Attila and the Huns

by Edward Hutton

FOOTNOTES:

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

[4] The Prussian student is even to-day famous for the scars on his face inflicted in the duels at the Universities.

[5] Cf. the physique of the ordinary Prussian at its most characteristic in Von Hindenberg, who really seems to have been hewn out of wood.

[6] It was a modern and famous German who not long since declared that the Prussians were such quarrelsome and disagreeable brutes that it was only their propensity to drink beer and that continually that mollified them sufficiently to be regarded as human beings.

[7] It is curious to remember that this first encounter of Attila with the Imperial power took place in what is now Servia only fifty miles further down the Danube than Belgrade.

[8] It has been suggested that his name Attila is that of the Volga in the fifth century and that therefore he was born upon its banks; but as well might one say that Roua was born there because one of the ancient names of that river was Rha.

[9] For all this see Appendix: Jornandes, R. Get., 35 and especially for his dress and food, Priscus, infra.

[10] Cf. Jorn., R. Get., 36: “Homo subtilis antequam arma gereret , arte pugnabat....”

[11] See Appendix, Jornandes, R. Get., 35.

III
ATTILA AND THE EASTERN EMPIRE

When Attila had achieved the hegemony of the North he turned his attention upon the Empire; and it is curious for us at this moment to note the coincidence that this first attack upon civilisation was delivered at the very spot upon the Danube where the Germanic powers in August, 1914, began their offensive. Attila directed his armies upon the frontiers of modern Servia at the point where the Save joins the Danube, where the city of Singidunum rose then and where to-day Belgrade stands.

The pretext for this assault was almost as artificial and manufactured as that which Austria put forward for her attack upon Servia. Attila asserted that the Bishop of that same frontier town of Margus, on the Morava, where he had made treaty with the Empire, had crossed the Danube, and having secretly obtained access to the sepulchre of the Hunnish kings had stolen away its treasures. The Bishop, of course, eagerly denied this strange accusation, and it seemed indeed so unlikely that he was guilty that Theodosius was exceedingly reluctant to sacrifice him. The people of Moesia clamoured for a decision; if the Bishop were guilty then he must be delivered to Attila, but if not Theodosius must protect both him and them. For Attila had waited for nothing; he had crossed the Danube before making his accusation and had occupied Viminacium, one of the greater towns upon the frontier.

Meanwhile the Bishop, seeing the hesitation of Theodosius and expecting to be sacrificed, made his way to the camp of the Huns and promised in return for his life to deliver Margus to them, and this he did upon the following night. Then, dividing his forces into two armies, Attila began his real attack upon the Empire.

The first of these armies was directed upon Singidunum, the modern Belgrade, which was taken and ruined, and when that was achieved it proceeded up the Save to Sirmium, the ancient capital of Pannonia, which soon fell into its hands. The second crossed the Danube further eastward and besieged Ratiaria, a considerable town, the head-quarters of a Roman Legion and the station of the fleet of the Danube.

THE ATTACK OF ATTILA UPON THE EAST.

Having thus, with this second army, secured the flank, Attila marched his first army from Singidunum up the Morava to Naissus (Nisch), precisely as the Austrians tried to do but yesterday. They failed, but he succeeded and Naissus fell. Thence he passed on to Sardica where he was met by his second army which had taken Ratiaria. Sardica was pillaged and burnt.

Attila thus possessed himself in the year 441 of the gateways of the Balkans, almost without a protest from Theodosius. Five years later, in 446, he was ready to advance again. In that year and the next he destroyed two Roman armies, took and pillaged some seventy towns, and pushed south as far as Thermopylae, and eastward even to Gallipoli; only the walls of Constantinople saved the capital. Theodosius was forced to buy a disgraceful peace at the price of an immediate payment of 6000 pounds’ weight of gold, an annual tribute, no longer even disguised, of 2000 pounds, and an undertaking that the Empire would never employ or give refuge to any of those whom Attila claimed as his subjects.

It was easier to agree to such terms than to fulfil them. The provinces were ruined, the whole fiscal system of the East in confusion, and even what wealth remained was, as Priscus tells us, “spent not in national purposes, but on absurd shows and gaudy pageants, and all the pleasures and excesses of a licentious society such as would not have been permitted in any properly governed State, even in the midst of the greatest prosperity.” Attila, who marked the decay and the embarrassment of the Imperial Government, forewent nothing of his advantage. He became more and more rapacious. When he did not obtain all he desired he sent an embassy to Constantinople to intimidate the government, and this became a regular means of blackmail with him, a means more humiliating than war and not less successful.

The first of these embassies arrived in Constantinople immediately after the terms of peace had been agreed upon. It made further demands, and was treated with the most extravagant hospitality. Three times within a single year other embassies arrived; they were a means of blackmail and were assured of an ever-increasing success.

The most famous and the most important of these embassies was that which arrived in Constantinople in 449. The ambassadors then employed by Attila are worthy of notice, for in them we see not only the condition of things at that time, but also the naive cunning of the Hun. The two chief legates whom Attila dispatched to Constantinople upon this occasion were Edecon and Orestes. Edecon was a Scythian or Hun by birth, a heathen of course, and a Barbarian, the commander of the guard of Attila, and the father of Odoacer, later to be so famous. Orestes, on the other hand, who was one of Attila’s chief ministers, was a Roman provincial of Pannonia, born at Petavium (probably Pettau on the Drave), who had made a fortunate marriage as a young man when he allied himself with Romulus, a considerable Roman personage of that province. He had, however, deserted the Imperial service, certainly open to him, for that of the Barbarians, and had made his fortune. Nor was his part in history to be played out in the service of Attila, for his son Romulus was to be the last of the Western Emperors, contemptuously known to history as Romulus Augustulus.

Orestes was then an adventurer pure and simple, but in sending him with the Barbarian Edecon, we see the system of Attila in his blackmail of the Empire. The employment of a Roman provincial was a check upon the Barbarian envoy. A bitter jealousy subsisted between them, each spied on the other, and thus Attila was well served. The fact that the Hun was able to command the services of such as Orestes is a sufficient comment upon the condition of the frontier provinces.

It was these two jealous envoys that, in the early months of 449, appeared in Constantinople bringing, of course, new demands. Their mission, indeed, was the most insolent that Attila had so far dared to send. It demanded three main things; first, that all the country to the south of the Danube as far as Naissus should be regarded as a part of the Hunnish Empire; second, that in future Theodosius should send to the Hunnish court only the most illustrious ambassadors, but if this were done Attila for his part would consent to meet them on the frontier at Sardica; third, that the refugees should be delivered up. This last demand was a repetition of many that had gone before it. As before Attila threatened if his requests were not granted he would make war.

