the Gulf of Bothnia to the most southern promontory of Sicily, from the
Oder and the Adriatic to the Hebrides and to Lisbon. It is true that the
language spoken over a large portion of this place is not predominantly
German; but even in France and Italy, and Spain, the influence of the
Franks, Burgundians, Visigoths, Ostrogoths, and Lombards while it has
colored even the language, has in blood and institutions left its mark
legibly and indelibly. Germany, the Low Countries, Switzerland, for the
most part Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, and our own islands are all in
language, in blood, and in institutions German most decidedly. But all
South America is peopled with Spaniards and Portuguese; all North
America and all Australia with Englishmen. I say nothing of the
prospects and influence of the German race in Africa and in India; it is
enough to say that half of Europe and all America and Australia are
German, more or less completely, in race, in language, or in
institutions, or in all."
By the middle of the fifth century Germanic nations had settled
themselves in many of the fairest regions of the Roman Empire, had
imposed their yoke on the provincials, and had undergone, to a
considerable extent, that moral conquest which the arts and refinements
of the vanquished in arms have so often achieved over the rough victor.
The Visigoths held the North of Spain, and Gaul south of the Loire.
Franks, Alemanni, Alans, and Burgundians had established themselves in
other Gallic provinces, and the Suevi were masters of a large southern
portion of the Spanish peninsula. A king of the Vandals reigned in
North Africa; and the Ostrogoths had firmly planted themselves in the
provinces north of Italy. Of these powers and principalities, that of
the Visigoths, under their king Theodoric, son of Alaric, was by far the
first in power and in civilization.
The pressure of the Huns upon Europe had first been felt in the fourth
century of our era. They had long been formidable to the Chinese empire,
but the ascendency in arms which another nomadic tribe of Central Asia,
the Sienpi, gained over them, drove the Huns from their Chinese conquest
westward; and this movement once being communicated to the whole chain
of barbaric nations that dwelt northward of the Black Sea and the Roman
Empire, tribe after tribe of savage warriors broke in upon the barriers
of civilized Europe. The Huns crossed the Tanais into Europe in 375, and
rapidly reduced to subjection the Alans, the Ostrogoths, and other
tribes that were then dwelling along the course of the Danube. The
armies of the Roman Emperor that tried to check their progress were cut
to pieces by them, and Pannonia and other provinces south of the Danube
were speedily occupied by the victorious cavalry of these new invaders.
Not merely the degenerate Romans, but the bold and hardy warriors of
Germany and Scandinavia, were appalled at the number, the ferocity, the
ghastly appearance, and the lightning-like rapidity of the Huns. Strange
and loathsome legends were coined and credited, which attributed their
origin to the union of
"Secret, black, and midnight hags"
with the evil spirits of the wilderness.
Tribe after tribe and city after city fell before them. Then came a
pause in their career of conquest in Southwestern Europe, caused
probably by dissensions among their chiefs, and also by their arms being
employed in attacks upon the Scandinavian nations. But when Attila--or
Atzel, as he is called in the Hungarian language--became their ruler,
the torrent of their arms was directed with augmented terrors upon the
West and the South, and their myriads marched beneath the guidance of
one master-mind to the overthrow both of the new and the old powers of
the earth.
Recent events have thrown such a strong interest over everything
connected with the Hungarian name that even the terrible renown of
Attila now impresses us the more vividly through our sympathizing
admiration of the exploits of those who claim to be descended from his
warriors, and "ambitiously insert the name of Attila among their native
kings." The authenticity of this martial genealogy is denied by some
writers and questioned by more. But it is at least certain that the
Magyars of Arpad, who are the immediate ancestors of the bulk of the
modern Hungarians, and who conquered the country which bears the name of
Hungary in A.D. 889, were of the same stock of mankind as were the Huns
of Attila, even if they did not belong to the same subdivision of that
stock. Nor is there any improbability in the tradition that after
Attila's death many of his warriors remained in Hungary, and that their
descendants afterward joined the Huns of Arpad in their career of
conquest. It is certain that Attila made Hungary the seat of his empire.
