeed the Hun wished to remove

the differences between Theodosius and himself he should send Onegesius

as ambassador. Onegesius was the chief minister of Attila.

Such were the two missions, the one official, the other secret, which

set out together from Constantinople.

The great journey seems to have been almost wholly uneventful as far

as Sardica, 350 miles from Constantinople, which was reached after

a fortnight of travel. They found that town terribly pillaged but

not destroyed, and the Imperial embassy bought sheep and oxen, and

having prepared dinner invited Edecon and his colleagues to share

it with them, for they were still officially within the Empire. But

within those ruins, even among the ambassadors, peace was impossible.

Priscus records the ridiculous quarrel which followed. The Huns began

to magnify the power of Attila,--was not his work around them? The

Romans knowing the contents of the letter they bore sang the praises

of the Emperor. Suddenly Vigilas, perhaps already drunk, asserted

that it was not right to compare men with the gods, nor Attila with

Theodosius, since Attila was but a man. Only the intervention of

Maximin and Priscus prevented bloodshed, nor was harmony restored till

Orestes and Edecon had received presents of silk and jewels. Even

these gifts were not made altogether without an untoward incident.

For Orestes in thanking Maximin exclaimed that he, Maximin, was not

like those insolent courtiers of Constantinople “who gave presents and

invitations to Edecon, but none to me.” And when Maximin, ignorant of

the Chrysaphian plot, demanded explanations, Orestes angrily left him.

Already the plan of assassination was beginning to fester.

The ambassadors went on from ruined Sardica to desolate Naissus (Nisch)

utterly devoid of inhabitants, full only of horror and ruins. They

crossed a plain sown with human bones whitening in the sun, and saw

the only witness to the Hunnish massacre of the inhabitants--a vast

cemetery. “We found,” Priscus tells us, “a clean place above the river

where we camped and slept.”

Close to this ruined town was the Imperial army, commanded by

Agintheus, under whose eagles five of the seventeen refugees to be

surrendered had taken refuge. The Roman general, however, was obliged

to give them up. Their terror as they went on in the ambassadorial

train towards the Danube may well be imagined.

The great river at length came in sight; its approaches lined and

crowded with Huns, the passages served by the Barbarians in dug-outs,

boats formed out of the hollowed trunks of trees. With these boats the

whole Barbarian shore was littered as though in readiness for the

advance of an army. Indeed, as it appeared Attila was in camp close by,

and intent on hunting within the Roman confines to the south of the

river, a means certainly of reconnaissance as habitually used by the

Huns as commerce has been for the same end by the Germans.

We do not know with what feelings Maximin and Priscus saw all this and

crossed the great river frontier at last and passed into Barbary. To

their great chagrin, for they had made the way easy for the Hunnish

ambassadors on the road through the Imperial provinces, Edecon and

Orestes now left them brusquely enough. For several days they went on

alone but for the guides Edecon had left them, till one afternoon they

were met by two horsemen who informed them that they were close to

the camp of Attila who awaited them. And indeed upon the morrow they

beheld from a hill-top the Barbarian tents spread out innumerable at

their feet, and among them that of the King. They decided to camp there

on the hill; but a troop of Huns at once rode up and ordered them to

establish themselves in the plain. “What,” cried they, “will you dare

to pitch your tents on the heights when that of Attila is below?”

They were scarce established in their appointed place when to their

amazement Edecon and Orestes and others appeared and asked their

business, the object of their embassy. The astonished ambassadors

looked at one another in amaze. When the question was repeated Maximin

announced that he could not disclose his mission to any other than

Attila to whom he was accredited. Scotta, the brother of Onegesius,

then announced angrily that Attila had sent them and they must have an

answer. When Maximin again refused the Huns galloped away.

The Romans, however, were not left long in doubt of the reception they

were to get. Scotta and his friends soon returned without Edecon,

and to the further amazement of Maximin repeated word for word the

contents of the Imperial letter to Attila. “Such,” said they, “is your

commission. If this be all depart at once.” Maximin protested in vain.

