CHALONS
If, in the battle of Chalons, Attila and his Huns had been
victorious over the combined forces of the semi-Christianized
Visigoths under Theoderic and the Romans under Ætius--then Hungvari
influence rather than Teutonic would have dominantly determined the
progress of the civilized world.
Rome had fallen: effete in her withered hand lay the rod of empire:
and swarming about her, now quarrelling among themselves and with
her, now fraternizing, but always more or less in awe of her
prostrate majesty were her barbarous children--Franks, Burgundians,
Alans, Lombards, Gauls, Alemanni, Visigoths, and Ostrogoths. These
had known Rome in the hour of her pride and power; they revered
the Rome that was for the sake of the Rome that had been; they
had imbibed something of her culture, her military discipline,
her laws, her religion. Semi-civilized, semi-Christianized, with
the bold Teutonic virtues yet pristine from the Black Forests
of Germany,--they were the possible material of an excellence
surpassing that of Rome, even when Rome could boast of excellence.
But about 450 A. D. hordes, innumerable hordes, _velut unda
supervenit undam_ (even as wave upon wave) of hideously ugly,
lithe, little, wiry, imp-like men poured into Europe from the
Asiatic lands north of the Black Sea. By their numbers, their
lightning-like rapidity, their uncanny appearance, and their brute
ferocity, they quickly swept the countries before them, put to
flight the Alans, the Ostrogoths, and other tribes dwelling along
the course of the Danube, and finally under their terrible leader
Atzel (Attila), Scourge of God, they confronted the civilized and
semi-civilized world in arms on the plain of Chalons.
BATTLE.
From early dawn even until darkness frowned over the field the
blood-feast flowed: and Death was satiated.
Attila withdrew to his camp. He left an effective guard around his
wagons and outposts and made every thing ready for a prolonged
and obstinate resistance to the attack anticipated at early dawn.
Nevertheless he built for himself a massive funeral pile, placed
upon it his most valued treasures and his favorite wives, and was
fully prepared and resolute to apply the torch, ascend the pyre,
and so perish in the flames--should defeat fall to his fortune on
the following day.
Morning dawned. The awful work of death on the preceding day
appalled both armies; miles upon miles of outstretched plain lay
covered with carnage; the all-night-writhing mounds of men were
ominously still. Sullenly did foe gaze upon foe; but each recoiled
from renewal of the slaughter.
Still the advantage was with the allies; for Attila, so late the
fierce aggressor, was barricaded in his camp--tho’ grimly awaiting
attack indeed, and prepared to resist to the end and die like a
lion in his den.
Did the Romans know of that funeral pile? They may not, indeed,
have known the peculiar manner in which Attila would seek death,
but they knew that he would die by his own hand--if the worst came.
Cato had done so and Varus and Brutus and Cassius and Hannibal and
Anthony and Cleopatra--_ad infinitum_.
Addison, in his tragedy _Cato_, has graphically portrayed the
conflicting thoughts and emotions in the mind of a man who feels
that life cannot longer be borne and yet shrinks back from the
horror and the dread unknown.
Cato had lost the battle of Utica. He had been true to Pompey, he
had fought the last battle for the cause of Pompey--and lost. And
Cæsar was indeed god of this world, and the morrow held no place on
all this so vast earth for Cato; this lost-battle night must end it
all. He read Plato’s discourse on the immortality of the soul, and
in the lines of Addison, thus soliloquized:
“It must be so. Plato, thou reason’st well:
Else whence this pleasing hope, this fond desire,
This longing after immortality?
Or whence this secret dread and inward horror
Of falling into naught? Why shrinks the soul
Back on herself and startles at destruction?
’Tis the divinity that stirs within us;
’Tis Heaven itself that points out an hereafter,
And intimates eternity to man.
* * * * *
The soul, secured in her existence, smiles
At the drawn dagger and defies its point.
The stars shall fade away, the sun himself
Grow dim with age and nature sink in years;
But thou shalt flourish in immortal youth
Unhurt amidst the war of elements,
The wreck of matter and the crash of worlds.”
But Attila did not mount his funeral pile. The day passed without
attack upon Attila’s formidable position. King Theodoric lay dead
upon the plain and his son Prince Thorismund, who had distinguished
himself in the battle, was victoriously proclaimed King of the
Visigoths.
Ætius, Valentinian’s able general, held in leash both the Romans
and the Visigoths even while Attila slowly broke up camp and
withdrew in long lines leading northward.
EFFECT.
The effect was that of victory for the allies. Rome was saved from
a fresh infusion of barbarism whilst her Teutonic element was
still semi-barbarous. The German characteristics--love of liberty,
independence, and reverential regard for women--thus dominated the
Christian civilization which now began to flourish vigorously out
from the decadence of pagan Rome.