It seems also susceptible of clear proof that the territory was then
called Hungvar, and Attila's soldiers Hungvari. Both the Huns of Attila
and those of Arpad came from the family of nomadic nations whose
primitive regions were those vast wildernesses of High Asia which are
included between the Altaic and the Himalayan mountain chains.
The inroads of these tribes upon the lower regions of Asia and into
Europe have caused many of the most remarkable revolutions in the
history of the world. There is every reason to believe that swarms of
these nations made their way into distant parts of the earth at periods
long before the date of the Scythian invasion of Asia, which is the
earliest inroad of the nomadic race that history records. The first, as
far as we can conjecture, in respect to the time of their descent, were
the Finnish and Ugrian tribes, who appear to have come down from the
Altaic border of High Asia toward the northwest, in which direction they
advanced to the Uralian Mountains. There they established themselves;
and that mountain chain, with its valleys and pasture lands, became to
them a new country, whence they sent out colonies on every side; but the
Ugrian colony which under Arpad occupied Hungary and became the
ancestors of the bulk of the present Hungarian nation did not quit
their settlements on the Uralian Mountains till a very late period, and
not until four centuries after the time when Attila led from the primary
seats of the nomadic races in High Asia the host with which he advanced
into the heart of France. That host was Turkish, but closely allied in
origin, language, and habits with the Finno-Ugrian settlers on the Ural.
Attila's fame has not come down to us through the partial and suspicious
medium of chroniclers and poets of his own race. It is not from Hunnish
authorities that we learn the extent of his might: it is from his
enemies, from the literature and the legends of the nations whom he
afflicted with his arms, that we draw the unquestionable evidence of his
greatness. Besides the express narratives of Byzantine, Latin, and
Gothic writers, we have the strongest proof of the stern reality of
Attila's conquests in the extent to which he and his Huns have been the
themes of the earliest German and Scandinavian lays. Wild as many of
those legends are, they bear concurrent and certain testimony to the awe
with which the memory of Attila was regarded by the bold warriors who
composed and delighted in them.
Attila's exploits, and the wonders of his unearthly steed and magic
sword, repeatedly occur in the sagas of Norway and Iceland; and the
celebrated _Nibelungenlied_, the most ancient of Germanic poetry, is
full of them. There Etsel, or Attila, is described as the wearer of
twelve mighty crowns, and as promising to his bride the lands of thirty
kings whom his irresistible sword had subdued. He is, in fact, the hero
of the latter part of this remarkable poem; and it is at his capital
city, Etselenburg, which evidently corresponds to the modern Buda, that
much of its action takes place.
When we turn from the legendary to the historic Attila, we see clearly
that he was not one of the vulgar herd of barbaric conquerors.
Consummate military skill may be traced in his campaigns; and he relied
far less on the brute force of armies for the aggrandizement of his
empire than on the unbounded influence over the affections of friends
and the fears of foes which his genius enabled him to acquire. Austerely
sober in his private life--severely just on the judgment
seat--conspicuous among a nation of warriors for hardihood, strength,
and skill in every martial exercise--grave and deliberate in counsel,
but rapid and remorseless in execution, he gave safety and security to
all who were under his dominion, while he waged a warfare of
extermination against all who opposed or sought to escape from it. He
watched the national passions, the prejudices, the creeds, and the
superstitions of the varied nations over which he ruled and of those
which he sought to reduce beneath his sway: all these feelings he had
the skill to turn to his own account. His own warriors believed him to
be the inspired favorite of their deities, and followed him with fanatic
zeal; his enemies looked on him as the preappointed minister of heaven's
wrath against themselves; and though they believed not in his creed,
their own made them tremble before him.
In one of his early campaigns he appeared before his troops with an
ancient iron sword in his grasp, which he told them was the god of war
whom their ancestors had worshipped. It is certain that the nomadic
tribes of Northern Asia, whom Herodotus described under the name of
Scythians, from the earliest times worshipped as their god a bare sword.
