Chapter IX: Attila’s Home-Coming 145 (3)

In Avitus we have a figure which at once arrests our attention amid all the welter of Barbarians of which even Gaul was full. In him we see, and are assured, that the civilisation of Rome was still a living thing in the West, that it had not been overwhelmed by savages or lost in a mist of superstition. Avitus indeed seems to have stepped suddenly out of the great Roman time, he reminds us of what we have learned to expect a Roman noble of the time of Marcus Aurelius, or for that matter of St. Ambrose, to be. In him we see one we can greet as a brother; we should have been able to discuss with him the decline of the Empire. A rich man, coming of a noble family which for long had enjoyed the highest honour and the heaviest official responsibility, a scholar, a connoisseur, above all a somewhat bored patriot, he was also a soldier distinguished for his personal courage. He had already in 439 been successful in arranging a treaty for Rome with the Visigoths, and it was to him in this hour of enormous peril that Aetius turned again. He found him in his beautiful, peaceful and luxurious villa of Avitacum amid the foothills of the mountains of Auvergne, living as so many of our great nobles of the eighteenth century lived, half a farmer, half a scholar, wholly epicurean and full of the most noble self-indulgence, surrounded by his family, his son and daughter, and his friends, poets and scholars and delightful women. His son Ecdicius was the heir both of his wealth and his responsibilities, his daughter Papianella had married Sidonius Apollinaris of Lyons, a man already famous as a poet and coming of a distinguished Gallo-Roman family. It was this man who in the moment of crisis appeared on behalf of civilisation at the Visigoths’ Court--we could not have had a more noble representative.

His mission was wholly successful; but the time spent in showing the Visigoths where their interests lay was to cost Orleans dear. The devoted city wholly surrounded and every day submitted to the assaults and the clouds of arrows of the Huns, hearing no news of any relief, was in despair. In vain the Bishop Anianus went in procession through the streets, and even among the troops on the ramparts, bearing the relics of his church; they called him traitor. Still firm in his faith in God and in the promise of Aetius, daily he made men climb the last high tower in expectation of deliverance. None came, no sign of the armies of Aetius could be discerned. Day after day the mighty roads southward lay in the sun white and empty of all life. At last he sent by stealth a messenger to Aetius with this message: “My son, if you come not to-day it will be too late.” That messenger never returned. Anianus himself began to doubt and at last heard counsels of surrender almost without a protest; indeed consented himself to treat with the Huns. But Attila was beside himself at the length of the resistance, he would grant no terms. Nothing remained but death or worse than death.

Upon the following morning, the week having been full of thunder, the first rude cavalry of the Huns began to enter the city through the broken gates. The pillage and massacre and rape began, and, as to-day in Belgium, we read with a certain order and system. Nothing was spared, neither the houses of the citizens, nor their holy places, neither age nor sex. It seemed as though all would perish in a vast and systematic vandalism and murder.

Suddenly a cry rose over the noise of the butchery and destruction. The Eagles! The Eagles! And over the mighty bridge that spans the Loire thundered the cavalry of Rome, and the tumultuous standards of the Goths. They came on; nothing might stop them. Step by step they won the bridge head, they fought upon the shore, in the water, through the gates. Street by street, fighting every yard, the Imperial troops pushed on, the glistening eagles high overhead. House by house, alley by alleyway was won and filled with the dead; the Huns broke and fled, the horses stamped out their faces in the byways, in the thoroughfares there was no going, the Barbarian carrion was piled so high; Attila himself was afraid. He sounded the retreat.

That famous and everlasting day was the 14th of June, for Aetius had kept his word. Orleans had begun the deliverance of Gaul and of the West.

VII

THE RETREAT OF ATTILA AND THE BATTLE OF THE CATALAUNIAN PLAINS

The retreat of Attila from Orleans would seem to have been one of the most terrible of which we have any record. The Gothic chronicler Jornandes, writing a hundred years after the events he describes, wholly or almost wholly at the mercy of a Gothic and so a Barbarian legend, would seem, though poorly informed as to facts and details, to be fully justified in the general impression he gives of the horror and disaster which befell the Hunnish host. It is certain that Attila’s withdrawal of his army must have been not only difficult but impossible without disaster: too many and too brutal crimes had been committed for the ruined population of northern Gaul to permit it an easy passage in retreat. The devastated country could no longer supply its needs, everywhere ruined men awaited revenge: it can have been little less than a confused flight that Attila made with his thousands towards the Rhine, with Aetius and Theodoric ever upon his flanks.

Nor was he to escape without battle. The Imperial armies pressing on behind him gained upon him daily, a sufficient comment upon his state, and it was really in despair that he reached at last the city of Troyes, more than a hundred miles from Orleans, an open city which there might, he hoped, be time to loot, and so to restore to some extent the confidence and the condition of his people. That he was not able to loot Troyes is the best evidence we could have of the energy of the Imperial pursuit; but here again we meet with one of those almost incredible interpositions of the spiritual power that we have already seen at Tongres, at Rheims, at Paris, and not least at Orleans. It must have meant almost everything to Attila on his hurried and harassed road north-east out of Gaul to be able to feed and to rest his army at Troyes, where the great road by which he had come crossed the Seine. That he was not able to do this was doubtless due fundamentally to the pressure of Aetius upon his flanks, but there was something more, we are told. Just as Anianus of Orleans had by his prayers saved his city, so Lupus of Troyes defended his town in the same way. He, the Bishop, and now perhaps the governor, of Troyes went forth to Attila, faced and outfaced him, and indeed so impressed and even terrified the superstitious Barbarian that he left Troyes alone and passed on, taking only the Bishop himself with him a prisoner in his train. “For,” said he, mocking him even in his fear, “if I take a man so holy as you with me I cannot fail of good luck even to the Rhine.”

