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.”