But it is in his account of the events that followed the burial of Theodoric that we most doubt our guide Jornandes. He declares that Thorismund, Theodoric’s son and successor, wished to attack the Hun and avenge his father’s death; but that he consulted Aetius as the chief commander, who “fearing if the Huns were destroyed, the Goths might still more hardly oppress the Empire, advised him to return to Toulouse and make sure of his kingdom lest his brothers should seize it. This advice Thorismund followed without seeing the duplicity of Aetius.” Such an explanation of the treason of the Goths was doubtless accepted by the Gothic traditions and especially comfortable to Jornandes. It is incredible, because any observer could see that Attila was not so badly beaten that he was not a far greater danger to the Empire than ever the Visigoths could be. To let him escape, and that is what the departure of Thorismund meant, was treason, not to the Goths, but to the Empire. It served the cause not of Aetius but of Thorismund, not of Rome but of the Goths, whose loyalty was never above suspicion and whose slow adhesion to the Imperial cause had been the talk of Gaul and the scandal of every chancellery.
But Aetius could not have been much astonished by the desertion, and it was no less, of Thorismund. Rome was used to the instability of her Barbarian allies who if they really could have been depended upon, if they had really possessed the quality of decision, and known their own minds would no longer have been Barbarians. It was Attila who was amazed. He had given himself up for lost when looking out from that dark earthwork at dawn he saw the Visigothic camp empty and deserted, and at the sight “his soul returned into his body.” Without a moment’s hesitation, broken as he was, he began a retreat that Aetius was not able to prevent or to turn into a rout, which he could only ensure and emphasise. Upon that long march to the Rhine all the roads were strewn with the Hunnish sick and wounded and dead, but the main army, what was left of the half-million that had made the invasion, escaped back into the forests of Germany. Gaul was saved, and with Gaul the future of the West and of civilisation. But Attila was not destroyed.
FOOTNOTES:
[12] Jornandes, R. Get., 41. According to the Abbe Dubos the “XC millibus” which appears in the text of Jornandes is the mistake of a copyist for “XV millibus.”
VIII
ATTILA’S ATTACK UPON AND RETREAT FROM ITALY
It might seem to be a hard question to answer whether Attila was really beaten or not in Gaul. This at least is certain, the retreat from Orleans to the Camp by Châlons was a disaster for him, and the great battle which followed was only not annihilating because of the desertion of the Visigoths. Attila saved what that retreat and battle had left of his army, and without delay, for necessity pushed him on, turned to prove upon the body of Italy itself that he was still the “universal tyrant” and the “scourge of God.”
Historians of the decline and fall of the Empire, of the invasions of the Barbarians, have consistently expressed surprise, often not unmixed with contempt and derision, that Attila was allowed to escape. But it must be remembered that it is the almost unbroken characteristic of the Barbarian wars that the invaders did escape; so Alaric continually avoided destruction at the hands of Stilicho; and if the Visigoths were thus able to save themselves how much more was Attila whose armies were so largely composed of mounted men. It might seem that the superiority of the Barbarian lay in just that, mobility; the rude and savage men that composed their armies were content and able to live upon the country they ravaged, they were not dependent as were the Imperial armies upon their bases and their supply; they were always a bolt shot at a venture. Their success is paralleled in our own day by that of the Boers in South Africa. We do not blame Roberts and Kitchener that they allowed De Wet to escape them for so long; we understand that it was inevitable it should be so. Not thus argued the Romans. Full of discontent, rotten with intrigue and corruption as the Imperial Government was, there were many who from personal hatred and ambition, or mere treason, blamed and traduced Aetius for the escape of Attila which they had planned and prayed for in their hearts. Any weapon was good enough to use against the great general who apparently suffered neither fools nor traitors gladly, and was as ambitious if as able as Stilicho. Every sort of calumny was used against him. It was recalled that he had had intimate relations with Roua, the uncle of Attila, it was suggested that he had purposely spared the Huns.
To all this bitterness much was added by the acts of Aetius himself. Immeasurably proud, like Stilicho, he pretended to claim the hand of the Princess Eudoxia, the daughter of the Emperor Valentinian, for his son; moreover, among his other preparations against a new attack of Attila was a plan to remove the Emperor into Gaul; that he might replace him himself, his enemies declared. So violent grew the opposition to this last project that it had to be abandoned. Aetius was content to send Valentinian to Rome, while he himself, with his army, held Ravenna and the line of the Po.
In the first chapter of this book I have briefly explained the Imperial theory of the defence of Italy; that theory I have at greater length, and I think for the first time, set forth in a previous work.[13] Here I must very briefly recapitulate in saying that the valley of the Po, the whole Cisalpine Plain between the Alps and the Apennines, was in the Imperial theory, and rightly, the defence of Italy. That defence was barred again upon the inward or southern side by the barren and therefore impassable range of the Apennines,—impassable, that is, save at the eastern extremity, where the Via Emilia ran between the mountains and the sea into the city of Rimini. That narrow pass was commanded and held not by Rimini, which was indefensible, but by Ravenna which, on account of its position in the marshes, could not be taken and scarcely attacked. It was the due and wise recognition of these facts that caused the Emperor Honorius to take up his residence in Ravenna when Alaric crossed the Alps. That city had been the key to the defence of Italy ever since; it remained so now, therefore Aetius went thither gathering his army along the Via Emilia behind the line of the Po to await the final adventure of Attila.
Having failed to destroy the Eastern Empire, having failed in his attack upon the western provinces, the only thing that remained for Attila to attempt was the destruction and rape of the soul of all, the citadel of civilisation, Italy and Rome. It was the hardest task of all, therefore in his prudence, and he was always prudent, he had not tried it till now. It was his last throw. It was to fail, and that so contemptibly that his campaigns East and West in comparison seem like triumphs. Like Kaiser Wilhelm II., what Attila lacked in real force he strove to supply with blasphemy and boasting. He was as ill-informed and as ignorant of the real nature and strength of the forces opposed to him as the German statesmen of our day; he exaggerated and relied upon the corruption of the Empire; above all, like the Kaiser, he failed to see that the future frowned against him dark and enormous as the Alps.