The ambassadors Edecon and Orestes came to Constantinople where a “Roman” named Vigilas acted as their guide and interpreter, an indiscreet and vulgar fellow of whom we shall hear more presently. Received in audience by Theodosius in the famous palace on the Bosphorus, the ambassadors with the interpreter later visited the chief minister, the eunuch Chrysaphius. On their way they passed through the noble halls of Constantine decorated with gold and built of marble, the whole a vast palace, perhaps as great as the Vatican. Edecon, the Hun, was stupefied by so much splendour, he could not forbear to express his amazement; Vigilas was not slow to mark this naive astonishment nor to describe it to Chrysaphius, who presently proposed to put it to good use. Taking Edecon apart from Orestes as he talked he suggested to him that he also might enjoy such splendour if he would leave the Huns and enter the service of the Emperor. After all it was not more than Orestes had done. But Edecon answered that it would be despicable to leave one’s master without his consent. Chrysaphius then asked what position he held at the court of Attila, and if he was so much in the confidence of his master as to have access freely to him. To which Edecon answered that he approached him when he would, that he was indeed the chief of his captains and kept watch over his person by night. And when Chrysaphius heard this he was content and told Edecon that if he were capable of discretion he would show him a way to grow rich without trouble, but that he must speak with him more at leisure, which he would do presently if he would come and sup with him that evening alone without Orestes or any following. Already in the mind of the eunuch a plan was forming by which he hoped to rid the Empire once for all of the formidable Hun.

Edecon accepted the invitation. Awaiting him he found Vigilas with Chrysaphius, and after supper heard apparently without astonishment the following amazing proposal. After swearing him to secrecy, Chrysaphius explained that he proposed to him the assassination of Attila. “If you but succeed in this and gain our frontiers,” said he, “there will be no limit to our gratitude, you shall be loaded with honours and riches.”

The Hun was ready in appearance at least to agree, but he insisted that he would need money for bribery, not much, but at least fifty pounds’ weight of gold. This he explained he could not carry back with him as Attila was wont upon the return of his ambassadors to exact a most strict account of the presents they had received, and so great a weight of gold could not escape the notice of his own companion and servants. He suggested then that Vigilas should accompany him home under the pretext of returning the fugitives and that at the right moment he should find the money necessary for the project. Needless to say, Chrysaphius readily agreed to all that Edecon proposed. He does not seem either to have been ashamed to make so Hunnish a proposal or to have suspected for a moment that Edecon was deceiving him. He laid all before Theodosius, won his consent and the approval of Martial his minister.

Together they decided to send an embassy to Attila, to which the better to mask their intentions Vigilas should be attached as interpreter. This embassy they proposed to make as imposing as possible, and to this end they appointed as its chief a man of a high, but not of consular rank, and of the best reputation. In this they showed a certain ability, for as it seemed to them if their plot failed they could escape suspicion by means of the reputation of their ambassador. The man they chose was called Maximin, and he fortunately chose as his secretary Priscus, the Sophist, to whose pen we are indebted for an account of all these things. He asserts, and probably with truth, that neither Maximin nor he himself was aware of the plot of assassination. They conceived themselves to be engaged in a serious mission and were the more impressed by its importance in that its terms were far less subservient to the Hun than had been the custom in recent times. Attila was told that henceforth he must not evade the obligations of his treaties nor invade at all the Imperial territories. And with regard to the fugitives he was informed that beside those already surrendered seventeen were now sent but that there were no more. So ran the letter. But Maximin was also to say that the Hun must look for no ambassador of higher rank than himself since it was not the Imperial custom towards the Barbarians; on the contrary, Rome was used to send to the North any soldier or messenger who happened to be available. And since he had now destroyed Sardica his proposal to meet there any ambassador of consular rank was merely insolent. If indeed the Hun wished to remove the differences between Theodosius and himself he should send Onegesius as ambassador. Onegesius was the chief minister of Attila.

Such were the two missions, the one official, the other secret, which set out together from Constantinople.

The great journey seems to have been almost wholly uneventful as far as Sardica, 350 miles from Constantinople, which was reached after a fortnight of travel. They found that town terribly pillaged but not destroyed, and the Imperial embassy bought sheep and oxen, and having prepared dinner invited Edecon and his colleagues to share it with them, for they were still officially within the Empire. But within those ruins, even among the ambassadors, peace was impossible. Priscus records the ridiculous quarrel which followed. The Huns began to magnify the power of Attila,—was not his work around them? The Romans knowing the contents of the letter they bore sang the praises of the Emperor. Suddenly Vigilas, perhaps already drunk, asserted that it was not right to compare men with the gods, nor Attila with Theodosius, since Attila was but a man. Only the intervention of Maximin and Priscus prevented bloodshed, nor was harmony restored till Orestes and Edecon had received presents of silk and jewels. Even these gifts were not made altogether without an untoward incident. For Orestes in thanking Maximin exclaimed that he, Maximin, was not like those insolent courtiers of Constantinople “who gave presents and invitations to Edecon, but none to me.” And when Maximin, ignorant of the Chrysaphian plot, demanded explanations, Orestes angrily left him. Already the plan of assassination was beginning to fester.

The ambassadors went on from ruined Sardica to desolate Naissus (Nisch) utterly devoid of inhabitants, full only of horror and ruins. They crossed a plain sown with human bones whitening in the sun, and saw the only witness to the Hunnish massacre of the inhabitants—a vast cemetery. “We found,” Priscus tells us, “a clean place above the river where we camped and slept.”

Close to this ruined town was the Imperial army, commanded by Agintheus, under whose eagles five of the seventeen refugees to be surrendered had taken refuge. The Roman general, however, was obliged to give them up. Their terror as they went on in the ambassadorial train towards the Danube may well be imagined.

The great river at length came in sight; its approaches lined and crowded with Huns, the passages served by the Barbarians in dug-outs, boats formed out of the hollowed trunks of trees. With these boats the whole Barbarian shore was littered as though in readiness for the advance of an army. Indeed, as it appeared Attila was in camp close by, and intent on hunting within the Roman confines to the south of the river, a means certainly of reconnaissance as habitually used by the Huns as commerce has been for the same end by the Germans.

We do not know with what feelings Maximin and Priscus saw all this and crossed the great river frontier at last and passed into Barbary. To their great chagrin, for they had made the way easy for the Hunnish ambassadors on the road through the Imperial provinces, Edecon and Orestes now left them brusquely enough. For several days they went on alone but for the guides Edecon had left them, till one afternoon they were met by two horsemen who informed them that they were close to the camp of Attila who awaited them. And indeed upon the morrow they beheld from a hill-top the Barbarian tents spread out innumerable at their feet, and among them that of the King. They decided to camp there on the hill; but a troop of Huns at once rode up and ordered them to establish themselves in the plain. “What,” cried they, “will you dare to pitch your tents on the heights when that of Attila is below?”