Nothing remained but to prepare for departure. Vigilas who knew what

Chrysaphius expected was particularly furious; better have lied than to

return without achieving anything, said he. What to do? It was already

night. They were in the midst of Barbary, between them and the Danube

lay leagues of wild unfriendly country. Suddenly as their servants

loaded the beasts for their miserable journey other messengers arrived

from the Hun. They might remain in their camp till dawn. In that uneasy

night, had Vigilas been less of a fool, he must have guessed that

Edecon had betrayed him.

It was not the barbarous Vigilas, however, who found a way out of the

difficulty, for at dawn the command to depart was repeated, but that

Priscus who has left us so vivid an account of this miserable affair.

He it was who, seeing the disgrace of his patron, sought out Scotta,

the brother of Onegesius, the chief minister of Attila, in the Hunnish

camp. With him went Vigilas as interpreter, and so cleverly did the

Sophist work upon the ambition of Scotta, pointing out to him not only

the advantages of peace between the Huns and the Romans, but also the

personal advantage Scotta would gain thereby in honour and presents,

and at last feigning to doubt Scotta’s ability to achieve even so small

a matter as the reception of the embassy that he had his way. Scotta

rode off to see Attila, Priscus returned to his patron, and soon after

Scotta returned to escort them to the royal tent.

The reception must have been a strange spectacle. The tent of Attila

was quite surrounded by a multitude of guards; within, upon a stool

of wood, was seated the great Hun. Priscus, Vigilas and the servants

who attended them bearing the presents remained upon the threshold.

Maximin alone went forward and gave into Attila’s hands the letter of

Theodosius saying: “The Emperor wishes Attila and all that are his

health and length of days.” “May the Romans receive all they desire for

me,” replied the instructed Barbarian. And turning angrily to Vigilas

he said: “Shameless beast, why hast thou dared to come hither knowing

as thou dost the terms of peace I made with thee and Anatolius. Did I

not then tell thee that I would receive no more ambassadors till all

the refugees had been surrendered!” Vigilas replied that they brought

seventeen fugitives with them and that now there remained no more

within the Empire. This only made Attila more furious: “I would crucify

thee and give thee as food for the vultures but for the laws regarding

envoys,” cried he. As for the refugees, he declared there were many

still within the Empire, and bade his people read out their names, and

this done he told Vigilas to depart with Eslas, one of his officers, to

inform Theodosius that he must forthwith return all the fugitives who

had entered the Empire from the time of Carpilio, son of Aetius, who

had been his hostage. “I will never suffer,” said he, “that my slaves

shall bear arms against me, useless though they be to aid those with

whom they have found refuge.... What city or what fortress have they

been able to defend when I have determined to take it?” When he had

said these words he grew calmer; informed Maximin that the order of

departure only concerned Vigilas, and prayed the ambassador to remain

and await the reply to the letter of the Emperor. The audience closed

with the presentation and acceptance of the Roman presents.

Vigilas must surely have guessed now what his dismissal meant. Perhaps,

however, he was too conceited and too stupid to notice it. At any rate

he did not enlighten his companions but professed himself stupefied

by the change of Attila’s demeanour towards him. The whole affair was

eagerly discussed in the Roman camp. Priscus suggested that Vigilas’

unfortunate indiscretion at Sardica had been reported to Attila and had

enraged him. Maximin did not know what to think. While they were still

debating Edecon appeared and took Vigilas apart. The Hun may well have

thought he needed reassurance. He declared that he was still true to

the plan of Chrysaphius. Moreover, seeing what a fool Vigilas was, he

told him that his dismissal was a contrivance of his own to enable the

interpreter to return to Constantinople and fetch the money promised,

which could be introduced as necessary to the embassy for the purchase

of goods. Vigilas, however, can scarcely have believed him, at any rate

for long; a few hours later Attila sent word that none of the Romans

were to be allowed to buy anything but the bare necessities of life

from the Huns, neither horses, nor other beasts, nor slaves, nor to

redeem captives. Vigilas departed with the order ringing in his ears,

upon a mission he must have known to be hopeless.

Two days later Attila broke camp and set out for his capital, the

Roman ambassadors following in his train under the direction of guides

appointed by the Hun. They had not gone far on their way northward when

they were directed to leave the train of Attila and to follow another

route, because, they were told, the King was about to add one more to

his innumerable wives, Escam, the daughter of a chief in a neighbouring

village.