That sword-god was supposed, in Attila's time, to have disappeared from
earth; but the Hunnish King now claimed to have received it by special
revelation. It was said that a herdsman, who was tracking in the desert
a wounded heifer by the drops of blood, found the mysterious sword
standing fixed in the ground, as if it had darted down from heaven. The
herdsman bore it to Attila, who thenceforth was believed by the Huns to
wield the Spirit of Death in battle, and their seers prophesied that
that sword was to destroy the world. A Roman, who was on an embassy to
the Hunnish camp, recorded in his memoirs Attila's acquisition of this
supernatural weapon, and the immense influence over the minds of the
barbaric tribes which its possession gave him. In the title which he
assumed we shall see the skill with which he availed himself of the
legends and creeds of other nations as well as of his own. He designated
himself "ATTILA, Descendant of the Great Nimrod. Nurtured in Engaddi. By
the grace of God, King of the Huns, the Goths, the Danes, and the Medes.
The Dread of the World."
Herbert states that Attila is represented on an old medallion with a
teraph, or a head, on his breast; and the same writer adds: "We know,
from the _Hamartigenea_ of Prudentius, that Nimrod, with a snaky-haired
head, was the object of adoration of the heretical followers of Marcion;
and the same head was the palladium set up by Antiochus Epiphanes over
the gates of Antioch, though it has been called the visage of Charon.
The memory of Nimrod was certainly regarded with mystic veneration by
many; and by asserting himself to be the heir of that mighty hunter
before the Lord, he vindicated to himself at least the whole Babylonian
kingdom.
"The singular assertion in his style, that he was nurtured in Engaddi,
where he certainly had never been, will be more easily understood on
reference to the twelfth chapter of the Book of Revelation, concerning
the woman clothed with the sun, who was to bring forth in the
wilderness--'where she hath a place prepared of God'--a man-child, who
was to contend with the dragon having seven heads and ten horns, and
rule all nations with a rod of iron. This prophecy was at that time
understood universally by the sincere Christians to refer to the birth
of Constantine, who was to overwhelm the paganism of the city on the
seven hills, and it is still so explained; but it is evident that the
heathens must have looked on it in a different light, and have regarded
it as a foretelling of the birth of that Great one who should master the
temporal power of Rome. The assertion, therefore, that he was nurtured
in Engaddi, is a claim to be looked upon as that man-child who was to be
brought forth in a place prepared of God in the wilderness. Engaddi
means a place of palms and vines in the desert; it was hard by Zoar, the
city of refuge, which was saved in the Vale of Siddim, or Demons, when
the rest were destroyed by fire and brimstone from the Lord in heaven,
and might, therefore, be especially called a place prepared of God in
the wilderness."
It is obvious enough why he styled himself "By the Grace of God, King of
the Huns and Goths," and it seems far from difficult to see why he added
the names of the Medes and the Danes. His armies had been engaged in
warfare against the Persian kingdom of the Sassanidæ, and it is certain
that he meditated the invasion and overthrow of the Medo-Persian power.
Probably some of the northern provinces of that kingdom had been
compelled to pay him tribute; and this would account for his styling
himself king of the Medes, they being his remotest subjects to the
south. From a similar cause he may have called himself king of the
Danes, as his power may well have extended northward as far as the
nearest of the Scandinavian nations, and this mention of Medes and Danes
as his subjects would serve at once to indicate the vast extent of his
dominion.[24]
The immense territory north of the Danube and Black Sea and eastward of
Caucasus, over which Attila ruled, first in conjunction with his brother
Bleda, and afterward alone, cannot be very accurately defined, but it
must have comprised within it, besides the Huns, many nations of Slavic,
Gothic, Teutonic, and Finnish origin. South also of the Danube, the
country, from the river Sau as far as Novi in Thrace, was a Hunnish
province. Such was the empire of the Huns in A.D. 445; a memorable year,
in which Attila founded Buda on the Danube as his capital city, and rid
himself of his brother by a crime which seems to have been prompted not
only by selfish ambition, but also by a desire of turning to his purpose
the legends and forebodings which then were universally spread
throughout the Roman Empire, and must have been well known to the
watchful and ruthless Hun.