They were scarce established in their appointed place when to their amazement Edecon and Orestes and others appeared and asked their business, the object of their embassy. The astonished ambassadors looked at one another in amaze. When the question was repeated Maximin announced that he could not disclose his mission to any other than Attila to whom he was accredited. Scotta, the brother of Onegesius, then announced angrily that Attila had sent them and they must have an answer. When Maximin again refused the Huns galloped away.

The Romans, however, were not left long in doubt of the reception they were to get. Scotta and his friends soon returned without Edecon, and to the further amazement of Maximin repeated word for word the contents of the Imperial letter to Attila. “Such,” said they, “is your commission. If this be all depart at once.” Maximin protested in vain. Nothing remained but to prepare for departure. Vigilas who knew what Chrysaphius expected was particularly furious; better have lied than to return without achieving anything, said he. What to do? It was already night. They were in the midst of Barbary, between them and the Danube lay leagues of wild unfriendly country. Suddenly as their servants loaded the beasts for their miserable journey other messengers arrived from the Hun. They might remain in their camp till dawn. In that uneasy night, had Vigilas been less of a fool, he must have guessed that Edecon had betrayed him.

It was not the barbarous Vigilas, however, who found a way out of the difficulty, for at dawn the command to depart was repeated, but that Priscus who has left us so vivid an account of this miserable affair. He it was who, seeing the disgrace of his patron, sought out Scotta, the brother of Onegesius, the chief minister of Attila, in the Hunnish camp. With him went Vigilas as interpreter, and so cleverly did the Sophist work upon the ambition of Scotta, pointing out to him not only the advantages of peace between the Huns and the Romans, but also the personal advantage Scotta would gain thereby in honour and presents, and at last feigning to doubt Scotta’s ability to achieve even so small a matter as the reception of the embassy that he had his way. Scotta rode off to see Attila, Priscus returned to his patron, and soon after Scotta returned to escort them to the royal tent.

The reception must have been a strange spectacle. The tent of Attila was quite surrounded by a multitude of guards; within, upon a stool of wood, was seated the great Hun. Priscus, Vigilas and the servants who attended them bearing the presents remained upon the threshold. Maximin alone went forward and gave into Attila’s hands the letter of Theodosius saying: “The Emperor wishes Attila and all that are his health and length of days.” “May the Romans receive all they desire for me,” replied the instructed Barbarian. And turning angrily to Vigilas he said: “Shameless beast, why hast thou dared to come hither knowing as thou dost the terms of peace I made with thee and Anatolius. Did I not then tell thee that I would receive no more ambassadors till all the refugees had been surrendered!” Vigilas replied that they brought seventeen fugitives with them and that now there remained no more within the Empire. This only made Attila more furious: “I would crucify thee and give thee as food for the vultures but for the laws regarding envoys,” cried he. As for the refugees, he declared there were many still within the Empire, and bade his people read out their names, and this done he told Vigilas to depart with Eslas, one of his officers, to inform Theodosius that he must forthwith return all the fugitives who had entered the Empire from the time of Carpilio, son of Aetius, who had been his hostage. “I will never suffer,” said he, “that my slaves shall bear arms against me, useless though they be to aid those with whom they have found refuge.... What city or what fortress have they been able to defend when I have determined to take it?” When he had said these words he grew calmer; informed Maximin that the order of departure only concerned Vigilas, and prayed the ambassador to remain and await the reply to the letter of the Emperor. The audience closed with the presentation and acceptance of the Roman presents.

Vigilas must surely have guessed now what his dismissal meant. Perhaps, however, he was too conceited and too stupid to notice it. At any rate he did not enlighten his companions but professed himself stupefied by the change of Attila’s demeanour towards him. The whole affair was eagerly discussed in the Roman camp. Priscus suggested that Vigilas’ unfortunate indiscretion at Sardica had been reported to Attila and had enraged him. Maximin did not know what to think. While they were still debating Edecon appeared and took Vigilas apart. The Hun may well have thought he needed reassurance. He declared that he was still true to the plan of Chrysaphius. Moreover, seeing what a fool Vigilas was, he told him that his dismissal was a contrivance of his own to enable the interpreter to return to Constantinople and fetch the money promised, which could be introduced as necessary to the embassy for the purchase of goods. Vigilas, however, can scarcely have believed him, at any rate for long; a few hours later Attila sent word that none of the Romans were to be allowed to buy anything but the bare necessities of life from the Huns, neither horses, nor other beasts, nor slaves, nor to redeem captives. Vigilas departed with the order ringing in his ears, upon a mission he must have known to be hopeless.

Two days later Attila broke camp and set out for his capital, the Roman ambassadors following in his train under the direction of guides appointed by the Hun. They had not gone far on their way northward when they were directed to leave the train of Attila and to follow another route, because, they were told, the King was about to add one more to his innumerable wives, Escam, the daughter of a chief in a neighbouring village.

Very curious is Priscus’ description of the way followed by the patron and his embassy. They journeyed across the Hungarian plain, across horrible marshes and lakes which had to be traversed sometimes on rafts; they crossed three great rivers, the Drave, the Temes, and the Theiss in dug-outs, boats such as they had seen on the Danube hollowed out of the trunks of trees. They lived for the most part on millet which their guides brought or took from the wretched inhabitants, they drank mead and beer, and were utterly at the mercy of the weather, which was extremely bad. On one occasion, indeed, their camp was entirely destroyed by tempest, and had it not been for the hospitality of the widow of Bleda they would perhaps have perished.

For seven days they made their way into the heart of Hungary till they came to a village where their way joined the greater route by which Attila was coming. There they were forced to await the King, since they must follow and not precede him. It was in this place that they met another Roman embassy, that of the Emperor in the West, Valentinian III, who was quarrelling with Attila about the holy vessels of Sirmium. It seems that the Bishop of Sirmium in 441, seeing his city invested, had gathered his chalices and patens and plate, sacred vessels of his church, and had sent them secretly to a certain Constantius, a Gaul, at that time Attila’s minister. In case the city fell they were to be used as ransom, first of the Bishop, and in case of his death of any other captives. Constantius was, however, untrue to the trust placed in him by the Bishop, and sold or pawned the plate to a silversmith in Rome. Attila hearing of it when Constantius was beyond his reach claimed the booty as his own. It was upon this miserable business that Valentinian had sent an embassy to Attila from Ravenna.

It is certainly a shameful and an amazing spectacle we have here. In that little village of Barbary the ambassadors of the Emperors, East and West, of the Courts of Constantinople and Ravenna, of New Rome and of Old, wait in a marsh the passage of a savage that they may be allowed to follow in his train and humbly seek an audience. Surely Attila himself had arranged that meeting, and as he rode on to his capital, the two embassies following in his dust, he must have enjoyed the outrageous insult to civilisation, the triumph of brute force over law.