Attila passed on; he had crossed the Seine; before him lay the passage of the Aube, and it was here that the advance guard of the Imperial armies first got into touch with their quarry. It was night. Attila had left the Gepidae to hold the crossing, and it was they who felt the first blows of Aetius whose advance guard was composed of Franks; the fight endured all night and at dawn the passage was won and some 15,000[12] dead and wounded lay upon the field. Attila had crossed into Champagne, but the Imperial army was already at his heels; he would have to fight. The battle which followed, one of the most famous as it is one of the most important in the history of Europe, whose future was there saved and decided, would seem to have been fought all over that wide and bare country of Champagne between the Aube and the Marne, and to have been finally focussed about the great earthwork still called the Camp of Attila by Châlons; it is known to history as the battle of the Catalaunian plains.

It may well be that the fight at the passage of the Aube had given Attila time to reach that great earthwork, one of the most gigantic and impressive things in Europe, which rises out of that lost and barren country of Champagne like something not wholly the work of man. There he halted; convinced at last that he could not escape without battle, he encamped his army and made ready for the conflict.

In this terrible and tragic place he held council, and superstitious as ever in the supreme moment of his career, began to consult an endless procession of soothsayers, augurs and prophets upon the coming battle. From the entrails of birds, or the veins upon the bones of sheep, or the dying gestures of some animal, his sorcerers at last dared to proclaim to him his coming defeat, but to save their heads, perhaps, they added that the general of his enemies would perish in the conflict. It is sufficient witness to the genius of Aetius, to the fear he inspired in the Hun, and should be a complete answer to his enemies and traducers, that Attila, when he heard this, from despair passed immediately to complete joy and contentment. If after all Aetius defeated him at the price of his life, what might he not recover when his great adversary was no more! He therefore made ready with a cheerful heart for the conflict. Jornandes, whom we are bound to follow, for he is our chief, if not quite our only authority for all this vast onslaught of the Hun upon the Gaul, describes for us, though far from clearly, the configuration and the development of the battle. In following this writer, however, it is necessary to remember that he was a Goth, and relied for the most part upon Gothic traditions; also, above all, it is necessary not to abandon our common sense, protest he never so insistently.

Jornandes tells us that Attila put off the fight as long as possible and at last attacked, or so I read him, not without fear and trepidation, about three o’clock in the afternoon, so that if fortune went against him the oncoming of night might assist him to escape. He then sketches the field. Between the two armies, if I read him aright, was a rising ground which offered so much advantage to him who should occupy it that both advanced towards it, the Huns occupying it with their right and the Imperialists with their right, composed of auxiliaries.

On the right wing of the Romans Theodoric and his Visigoths held the field, on the left wing Aetius and the Romans; between them holding the centre and himself held by Aetius and Theodoric was the uncertain Alan Sangiban.

The Huns were differently arranged. In the midst, surrounded by his hardest and best warriors, stood Attila considering as ever his personal safety. His wings were wholly composed of auxiliaries, among them being the Ostrogoths with their chiefs; the Gepidae with their King; and Walamir the Ostrogoth; and Ardaric, King of the Gepidae, whom Attila trusted and loved more than all others. The rest, a crowd of kings and leaders of countless races, waited the word of Attila. For Attila, king of all kings, was alone in command and on him alone depended the battle.

The fight began, as Jornandes insists, with a struggle for the rising ground between the two armies. The advantage in which seems to have rested with the Visigoths, under Thorismund, who thrust back the Huns in confusion. Upon this Attila drew off, and seeing his men discouraged, seized this moment to harangue them, according to Jornandes, somewhat as follows:

“After such victories over so many nations, after the whole world has been almost conquered, I should think it ridiculous to rouse you with words as though you did not know how to fight. I leave such means to a new general, or to one dealing with raw soldiers. They are not worthy of us. For what are you if not soldiers, and what are you accustomed to if not to fight; and what then can be sweeter to you than vengeance and that won by your own hand? Let us then go forward joyfully to attack the enemy, since it is always the bravest who attack. Break in sunder this alliance of nations which have nothing in common but fear of us. Even before they have met you fear has taught them to seek the higher ground and they are eager for ramparts on these wide plains.

“We all know how feebly the Romans bear their weight of arms; it is not at the first wound, but at the first dust of battle they lose heart. While they are forming, before they have locked their shields into the _testudo_, charge and strike, advance upon the Alans and press back the Visigoths. Here it is we should look for speedy victory. If the nerves are cut the members fail and a body cannot support itself upright when the bones are dragged out of it. Lift up your hearts and show your wonted courage, quit you like Huns and prove the valour of your arms, let the wounded not rest till he has killed his enemy, let him who remains untouched steep himself in slaughter. It is certain that nothing can touch him who is fated to live, while he will die even without war who will surely die. And wherefore should fortune have made the Huns the vanquishers of so many nations if it were not to prepare them for this supreme battle? Why should she have opened to our ancestors a way through the marshes of Azov unknown till then if it were not to bring us even to this field? The event does not deceive me; here is the field to which so much good fortune has led us, and this multitude brought together by chance will not look into the eyes of the Huns. I myself will be the first to hurl my spear against the enemy, and if any remain slothful when Attila fights, he is but dead and should be buried.”

These words, says Jornandes, warmed the hearts of the Huns so that they all rushed headlong into battle.