The year 445 of our era completed the twelfth century from the
foundation of Rome, according to the best chronologers. It had always
been believed among the Romans that the twelve vultures, which were said
to have appeared to Romulus when he founded the city, signified the time
during which the Roman power should endure. The twelve vultures denoted
twelve centuries. This interpretation of the vision of the birds of
destiny was current among learned Romans, even when there were yet many
of the twelve centuries to run, and while the imperial city was at the
zenith of its power. But as the allotted time drew nearer and nearer to
its conclusion, and as Rome grew weaker and weaker beneath the blows of
barbaric invaders, the terrible omen was more and more talked and
thought of; and in Attila's time, men watched for the momentary
extinction of the Roman State with the last beat of the last vulture's
wing. Moreover, among the numerous legends connected with the foundation
of the city, and the fratricidal death of Remus, there was one most
terrible one, which told that Romulus did not put his brother to death
in accident or in hasty quarrel, but that
"He slew his gallant twin
With inexpiable sin,"
deliberately and in compliance with the warnings of supernatural powers.
The shedding of a brother's blood was believed to have been the price at
which the founder of Rome had purchased from destiny her twelve
centuries of existence.
We may imagine, therefore, with what terror in this the twelve hundredth
year after the foundation of Rome the inhabitants of the Roman Empire
must have heard the tidings that the royal brethren Attila and Bleda had
founded a new capital on the Danube, which was designed to rule over the
ancient capital on the Tiber; and that Attila, like Romulus, had
consecrated the foundations of his new city by murdering his brother; so
that for the new cycle of centuries then about to commence, dominion had
been bought from the gloomy spirits of destiny in favor of the Hun by a
sacrifice of equal awe and value with that which had formerly obtained
it for the Roman.
It is to be remembered that not only the pagans but also the Christians
of that age knew and believed in these legends and omens, however they
might differ as to the nature of the superhuman agency by which such
mysteries had been made known to mankind. And we may observe with
Herbert, a modern learned dignitary of our Church, how remarkably this
augury was fulfilled; for "if to the twelve centuries denoted by the
twelve vultures that appeared to Romulus we add, for the six birds that
appeared to Remus, six _lustra_ or periods of five years each, by which
the Romans were wont to number their time, it brings us precisely to the
year 476, in which the Roman Empire was finally extinguished by
Odoacer."
An attempt to assassinate Attila, made, or supposed to have been made,
at the instigation of Theodoric the Younger, the emperor of
Constantinople, drew the Hunnish armies, in 445, upon the Eastern
Empire, and delayed for a time the destined blow against Rome. Probably
a more important cause of delay was the revolt of some of the Hunnish
tribes to the north of the Black Sea against Attila, which broke out
about this period, and is cursorily mentioned by the Byzantine writers.
Attila quelled this revolt, and having thus consolidated his power, and
having punished the presumption of the Eastern Roman Emperor by fearful
ravages of his fairest provinces, Attila, in 450 A.D., prepared to set
his vast forces in motion for the conquest of Western Europe. He sought
unsuccessfully by diplomatic intrigues to detach the king of the
Visigoths from his alliance with Rome, and he resolved first to crush
the power of Theodoric, and then to advance with overwhelming power to
trample out the last sparks of the doomed Roman Empire.
A strange invitation from a Roman princess gave him a pretext for the
war, and threw an air of chivalric enterprise over his invasion.
Honoria, sister of Valentinian III, the emperor of the West, had sent to
Attila to offer him her hand and her supposed right to share in the
imperial power. This had been discovered by the Romans, and Honoria had
been forthwith closely imprisoned. Attila now pretended to take up arms
in behalf of his self-promised bride, and proclaimed that he was about
to march to Rome to redress Honoria's wrongs. Ambition and spite against
her brother must have been the sole motives that led the lady to woo the
royal Hun; for Attila's face and person had all the natural ugliness of
his race, and the description given of him by a Byzantine ambassador
must have been well known in the imperial courts. Herbert has well
versified the portrait drawn by Priscus of the great enemy of both
Byzantium and Rome:
"Terrific was his semblance, in no mould
Of beautiful proportion cast; his limbs
Nothing exalted, but with sinews braced
Of Chalybean temper, agile, lithe,
And swifter than the roe; his ample chest
Was overbrow'd by a gigantic head,
With eyes keen, deeply sunk, and small, that gleam'd
Strangely in wrath as though some spirit unclean
Within that corporal tenement install'd
Look'd from its windows, but with temper'd fire
Beam'd mildly on the unresisting. Thin
His beard and hoary; his flat nostrils crown'd
A cicatrized, swart visage; but, withal,
That questionable shape such glory wore
That mortals quail'd beneath him."