Very curious is Priscus’ description of the way followed by the patron

and his embassy. They journeyed across the Hungarian plain, across

horrible marshes and lakes which had to be traversed sometimes on

rafts; they crossed three great rivers, the Drave, the Temes, and the

Theiss in dug-outs, boats such as they had seen on the Danube hollowed

out of the trunks of trees. They lived for the most part on millet

which their guides brought or took from the wretched inhabitants, they

drank mead and beer, and were utterly at the mercy of the weather,

which was extremely bad. On one occasion, indeed, their camp was

entirely destroyed by tempest, and had it not been for the hospitality

of the widow of Bleda they would perhaps have perished.

For seven days they made their way into the heart of Hungary till they

came to a village where their way joined the greater route by which

Attila was coming. There they were forced to await the King, since they

must follow and not precede him. It was in this place that they met

another Roman embassy, that of the Emperor in the West, Valentinian

III, who was quarrelling with Attila about the holy vessels of Sirmium.

It seems that the Bishop of Sirmium in 441, seeing his city invested,

had gathered his chalices and patens and plate, sacred vessels of his

church, and had sent them secretly to a certain Constantius, a Gaul, at

that time Attila’s minister. In case the city fell they were to be used

as ransom, first of the Bishop, and in case of his death of any other

captives. Constantius was, however, untrue to the trust placed in him

by the Bishop, and sold or pawned the plate to a silversmith in Rome.

Attila hearing of it when Constantius was beyond his reach claimed the

booty as his own. It was upon this miserable business that Valentinian

had sent an embassy to Attila from Ravenna.

It is certainly a shameful and an amazing spectacle we have here. In

that little village of Barbary the ambassadors of the Emperors, East

and West, of the Courts of Constantinople and Ravenna, of New Rome

and of Old, wait in a marsh the passage of a savage that they may be

allowed to follow in his train and humbly seek an audience. Surely

Attila himself had arranged that meeting, and as he rode on to his

capital, the two embassies following in his dust, he must have enjoyed

the outrageous insult to civilisation, the triumph of brute force over

law.

IV

THE IMPERIAL EMBASSY AT THE COURT OF ATTILA

The entry of Attila into his capital was witnessed by Priscus and has

been recorded by him with much naive care, for it evidently excited his

curiosity and interest. The Hun was met by a procession of maidens who

passed in groups of seven under long veils of white linen, upheld by

the matrons on either side of the way, singing as they passed Scythian

songs. So they went on towards the palace past the house of the chief

minister Onegesius, where the wife of the favourite, surrounded by her

servants and slaves, awaited the King to present him with a cup filled

with wine, which he graciously consented to receive at her hands. Four

huge Huns lifted up a tray of silver loaded with viands that the King

might eat also, which he did without alighting from his horse. Then

he passed on to his own house. Maximin pitched his camp, it seems,

between the house of Onegesius and the palace of the King.

This palace, built on an eminence, commanded the whole town or village,

and was remarkable on account of its high towers. It seems to have

consisted of a vast circular enclosure within which were many houses,

that of the King and those of his wives and children. All was of wood,

both enclosures and houses, but admirably built and polished and

ornamented with carving. The harem was of a lighter construction from

the palace and had no towers, but was on all sides ornamented with

carvings. Not far away from the royal enclosure stood the house of

Onegesius, similarly constructed but not so large and fine. But here

the minister, a remarkable personage, had constructed, and that in

stone, a bath on the Roman model. It seems that in the sack of Sirmium

an architect had been taken captive. Now Onegesius forced him to build

in the manner of the Romans a complete _balnea_, and this the captive

did as speedily as possible hoping for his freedom. Stone was brought

from Pannonia and all was contrived and finished; but when the builder

claimed his liberty, Onegesius, seeing that no one among the Huns

understood the use of this thing, appointed him _balneator_, so that

the wretched architect was forced to remain to serve the bath he had

built.

