whether he propitiated the god of war with the victims which he
continually offered in the field of battle, the favorite of Mars soon
acquired a sacred character, which rendered his conquests more easy and
more permanent; and the Barbarian princes confessed, in the language of
devotion or flattery, that they could not presume to gaze, with a steady
eye, on the divine majesty of the King of the Huns. His brother Bleda,
who reigned over a considerable part of the nation, was compelled to
resign his sceptre and his life. Yet even this cruel act was attributed
to a supernatural impulse; and the vigor with which Attila wielded the
sword of Mars convinced the world that it had been reserved alone for
his invincible arm. But the extent of his empire affords the only
remaining evidence of the number and importance of his victories; and
the Scythian monarch, however ignorant of the value of science and
philosophy, might perhaps lament that his illiterate subjects were
destitute of the art which could perpetuate the memory of his exploits.
If a line of separation were drawn between the civilized and the savage
climates of the globe; between the inhabitants of cities, who cultivated
the earth, and the hunters and shepherds, who dwelt in tents, Attila
might aspire to the title of supreme and sole monarch of the Barbarians.
He alone, among the conquerors of ancient and modern times, united the
two mighty kingdoms of Germany and Scythia; and those vague
appellations, when they are applied to his reign, may be understood with
an ample latitude. Thuringia, which stretched beyond its actual limits
as far as the Danube, was in the number of his provinces; he interposed,
with the weight of a powerful neighbor, in the domestic affairs of the
Franks; and one of his lieutenants chastised, and almost exterminated,
the Burgundians of the Rhine. He subdued the islands of the ocean, the
kingdoms of Scandinavia, encompassed and divided by the waters of the
Baltic; and the Huns might derive a tribute of furs from that northern
region, which has been protected from all other conquerors by the
severity of the climate and the courage of the natives.
Toward the east, it is difficult to circumscribe the dominion of Attila
over the Scythian deserts: yet we may be assured that he reigned on the
banks of the Volga; that the King of the Huns was dreaded, not only as a
warrior, but as a magician; that he insulted and vanquished the khan of
the formidable Geougen; and that he sent ambassadors to negotiate an
equal alliance with the empire of China. In the proud review of the
nations who acknowledged the sovereignty of Attila, and who never
entertained, during his lifetime, the thought of a revolt, the Gepidæ
and the Ostrogoths were distinguished by their numbers, their bravery,
and the personal merit of their chiefs. The renowned Ardaric, King of
the Gepidæ, was the faithful and sagacious counsellor of the monarch,
who esteemed his intrepid genius, while he loved the mild and discreet
virtues of the noble Walamir, King of the Ostrogoths. The crowd of
vulgar kings, the leaders of so many martial tribes, who served under
the standard of Attila, were ranged in the submissive order of guards
and domestics round the person of their master. They watched his nod;
they trembled at his frown; and at the first signal of his will they
executed, without murmur or hesitation, his stern and absolute commands.
In time of peace the dependent princes, with their national troops,
attended the royal camp in regular succession; but when Attila collected
his military force he was able to bring into the field an army of five
or, according to another account, of seven hundred thousand Barbarians.
The ambassadors of the Huns might awaken the attention of Theodosius, by
reminding him that they were his neighbors both in Europe and Asia;
since they touched the Danube on one hand, and reached, with the other,
as far as the Tanais. In the reign of his father Arcadius, a band of
adventurous Huns had ravaged the provinces of the East, from whence they
brought away rich spoils and innumerable captives. They advanced, by a
secret path, along the shores of the Caspian Sea; traversed the snowy
mountains of Armenia; passed the Tigris, the Euphrates, and the Halys;
recruited their weary cavalry with the generous breed of Cappadocian
horses: occupied the hilly country of Cilicia, and disturbed the festal
songs and dances of the citizens of Antioch.
