Outlines of Universal History, Designed as a Text-book and for Private Reading

by George Park Fisher

RADAGAISUS.—The empire was not long left in peace. Alaric was a Christian, and partially civilized. Radagaisus was a Goth, but a heathen and a barbarian. The Suevi under his command, took their course southward from the neighborhood of the Baltic, and, drawing after them the Burgundians, Vandals, and Alans,—tribes which began to be alarmed by the hordes of Huns that were gathering behind them,—advanced to the pillage of the empire. Leaving the bulk of their companions on the borders of the Rhine, two hundred thousand of them crossed the Alps, and made their way as far as Florence. Stilicho once more saved Rome and the empire by forcing them back into the Apennines, where most of them perished from famine. Radagaisus surrendered, and was beheaded. The news of this disaster moved the host which had been left behind, joined by the remainder of the army of Radagaisus, to make an attack upon Gaul. Despite the resistance of the Ripuarian Franks, to whom Rome had committed the defense of the Rhine, they crossed that river on the last day of the year 406. For two years Gaul was a prey to their ravages, until the Suevi, the Alans, and the Vandals, sought for fresh booty on the south of the Pyrenees (409). In Gaul they "destroyed the cities, ravaged the fields, and drove before them in a promiscuous crowd, the bishop, the senator, and the virgin, laden with the spoils of their houses and altars." Brief as was this period of devastation, it marks the severance of Gaul from the empire.

ALARIC AGAIN IN ITALY.—Stilicho had kept up friendly relations with Alaric, and had retained in Italy thirty thousand barbarians in the pay of the empire. The brave general became an object of suspicion to Honorius, who caused him to be assassinated, and the wives and children of the barbarian troops to be massacred. The men fled to Alaric. He came back with them to avenge them. He appeared under the walls of Rome. "It was more than six hundred years since a foreign enemy had been there, and Hannibal had advanced so far, only to retreat." When the envoys of the Senate represented to Alaric how numerous was the population, he answered, "The thicker the hay, the easier it is mowed." But he consented to accept an enormous ransom, and retired to winter quarters in Tuscany. The court at Ravenna refused to assign lands to the Visigoths for a permanent settlement in Northern Italy. Alaric demanded the post of master-general of the Western armies. Once more he advanced to Rome, seized the "Port" of Ostia, and compelled the Senate to appoint Attalus, the prefect of the city, emperor. He besieged Ravenna without effect, quarreled with Attalus, and deposed him, and for the third time marched upon Rome. Slaves within the city opened the Salarian gate to their countrymen, and on the 24th of August, 410, the sack of the city began. To add to the horrors of the scene, a terrific thunderstorm was raging. For three days Rome was given up to pillage. Only the Christian temples were respected, which were crowded by those who sought within them an asylum. Rome had been the center of Paganism. The scattering and destruction of its patrician families was the ruin of the old religion. Alaric did not long survive his victory. He died at Consentia in Bruttium. He was buried under the little river Basentius, which was turned out of its course while the sepulcher was constructing, and then restored to its former channel. The slaves employed in the work were put to death, that the place of his burial might remain a secret (410).

ATHAULF: WALLIA.—Athaulf (called Adolphus), the brother and successor of Alaric, was an admirer of the empire. He enlisted in the service of Honorius, and married his sister, Placidia, who was in the hands of the Goths, either as a captive or as a hostage. He put down usurpers in the south of Gaul who had set themselves up as emperors, and entered Spain, in order to drive out the barbarians from that country. But he was assassinated (415). His successor, Wallia, carried forward his plans, in the name of Honorius, against the Alans, the Suevi, and the Vandals. He partly exterminated the Alans, chased the Suevi into the mountains on the north-west, and the Vandals into the district called after them, Andalusia.

THREE BARBARIAN KINGDOMS.—The kingdom of the Suevi thus established (419), under the kings reigning from 438 to 455 conquered Lusitania, and would have subdued all Spain had they not been checked by the Visigoths. As a reward for their services, the latter received from Honorius, Aquitaine in Gaul, as far as the Loire and the Rhone, with Toulouse for their capital. They conquered the Suevi in 456, and in 585 subjugated them; in 507 the Franks had driven them out of Gaul. Early in the fifth century the Burgundian kingdom grew up in South-eastern Gaul. At the end of that century the Rhone was a Burgundian river. Lyons and Vienne were Burgundian cities. Thus in the first twenty years of the fifth century there arose three barbarian kingdoms. Of these, that of the Suevi soon vanished (585), being absorbed by the Visigoths; that of the Burgundians continued until 534; while that of the Visigoths in Spain lasted until the conquest by the Arabs in 711.