Onegesius had only just returned from an important expedition when

Attila arrived in his capital with the Imperial envoys. He had been

engaged in finishing the conquest of Acatziri and was immediately

closeted with the King on his return, so that Maximin was not received

by him on that first day. In his anxiety the ambassador grew impatient,

and very early upon the following morning he dispatched Priscus with

presents to wait upon the minister. Priscus found the enclosure shut

and no one stirring and while he waited for the house to awake he

walked up and down in the dawn to keep himself warm. Suddenly he was

greeted with the Greek salutation Χαῖρε, “Hail,” or, as we should say,

“Good morning.” Startled to hear a civilised tongue in the midst of

Barbary he returned the greeting. And there followed one of the most

interesting discussions of which we have any record, of the respective

merits of civilisation and barbarism, a debate that must have filled

in the minds of many at that time. Priscus at last asked the stranger

how he was come to be amongst the Barbarians. “Why do you ask me?”

answered the unknown. “Because you speak Greek like a native,” answered

Priscus. But the stranger only laughed. “Indeed,” said he, “I am Greek.

I came for the sake of business to Viminacium on the Danube in Moesia,

and there I lived many years and married a rich wife. But when the Huns

stormed the city I lost all my fortune and became the slave of this

Onegesius whom you are waiting to see. For it is the custom of the

Huns to give the richest to their princes. My new master took me to

the wars where I did well not without profit. I have fought with the

Romans and the Acatziri and have bought my liberty. I am now become a

Hun, I have married a Barbarian wife and have children by her; I am

often the guest of Onegesius, and to tell you the truth I consider my

present station preferable to my past. For when war is over one lives

here decently without worries, one enjoys one’s own. War nourishes us;

but destroys those who live under the Roman Government. Under Rome one

has to trust to others for one’s safety, since the law forbids one to

bear arms even in self-defence, and those who are allowed to fight are

betrayed by the ignorance and corruption of their leaders. And even

so the evils of war under the Romans are as nothing to the evils of

peace, the insupportable taxations, the robbery of the tax-gatherers,

and the oppression of the powerful. How can it be otherwise since

there is there one law for the rich and another for the poor? If a

rich man commits a crime he knows how to profit by it; but if a poor

man transgresses the law, perhaps in ignorance, he knows not the

formalities and is ruined. Justice can only be obtained at a great

price, and this in my opinion is the worst of evils. You must buy an

advocate to plead for you, and only after depositing a sum of money as

security can you plead at all or obtain sentence.”

Thus for a long time the renegade from civilisation defended himself

and the Barbarians, and when at length he was silent Priscus begged him

to listen patiently while he defended what, after all, was the future

of the world. What appears most to have excited the animosity of the

apostate was, as we might expect, the Roman law and its processes,

and it is these that Priscus first defends. He explains the division

of labour and responsibility peculiar to civilisation, the structure

of the Roman State and society, divided, according to him, into three

classes; those concerned with the making and administration of the

law; those concerned with national and public safety; and those who

till the soil. He defends all this nobly and eloquently, the logic

and clarity of its complexity against the appalling promiscuity and

confusion of Barbarian anarchy. He shows the individual as a part of

society, and in the main his view of civilisation is ours, we can

applaud and understand it. Even the apostate stranger is moved at

last. There in the Hunnish land at dawn one morning, carried back by

the eloquence of Priscus to all he had lost, he weeps and exclaims:

“The law of the Romans is good; their Republic nobly ordered, but evil

magistrates have corrupted it.” He might have said more but that just

then a servant of Onegesius appeared and Priscus left him never to see

him again.

In instructing Maximin especially to negotiate with Onegesius,

Theodosius and Chrysaphius doubtless hoped to win this man by diplomacy

as they thought they had won Edecon, by corruption. Their calculations

were doomed to disappointment; for both Onegesius and Edecon seem to

have been loyal to their master, and Edecon had already acquainted him

with the plot against his life. It might seem certain that Onegesius

also was now aware of this. Having accepted the presents sent him,

and learnt that Maximin desired to see him, he decided to visit him at

once, and without delay repaired to the Roman encampment. There Maximin

opened his business. He explained the necessity for peace between the

Huns and the Empire, the honour of establishing which he hoped to share

with Attila’s minister, to whom he prophesied every sort of honour and

benefit if he should succeed. But the Hun was not convinced. “How can

I arrange such a peace?” he asked. “In short, by deciding the points

in dispute between us with justice,” as naively replied Maximin. “The

Emperor will accept your decision.” “But,” answered Onegesius, “I have

no will but that of my master.” He did not understand the difference

between civilisation and barbarism any more than the modern German

sees the gulf fixed between Civilisation and “Kultur.” “Slavery,”

said he, “would be sweeter to me in the kingdom of Attila than all

the honours and all the wealth of the Roman Empire.” Then as though

to soften what he had said, he added that he could serve the cause of

peace which Maximin had at heart better at the Court of Attila than at

Constantinople.