IV
THE IMPERIAL EMBASSY AT THE COURT OF ATTILA

The entry of Attila into his capital was witnessed by Priscus and has been recorded by him with much naive care, for it evidently excited his curiosity and interest. The Hun was met by a procession of maidens who passed in groups of seven under long veils of white linen, upheld by the matrons on either side of the way, singing as they passed Scythian songs. So they went on towards the palace past the house of the chief minister Onegesius, where the wife of the favourite, surrounded by her servants and slaves, awaited the King to present him with a cup filled with wine, which he graciously consented to receive at her hands. Four huge Huns lifted up a tray of silver loaded with viands that the King might eat also, which he did without alighting from his horse. Then he passed on to his own house. Maximin pitched his camp, it seems, between the house of Onegesius and the palace of the King.

This palace, built on an eminence, commanded the whole town or village, and was remarkable on account of its high towers. It seems to have consisted of a vast circular enclosure within which were many houses, that of the King and those of his wives and children. All was of wood, both enclosures and houses, but admirably built and polished and ornamented with carving. The harem was of a lighter construction from the palace and had no towers, but was on all sides ornamented with carvings. Not far away from the royal enclosure stood the house of Onegesius, similarly constructed but not so large and fine. But here the minister, a remarkable personage, had constructed, and that in stone, a bath on the Roman model. It seems that in the sack of Sirmium an architect had been taken captive. Now Onegesius forced him to build in the manner of the Romans a complete balnea, and this the captive did as speedily as possible hoping for his freedom. Stone was brought from Pannonia and all was contrived and finished; but when the builder claimed his liberty, Onegesius, seeing that no one among the Huns understood the use of this thing, appointed him balneator, so that the wretched architect was forced to remain to serve the bath he had built.

Onegesius had only just returned from an important expedition when Attila arrived in his capital with the Imperial envoys. He had been engaged in finishing the conquest of Acatziri and was immediately closeted with the King on his return, so that Maximin was not received by him on that first day. In his anxiety the ambassador grew impatient, and very early upon the following morning he dispatched Priscus with presents to wait upon the minister. Priscus found the enclosure shut and no one stirring and while he waited for the house to awake he walked up and down in the dawn to keep himself warm. Suddenly he was greeted with the Greek salutation Χαῖρε, “Hail,” or, as we should say, “Good morning.” Startled to hear a civilised tongue in the midst of Barbary he returned the greeting. And there followed one of the most interesting discussions of which we have any record, of the respective merits of civilisation and barbarism, a debate that must have filled in the minds of many at that time. Priscus at last asked the stranger how he was come to be amongst the Barbarians. “Why do you ask me?” answered the unknown. “Because you speak Greek like a native,” answered Priscus. But the stranger only laughed. “Indeed,” said he, “I am Greek. I came for the sake of business to Viminacium on the Danube in Moesia, and there I lived many years and married a rich wife. But when the Huns stormed the city I lost all my fortune and became the slave of this Onegesius whom you are waiting to see. For it is the custom of the Huns to give the richest to their princes. My new master took me to the wars where I did well not without profit. I have fought with the Romans and the Acatziri and have bought my liberty. I am now become a Hun, I have married a Barbarian wife and have children by her; I am often the guest of Onegesius, and to tell you the truth I consider my present station preferable to my past. For when war is over one lives here decently without worries, one enjoys one’s own. War nourishes us; but destroys those who live under the Roman Government. Under Rome one has to trust to others for one’s safety, since the law forbids one to bear arms even in self-defence, and those who are allowed to fight are betrayed by the ignorance and corruption of their leaders. And even so the evils of war under the Romans are as nothing to the evils of peace, the insupportable taxations, the robbery of the tax-gatherers, and the oppression of the powerful. How can it be otherwise since there is there one law for the rich and another for the poor? If a rich man commits a crime he knows how to profit by it; but if a poor man transgresses the law, perhaps in ignorance, he knows not the formalities and is ruined. Justice can only be obtained at a great price, and this in my opinion is the worst of evils. You must buy an advocate to plead for you, and only after depositing a sum of money as security can you plead at all or obtain sentence.”

Thus for a long time the renegade from civilisation defended himself and the Barbarians, and when at length he was silent Priscus begged him to listen patiently while he defended what, after all, was the future of the world. What appears most to have excited the animosity of the apostate was, as we might expect, the Roman law and its processes, and it is these that Priscus first defends. He explains the division of labour and responsibility peculiar to civilisation, the structure of the Roman State and society, divided, according to him, into three classes; those concerned with the making and administration of the law; those concerned with national and public safety; and those who till the soil. He defends all this nobly and eloquently, the logic and clarity of its complexity against the appalling promiscuity and confusion of Barbarian anarchy. He shows the individual as a part of society, and in the main his view of civilisation is ours, we can applaud and understand it. Even the apostate stranger is moved at last. There in the Hunnish land at dawn one morning, carried back by the eloquence of Priscus to all he had lost, he weeps and exclaims: “The law of the Romans is good; their Republic nobly ordered, but evil magistrates have corrupted it.” He might have said more but that just then a servant of Onegesius appeared and Priscus left him never to see him again.

In instructing Maximin especially to negotiate with Onegesius, Theodosius and Chrysaphius doubtless hoped to win this man by diplomacy as they thought they had won Edecon, by corruption. Their calculations were doomed to disappointment; for both Onegesius and Edecon seem to have been loyal to their master, and Edecon had already acquainted him with the plot against his life. It might seem certain that Onegesius also was now aware of this. Having accepted the presents sent him, and learnt that Maximin desired to see him, he decided to visit him at once, and without delay repaired to the Roman encampment. There Maximin opened his business. He explained the necessity for peace between the Huns and the Empire, the honour of establishing which he hoped to share with Attila’s minister, to whom he prophesied every sort of honour and benefit if he should succeed. But the Hun was not convinced. “How can I arrange such a peace?” he asked. “In short, by deciding the points in dispute between us with justice,” as naively replied Maximin. “The Emperor will accept your decision.” “But,” answered Onegesius, “I have no will but that of my master.” He did not understand the difference between civilisation and barbarism any more than the modern German sees the gulf fixed between Civilisation and “Kultur.” “Slavery,” said he, “would be sweeter to me in the kingdom of Attila than all the honours and all the wealth of the Roman Empire.” Then as though to soften what he had said, he added that he could serve the cause of peace which Maximin had at heart better at the Court of Attila than at Constantinople.