Egypt trembled at their approach; and the monks and pilgrims of the Holy
Land prepared to escape their fury by a speedy embarkation. The memory
of this invasion was still recent in the minds of the orientals. The
subjects of Attila might execute, with superior forces, the design which
these adventurers had so boldly attempted; and it soon became the
subject of anxious conjecture whether the tempest would fall on the
dominions of Rome or of Persia. Some of the great vassals of the King of
the Huns, who were themselves in the rank of powerful princes, had been
sent to ratify an alliance and society of arms with the Emperor, or
rather with the general, of the West. They related, during their
residence at Rome, the circumstances of an expedition which they had
lately made into the East.
After passing a desert and a morass, supposed by the Romans to be the
lake Mæotis, they penetrated through the mountains, and arrived, at the
end of fifteen days' march, on the confines of Media; where they
advanced as far as the unknown cities of Basic and Cursic. They
encountered the Persian army in the plains of Media; and the air,
according to their own expression, was darkened by a cloud of arrows.
But the Huns were obliged to retire before the numbers of the enemy.
Their laborious retreat was effected by a different road; they lost the
greater part of their booty; and at length returned to the royal camp,
with some knowledge of the country, and an impatient desire of revenge.
In the free conversation of the imperial ambassadors, who discussed, at
the court of Attila, the character and designs of their formidable
enemy, the ministers of Constantinople expressed their hope that his
strength might be diverted and employed in a long and doubtful contest
with the princes of the house of Sassan.
The more sagacious Italians admonished their eastern brethren of the
folly and danger of such a hope; and convinced them, that the Medes and
Persians were incapable of resisting the arms of the Huns; and that the
easy and important acquisition would exalt the pride, as well as power,
of the conqueror. Instead of contenting himself with a moderate
contribution and a military title, which equalled him only to the
generals of Theodosius, Attila would proceed to impose a disgraceful and
intolerable yoke on the necks of the prostrate and captive Romans, who
would then be encompassed, on all sides, by the empire of the Huns.
While the powers of Europe and Asia were solicitous to avert the
impending danger, the alliance of Attila maintained the Vandals in the
possession of Africa. An enterprise had been concerted between the
courts of Ravenna and Constantinople for the recovery of that valuable
province; and the ports of Sicily were already filled with the military
and naval forces of Theodosius. But the subtle Genseric, who spread his
negotiations round the world, prevented their designs, by exciting the
King of the Huns to invade the Eastern Empire; and a trifling incident
soon became the motive, or pretence, of a destructive war. Under the
faith of the treaty of Margus, a free market was held on the northern
side of the Danube, which was protected by a Roman fortress surnamed
Constantia. A troop of Barbarians violated the commercial security,
killed or dispersed the unsuspecting traders, and levelled the fortress
with the ground. The Huns justified this outrage as an act of reprisal,
alleged that the Bishop of Margus had entered their territories to
discover and steal a secret treasure of their kings, and sternly
demanded the guilty prelate, the sacrilegious spoil, and the fugitive
subjects who had escaped from the justice of Attila.
The refusal of the Byzantine court was the signal of war; and the
Mæsians at first applauded the generous firmness of their sovereign. But
they were soon intimidated by the destruction of Viminiacum and the
adjacent towns; and the people were persuaded to adopt the convenient
maxim that a private citizen, however innocent or respectable, may be
justly sacrificed to the safety of his country. The Bishop of Margus,
who did not possess the spirit of a martyr, resolved to prevent the
designs which he suspected. He boldly treated with the princes of the
Huns; secured, by solemn oaths, his pardon and reward; posted a numerous
detachment of Barbarians, in silent ambush, on the banks of the Danube;
and, at the appointed hour, opened, with his own hand, the gates of his
episcopal city. This advantage, which had been obtained by treachery,
served as a prelude to more honorable and decisive victories.