But it was now time to present the Queen--a favourite wife of

Attila--with her gifts. This embassy was again entrusted to Priscus.

He found her in her apartments seated on cushions surrounded by her

women and slaves on either side, the women at work embroidering clothes

for the men. It was on coming out from these apartments that Priscus

saw Attila for the first time since his arrival. Hearing a great noise

he went to see what was the cause and soon perceived the Hun with

Onegesius on the way to administer justice before the gate of his

palace. There too within the enclosure he found the Roman ambassadors

from Ravenna. With them he compared notes, and soon learned that they

had been no more successful than Maximin. But presently Onegesius sent

for him and informed him that Attila was determined to receive no more

ambassadors from Theodosius unless they were of consular rank, and he

named three persons who would be acceptable. Priscus naively answered

that thus to designate ambassadors must necessarily render them suspect

to their own Government, forgetting that Maximin had done the same but

a few hours before. But Onegesius answered roughly: “It must be so or

there will be war.” Much disheartened Priscus made his way back to the

Roman camp and there found Tatallus, the father of Orestes, who had

come to inform Maximin that Attila expected him to dine with him.

This dinner to which the ambassadors of Valentinian were also invited

took place in a large _salone_ furnished with little tables for four

or five persons each, at three o’clock in the afternoon. Upon the

threshold the ambassadors were offered cups of wine in which to drink

the health of the King, who reclined in the midst before a table, on

a couch set upon a platform or dais, so that he was set up above his

guests; beside him but lower sat Ellak his heir, who dared not lift

his eyes from the ground. Upon his right were Onegesius and two other

sons of the King, upon his left were placed the ambassadors. When all

were assembled Attila drank to Maximin who stood up to acknowledge

his condescension and drank in return. A like ceremony was performed

by all the ambassadors in turn. Then the feast was served upon plates

and dishes of silver and the wine in cups of gold; only Attila ate

and drank from wooden dishes and a wooden cup. Before each course

the drinking ceremony of salutation was performed again, and as the

banquet lasted well on into the darkness, when torches were lighted

and Hunnish poets sang or chanted their verses in the Barbarian tongue

celebrating the glories of war and victory to the delight of the

assembly whose eyes shone with emotion, the young with tears of desire

and the old with fright, few can have been sober when a buffoon and

then the famous dwarf Zercan began to set the tables in a roar; though

Attila remained grave and unmoved.

So the days passed without anything being accomplished. The impatient

ambassadors were compelled to attend a similar dinner given in their

honour by the Queen Kerka, and again they dined with Attila; but

nothing was discussed or decided. Several times, indeed, Attila spoke

to Maximin of a matter he apparently had at heart, namely, the marriage

of his secretary Constantius, who some years earlier had been sent

to Constantinople, and whom Theodosius had promised a rich wife on

condition that peace was not broken. The wife chosen, however, was

spirited away and this had become a grievance, Attila being so enraged

that he sent word to Theodosius that if he could not keep order in his

own house, he, Attila, would come and help him. Of course Constantius

was promised another and a richer heiress, and it was this matter that

Attila preferred to discuss with Maximin rather than the letter he had

brought from the Emperor.

At last, in despair, Maximin demanded leave to depart, and this

appears to have been granted as soon as Attila knew that Vigilas was

on his way back from Constantinople. It is possible that the Hun had

only detained the ambassadors as hostages, or to satisfy himself that

they were ignorant of the plot against his life. They went at last

without satisfaction, but not empty-handed. Attila had them loaded

with presents, skins, horses, embroideries, nor was their journey back

without incident. A few days’ march on their way, near the frontier,

Priscus tells us they saw the horrid and ill-omened spectacle of a

refugee crucified beside the road. A little further on they saw two

Romans put to death with every sort of barbarous cruelty before their

eyes. These were the reminders of Attila. Not far from the Danube they

met Vigilas and his Hunnish companion, in reality his guard, Esla.