But it was now time to present the Queen—a favourite wife of Attila—with her gifts. This embassy was again entrusted to Priscus. He found her in her apartments seated on cushions surrounded by her women and slaves on either side, the women at work embroidering clothes for the men. It was on coming out from these apartments that Priscus saw Attila for the first time since his arrival. Hearing a great noise he went to see what was the cause and soon perceived the Hun with Onegesius on the way to administer justice before the gate of his palace. There too within the enclosure he found the Roman ambassadors from Ravenna. With them he compared notes, and soon learned that they had been no more successful than Maximin. But presently Onegesius sent for him and informed him that Attila was determined to receive no more ambassadors from Theodosius unless they were of consular rank, and he named three persons who would be acceptable. Priscus naively answered that thus to designate ambassadors must necessarily render them suspect to their own Government, forgetting that Maximin had done the same but a few hours before. But Onegesius answered roughly: “It must be so or there will be war.” Much disheartened Priscus made his way back to the Roman camp and there found Tatallus, the father of Orestes, who had come to inform Maximin that Attila expected him to dine with him.

This dinner to which the ambassadors of Valentinian were also invited took place in a large salone furnished with little tables for four or five persons each, at three o’clock in the afternoon. Upon the threshold the ambassadors were offered cups of wine in which to drink the health of the King, who reclined in the midst before a table, on a couch set upon a platform or dais, so that he was set up above his guests; beside him but lower sat Ellak his heir, who dared not lift his eyes from the ground. Upon his right were Onegesius and two other sons of the King, upon his left were placed the ambassadors. When all were assembled Attila drank to Maximin who stood up to acknowledge his condescension and drank in return. A like ceremony was performed by all the ambassadors in turn. Then the feast was served upon plates and dishes of silver and the wine in cups of gold; only Attila ate and drank from wooden dishes and a wooden cup. Before each course the drinking ceremony of salutation was performed again, and as the banquet lasted well on into the darkness, when torches were lighted and Hunnish poets sang or chanted their verses in the Barbarian tongue celebrating the glories of war and victory to the delight of the assembly whose eyes shone with emotion, the young with tears of desire and the old with fright, few can have been sober when a buffoon and then the famous dwarf Zercan began to set the tables in a roar; though Attila remained grave and unmoved.

So the days passed without anything being accomplished. The impatient ambassadors were compelled to attend a similar dinner given in their honour by the Queen Kerka, and again they dined with Attila; but nothing was discussed or decided. Several times, indeed, Attila spoke to Maximin of a matter he apparently had at heart, namely, the marriage of his secretary Constantius, who some years earlier had been sent to Constantinople, and whom Theodosius had promised a rich wife on condition that peace was not broken. The wife chosen, however, was spirited away and this had become a grievance, Attila being so enraged that he sent word to Theodosius that if he could not keep order in his own house, he, Attila, would come and help him. Of course Constantius was promised another and a richer heiress, and it was this matter that Attila preferred to discuss with Maximin rather than the letter he had brought from the Emperor.

At last, in despair, Maximin demanded leave to depart, and this appears to have been granted as soon as Attila knew that Vigilas was on his way back from Constantinople. It is possible that the Hun had only detained the ambassadors as hostages, or to satisfy himself that they were ignorant of the plot against his life. They went at last without satisfaction, but not empty-handed. Attila had them loaded with presents, skins, horses, embroideries, nor was their journey back without incident. A few days’ march on their way, near the frontier, Priscus tells us they saw the horrid and ill-omened spectacle of a refugee crucified beside the road. A little further on they saw two Romans put to death with every sort of barbarous cruelty before their eyes. These were the reminders of Attila. Not far from the Danube they met Vigilas and his Hunnish companion, in reality his guard, Esla.

This conceited fool, for indeed he was as much a fool as a villain, had with him twice the weight of gold promised to Edecon, and, moreover, he brought also his only son, a youth of six-and-twenty years. He had altogether delivered himself into Attila’s hands. Leaving Maximin and his embassy to make their way back to Constantinople Vigilas went on into Barbary, intent on the assassination of Attila, and had no sooner set foot in the Hunnish capital than he was seized, his baggage opened and the gold discovered. When asked to explain these riches, he answered that they were for his own use and that of his entourage, and that he proposed to ransom the Roman captives and to purchase horses, skins and embroideries. “Evil beast,” shouted Attila, “thou liest, but thy lies deceive none.” Then he bade seize the youth Vigilas’ son, and swore to have him killed there and then if the father did not confess. Then Vigilas, seeing his child in so great a peril, became demented and cried out: “Do not kill my son, for he is ignorant and innocent of all; I alone am guilty.” And he confessed all the plot to kill Attila that Chrysaphius had devised with him. And Attila heard him out, and seeing what he said agreed with the report of Edecon he knew he heard the truth. After a little he bade loose the youth and sent him back to Constantinople to bring him another hundred pounds’ weight of gold for the ransom of Vigilas his father, whom he loaded with chains, and flung into prison. And with the young man he sent two ambassadors, Orestes and Esla, with his demands to the Emperor.

They came to Constantinople; they had audience of Theodosius. Round the neck of Orestes hung the sack in which Vigilas had brought the price of assassination to Barbary. Esla, as he stood there, demanded of Chrysaphius if he recognised it, and when he answered not, turned to the Emperor and said, “Attila, son of Moundzoukh, and Theodosius are two sons of noble fathers; Attila has remained worthy of his parent, but Theodosius has betrayed his because in paying tribute to Attila he has owned himself his slave. Nor as a slave has he been faithful to his master, nor will Attila cease to proclaim his iniquity, for he has become the accomplice of Chrysaphius the eunuch since he does not deliver him to punishment as he deserves.”

There was no answer. Humiliated and afraid the Emperor did everything according to the bidding of Attila, save only he refused him the head of Chrysaphius. The greatest officers of the Empire were sent as ambassadors and Attila humiliated them at his pleasure; a rich widow was found for Constantius, gold and silver were poured out at Attila’s feet. Yet he demanded the head of Chrysaphius. At last, in the year 450, two Gothic messengers, it is said, arrived from the Hun, the one at Constantinople, the other at Ravenna. Upon the same day and at the same hour they appeared before Theodosius and Valentinian and delivered this message: “Attila, my master and thine, bids thee prepare a palace for him.” Imperat per me Dominus meus et Dominus tuus Attilas, ut sibi palatium instruas.

That insolent message, if indeed it was ever delivered, fell upon deaf ears. Upon July 25, 450, Theodosius died, and three months later Placidia the mother and good genius of Valentinian, the real ruler of the West, died also. A new Emperor, Marcian, reigned at Constantinople. Chrysaphius was put to death, and Marcian, an old soldier, at once faced Attila with something of the ancient Roman energy. The Barbarian turned away to consider how he might loot the West.

V
THE ATTACK UPON THE WEST

In turning from the East, where he did not like the look of Marcian, to the West, where the weak and sensual Valentinian, then thirty-one years old, seemed to offer himself as a prey, the universal robber needed a pretext for his attack. The matter of the plate of Sirmium he had either forgotten or he feared that concerning it he would be met and satisfied. He needed a bone of contention which it would be impossible for Valentinian to yield. He found it in Honoria, the Emperor’s sister.