We know really nothing of the tremendous encounter which followed, the result of which saved the Western world. It is true that Jornandes gives us a long account of it, but we are ignorant how far it is likely to be true, whence he got it, and how much was his own invention. That the battle was immense, we know; Jornandes asserts that it had no parallel and that it was such that, if unseen, no other marvel in the world could make up for such a loss. He tells us that there was a tradition that a stream that passed over the plain was swollen with blood into a torrent: “they who drank of it in their thirst drank murder.” It was by this stream, according to Jornandes, that Theodoric, King of the Visigoths, was thrown from his horse and trampled under foot and slain, and so fulfilled the prophecy which Attila’s sorcerers had declared to him. The fall of the King appears so to have enraged the Visigoths--and here we must go warily with Jornandes--that they engaged the enemy more closely and almost slew Attila himself in their fury. Indeed, it was their great charge which flung him and his guard, the Hunnish centre, back into the mighty earthwork which before them seemed but a frail barrier so enormous was their rage. Night fell upon the foe beleaguered and blockaded within that mighty defence.

In that night Thorismund, the son of Theodoric, was lost and found again. Aetius, too, separated in the confusion of the night from his armies, found himself, as Thorismund had done, among the waggons of the enemy, but like Thorismund again found his way back at last and spent the rest of the night among the Goths.

When day dawned, what a sight met the eyes of the allies. The vast plains were strewn with the dying and the dead, 160,000 men had fallen in that encounter, and within that terrible earthwork lay what was left of the Huns, wounded and furious, trapped as Alfred trapped Guthrum later upon the Wiltshire downs.

The battle had cost the Imperialists dear enough. Nor was their loss all. The death of Theodoric brought with it a greater anxiety and eventually cost Aetius his Gothic allies. A council of war was called. It was determined there to hold Attila and starve him within his earthwork. In the meantime search was made for the body of Theodoric. After a long time this was found, “where the dead lay thickest,” and was borne out of the sight of the enemy, the Goths “lifting their harsh voices in a wild lament.” It is to be supposed that there Theodoric was buried. And it is probable that the bones and swords and golden ornaments and jewels which were found near the village of Pouan by the Aube in 1842 may well have been the remains of Theodoric and his funeral, for the fight doubtless raged over a great territory, and it is certain that the king would be buried out of sight of the foe. On the other hand, these bones may have belonged to a Frankish chief who had fallen in the fight for the passage of the Aube.

But it is in his account of the events that followed the burial of Theodoric that we most doubt our guide Jornandes. He declares that Thorismund, Theodoric’s son and successor, wished to attack the Hun and avenge his father’s death; but that he consulted Aetius as the chief commander, who “fearing if the Huns were destroyed, the Goths might still more hardly oppress the Empire, advised him to return to Toulouse and make sure of his kingdom lest his brothers should seize it. This advice Thorismund followed without seeing the duplicity of Aetius.” Such an explanation of the treason of the Goths was doubtless accepted by the Gothic traditions and especially comfortable to Jornandes. It is incredible, because any observer could see that Attila was not so badly beaten that he was not a far greater danger to the Empire than ever the Visigoths could be. To let him escape, and that is what the departure of Thorismund meant, was treason, not to the Goths, but to the Empire. It served the cause not of Aetius but of Thorismund, not of Rome but of the Goths, whose loyalty was never above suspicion and whose slow adhesion to the Imperial cause had been the talk of Gaul and the scandal of every chancellery.

But Aetius could not have been much astonished by the desertion, and it was no less, of Thorismund. Rome was used to the instability of her Barbarian allies who if they really could have been depended upon, if they had really possessed the quality of decision, and known their own minds would no longer have been Barbarians. It was Attila who was amazed. He had given himself up for lost when looking out from that dark earthwork at dawn he saw the Visigothic camp empty and deserted, and at the sight “his soul returned into his body.” Without a moment’s hesitation, broken as he was, he began a retreat that Aetius was not able to prevent or to turn into a rout, which he could only ensure and emphasise. Upon that long march to the Rhine all the roads were strewn with the Hunnish sick and wounded and dead, but the main army, what was left of the half-million that had made the invasion, escaped back into the forests of Germany. Gaul was saved, and with Gaul the future of the West and of civilisation. But Attila was not destroyed.

FOOTNOTES:

[12] Jornandes, _R. Get._, 41. According to the Abbe Dubos the “XC millibus” which appears in the text of Jornandes is the mistake of a copyist for “XV millibus.”

VIII

ATTILA’S ATTACK UPON AND RETREAT FROM ITALY

It might seem to be a hard question to answer whether Attila was really beaten or not in Gaul. This at least is certain, the retreat from Orleans to the Camp by Châlons was a disaster for him, and the great battle which followed was only not annihilating because of the desertion of the Visigoths. Attila saved what that retreat and battle had left of his army, and without delay, for necessity pushed him on, turned to prove upon the body of Italy itself that he was still the “universal tyrant” and the “scourge of God.”

Historians of the decline and fall of the Empire, of the invasions of the Barbarians, have consistently expressed surprise, often not unmixed with contempt and derision, that Attila was allowed to escape. But it must be remembered that it is the almost unbroken characteristic of the Barbarian wars that the invaders did escape; so Alaric continually avoided destruction at the hands of Stilicho; and if the Visigoths were thus able to save themselves how much more was Attila whose armies were so largely composed of mounted men. It might seem that the superiority of the Barbarian lay in just that, mobility; the rude and savage men that composed their armies were content and able to live upon the country they ravaged, they were not dependent as were the Imperial armies upon their bases and their supply; they were always a bolt shot at a venture. Their success is paralleled in our own day by that of the Boers in South Africa. We do not blame Roberts and Kitchener that they allowed De Wet to escape them for so long; we understand that it was inevitable it should be so. Not thus argued the Romans. Full of discontent, rotten with intrigue and corruption as the Imperial Government was, there were many who from personal hatred and ambition, or mere treason, blamed and traduced Aetius for the escape of Attila which they had planned and prayed for in their hearts. Any weapon was good enough to use against the great general who apparently suffered neither fools nor traitors gladly, and was as ambitious if as able as Stilicho. Every sort of calumny was used against him. It was recalled that he had had intimate relations with Roua, the uncle of Attila, it was suggested that he had purposely spared the Huns.