CONQUEST OF AFRICA BY THE VANDALS.—Honorius died in 423. He had shown himself a zealous defender of the Church against heresy, and was the author of edicts for the suppression of heathenism, and for the destruction of heathen temples and idols. But he had proved himself inefficient in the defense of the empire. His nephew Valentinian III., the son of Placidia and of the general Constantius, whom she had married in 417, succeeded him; but he was only six years old, and for twenty-five years the government was carried on in his name by his unworthy mother. She had two able generals, Aëtius and Boniface, whose discord was fatal in its effects. At the same time in the East, the government was managed by Pulcheria for her brother, Theodosius II., who had succeeded Arcadias in 408. Aëtius, who was a Hun, by insidious arts persuaded Placidia to recall Boniface, who was governor of Africa, at the same time that he advised Boniface to disobey the order which he represented as a sentence of death. Boniface sent to Gonderic, king of the Vandals in Spain,—who, after the retreat of the Visigoths, were strong in that country,—an offer of an alliance. Genseric, the Vandal leader, the brother and successor of Gonderic, landed in Africa in 429 with fifty thousand men. Too late the treachery of Aëtius was explained to Boniface. Genseric, with his allies, tribes of nomad Moors, defeated him in a bloody battle, and besieged Hippo for fourteen months. Augustine, the bishop of Hippo, animated the courage of its defenders until his death in 430, in the seventy-sixth year of his age. Boniface was again defeated, and Hippo was taken. The Vandals pushed on their conquest, but eight years passed before Carthage was reduced (439). Valentinian had recognized by treaty the kingdom of the Vandals. Genseric was characterized by genius and energy as well as by cruelty and avarice. He built up a navy, and made himself master of Sicily, Corsica, Sardinia, and the Balearic Isles. He was able to defy Constantinople, on account of his control of the Mediterranean. At the same time he entered into relations with the barbarians in the north, in order that Aëtius, who endeavored to bring in some degree of order and obedience in the empire, might be checked and restrained on all sides. The Vandals were Arians, and made full use of the difference in faith as a motive for plundering and maltreating the orthodox Christians in Africa, whom their arms had subdued.

ATTILA: CHALONS.—The enemy whom Genseric invoked to make a diversion in his favor against the combined rulers of the East and of the West, was Attila. For a half-century the Huns had halted, in their migration, in the center of Europe, and held under their sway the Ostrogoths, the Gepids, the Marcomanni, and other tribes. The empire of Attila extended from the Baltic to the north of the Danube, and as far east as the Volga. His name inspired terror wherever it was heard. He was styled "the scourge of God." The "sword of Mars"—the point of an ancient sword which, it was said, was discovered by supernatural means, and was presented to him—was deemed the symbol of his right to the dominion of the world. Yet, notwithstanding his fierce visage and haughty mien, he was an indulgent ruler of his own people, and not without pity and other generous traits. Such was the dread of him that it was said that no blade of grass grew on the path which his armies had traversed. First, he attacked Theodosius II. in the East, to force him to recall the troops which he had sent against Genseric. He crossed the Danube, destroyed seventy cities, and forced the Eastern emperor not only to pay a tribute heavier than he had paid before, but also to cede to the Huns the right bank of the river. Theodosius failed in a treacherous attempt to assassinate him through Attila's ambassador, Edecon, whom he had bribed. Attila discovered the plot, but pardoned with disdain the ambassadors of the emperor who went to him in his wooden palace in Pannonia. He contented himself with reproaching Theodosius with "conspiring, like a perfidious slave, against the life of his master." Regarding Constantinople as impregnable, he turned to the West. He demanded of the Western emperor the half of his states; and, moving to the Rhine with six hundred thousand barbarians, he crossed that river and the Moselle, advanced on his devastating path into the heart of Gaul, crossed the Seine, and laid siege to Orleans. Everywhere the inhabitants fled before him. The courage of the people in Orleans was sustained by their bishop, who at length, as the city was just falling into the hands of the assailants, saw a cloud of dust, and cried, "It is the help of God." It was Aëtius, who, on the death of Boniface, had thought it prudent to fly to the Huns, had come back to Italy at the head of sixty thousand men, obtained forgiveness of Placidia, and been made master-general of her forces. He had united to the Roman troops the barbarians who had occupied Gaul, the Visigoths under Theodoric, the Saxons, the Burgundians, the Ripuarian and the Salian Franks. On the Catalaunian fields, a vast plain near Chalons, whither Attila now retreated to find room for the effective use of his cavalry, the two multitudinous armies, each composed of a motley collection of nations, met. It was, like the conflict at Marathon, one of the decisive battles of history. It was to determine whether the Aryan or the Scythian was to be supreme in Europe. The battle-field was strewn, it was said, with the bodies of a hundred and sixty thousand men,—an exaggeration indicating that the carnage was too great to be estimated. Attila was worsted. He encircled his camp with a rampart of wagons; and in the morning the victors saw him standing on the top of a mound composed of the trappings of horsemen, which was to serve as his funeral-pile, with torch-bearers at hand ready to light it in case of defeat. Aëtius was weakened by the withdrawal of the Visigoths: the allies did not venture to attack the lion standing thus at bay, but suffered him to return to Germany (451).

