Attila and His Conquerors: A Story of the Days of St. Patrick and St. Leo the Great

by Elizabeth Rundle Charles

Nearer and nearer drew the fierce nation of warriors and plunderers, numbered by hundreds of thousands. By their mere presence they would have eaten up the land like a cloud of locusts; and they came not as mere locusts devouring in order to live, but as a predatory army fearfully organized to destroy; bent on carrying away all the plunder they could, and also on leaving behind all the devastation they could; ravaging not merely to impoverish Gaul, but through impoverishing Gaul to ruin Rome.

Soon the fires of the burnt villages and towns smouldered and died out; and instead came the outposts of the terrible horde itself. Troops of Tartar horsemen dashed up to the walls of the city; little beardless brown men with long black hair, man and horse apparently grown into one, the riders waving their spears as they stood on the backs of their horses, or stooping underneath to pick up some dropped weapon; the man apparently an integral development of the horse, the horse not so much ridden as inspired and possessed by the man. Baithene, gazing at them for the first time from the walls, in the dusk of the evening, could not wonder at the rumours that they were not human at all, but the offspring of witches and demons. From time to time through the darkness came an unearthly combined yell, like the howl of a wild beast or malignant demon; and he crossed himself, thought of the exorcism in the baptismal service, and repeated his renunciation of the devil from the bottom of his heart. He had to watch through that night, and early in the first flush of the morning he saw that the horizon was dim with a great cloud of dust, whilst in the distance, through the silence of the dawn, was heard the grinding of huge wagon-wheels, with all the tumult of the movement of a vast multitude.

Slowly the huge host gathered in from all sides, until the confused hum and murmur began to define itself into various sounds—the creaking of wheels, the cracking of whips, the lowing of oxen, the neighing of horses, the harsh voices of men, the shrill voices of women, even the wailing of babes; and through all the deep under-hum of an enormous mass of human beings in motion. The hearts of the men on the walls quailed with a weird terror; for through all came the unfamiliar cadences of wild foreign speech, with a sense that this living mass which was closing in around them with deadly purpose, to plunder and kill, to burn and to destroy, was pouring forth from the unknown boundless spaces of savage wildernesses, an interminable tide of destruction swelling up as from some unfathomable abyss of hell.

A preternatural terror hung over these hordes, but more especially around Attila himself, the Scourge of God, the ally of demons, who was known now to be in their midst, directing the devastations with the deadliest skill of destruction, practised in ravaging the fairest lands into deserts, and in razing the stateliest cities into ruin so utter as never to be repaired. With a frightful faculty of appropriating from the civilization he sought to destroy just the very elements which enabled him to destroy it, from the courts of Ravenna and Constantinople he had learnt the art of conquering by dividing. And at this moment the chief anxiety in Orleans was the doubt whether he might not have succeeded by his cunning in breaking the alliance between Theodoric, King of the Visigoths, and the great General Aetius, who had promised Bishop Anianus some weeks before in his palace at Arles to relieve the city with the combined forces of Goth and Roman, at the latest, by the fourteenth of June. Attila was too shrewd to attempt to substitute Roman discipline and methods of warfare for the dash and fury of the charges and wheelings of his wild horsemen. But he had learnt something of the art of besieging from his foes, from the captives of the cities he had ruined; and in the dusk of the morning they saw the huge battering-rams being drawn up to the walls.

It was the combination of the mechanical weight of a vast multitude, a host not of men but of nations, of the wild swiftness and unexpectedness of their assaults, reckless of peril as a troop of wild beasts, with the preternatural terror of the unknown spaces from which they issued, and the unknown powers of darkness from which they were said to have sprung, that made the approach of these Huns so paralyzing. And in Attila himself the terror was concentrated. The terror of his name and the weight of his rule, if that could be called rule which was a disorganization of all existing order, were known from the borders of China and the great Tartar desert through Hungary to Constantinople, and to the coasts of northernmost Scandinavia. Thus these demon armies had for the moment a Satanic Majesty, a Prince of the power of the air, before whose crafts and assaults the feeble diplomacy of Constantinople and Ravenna was as the innocent cunning of a child.

As the end of Baithene’s watch was drawing near he heard a yell from the advancing host, which seemed a cry of welcome and triumph; and, straining his eyes, he caught sight of a multitude of horsemen whirling round a central point like a whirlpool. There were frantic cries from many of these Tartar horsemen; there was a wheeling and rushing to and fro of the nimble little horses, a waving of spears, a flaunting of rude banners, a metallic clashing of cymbals and shields. And through the still morning air the sound of one terrible name was borne to the besieged in countless shrill tones of exultation—“Attila! Attila!” The besieged repeated it to each other in hoarse murmurs and whispers, as those who think they see some gruesome preternatural phantoms in the dark. “Attila! Attila! the darling of the devil, the Scourge of God.”

The hour for relieving guard had arrived; silently the wearied men left the walls.

Baithene was angry with himself for the presentiments of evil which seemed to reduce him to the resignation of dull despair. But as they came near the cathedral, the little band of soldiers met a procession of white-robed priests, heading a multitude eagerly thronging to the church. He entered with them, and knelt in the stillness amidst the throng of silent worshippers.

Then came the solemnity of the daily Eucharist. Not lamentations and litanies, but hymns of joy and thanksgiving, in the sonorous Latin which was the common tongue, in some measure understood by all. Gloria in excelsis Deo, et in terra pax hominibus bonæ voluntatis. “We praise Thee, we bless Thee, we worship Thee, we give thanks to Thee for Thy great glory, O God, Heavenly King, God the Father Almighty.