To all this bitterness much was added by the acts of Aetius himself. Immeasurably proud, like Stilicho, he pretended to claim the hand of the Princess Eudoxia, the daughter of the Emperor Valentinian, for his son; moreover, among his other preparations against a new attack of Attila was a plan to remove the Emperor into Gaul; that he might replace him himself, his enemies declared. So violent grew the opposition to this last project that it had to be abandoned. Aetius was content to send Valentinian to Rome, while he himself, with his army, held Ravenna and the line of the Po.

In the first chapter of this book I have briefly explained the Imperial theory of the defence of Italy; that theory I have at greater length, and I think for the first time, set forth in a previous work.[13] Here I must very briefly recapitulate in saying that the valley of the Po, the whole Cisalpine Plain between the Alps and the Apennines, was in the Imperial theory, and rightly, the defence of Italy. That defence was barred again upon the inward or southern side by the barren and therefore impassable range of the Apennines,--impassable, that is, save at the eastern extremity, where the Via Emilia ran between the mountains and the sea into the city of Rimini. That narrow pass was commanded and held not by Rimini, which was indefensible, but by Ravenna which, on account of its position in the marshes, could not be taken and scarcely attacked. It was the due and wise recognition of these facts that caused the Emperor Honorius to take up his residence in Ravenna when Alaric crossed the Alps. That city had been the key to the defence of Italy ever since; it remained so now, therefore Aetius went thither gathering his army along the Via Emilia behind the line of the Po to await the final adventure of Attila.

Having failed to destroy the Eastern Empire, having failed in his attack upon the western provinces, the only thing that remained for Attila to attempt was the destruction and rape of the soul of all, the citadel of civilisation, Italy and Rome. It was the hardest task of all, therefore in his prudence, and he was always prudent, he had not tried it till now. It was his last throw. It was to fail, and that so contemptibly that his campaigns East and West in comparison seem like triumphs. Like Kaiser Wilhelm II., what Attila lacked in real force he strove to supply with blasphemy and boasting. He was as ill-informed and as ignorant of the real nature and strength of the forces opposed to him as the German statesmen of our day; he exaggerated and relied upon the corruption of the Empire; above all, like the Kaiser, he failed to see that the future frowned against him dark and enormous as the Alps.

Tradition rightly imposed upon Aetius the defence of Italy at the expense as it were of Cisalpine Gaul; it insisted that Cisalpine Gaul was to be the scene of the encounter. He determined to hold the line of the Po as he had held the line of the Loire; there was no need to be doubtful of his success. Already so many Barbarian invaders had found destruction in the immensity of that great plain. Nevertheless Aetius reinsured himself and Rome; he reinsured himself with Constantinople. It was no longer Theodosius the Calligrapher who sat on the Eastern throne, but Marcian the soldier. To him Valentinian sent ambassadors; Marcian heard them and promised an army. If, then, Aetius could lure Attila on far enough, but not too far for the safety of Italy, if he could hold him in the Cisalpine Plain, Marcian coming into Pannonia would be in time to cut off his retreat, and so at last the Hun would be utterly destroyed, and the bones of his great host might bleach beside the rivers of Lombardy. There at any rate we have the best explanation of what followed.

Before the winter was over, the winter of 451-452, Attila was already moving south-west out of Barbary over the Danube, and at last by the great Roman road through Pannonia, crossing the Julian Alps as Alaric had done before him to cross the Isonzo, to lay siege to the first great Italian fortress, then perhaps, save Ravenna, the strongest place in all Italy, Aquileia, the capital of the province of Venetia. The walls of this mighty stronghold which was some sixty stadia from the sea were washed by the rivers Natiso and Turrus. I say it was, save Ravenna, the strongest place in Italy. It had been made so about the end of the fourth century, but it had much longer ranked third among Italian fortresses, only outstripped by Milan and Capua. Though set in the plain it was so strongly held with walls and towers that it enjoyed the reputation of being impregnable. Both Alaric and Radagaisus had passed it by; in the early spring of 452 Attila laid siege to it. For three months he laboured in vain; no engine he possessed, no contrivance he could command, no labour he could compel, were enough to break those Roman walls and to batter down the gates of this virgin fortress. He hoped to starve it out, but in three months the number of his armies, their depredations and ravages of the countryside began to tell far more against him than against the beleaguered city. Living on the country as he must do he was himself like to go hungry; moreover the spring heats in the marshy plains were already due, his hosts were discontented, they expected the loot of Italy, they began to remember the siege of Orleans and the battle of Châlons.

Furious at being denied, enraged with his people, and perhaps most of all with himself, the Hun was about to pass on as Alaric had done in spite of the danger which was greater far now than in the time of the Goth, when one evening, so it is said, as he moodily rode within sight of the walls and towers of his inaccessible prey after the heat of the day he saw by chance a stork preparing to leave her nest on one of the towers of the great city, and to fly with her young into the country. In this he saw an assurance of victory. On the morrow once more he hounded his Huns to the assault: and no man since that day has found even the ruins of Aquileia.[14] It was not defeat, it was extermination, complete pillage, and fire. So horrible were the cruelties there committed that they can only be compared with what the Germans have done, and in our day, in Belgium. History records the fate of a young and beautiful woman, Dougna by name, who, pursued by a band of Huns, wrapped her head in her veil and flung herself from the walls into the Natiso.