The Illyrian frontier was covered by a line of castles and fortresses;
and though the greatest part of them consisted only of a single tower,
with a small garrison, they were commonly sufficient to repel or to
intercept the inroads of an enemy who was ignorant of the art and
impatient of the delay of a regular siege. But these slight obstacles
were instantly swept away by the inundation of the Huns. They destroyed,
with fire and sword, the populous cities of Sirmium and Singidunum, of
Ratiaria and Marcianopolis, of Naissus and Sardica; where every
circumstance of the discipline of the people and the construction of the
buildings had been gradually adapted to the sole purpose of defence. The
whole breadth of Europe, as it extends above five hundred miles from the
Euxine to the Hadriatic, was at once invaded and occupied and desolated
by the myriads of Barbarians whom Attila led into the field. The public
danger and distress could not, however, provoke Theodosius to interrupt
his amusements and devotion or to appear in person at the head of the
Roman legions.
But the troops which had been sent against Genseric were hastily
recalled from Sicily; the garrisons on the side of Persia were
exhausted; and a military force was collected in Europe, formidable by
their arms and numbers, if the generals had understood the science of
command and their soldiers the duty of obedience. The armies of the
Eastern Empire were vanquished in three successive engagements; and the
progress of Attila may be traced by the fields of battle. The two
former, on the banks of the Utus and under the walls of Marcianapolis,
were fought in the extensive plains between the Danube and Mount Hæmus.
As the Romans were pressed by a victorious enemy, they gradually and
unskilfully retired toward the Chersonesus of Thrace; and that narrow
peninsula, the last extremity of the land, was marked by their third,
and irreparable, defeat.
By the destruction of this army Attila acquired the indisputable
possession of the field. From the Hellespont to Thermopylæ, and the
suburbs of Constantinople, he ravaged, without resistance and without
mercy, the provinces of Thrace and Macedonia. Heraclea and Hadrianople
might, perhaps, escape this dreadful irruption of the Huns; but the
words, the most expressive of total extirpation and erasure, are applied
to the calamities which they inflicted on seventy cities of the Eastern
Empire. Theodosius, his court, and the unwarlike people were protected
by the walls of Constantinople; but those waits had been shaken by a
recent earthquake, and the fall of fifty-eight towers had opened a large
and tremendous breach. The damage indeed was speedily repaired; but this
accident was aggravated by a superstitious fear, that heaven itself had
delivered the imperial city to the shepherds of Scythia, who were
strangers to the laws, the language, and the religion of the Romans.
In all their invasions of the civilized empires of the South, the
Scythian shepherds have been uniformly actuated by a savage and
destructive spirit. The laws of war, that restrain the exercise of
national rapine and murder, are founded on two principles of substantial
interest: the knowledge of the permanent benefits which may be obtained
by a moderate use of conquest; and a just apprehension, lest the
desolation which we inflict on the enemy's country may be retaliated on
our own. But these considerations of hope and fear are almost unknown in
the pastoral state of nations. The Huns of Attila may, without
injustice, be compared to the Moguls and Tartars, before their primitive
manners were changed by religion and luxury.
After the Moguls had subdued the northern provinces of China, it was
seriously proposed, not in the hour of victory and passion, but in calm
deliberate council, to exterminate all the inhabitants of that populous
country, that the vacant land might be converted to the pasture of
cattle. The firmness of a Chinese mandarin, who insinuated some
principles of rational policy into the mind of Genghis, diverted him
from the execution of this horrid design. But in the cities of Asia,
which yielded to the Moguls, the inhuman abuse of the rights of war was
exercised with a regular form of discipline, which may, with equal
reason, though not with equal authority, be imputed to the victorious
Huns. The inhabitants, who had submitted to their discretion, were
ordered to evacuate their houses, and to assemble in some plain adjacent
to the city; where a division was made of the vanquished into three
parts. The first class consisted of the soldiers of the garrison, and of
the young men capable of bearing arms; and their fate was instantly
decided; they were either enlisted among the Moguls, or they were
massacred on the spot by the troops, who, with pointed spears and bended
bows, had formed a circle round-the captive multitude. The second class,
composed of the young and beautiful women, of the artificers of every
rank and profession, and of the more wealthy or honorable citizens, from
whom a private ransom might be expected, was distributed in equal or
proportionable lots. The remainder, whose life or death was alike
useless to the conquerors, were permitted to return to the city; which,
in the mean while, had been stripped of its valuable furniture; and a
tax was imposed on those wretched inhabitants for the indulgence of
breathing their native air.