Two chiefs of the Franks, who were then settled on the Lower Rhine, were
at this period engaged in a feud with each other, and while one of them
appealed to the Romans for aid, the other invoked the assistance and
protection of the Huns. Attila thus obtained an ally whose coöperation
secured for him the passage of the Rhine, and it was this circumstance
which caused him to take a northward route from Hungary for his attack
upon Gaul. The muster of the Hunnish hosts was swollen by warriors of
every tribe that they had subjugated; nor is there any reason to suspect
the old chroniclers of wilful exaggeration in estimating Attila's army
as seven hundred thousand strong. Having crossed the Rhine probably a
little below Coblentz, he defeated the king of the Burgundians, who
endeavored to bar his progress. He then divided his vast forces into two
armies, one of which marched northwest upon Tongres and Arras and the
other cities of that part of France, while the main body, under Attila
himself, advanced up the Moselle, and destroyed Besançon and other towns
in the country of the Burgundians.
One of the latest and best biographers of Attila well observes that,
"having thus conquered the eastern part of France, Attila prepared for
an invasion of the West-Gothic territories beyond the Loire. He marched
upon Orleans, where he intended to force the passage of that river, and
only a little attention is requisite to enable us to perceive that he
proceeded on a systematic plan: he had his right wing on the north for
the protection of his Frank allies; his left wing on the south for the
purpose of preventing the Burgundians from rallying and of menacing the
passes of the Alps from Italy; and he led his centre toward the chief
object of the campaign--the conquest of Orleans, and an easy passage
into the West-Gothic dominion. The whole plan is very like that of the
allied powers in 1814, with this difference, that their left wing
entered France through the defiles of the Jura, in the direction of
Lyons, and that the military object of the campaign was the capture of
Paris."
It was not until the year 451 that the Huns commenced the siege of
Orleans; and during their campaign in Eastern Gaul, the Roman general
Aetius had strenuously exerted himself in collecting and organizing such
an army as might, when united to the soldiery of the Visigoths, be fit
to face the Huns in the field. He enlisted every subject of the Roman
Empire whom patriotism, courage, or compulsion could collect beneath the
standards; and round these troops, which assumed the once proud title of
the legions of Rome he arrayed the large forces of barbaric auxiliaries,
whom pay, persuasion, or the general hate and dread of the Huns brought
to the camp of the last of the Roman generals. King Theodoric exerted
himself with equal energy. Orleans resisted her besiegers bravely as in
after-times. The passage of the Loire was skilfully defended against the
Huns; and Aetius and Theodoric, after much manoeuvring and difficulty,
effected a junction of their armies to the south of that important
river.
On the advance of the allies upon Orleans, Attila instantly broke up the
siege of that city and retreated toward the Marne. He did not choose to
risk a decisive battle with only the central corps of his army against
the combined power of his enemies, and he therefore fell back upon his
base of operations, calling in his wings from Arras and Besançon, and
concentrating the whole of the Hunnish forces on the vast plains of
Châlons-sur-Marne. A glance at the map will show how scientifically this
place was chosen by the Hunnish general as the point for his scattered
forces to converge upon; and the nature of the ground was eminently
favorable for the operations of cavalry, the arm in which Attila's
strength peculiarly lay.
It was during the retreat from Orleans that a Christian hermit is
reported to have approached the Hunnish King and said to him, "Thou art
the Scourge of God for the chastisement of the Christians." Attila
instantly assumed this new title of terror, which thenceforth became the
appellation by which he was most widely and most fearfully known.