The fall of Aquileia, the extermination of its inhabitants and the horrors that were committed terrorised all Venetia. It was the Prussian doctrine of “frightfulness” carried out with as little scruple as, though more excuse than, that we have seen at work with so great an amazement, and rage, and disgust here in the West upon the body of our Godchild Belgium. Attila marched on; Altinum and Concordia suffered the same fate; they too disappear from the pages of history; Padua and Modena were ravaged and burnt. Vicenza, Verona, Brescia, Bergamo, Milan and Pavia opened their gates, they were but spoiled, their inhabitants exchanged death for slavery. In that long night such as might flee fled away doubtless demanding of God whither they should go. God led them to the lagoons.

That Attila thought he was already victorious when he looked on his ruins as Kaiser Wilhelm did when his “heart bled for Louvain” (blood from a stone indeed!) an incident twice recorded by Suidas bears witness. It seems that in Milan, among the mural decorations of the palace, was one representing two Roman Emperors enthroned and clothed in the purple with certain Barbarians, Huns or Scythians, prostrate, demanding mercy at their feet. This work Attila ordered to be effaced and in its stead to be painted one in which he himself sat enthroned, while before him the two Roman Emperors poured gold from great sacks which they bore on their backs. A witty, if brutal jest; futile, too, since along the Po still flashed the eagles of Aetius and already over the Alps came the rumour of the armies of Byzantium.

And, indeed, in the heart of Attila there was more fear than hope, fear of the gods of this strange and lovely country he had ruined, of the gods of the marshes and the heats that were already devastating his armies with fever, of those gods Peter and Paul whom he had already learnt to dread in Gaul and whose City, the most ancient and the most holy in the world, it was in his heart next to ravage and to sack; fear of his own armies now heavy with loot and riches, anxious for home and already on the verge of starvation in a country they had made utterly barren; fear most of all, perhaps, of his own destiny. “What,” he asked himself, “if I conquer like Alaric only to die as he did?”

That the very name of Rome was still terrible to the Barbarians is certain. They feared her name. Nevertheless the pride of Attila and his ambition conquered his fear of his army, of his destiny, of the name of Rome. He was determined to go on, and with this intention he ordered his troops to concentrate from Padua, Vicenza, Verona, Brescia, Bergamo, Milan and Pavia upon Mantua, whence he proposed to cross the Po, probably at Hostilia, and so to descend upon the Via Emilia at Bologna.

This move seems to have disturbed Rome profoundly. The enemies of Aetius were there in the ascendant with the Emperor, and their influence with the government was enough to cause a deep disquietude with regard to the strategy of the great general. They remembered Alaric; they remembered Radagaisus; they recalled the fate of Orleans, and the escape after the battle of Châlons, above all they whispered of Aquileia, Altinum and Concordia which were no more. In this state of panic they left Aetius out of account, they forgot the army of Marcian already on the move, they repudiated the whole strategy of their general and with it their own traditions. They decided to send an especial and unprecedented embassy to Attila, to offer a price for the safety of Italy. The ambassador they chose was the Pope.

Perhaps this amazing act ought not to astonish us, for we have seen the like so often in Gaul. The acts of Anianus of Orleans, of Lupus of Troyes, should have prepared us for the supreme act of S. Leo the Great. That they have not done so is sufficient to prove to us that we have failed to understand the time. Moreover, this great embassy was not the first Leo had undertaken on behalf of the Imperial Court. During the pontificate of Sixtus III (432-40), when Leo was Roman Deacon, Valentinian III had sent him to Gaul to settle a dispute and bring about a reconciliation between Aetius their chief military commander in that province and Albinus the chief magistrate. Sixtus III died on August 19, 440, while Leo was in Gaul, and the ambassador was chosen as his successor.

The great Pope did not go alone upon this his last great mission, with him were two illustrious nobles, the Consul Gennadius Avienus, who after the Emperor was the greatest noble in the West, and the Prefect Trigetius. They set out from Rome by the Via Flaminia and met Attila as they had intended before he crossed the Po, on the Mincio near Mantua--in a place called the Campus Ambuleius. It was there one of the most grave and famous conferences that have ever been held in Europe met.

The ambassadors were all in official dress, Leo wore his pontifical vestments, the golden mitre, a chasuble of purple with the pallium. It was he who dealt with Attila, in what manner we know not, but with complete success. It was not the armies of Aetius after all that saved Italy, and with Italy all that was worth having in the world, but an old and unarmed man, Leo our Pope, for above him in the sky the Hun perceived, so he declared, the mighty figures of S. Peter and S. Paul; his eyes dazzled, he bowed his head. Yielding, he consented to retreat and evacuate Italy and the Empire. It is as though the new head and champion of civilisation, of Christendom, had declared himself. It was the Pope.

The terms of the treaty then made were doubtless shameful enough to old Roman ideas, for they certainly involved an annual tribute to the Hun, from whom, moreover, no indemnity was exacted for the ruin of the Transpadana. But the great fact of the situation created by Leo overshadowed all this; Italy, the soul of the West, was saved. If, as we have a right to suppose, Aetius had no direct part in this achievement, both he and Marcian were probably indirectly responsible for it and in fact had far more to do with it than Leo. Were the Roman armies nothing, then, or the Byzantine threat against Attila’s communications only a dream?

Not so. Attila retreated because like another Barbarian he “could do no other,” and even so he dared not retrace his way over the Julian Alps, for Marcian was already in Moesia, and ready and anxious to meet and to punish him. He retreated instead upon that Verona which he had ruined, crossed the Alps there, and after pillaging Augsburg, was lost, as it proved for ever, in the storm of the north and the darkness of his Barbary.