If, as Byron says,
“Cervantes laughed Spain’s chivalry away,”
then also it may be said that Lucan laughed Rome’s gods and
goddesses away. The laugh is the most insidiously potent of all
destructive forces when the laugher is loved and the times are
attuned to hear. Not satire, not personal bitterness, not even the
withering invectives of a Juvenal are as sweepingly effective as
the quills of ridicule, the inescapable miasma of the laugh. Once
let the grin distort the frown of Zeus and majesty trembles, awe
smiles, reverence dies.
And so the pagan deities were dead; their temples empty and
meaningless; and thundering Jove and jealous Juno and murderous
Mars and all the other deifications of the all too human heart of
man were impotently silent under the spell of the solemn central
figure of the new religion--Christ on the Cross.
And the Church in the name and with the power of that sublime
Sufferer taught the reverse of all that paganism had taught; of
all that the world had hitherto heard and heeded; of all that the
all too human heart of man held as dearest and best. “Love your
enemies,” said the Church to the men who had fought at Chalons.
“Blessed are the merciful, Blessed are the clean of heart, Blessed
are the peacemakers”, reiterated the Church to her semi-barbarous
children. And they understood only in part, and they did deeds of
appalling atrocity even while acquiescing to her teachings: for the
will to do good was, indeed, emotionally present with them, but
the power so to do failed them crucially. Yet their sins were of
surface-passions not of the inmost heart; for they were ever in
reverential awe of the sublime Sufferer on the Cross; for he spoke
as no man ever yet had spoken, and he lived what he said, and he
died praying for his murderers: and all this is not of man--as none
knew better than they who knew the naked human heart.
ATTILA.
History has not done justice to Attila. History has not done
justice to any lost cause. For the winners, not the losers, are the
writers as well as the makers of history, and all forces combine to
make them unjust to the lost cause.
Herodotus gives us the story of Marathon, Thermopylæ, Platæa,
Salamis; Persia had no Herodotus: Homer extols the exploits of
the Grecian army, the valor of Achilles; but Hector had no Homer:
Roman historians tell the story of the Punic wars; Carthage from
her desolate site sown with salt cares not what they say, whilst
Hannibal, bravest of the brave, and supreme military genius, speaks
on the historic page only from the lips of the hated Romans.
When Protestantism finally won in England and the long able
reign of Elizabeth established it firmly upon a political basis,
then were fulminated against the Church of Rome all those unjust
accusations and gross misrepresentations which, crystallized in
history and in literature, seem ineradicable as fate. But truth is
older than history or literature, and more analytically powerful
than the synthetic forces of crystallization, and patiently
prevalent even over fate.
Elizabeth’s very legitimacy depended upon the establishment of
Protestantism in England and the overthrow of Catholicity; and to
this two-fold end the energies of the very astute daughter of Henry
VIII. were undeviatingly directed.
It takes about three hundred years from the time of a cataclysmic
upheaval of any kind before the minds of men can view it
dispassionately or estimate it without bias. But what are three
hundred years to age-old Truth?
Elizabeth possessed, in addition to the terse Tudor qualities,
the rare gift of foresight. She knew the power of the pen and
the possibilities for fame or infamy in the men of genius of her
time. And so her court was open to the great men of that day and
her smile of patronage was ever ready to welcome poet, artist,
dramatist, politician, warrior, traveler, historian, and statesman:
she became all to all and she won all.
As _Gloriana_ in Spenser’s immortal “Færie Queen” she reigns
forever. Bacon, Spenser, Sidney Smith, Raleigh, Voltaire--as Voices
having a thousand echoes throughout the years--have amply rewarded
that patient foresight and have fixed her in fame as--what she was
to them--Good Queen Bess.
And so Attila and his Huns in low long sinuously winding northern
lines left behind them the carnage strewn plain of Chalons, and the
camp with its ominous pyre, and the dazed foe. And thus victory
remained to Ætius, last of the Romans: and the field of Chalons
which saved civilization and semi-civilization from an untimely
intrusion of rank barbarism; which secured domination to the
Teutonic race rather than to the Sarmatic; which freed Europe from
Asia--was the last victory of imperial Rome.
Attila died two years later; some say as the victim of poison
secretly mixed with his food by Ætius’ ever vigilant spies. With
him his vast empire passed away: and the leader who once claimed as
proud titles,--“Atzel, Descendant of the Great Nimrod. By the Grace
of God, King of the Huns, the Goths, the Danes, and the Medes. The
Dread of the World”--died ignominiously one carousal wedding night:
and history, ever unjust to a lost cause, writes his name among the
_Almosts_ and calmly commends the destiny by which Attila and his
Hunnish hordes were defeated in the great battle of Chalons.