Such was the behavior of the Moguls, when they were not conscious of any
extraordinary rigor. But the most casual provocation, the slightest
motive of caprice or convenience, often provoked them to involve a whole
people in an indiscriminate massacre; and the ruin of some flourishing
cities was executed with such unrelenting perseverance that, according
to their own expression, horses might run, without stumbling, over the
ground where they had once stood. The three great capitals of Khorassan,
and Maru, Neisabour, and Herat, were destroyed by the armies of Genghis,
and the exact account which was taken of the slain amounted to four
million three hundred and forty-seven thousand persons. Timur, or
Tamerlane, was educated in a less barbarous age, and in the profession
of the Mahometan religion; yet, if Attila equalled the hostile ravages
of Tamerlane,[20] either the Tartar or the Hun might deserve the epithet
of the "Scourge of God."
It may be affirmed, with bolder assurance, that the Huns depopulated the
provinces of the Empire, by the murder of Roman subjects whom they led
away into captivity. In the hands of a wise legislator, such an
industrious colony might have contributed to diffuse through the deserts
of Scythia the rudiments of the useful and ornamental arts; but these
captives, who had been taken in war, were accidentally dispersed among
the hordes that obeyed the empire of Attila. The estimate of their
respective value was formed by the simple judgment of unenlightened and
unprejudiced Barbarians. Perhaps they might not understand the merit of
a theologian, profoundly skilled in the controversies of the Trinity and
the Incarnation; yet they respected the ministers of every religion;
ind the active zeal of the Christian missionaries, without approaching
the person or the palace of the monarch, successfully labored in the
propagation of the Gospel.
The pastoral tribes, who were ignorant of the distinction of landed
property, must have disregarded the use, as well as the abuse, of civil
jurisprudence; and the skill of an eloquent lawyer could excite only
their contempt or their abhorrence. The perpetual intercourse of the
Huns and the Goths had communicated the familiar knowledge of the two
national dialects; and the Barbarians were ambitious of conversing in
Latin, the military idiom even of the Eastern Empire. But they disdained
the language and the sciences of the Greeks; and the vain sophist, or
grave philosopher, who had enjoyed the flattering applause of the
schools, was mortified to find that his robust servant was a captive of
more value and importance than himself. The mechanic arts were
encouraged and esteemed, as they tended to satisfy the wants of the
Huns. An architect in the service of Onegesius, one of the favorites of
Attila, was employed to construct a bath; but this work was a rare
example of private luxury; and the trades of the smith, the carpenter,
the armorer, were much more adapted to supply a wandering people with
the useful instruments of peace and war.
But the merit of the physician was received with universal favor and
respect: the Barbarians, who despised death, might be apprehensive of
disease; and the haughty conqueror trembled in the presence of a captive
to whom he ascribed perhaps an imaginary power of prolonging or
preserving his life. The Huns might be provoked to insult the misery of
their slaves, over whom they exercised a despotic command; but their
manners were not susceptible of a refined system of oppression; and the
efforts of courage and diligence were often recompensed by the gift of
freedom. The historian Priscus, whose embassy is a source of curious
instruction, was accosted in the camp of Attila by a stranger, who
saluted him in the Greek language, but whose dress and figure displayed
the appearance of a wealthy Scythian. In the siege of Viminiacum he had
lost, according to his own account, his fortune and liberty; he became
the slave of Onegesius; but his faithful services, against the Romans
and the Acatzires, had gradually raised him to the rank of the native
Huns; to whom he was attached by the domestic pledges of a new wife and
several children. The spoils of war had restored and improved his
private property; he was admitted to the table of his former lord; and
the apostate Greek blessed the hour of his captivity, since it had been
the introduction to a happy and independent state, which he held by the
honorable tenure of military service.
