Attila and the Huns

by Edward Hutton

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.

CISALPINE GAUL AND THE DEFENCE OF ITALY

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.