It will be remembered that in 435, fifteen years before, this wild and passionate girl, in disgrace at Constantinople, had sent her ring to Attila and had offered herself to him, to be his bride, as her mother had been the bride of Adolphus, the successor of Alaric. For fifteen years the Barbarian had forgotten this romantic proposal, and though he had kept her ring he had made no overtures or demands of any sort for the lady. Upon the death of Placidia in 450 he recalled the affair, and at once sent a message to Valentinian claiming both Honoria and her property as his, and with her a half of the Western Empire. He asserted that he learned with the greatest surprise that his betrothed was on his account treated with ignominy and even imprisoned. For his part he could see nothing unworthy in her choice which in fact should have flattered the Emperor, and he insisted that she should at once be set at liberty and sent to him with her portion of the inheritance of her father, and the half of the Western Empire as her dowry.

To this amazing proposition Valentinian made answer that Honoria was already married, and that therefore she could not be the wife of the Hun, since unlike the Barbarians the Romans did not recognise polygamy or polyandry; that his sister had no claim to the Empire which could not be governed by a woman and was not a family inheritance. To all this Attila made no reply; only he sent Honoria’s ring to Ravenna and persisted in his demands.

The insincerity of Attila’s claims, the fact that they were but a pretext, is proved by this that suddenly he dropped them altogether and never referred to them again. Honoria was as utterly forgotten as the plate of Sirmium. He tried another way to attain his end, became suspiciously friendly, swore that the Emperor had no friend so sure as he, the Empire no ally more eager to serve it.

The truth was that a pretext for attack far better than the withholding of Honoria had suddenly appeared. The province of Africa had been lost to the Romans by the invasion of the Vandals who were now governed by a man not unlike Attila himself, Genseric. It is true he was not a pagan like the Hun, but he was an Arian, and he had gathered under his banner all the Barbarians that surged among the ruins of the Roman cities of Africa. Genseric had married his son to the daughter of Theodoric, King of the Visigoths, but as this alliance did not bring him all he hoped, he returned the girl to her father minus her ears and her nose, which he had cut off. Fearing lest Theodoric should invoke the aid of the Empire against him for this unspeakable deed, Genseric had sought the alliance of Attila. A new vision opened before the Hun; he saw a new alliance, if not a new suzerainty, offered him with whose aid he might attack the Empire both north and south, so that while he descended upon the richest of the European provinces of Rome—Gaul, Genseric should fall upon Italy herself. In this scheme for the final loot of the West Attila was still further encouraged by the fact that the Franks, the most warlike of the Barbarian tribes in Europe (that which was destined first to become Catholic and later to refound the Empire), were in anarchy by reason of the death of their chief, whose inheritance was in dispute between his two sons. The elder of these had appealed to Attila for his assistance, while the younger had turned to Rome and had become indeed the protégé, if not the adopted son, of the great Roman general Aetius. This young man at Aetius’ suggestion went to Rome to petition the Emperor, and there Priscus saw him “a beardless boy, his golden hair floating on his shoulders.”

Here was a quarrel after Attila’s own heart. The Vandals should invade Italy from Africa, he would fall upon Gaul, the passages of the Rhine being opened for him by the Franks. He forgot all about Honoria. At once he sent a message to Valentinian informing him of his determination to attack the Visigoths and bidding him not to interfere. The Visigoths, he declared, were his subjects, subjects who had escaped from his dominion, but over whom he had never abandoned his rights. He pointed out too how dangerous they were to the peace of the Empire, on whose behalf, as much as on his own, he now proposed to chastise them.

Valentinian replied that the Empire was not at war with the Visigoths, and that if it were it would conduct its own quarrels in its own way. The Visigoths, said he, dwelt in Gaul as the guests and under the protection of the Roman Empire, and in consequence to strike at them was to strike at the Empire. But Attila would not hear or understand. He insisted that he was about to render Valentinian a service, and then, confirming us in our opinion that his object was merely loot, sent to Theodoric bidding him not to be uneasy, for that he was about to enter Gaul to free him from the Roman yoke.

At the same time that the Visigoth received this message he also received one from Valentinian, greeting him as the “bravest of the Barbarians,” and bidding him resist “the tyrant of the universe” who, like the modern Prussian, “knows only his necessity, regards whatever suits him as lawful and legitimate, and is determined to bring the whole world under his domination.” Theodoric, in much the same position as modern Belgium, according to Jornandes, cried out, as King Albert might have done in August last: “O Romans, you have then at last your desire; you have made Attila at last our enemy also.” But the Romans were as little to blame or able to help it as England or France. Attila, “the tyrant of the universe,” had prepared and was intent upon war. All Theodoric could do was to be ready to defend himself.

Attila prepared to attack the West, but the same problem confronted the defenders then as yesterday, namely, by which road that attack would come. The Hun thundered against the Visigoths, but on this very account Aetius, like the French, thinking more subtly than the enemy, remained uncertain whether after all Italy would not be the victim rather than Gaul. He was wrong, like his representatives of to-day; the Barbarian was a barbarian, he believed in his own boasts.

An enormous army of every kind of Barbarian was gathered upon the Danube and in the provinces to the south of that river. This host may have numbered anything from half a million men upward; it was not less than half a million strong. Each tribe had its chief, among which the two most famous were the kings of the Gepidae and the Ostrogoths; but all alike trembled before Attila, who had thus beneath his hands the most formidable and numerous hosts that had ever yet threatened civilisation. It was barbarism itself in all its innumerable multitude which was about to fling itself upon Gaul.

The plan of Attila—if plan it can be called—was well chosen. Gaul was more easily attacked than Italy and was little less essential to the future of Roman civilisation. It was then, as it has been ever since, the very heart of Europe. To destroy it was to destroy the future.

Gathering his innumerable peoples upon the borders of the Danube, Attila divided his armies into two parts. The first army was to march to the Rhine by the right or southern bank of the Danube, by the great Roman military way, past all the Roman fortresses of the frontier of the Empire, each of which was to be destroyed as it advanced. The second army was to march by the left or northern bank of the Danube, and to meet the first near the sources of that river where, in the great forests of Germany, the two armies were to provide themselves with the materials necessary for their transport into Gaul. There, while they hewed down the trees in thousands, they were met by the Franks who had deserted or killed their young king the protégé of Aetius, and now flocked to his brother under the standard of Attila; certain of the Thuringians and the Burgundians also made common cause with them.

The chief business immediately before Attila was the passage of the Rhine, and it was in order to furnish material for bridges for this purpose that his armies had hewn down the trees by thousands in the ancient “Hercynian” forest. That passage would perhaps have been impossible and certainly very difficult if it had been contested. It was not contested, and to understand the reason why, we must understand the political condition of Gaul.