This conceited fool, for indeed he was as much a fool as a villain, had

with him twice the weight of gold promised to Edecon, and, moreover,

he brought also his only son, a youth of six-and-twenty years. He had

altogether delivered himself into Attila’s hands. Leaving Maximin and

his embassy to make their way back to Constantinople Vigilas went

on into Barbary, intent on the assassination of Attila, and had no

sooner set foot in the Hunnish capital than he was seized, his baggage

opened and the gold discovered. When asked to explain these riches, he

answered that they were for his own use and that of his entourage, and

that he proposed to ransom the Roman captives and to purchase horses,

skins and embroideries. “Evil beast,” shouted Attila, “thou liest, but

thy lies deceive none.” Then he bade seize the youth Vigilas’ son, and

swore to have him killed there and then if the father did not confess.

Then Vigilas, seeing his child in so great a peril, became demented

and cried out: “Do not kill my son, for he is ignorant and innocent of

all; I alone am guilty.” And he confessed all the plot to kill Attila

that Chrysaphius had devised with him. And Attila heard him out, and

seeing what he said agreed with the report of Edecon he knew he heard

the truth. After a little he bade loose the youth and sent him back to

Constantinople to bring him another hundred pounds’ weight of gold for

the ransom of Vigilas his father, whom he loaded with chains, and flung

into prison. And with the young man he sent two ambassadors, Orestes

and Esla, with his demands to the Emperor.

They came to Constantinople; they had audience of Theodosius. Round

the neck of Orestes hung the sack in which Vigilas had brought the

price of assassination to Barbary. Esla, as he stood there, demanded of

Chrysaphius if he recognised it, and when he answered not, turned to

the Emperor and said, “Attila, son of Moundzoukh, and Theodosius are

two sons of noble fathers; Attila has remained worthy of his parent,

but Theodosius has betrayed his because in paying tribute to Attila

he has owned himself his slave. Nor as a slave has he been faithful

to his master, nor will Attila cease to proclaim his iniquity, for he

has become the accomplice of Chrysaphius the eunuch since he does not

deliver him to punishment as he deserves.”

There was no answer. Humiliated and afraid the Emperor did everything

according to the bidding of Attila, save only he refused him the head

of Chrysaphius. The greatest officers of the Empire were sent as

ambassadors and Attila humiliated them at his pleasure; a rich widow

was found for Constantius, gold and silver were poured out at Attila’s

feet. Yet he demanded the head of Chrysaphius. At last, in the year

450, two Gothic messengers, it is said, arrived from the Hun, the one

at Constantinople, the other at Ravenna. Upon the same day and at the

same hour they appeared before Theodosius and Valentinian and delivered

this message: “Attila, my master and thine, bids thee prepare a palace

for him.” Imperat per me Dominus meus et Dominus tuus Attilas, ut sibi

palatium instruas.

That insolent message, if indeed it was ever delivered, fell upon

deaf ears. Upon July 25, 450, Theodosius died, and three months later

Placidia the mother and good genius of Valentinian, the real ruler of

the West, died also. A new Emperor, Marcian, reigned at Constantinople.

Chrysaphius was put to death, and Marcian, an old soldier, at once

faced Attila with something of the ancient Roman energy. The Barbarian

turned away to consider how he might loot the West.

V

THE ATTACK UPON THE WEST

In turning from the East, where he did not like the look of Marcian, to

the West, where the weak and sensual Valentinian, then thirty-one years

old, seemed to offer himself as a prey, the universal robber needed

a pretext for his attack. The matter of the plate of Sirmium he had

either forgotten or he feared that concerning it he would be met and

satisfied. He needed a bone of contention which it would be impossible

for Valentinian to yield. He found it in Honoria, the Emperor’s sister.

It will be remembered that in 435, fifteen years before, this wild and

passionate girl, in disgrace at Constantinople, had sent her ring to

Attila and had offered herself to him, to be his bride, as her mother

had been the bride of Adolphus, the successor of Alaric. For fifteen

years the Barbarian had forgotten this romantic proposal, and though

he had kept her ring he had made no overtures or demands of any sort

for the lady. Upon the death of Placidia in 450 he recalled the affair,

and at once sent a message to Valentinian claiming both Honoria and her

property as his, and with her a half of the Western Empire. He asserted

that he learned with the greatest surprise that his betrothed was on

his account treated with ignominy and even imprisoned. For his part

he could see nothing unworthy in her choice which in fact should have

flattered the Emperor, and he insisted that she should at once be set

at liberty and sent to him with her portion of the inheritance of her

father, and the half of the Western Empire as her dowry.