ATTILA IN ITALY.—The next year Attila invaded Upper Italy. He destroyed Aquileia, the inhabitants of which fled to the lagoons of the Adriatic, where their descendants founded Venice. Padua, Verona, and other cities were reduced to ashes. At Milan he saw a painting which represented the emperor on his throne, and the chiefs of the Huns prostrate before him. He ordered a picture to be painted in which the king of the Huns sat on the throne, and the emperor was at his feet. The Italians were without the means of defense. Leo I. (Leo the Great), bishop of Rome, at the risk of his life accompanied the emperor's ambassadors to Attila's camp. Their persuasions, with rich gifts and the promise of a tribute, availed. The army of Attila was weakened by sickness, and Aëtius was approaching. The king of the Huns decided to retire to his forests. The apparition of the two apostles, Peter and Paul, threatening the barbarian with instant death if he did not comply with the prayer of their successor, is the subject of one of the paintings of Raphael. Some months after he left Italy Attila died at the royal village near the Danube, probably from the bursting of an artery during the night (453). The nations which he had subjugated regained their freedom. The chiefs of the Huns contended for the crown in conflicts which dissipated their strength. The expeditions of Attila were like a violent tempest,— destructive for the moment, the traces of which soon disappear.

About the name of Attila, there gathered cycles of traditions, Gallo-Roman or Italian, East German or Gothic, West German and Scandinavian, and Hungarian. Such traditions in Germany formed, later, the germ of the national epic, the Nibelungen-lied. They testify to the powerful impression which the hero of the Huns made on the memory and imagination of the different nations.

GENSERIC.—Attila did not see Rome; but Genseric, his ally, visited it with fire and sword (455). The emperor was Petronius Maximus, a senator, who had slain Valentinian III. as the penalty for a mortal offense. The weakness of Maximus as a ruler caused him to be destroyed by the populace. Eudoxia, the widow of Valentinian, whom Maximus had compelled to marry the author of her husband's death, had secretly implored the aid of the king of the Vandals. Once more Leo showed his fearless spirit by going into the camp of the Vandal king, and interceding for Rome. He only succeeded, however, in mitigating to a limited extent the horrors that attended the pillage of the city by the fierce and greedy soldiers, the Vandals and Moors, who followed Genseric, For fourteen days (June 15-29, 455) Rome was given up to carnage and robbery. The conqueror carried off every thing of value that was capable of being transported. Eudoxia was rudely stripped of her jewels, and with her two daughters, descendants of the great Theodosius, was conveyed away with the conqueror to Carthage. For twenty years longer Genseric ruled over the Mediterranean in spite of the hostility of both empires. An expedition sent against him at the instigation of Ricimer, the Sueve, by the Eastern emperor Leo, was ill commanded by Basiliscus, and failed. But after the Vandal king died (477), his kingdom was torn by civil and religious disorders, and by the revolts of the Moors, and, fifty-seven years after the death of its founder, was conquered by the general of the Eastern Empire.

FALL OF ROME: ODOACER.—After the death of Maximus, Avitus was appointed emperor by the king of the Visigoths in Gaul. The barbarians hesitated to assume the purple themselves, but they determined on whom it should be bestowed. Of the emperors that succeeded, Majorian (457-461)—who was raised to the throne by Ricimer, military leader of the German mercenaries in the Roman army—presents an instance of a worthy character in a corrupt time. At last another leader of mercenaries (Orestes, a Pannonian) made his son emperor,—a boy six years old, called Romulus Augustulus (475). Odoacer, who commanded the Heruli, Rugii, and other federated tribes,—mercenaries to whom Orestes refused to grant a third part of the lands of Italy,—made himself ruler of that country. The Senate of Rome, in pursuance of his wishes, in an address to the Eastern emperor Zeno, declared that an emperor in the West was no longer necessary, and asked him to make Odoacer patrician, and prefect of the diocese of Italy. It was in this character—not as king, but in nominal subordination to Zeno, the head of the united Roman Empire—that Odoacer governed (476). For more than a half-century people had been accustomed to see the barbarians exercise supreme control, so that the extinguishment of the Western Empire was an event less marked in their eyes than it seemed to the view of subsequent ages.