In the course of the last half-century the great province of Gaul had suffered grievously, though not so grievously as Britain, which had almost lost its identity, nor so hopelessly as Africa, which was completely lost to civilisation. What had happened was this: all the further parts of Gaul had fallen into the occupation of the Barbarians as well as that violated corner enclosed on the west by the Jura, where the Burgundians had established themselves. In northern Gaul, in what we now call Picardy, Belgium and Luxembourg, the Franks were settled, the Salian Franks to the west about the cities of Tongres, Tournay, Arras, Cambrai, Amiens; the Ripuarian Franks to the east on either side the Rhine about Cologne, Mentz, Coblenz and Treves. To the south of the Salian Franks the Saxons held the coast and the lower reaches of the Seine, to the south of them lay Armorica, as far as the Loire, an isolated province of Bretons to the south of them as far as the Pyrenees, occupying all Aquitaine were the Visigoths under Theodoric. Central Gaul, however, with its cities of Metz, Strasburg, Troyes, Langres, Orleans, Lyons, Vienne, Arles, Narbonne, and the town of Lutetia or Paris, remained within the Roman power and administration which though in decay and very largely clericalised, as we shall see, was still a reality.

If Attila was bent on chastising the Visigoths it was obviously across this still Roman and Christian province of Central Gaul that he must march, and experience both in the East and the West had taught the Imperial Government that such a march meant the complete ruin, devastation and depopulation of every city on the way. The natural frontiers of Gaul upon the East were and are the Rhine and the mountains. To hold them is the safety of Gaul, to lose them is destruction. Unfortunately, the Rhine could not be held against Attila. It could not be held because the chief crossing place at Confluentes (Coblenz) was in the power of the Franks, while a secondary crossing at Augst, now a village between Bâle and Mulhouse, was in the power of the Burgundians. Those gates were flung wide, and it was through them that Attila at last entered the heart of the West.

Confluentes (Coblenz) stood at the junction of the Moselle with the Rhine, and thence upon the left of the Moselle a great Roman road ran south-west to Augusta Treverorum (Treves), whence a whole series of roads set forth to traverse Gaul in every direction. From Confluentes, too, running north along the left bank of the Rhine, a road pushed on northward through Bonn to Cologne, whence again a great highway ran west and south across what is now Belgium and Picardy. This would seem to have been the main route of Attila’s advance. At the southern entry at Augst his armies could await, meet and perhaps cut off or defeat any attack from Italy.

THE ATTACK OF ATTILA UPON GAUL AND THE RETREAT FROM ORLEANS

It was January when Attila set out, it was March when he found himself at last before the gates of Gaul upon the Rhine. The spring and summer lay all before him in which to ruin and to destroy what after all he could not understand.

VI
ATTILA’S ADVANCE FROM THE RHINE TO ORLEANS

In the ruin of the secular Roman administration which the last fifty years had seen, in the terror which the threat of Attila’s armies upon the Rhine roused everywhere in the great and noble province of Gallia, it would appear that many, if not all, of the cities still Roman, and above all Christian, found in some constant and dominating mind a substitute for, and a successor to, their ruined institutions. We see this in Tongres, in Metz, in Rheims, in Orleans, above all we see it, as we might expect, in Paris. The fate of these cities, the way they met their fate is illuminating; and if it is inexplicable and to our scepticism almost incredible, it is none the less certainly indicative of the condition, spiritual and political, of that still Roman society. It was Christianity which defeated Attila in Gaul as certainly as it alone was able later to turn him back from the destruction of Italy. The real victory, in spite of the great strokes of Aetius, was a spiritual victory; a victory of Christianity over heathenism.

I forbear to draw the parallel with the struggle in which we are at present engaged. Happily the most striking fact of the present contest is that the Allies have at once seen through and cast from them the brutal and hopeless philosophy of blasphemy and bosh, of “necessity” and “frightfulness” which is the most violent form of atheism that has yet attacked European society. Germany will perish by her “Kultur” as certainly as the Huns did by their heathenism. Indeed, in action they are identical and rest upon the same hopelessness, the denial of the divinity not of God only but of man.

That the defeat of Attila was a Christian victory is obvious at once, if we follow his footsteps. He began his attack from the crossing of the Rhine at Confluentes and fell upon Belgic Gaul. Metz fell. “On the very vigil of the blessed Easter,” says Gregory of Tours, “the Huns crossing out of Pannonia, burning as they came, entered Metz. They gave the city to the flames, massacred the people, putting all to the sword, killing even the priests before the altar of God. In all the city nothing remained save the oratory of the blessed Stephen the Protomartyr and Levite.” He asserts further that this chapel was spared only because St. Stephen himself invoked the aid of SS. Peter and Paul, who here already had superseded Romulus and Remus, it might seem, as the representatives of Rome, as Rome herself was about to become less the capital of the world than of the Catholic Church.

All Lorraine lay under the torch of the Hun. He passed on into Champagne. Rheims fell. The inhabitants had fled to the woods. St. Nicasius the bishop was cut down before the altar as he recited a part of the 118th Psalm: Adhaesit pavimento anima mea; vivifica me secundum verbum tuum. His sister, named Eutropia, fearing the brutality of the invaders, struck the murderer in the face and was cut down with her brother. Suddenly, we read, the church was filled with a strange thunder, the Huns fled in superstitious fear, deserting the half-destroyed town. On the following day the inhabitants returned to their ruins.

From Rheims the Hunnish flood swept on to St. Quentin and even to Tongres; all northern Gaul from the Marne to the Rhine was laid waste, everyone was a fugitive,—ruined, helpless. The peoples of the smaller towns fled first to the greater, and then with the peasants fled into the hills and the woods. It is in the fate of one of these little towns later to be so famous, indeed the capital of the West, Lutetia or Paris, that we have the most characteristic as it is the most amazing episode of the defence.

Of St. Geneviève’s life we know little apart from the legend which has transformed the wonderful reality into a delightful tale. St. Germanus of Auxerre found her under the hill of Valerian, a little girl of seven years, and his delight in her was but the first example of the influence her character was to have upon men and events. She was the spirit of Christian France incarnate. Joan of Arc is, as it were, but a repetition of her, and over that later and more famous maid she has this advantage; she was of Paris when Paris only had meaning, as it were, in her and her act.