To this amazing proposition Valentinian made answer that Honoria was

already married, and that therefore she could not be the wife of the

Hun, since unlike the Barbarians the Romans did not recognise polygamy

or polyandry; that his sister had no claim to the Empire which could

not be governed by a woman and was not a family inheritance. To all

this Attila made no reply; only he sent Honoria’s ring to Ravenna and

persisted in his demands.

The insincerity of Attila’s claims, the fact that they were but a

pretext, is proved by this that suddenly he dropped them altogether

and never referred to them again. Honoria was as utterly forgotten as

the plate of Sirmium. He tried another way to attain his end, became

suspiciously friendly, swore that the Emperor had no friend so sure as

he, the Empire no ally more eager to serve it.

The truth was that a pretext for attack far better than the withholding

of Honoria had suddenly appeared. The province of Africa had been lost

to the Romans by the invasion of the Vandals who were now governed

by a man not unlike Attila himself, Genseric. It is true he was not

a pagan like the Hun, but he was an Arian, and he had gathered under

his banner all the Barbarians that surged among the ruins of the Roman

cities of Africa. Genseric had married his son to the daughter of

Theodoric, King of the Visigoths, but as this alliance did not bring

him all he hoped, he returned the girl to her father minus her ears and

her nose, which he had cut off. Fearing lest Theodoric should invoke

the aid of the Empire against him for this unspeakable deed, Genseric

had sought the alliance of Attila. A new vision opened before the Hun;

he saw a new alliance, if not a new suzerainty, offered him with whose

aid he might attack the Empire both north and south, so that while he

descended upon the richest of the European provinces of Rome--Gaul,

Genseric should fall upon Italy herself. In this scheme for the final

loot of the West Attila was still further encouraged by the fact that

the Franks, the most warlike of the Barbarian tribes in Europe (that

which was destined first to become Catholic and later to refound the

Empire), were in anarchy by reason of the death of their chief, whose

inheritance was in dispute between his two sons. The elder of these had

appealed to Attila for his assistance, while the younger had turned to

Rome and had become indeed the protégé, if not the adopted son, of the

great Roman general Aetius. This young man at Aetius’ suggestion went

to Rome to petition the Emperor, and there Priscus saw him “a beardless

boy, his golden hair floating on his shoulders.”

Here was a quarrel after Attila’s own heart. The Vandals should

invade Italy from Africa, he would fall upon Gaul, the passages of

the Rhine being opened for him by the Franks. He forgot all about

Honoria. At once he sent a message to Valentinian informing him of his

determination to attack the Visigoths and bidding him not to interfere.

The Visigoths, he declared, were his subjects, subjects who had

escaped from his dominion, but over whom he had never abandoned his

rights. He pointed out too how dangerous they were to the peace of the

Empire, on whose behalf, as much as on his own, he now proposed to

chastise them.

Valentinian replied that the Empire was not at war with the Visigoths,

and that if it were it would conduct its own quarrels in its own way.

The Visigoths, said he, dwelt in Gaul as the guests and under the

protection of the Roman Empire, and in consequence to strike at them

was to strike at the Empire. But Attila would not hear or understand.

He insisted that he was about to render Valentinian a service, and

then, confirming us in our opinion that his object was merely loot,

sent to Theodoric bidding him not to be uneasy, for that he was about

to enter Gaul to free him from the Roman yoke.

At the same time that the Visigoth received this message he also

received one from Valentinian, greeting him as the “bravest of the

Barbarians,” and bidding him resist “the tyrant of the universe” who,

like the modern Prussian, “knows only his necessity, regards whatever

suits him as lawful and legitimate, and is determined to bring the

whole world under his domination.” Theodoric, in much the same position

as modern Belgium, according to Jornandes, cried out, as King Albert

might have done in August last: “O Romans, you have then at last your

desire; you have made Attila at last our enemy also.” But the Romans

were as little to blame or able to help it as England or France.