This reflection naturally produced a dispute on the advantages and
defects of the Roman government, which was severely arraigned by the
apostate, and defended by Priscus in a prolix and feeble declamation.
The freedman of Onegesius exposed, in true and lively colors, the vices
of a declining empire, of which he had so long been the victim; the
cruel absurdity of the Roman princes, unable to protect their subjects
against the public enemy, unwilling to trust them with arms for their
own defence; the intolerable weight of taxes, rendered still more
oppressive by the intricate or arbitrary modes of collection; the
obscurity of numerous and contradictory laws; the tedious and expensive
forms of judicial proceedings; the partial administration of justice;
and the universal corruption, which increased the influence of the rich
and aggravated the misfortunes of the poor. A sentiment of patriotic
sympathy was at length revived in the breast of the fortunate exile: and
he lamented, with a flood of tears, the guilt or weakness of those
magistrates who had perverted the wisest and most salutary institutions.
The timid or selfish policy of the Western Romans had abandoned the
Eastern Empire to the Huns. The loss of armies, and the want of
discipline or virtue, were not supplied by the personal character of the
monarch. Theodosius might still affect the style, as well as the title,
of "Invincible Augustus"; but he was reduced to solicit the clemency of
Attila, who imperiously dictated these harsh and humiliating conditions
of peace:
I. The Emperor of the East resigned, by an express or tacit convention,
an extensive and important territory, which stretched along the southern
banks of the Danube, from Singidunum, or Belgrade, as far as Novæ, in
the diocese of Thrace. The breadth was defined by the vague computation
of fifteen days' journey; but, from the proposal of Attila to remove
the situation of the national market, it soon appeared that he
comprehended the ruined city of Naissus within the limits of his
dominions.
II. The King of the Huns required and obtained that his tribute or
subsidy should be augmented from seven hundred pounds of gold to the
annual sum of two thousand one hundred; and he stipulated the immediate
payment of six thousand pounds of gold to defray the expenses or to
expiate the guilt of the war. One might imagine that such a demand,
which scarcely equalled the measure of private wealth, would have been
readily discharged by the opulent Empire of the East; and the public
distress affords a remarkable proof of the impoverished, or at least of
the disorderly, state of the finances. A large proportion of the taxes
extorted from the people was detained and intercepted in their passage,
through the foulest channels, to the treasury of Constantinople. The
revenue was dissipated by Theodosius and his favorites in wasteful and
profuse luxury, which was disguised by the name of imperial magnificence
or Christian charity. The immediate supplies had been exhausted by the
unforeseen necessity of military preparations. A personal contribution,
rigorously but capriciously imposed on the members of the senatorian
order, was the only expedient that could disarm, without loss of time,
the impatient avarice of Attila; and the poverty of the nobles compelled
them to adopt the scandalous resource of exposing to public auction the
jewels of their wives and the hereditary ornaments of their palaces.
III. The King of the Huns appears to have established, as a principle of
national jurisprudence, that he could never lose the property, which he
had once acquired, in the persons who had yielded either a voluntary or
reluctant submission to his authority. From this principle he concluded,
and the conclusions of Attila were irrevocable laws, that the Huns, who
had been, taken prisoners in war, should be released without delay and
without ransom; that every Roman captive who had presumed to escape
should purchase his right to freedom at the price of twelve pieces of
gold; and that all the Barbarians who had deserted the standard of
Attila should be restored, with out any promise or stipulation of
pardon. In the execution of this cruel and ignominious treaty the
imperial officers were forced to massacre several loyal and noble
deserters who refused to devote themselves to certain death; and the
Romans forfeited all reasonable claims to the friendship of any Scythian
people, by this public confession, that they were destitute either of
faith or power to protect the suppliant who had embraced the throne of
Theodosius.