Of her legend one can never have enough; but here I will only give that part of it which concerns this moment. “Tidings came to Paris,” says Voragine, who has summed up in his marvellous narrative all the earlier hagiographers: “Tidings came to Paris that Attila the felon king of the Huns had enterprised to destroy and waste parts of France and to subdue them to his domination. The burgesses of Paris, for great dread that they had, sent their goods into other cities more sure. St. Geneviève warned and admonished the good women of the town that they should wake in fastings and in orisons by which they might assuage the ire of Our Lord and eschew the tyranny of their enemies, like as did sometime the holy women Judith and Esther. They obeyed her and were long and many days in the church in wakings, fastings and in orisons. She said to the burgesses that they should not remove their goods, nor send them out of the town of Paris, for the other cities that they supposed should be more sure, should be destroyed and wasted, but by the Grace of God Paris should have no harm. And some had indignation at her and said that a false prophet had arisen and appeared in their time and began among them to ask and treat whether they should not drown her or stone her. Whilst they were thus treating, as God would, came to Paris after the decease of St. Germain, the archdeacon of Auxerre, and when he understood that they treated together of her death he came to them and said: ‘Fair sirs, for God’s sake do not this mischief, for she of whom ye treat, St. Germain witnesseth that she was chosen of God in her mother’s belly and lo, here be letters that he hath sent to her in which he recommendeth him to her prayers.’ When the burgesses heard these words recited by him of St. Germain and saw the letters, they marvelled and feared God and left their evil counsel and did no more thereto. Thus Our Lord kept her from harm, which keepeth always them that be his, and defendeth after that the apostle saith, and for her love did so much that the Tyrants approached not Paris, Thanks and glory to God and honour to the Virgin.”

That is, as I say, the most characteristic and the most significant episode, as it is the most amazing, of the defence. Paris was not to fall, was not even to be attacked. Attila was surfeited with destruction and loot, he was forced now to concentrate his attention upon the attack on the Visigoths of the south lest Rome and Aetius should stand in his way and imperil his whole campaign. His plan must be to defeat the Visigoths before he was forced to face Aetius coming up out of Italy, and with this on his mind he set out from Metz with his main army, passed through Toul and Rheims, which were gutted, through Troyes and Sens, which he was in too great haste to destroy, and over the Sologne, held then by his ally the King of the Alans, Sangibanus, and marched directly upon Orleans. That march represented the work of a whole month. He left Metz in the early days of April, he arrived before Orleans in the early days of May.

Orleans stands upon the most northern point of the Loire, the great river which divides Gaul east and west into a northern and a southern country. It has been the point around which the destinies of the Gauls have so often been decided—one has only to recall the most famous instance of all, the deliverance under Joan of Arc—that it is without surprise we see it fulfilling its rôle in the time of Attila also. From time immemorial, before the beginning of history, it had been an important commercial city, for it stood not only on one of the greatest and most fruitful rivers of western Europe, but, as I have said, upon the marches of the north and south, whose gate it was. No one could pass without its leave, at least in safety. Anciently it was known as Genabum and there had been planned and conceived the great revolt which so nearly engulfed Julius Cæsar, who burnt it to the ground. It stood then, as later when it rose again, upon the northern bank of the river and was joined with the south by a great bridge. The resurrection after that burning was not long delayed, but it seems to have been less magnificent than might have been expected and it certainly suffered much from war, so that in 272, in the time of Aurelian, it was rebuilt with a wall about it, and for this cause took the name of the Emperor. Times, however, were sadly changed with the great city when Attila came into Gaul. Much certainly was in ruin, the municipal government in full decadence or transition and it was therefore with a dreadful fear in her heart that Orleans watched the oncoming of the Huns. Nevertheless the city put herself into a state of defence. The first direct assault upon her was made by that Sangibanus, King of the Alans, and Attila’s ally, who requested to be allowed to garrison it. Orleans refused and closed her gates. At the same time she sent forth her bishop (and this is as significant of the true state of affairs of government in Gaul as the facts about Tongres, Rheims and Paris) into the south, still Roman, to Arles to learn when Aetius might be expected in relief and how far the Visigoths would move, not for their own defence only, but against the common enemy.

Anianus, for such was the bishop’s name, thus appears as the representative, the ambassador and the governor of the city. In Arles, to his delight, he found not only a secure and even splendid Roman government, but the great general himself, Aetius, who received him with impress. Anianus urged the necessity of an immediate assistance. He reckoned that it would be possible to hold out till the middle of June, but no longer. Aetius heard him patiently and promised that by then he would relieve the city. Anianus was not too soon, he had scarce returned to Orleans when Attila began the siege.

It will be asked, and with reason, why it was that Rome had waited so long before interfering to defend her great western province against this “wild beast”? Why had Aetius not marched out of Italy at the head of his armies months before? why had he waited till all the North was a ruin before he carried the eagles over the Alps and confronted this savage and his hordes with the ordered ranks of the army of civilisation? The answer may be found in the war we are fighting to-day against a similar foe. The French failed to defend the North against the modern Attila because they were too long uncertain which way he would come and where he would strike hardest. They could not be sure which was the decisive point of the German attack. This it was that kept so great a proportion of their armies in Alsace and upon that frontier. They credited the German with more subtlety than he possessed. They failed to grasp the gigantic simplicity of the Barbarian plan; the mighty hammer-stroke that shattered Belgium and plunged in to destroy all the North of France. They looked for something less blindly brutal and more wise. They could not believe that the German would destroy his whole case and outrage the moral consciousness of the world by violating the neutrality of Belgium. They failed to comprehend the essential stupidity of the Barbarian. They were wrong.

Aetius was wrong also, but with perhaps more excuse. He could not make up his mind where the real attack of Attila upon the Empire was to be delivered. What if the descent upon Gaul were but a feint and Italy were the real objective, Lombardy the true battlefield? There was this also; in Africa, Genseric, Attila’s ally, waited and threatened to descend upon the coast. Aetius overrated the intelligence of his enemy as much as did Joffre. Neither understood the force which opposed him, which it was to be their business and their glory to meet and to break.

Like Joffre, too, when Aetius at last found himself face to face with the reality of the situation he must have dared only not to despair. The successes of the Huns had decided the Visigoths to remain on the defence within their own confines; they refused to attack. Everywhere the Roman delay had discovered treason among the tribes who should have been their allies against a common foe. Aetius could only not despair. He addressed the Visigoths, though perhaps with more right, much as we might address to-day the Americans. “If we are beaten you will be the next to be destroyed; while if you help us to win yours will be the glory.” The Visigoths replied as America is doing to-day: “It is not our business; see you to it.”

They were wrong, the victory of Rome was as necessary for the future as our victory is to-day.

Much indeed was already achieved to that end by the mere presence of Aetius in Gaul. Suddenly the whole country was changed, everywhere the peoples sprang to arms, the noble and the peasant, the bourgeois of the cities, the bond and the free. From Armorica came an heroic company, the Ripuarian Franks and the Salian Franks having seen the ruin of the Roman cities of the country they had been permitted to occupy, the Burgundians also returned to, if they had indeed ever left, their old allegiance. So successful at last was the diplomacy of Rome that when even Sangibanus appeared Aetius feigned to be ignorant of his treason. The great general prepared with a good heart for the attack, but was determined to do everything possible to mobilise the Visigoths with his other forces. It was with this object that at last he sought the aid of Avitus, the senator, a very great Gaulish nobleman who lived in the city of Clermont, the chief town of the Auvergne.

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.