Attila, “the tyrant of the universe,” had prepared and was intent upon

war. All Theodoric could do was to be ready to defend himself.

Attila prepared to attack the West, but the same problem confronted the

defenders then as yesterday, namely, by which road that attack would

come. The Hun thundered against the Visigoths, but on this very account

Aetius, like the French, thinking more subtly than the enemy, remained

uncertain whether after all Italy would not be the victim rather than

Gaul. He was wrong, like his representatives of to-day; the Barbarian

was a barbarian, he believed in his own boasts.

An enormous army of every kind of Barbarian was gathered upon the

Danube and in the provinces to the south of that river. This host may

have numbered anything from half a million men upward; it was not less

than half a million strong. Each tribe had its chief, among which

the two most famous were the kings of the Gepidae and the Ostrogoths;

but all alike trembled before Attila, who had thus beneath his hands

the most formidable and numerous hosts that had ever yet threatened

civilisation. It was barbarism itself in all its innumerable multitude

which was about to fling itself upon Gaul.

The plan of Attila--if plan it can be called--was well chosen. Gaul was

more easily attacked than Italy and was little less essential to the

future of Roman civilisation. It was then, as it has been ever since,

the very heart of Europe. To destroy it was to destroy the future.

Gathering his innumerable peoples upon the borders of the Danube,

Attila divided his armies into two parts. The first army was to march

to the Rhine by the right or southern bank of the Danube, by the great

Roman military way, past all the Roman fortresses of the frontier of

the Empire, each of which was to be destroyed as it advanced. The

second army was to march by the left or northern bank of the Danube,

and to meet the first near the sources of that river where, in the

great forests of Germany, the two armies were to provide themselves

with the materials necessary for their transport into Gaul. There,

while they hewed down the trees in thousands, they were met by the

Franks who had deserted or killed their young king the protégé of

Aetius, and now flocked to his brother under the standard of Attila;

certain of the Thuringians and the Burgundians also made common cause

with them.

The chief business immediately before Attila was the passage of the

Rhine, and it was in order to furnish material for bridges for this

purpose that his armies had hewn down the trees by thousands in the

ancient “Hercynian” forest. That passage would perhaps have been

impossible and certainly very difficult if it had been contested. It

was not contested, and to understand the reason why, we must understand

the political condition of Gaul.

In the course of the last half-century the great province of Gaul

had suffered grievously, though not so grievously as Britain, which

had almost lost its identity, nor so hopelessly as Africa, which was

completely lost to civilisation. What had happened was this: all the

further parts of Gaul had fallen into the occupation of the Barbarians

as well as that violated corner enclosed on the west by the Jura,

where the Burgundians had established themselves. In northern Gaul,

in what we now call Picardy, Belgium and Luxembourg, the Franks were

settled, the Salian Franks to the west about the cities of Tongres,

Tournay, Arras, Cambrai, Amiens; the Ripuarian Franks to the east on

either side the Rhine about Cologne, Mentz, Coblenz and Treves. To the

south of the Salian Franks the Saxons held the coast and the lower

reaches of the Seine, to the south of them lay Armorica, as far as

the Loire, an isolated province of Bretons to the south of them as

far as the Pyrenees, occupying all Aquitaine were the Visigoths under

Theodoric. Central Gaul, however, with its cities of Metz, Strasburg,

Troyes, Langres, Orleans, Lyons, Vienne, Arles, Narbonne, and the town

of Lutetia or Paris, remained within the Roman power and administration

which though in decay and very largely clericalised, as we shall see,

was still a reality.

If Attila was bent on chastising the Visigoths it was obviously

across this still Roman and Christian province of Central Gaul that

he must march, and experience both in the East and the West had

taught the Imperial Government that such a march meant the complete

ruin, devastation and depopulation of every city on the way. The

natural frontiers of Gaul upon the East were and are the Rhine and

the mountains. To hold them is the safety of Gaul, to lose them is

destruction. Unfortunately, the Rhine could not be held against Attila.

It could not be held because the chief crossing place at Confluentes

(Coblenz) was in the power of the Franks, while a secondary crossing at

Augst, now a village between Bâle and Mulhouse, was in the power of the

Burgundians. Those gates were flung wide, and it was through them that

Attila at last entered the heart of the West.