FOOTNOTES:

[13] See my “Ravenna; a Study” (Dent), 1912.

[14] So Jornandes who asserts that Aquileia was so utterly destroyed “ita ut vix ejus vestigia ut appareant reliquerint.”

IX

ATTILA’S HOME-COMING

Such was the return, such was the failure of Attila. He had looked to hold the world in fee; he returned for the last time across the Danube his desire unaccomplished, his hopes dead. He had struck first the East and perhaps ruined it, but he had failed to take Constantinople. He had struck Gaul and left its cities shambles, but he had not destroyed the armies of Aetius. He had desired Rome for his plunder and his pride, but Leo had turned him back before he crossed the Po. Every attack had ended in a long retreat; if he brought ruin to a hundred Imperial cities, at last he but achieved his own. He returned to his wooden stockade in the heart of Hungary with all his hopes unfulfilled, all his achievements undone, a ruined man.

That he did not realise his failure is but to emphasise the fact that he was a Barbarian. To him, doubtless, destruction and booty, ruin and loot seemed the end of war, he had not even in this his last hour begun to understand what the Empire was. And so if we ask ourselves what in reality the enormous energy of the Hunnish onslaught achieved in the first half of the fifth century, we are compelled to answer, nothing; nothing, that is, consciously and directly. Unconsciously and indirectly, however, the restless brutality of Roua and of Attila brought to pass these two great and even fundamental things; it was the cause of the passing of Britain into England, and it founded the republics of the lagoons which were to produce Venice the Queen of the Adriatic.

Of all this, of his failure as of those strange achievements, Attila was wholly unaware. He came home like a conqueror to his wooden palace in the midst of a great feast prepared for him, to be greeted as Priscus describes he had been greeted before, on his return from the ruin of the East and his failure to reach Constantinople. He had made the West his tributary; he was laden with the gold and the spoil of northern Italy. It was enough for him, and so he made ready with joy to marry yet another wife, to add yet one more to his concubines; not that Honoria who would have been the sign of his victory, but one rather a prey than a prize, pitiful in her youth and helpless beauty, Ildico, or as the German legends call her Hildegrude, perhaps a Frankish or a Burgundian princess.

It is said, we know not with how much truth, that upon that long and last retreat as he crossed the river Lech by Augsburg an old woman with streaming hair, a witch or a sorceress, cried out to him thrice as he passed, “Retro Attila!” It is part of the legend which makes so much of his history.

Upon the night of his last orgy or wedding he had feasted and drunk beyond his wont and he was full of wine and of sleep when he sought the bed of the beautiful and reluctant Ildico, the last of his sacrifices and his loot. What passed in that brutal nuptial chamber we shall never know. In the morning there was only silence, and when his attendants at last broke into the room they found Attila dead in a sea of blood, whether murdered by his victim or struck down by apoplexy cannot be known. It is said that Ildico had much to avenge--the murder of her parents and her brothers as well as her own honour.

From that dreadful, characteristic chamber the Huns bore the body of their King, singing their doleful uncouth songs, to bury him in a secret place prepared by slaves who were duly murdered when their work was accomplished. Jornandes has preserved or invented for us the great funeral dirge which accompanied the last Barbarian rite. It celebrated Attila’s triumphs over Scythia and Germany which bore his yoke so meekly, and over the two Emperors who paid him tribute.

He left no memorial but his terror written in the fire and smoke of burning cities, and that tradition of “frightfulness” to which Kaiser Wilhelm II first appealed to his troops on their departure for China, and which he is practising upon the body of Europe to-day. For upon his death Attila’s vast and barbaric hegemony fell to pieces. Enormous revolts broke it in sunder, and e’er many years had passed the very memory of it was forgotten.

“Kingless was the army left:
Of its head the race bereft.
Every fury of the pit
Tortured and dismembered it.
Lo, upon a silent hour,
When the pitch of frost subsides,
Danube with a shout of power
Loosens his imprisoned tides:
Wide around the frighted plains
Shake to hear his riven chains,
Dreadfuller than heaven in wrath,
As he makes himself a path:
High leap the ice-cracks, towering pile
Floes to bergs, and giant peers
Wrestle on a drifted isle;
Island on ice-island rears;
Dissolution battles fast:
Big the senseless Titans loom,
Through a mist of common doom
Striving which shall die the last:
Till a gentle-breathing morn
Fires the stream from bank to bank,
So the Empire built of scorn
Agonized, dissolved and sank.”

