Attila and the Huns

by Edward Hutton

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.