SOURCES

I

AMMIANI MARCELLINI RERUM GESTARUM LIBER XXXI

II. 1. Totius autem sementem exitii et cladum originem diversarum, quas Martius furor incendio solito miscendo cuncta concivit, hanc comperimus causam. Hunnorum gens, monumentis veteribus leviter nota, ultra paludes Maeoticas glacialem oceanum accolens, omnem modum feritatis excedit. 2. Ubi quoniam ab ipsis nascendi primitiis infantum ferro sulcantur altius genae, ut pilorum vigor tempestivus emergens corrugatis cicatricibus hebetetur senescunt imberbes absque ulla venustate, spadonibus similes: compactis omnes firmisque membris, et opimis cervicibus: prodigiosae formae et pandi, ut bipedes existimes bestias, vel quales in commarginandis pontibus effigiati stipites dolantur incompte. 3. In hominum autem figura licet insuavi ita visi sunt asperi, ut neque igni, neque saporatis indigeant cibis, sed radicibus herbarum agrestium et semicruda cuiusvis pecoris carne vescantur, quam inter femora sua et equorum terga subsertam, fotu calefaciunt brevi. 4. Aedificiis nullis umquam tecti: sed haec velut ab usu communi discreta sepulchra declinant. Nec enim apud eos vel arundine fastigatum reperiri tugurium potest. Sed vagi montes peragrantes et silvas, pruinas, famem, sitimque perferre ab incunabulis adsuescunt. Peregre tecta nisi adigente maxima necessitate non subeunt; nec enim apud eos securos existimant esse sub tectis. 5. Indumentis operiuntur linteis, vel ex pellibus silvestrium murium consarcinatis: nec alia illis domestica vestis est, alia forensis. Sed semel obsoleti coloris tunica collo inserta non ante deponitur aut mutatur, quam diuturna carie in pannulos defluxerit defrustata. 6. Galeris incurvis capita tegunt: hirsuta crura coriis munientes haedinis: eorumque calcei formulis nullis aptati, vetant incedere gressibus liberis. Qua causa ad pedestres parum accommodati sunt pugnas: verum equis prope adfixi, duris quidem, sed deformibus, et muliebriter iisdem nonnumquam insidentes, funguntur muneribus consuetis. Ex ipsis quivis in hac natione pernox et perdius emit et vendit, cibumque sumit et potum, et inclinatus cervici angustae iumenti, in altum soporem adusque varietatem effunditur somniorum. 7. Et deliberatione super rebus proposita seriis, hoc habitu omnes in commune consultant. Aguntur autem nulla severitate regali, sed tumultuario optimatum ductu contenti, perrumpunt, quidquid inciderit. 8. Et pugnant nonnumquam lacessiti, sed ineuntes proelia cuneatim variis vocibus sonantibus torvum. Utque ad pernicitatem sunt leves et repentini; ita subito de industria dispersi vigescunt, et incomposita acie cum caede vasta discurrunt: nec invadentes vallum, nec castra inimica pilantes prae nimia rapiditate cernuntur. 9. Eoque omnium acerrimos facile dixeris bellatores, quod procul missilibus telis, acutis ossibus pro spiculorum acumine arte mira coagmentatis, sed distinctis: cominus ferro sine sui respectu confligunt, hostesque, dum mucronum noxias observant, contortis laciniis illigant, ut laqueatis resistentium membris equitandi vel gradiendi adimant facultatem. 10. Nemo apud eos arat, nec stivam aliquando contingit. Omnes enim sine sedibus fixis, abseque lare vel lege, aut ritu stabili dispalantur, semper fugientium similes: cum carpentis, in quibus habitant: ubi coniuges taetra illis vestimenta contexunt, et coërunt cum maritis, et pariunt, eo adusque pubertatem nutriunt pueros. Nullusque apud eos interrogatus, respondere, unde oritur, potest, alibi conceptus, natusque procul, et longius educatus. 11. Per indutias infidi, inconstantes, ad omnem auram incidentis spei novae perquam mobiles, totum furori incitatissimo tribuentes. Inconsultorum animalium ritu, quid honestum inhonestumve sit, penitus ignorantes: flexiloqui et obscuri, nullus religionis vel superstitionis reverentia aliquando districti: auri cupidine immensa flagrantes: adeo permutabiles, et irasci faciles, ut eodem aliquoties die a sociis nullo irritante saepe desciscant, itidemque propitientur nemine leniente. 12. Hoc expeditum indomitumque hominum genus, externa praedandi aviditate flagrans immani, per rapinas finitimorum grassatum et caedes, adusque Alanos pervenit, veteres Massagetas: qui unde sint, vel quas incolant terras (quoniam huc res prolapsa est) consentaneum est demonstrare, geographica perplexitate monstrata, quae diu multa luda..., et varia, tandem reperit veritatis interna ...* ...* ad.... 13. Hister advenarum magnitudine fluenti Sauromatas praetermeat adusque amnem Tanaim pertinentes, qui Asiam terminat ab Europa. Hoc transito, in immensum extentas Scythiae solitudines Alani inhabitant, ex montium adpellatione cognominati, paullatimque nationes conterminas crebritate victoriarum attritas ad gentilitatem sui vocabuli traxerunt ut Persae. 14. Inter hos Neuri mediterranea incolunt loca, vicini verticibus celsis, quos praeruptos geluque torpentes aquilones adstringunt. Post quos Budini sunt, et Geloni perquam feri, qui detractis peremptorum hostium cutibus indumenta sibi, equisque termina conficiunt, bellatrix gens. Gelonis Agathyrsi collimitant, interstincti colore caeruleo corpora simul et crines: et humiles quidem minutis atque raris, nobiles vero latis, fucatis et densioribus notis. 15. Post hos Melanchlaenas et Anthropophagos palari accepimus per diversa, humanis corporibus victitantes: quibus ob haec alimenta nefanda desertis, finitimi omnes longa petiere terrarum. Ideoque plaga omnis Orienti aestivo obiecta, usque dum venitur ad Seras, inhabitabilis mansit. 16. Parte alia prope Amazonum sedes Alani sunt Orienti acclines, diffusi per populosas gentes et amplas, Asiaticos vergentes in tractus, quas dilatari adusque Gangen accepi fluvium, intersecantem terras Indorum, mareque inundantem australe.

17. Ibi partiti per utramque mundi plagam Alani (quorum gentes varias nunc recensere non refert) licet dirempti spatiis longis, per pagos, ut Nomades, vagantur immensos: aevi tamen progressu ad unum concessere vocabulum, et summatim omnes Alani cognominantur mores et media et efferatam vivendi, sed iam immaturam. 18. Nec enim ulla sunt illisce tuguria, aut versandi vomeris cura, sed carne et copia victitant lactis, plaustris supersidentes, quae operimentis curvatis corticum per solitudines conferunt sine fine distentas. Cumque ad graminea venerint, in orbiculatam figuram locatis sarracis ferino ritu vescuntur: absumptisque pabulis, velut carpentis civitates impositas vehunt, maresque supra cum feminis coëunt, et nascuntur in his et educantur infantes: et habitacula sunt haec illis perpetua; et quocumque ierint, illic genuinum existimant larem. 19. Armenta prae se agentes cum gregibus pascunt: maximeque equini pecoris est eis sollicitior cura. Ibi campi semper herbescunt, intersitis pomiferis locis: atque ideo transeuntes quolibet, nec alimentis nec pabulis indigent: quod efficit humectum solum et crebri fluminum praetermeantium cursus. 20. Omnis igitur aetas et sexus imbellis circa vehicula ipsa versatur, muniisque distringitur mollibus: iuventus vero equitandi usu a prima pueritia coalescens, incedere pedibus existimat vile: et omnes multiplici disciplina prudentes sunt bellatores. Unde etiam Persae, qui sunt originitus Scythae, pugnandi sunt peritissimi.

21. Proceri autem Alani paene sunt omnes et pulchri, crinibus mediocriter flavis, oculorum temperata torvitate terribiles, et armorum levitate veloces, Hunnisque per omnia suppares, verum victu mitiores et cultu: latrocinando et venando adusque Maeotica stagna et Cimmerium Bosporon, itidemque Armenios discurrentes et Mediam. 22. Utque hominibus quietis et placidis otium est voluptabile; ita illos pericula iuvant et bella. Iudicatur ibi beatus, qui in proelio profuderit animam: senescentes enim et fortuitis mortibus mundo digressos, ut degeneres et ignavos conviciis atrocibus insectantur: nec quidquam est, quod elatius iactent, quam homine quolibet occiso; proque exuviis gloriosis, interfectorum avulsis capitibus detractas pelles pro phaleris iumentis accommodant bellatoriis. 23. Nec templum apud eos visitur, aut delubrum, ne tugurium quidem culmo tectum cerni usquam potest: sed gladius barbarico ritu humi figitur nudus, eumque ut Martem, regionum, quas circumcircant, praesulem verecundius colunt. 24. Futura miro praesagiunt modo: nam rectiores virgas vimineas colligentes, easque cum incantamentis quibusdam secretis praestituto tempore discernentes, aperte, quid protendatur, norunt. 25. Servitus quid sic ignorabant, omnes generoso semine procreati: iudicesque etiam nunc eligunt, diuturno bellandi usu spectatos. Sed ad reliqua textus propositi revertamur.

II

EX HISTORIA BYZANTINA PRISCI RHETORIS ET SOPHISTAE

_Excerpta de Legationibus Gentium ad Romanos._

(Niebuhr. Bonn. 1829.)

1. Scythae, quo tempore mercatus Scytharum et Romanorum frequenti multitudine celebrabatur, Romanos cum exercitu sunt adorti, et multos occiderunt. Romani ad Scythas miserunt, qui de praesidii expugnatione et foederum contemptu cum eis expostularent. Hi vero se non ultro bellum inferentes, sed factas iniurias ulciscentes, haec fecisse responderunt. Margi enim episcopum in suos fines transgressum, fiscum regium et reconditos thesauros indagatum expilasse. Hunc nisi dederent una cum transfugis, ut foederibus convenerit, (esse enim apud eos plures,) bellum illaturos. Quae cum Romani vera esse negarent, barbari vero in eorum, quae dicebant, fide perstarent, iudicium quidem de his, quae in contentione posita erant, subire minime voluerunt, sed ad bellum conversi sunt. Itaque transmisso Istro, oppidis et castellis ad ripam sitis plurima damna intulerunt, et inter cetera Viminacium, quae Moesorum urbs est in Illyrico, ceperunt. His gestis, cum multi in sermonibus dictitarent, episcopum dedi oportere, ne unius hominis causa universa Romanorum respublica belli periculum sustineret: ille se deditum iri suspicatus, clam omnibus civitatem incolentibus ad hostes effugit, et urbem traditurum, si sibi Scytharum reges liberalitate sua consulerent, pollicitus est. Ad ea cum beneficium omni ratione se repensuros promitterent, si rem ad exitum perduceret, datis dextris et dictis iureiurando utrinque praestito firmatis, ille cum magna barbarorum multitudine in fines Romanorum est reversus. Eam multitudinem cum ex adverso ripae in insidiis collocasset, nocte dato signo exsiliit, et urbem in manus hostium traduxit. Et ab eo tempore barbarorum res in diem auctiores melioresque fuerunt.

2. Sub Theodosio Iuniore Imperatore Attilas Hunnorum rex delectum ex suis habuit, et litteras ad Imperatorem scripsit de transfugis et de tributis, ut, quaecumque occasione huius belli reddita non essent, quam citissime ad se mitterentur, de tributis autem in posterum pendendis legati secum acturi ad se venirent: nam si cunctarentur aut bellum pararent, ne se ipsum quidem Scytharum multitudinem diutius contenturum. His litteris lectis, Imperator nequaquam Scythas, qui ad se confugissent, traditurum dixit, sed una cum illis in animo sibi esse, belli eventum exspectare. Ceterum se legatos missurum qui controversias dirimerent. Ea sicuti Romani decreverant, ubi Attilas rescivit, ira commotus Romanorum fines vastavit, et castellis quibusdam dirutis, in Ratiariam urbem magnam et populi multitudine abundantem irruptionem fecit.