Soon after this, a sturdy general, Magnentius, formed a conspiracy in the army, killed young Constans, and was proclaimed emperor by the soldiers. All the Western and Central realms acknowledged him.
Constantius, from the East, put his veteran army in motion,and advanced from the plains of Mesopotamia to make war upon Magnentius and to avenge his brother’s death. The whole then known world was thrown into commotion by this strife, which was to decide who should be master of this world. War and woe held high carnival. There were famine, pestilence, and death, smouldering towns, blood-stained fields covered with the slain, and despairing shrieks of widows and orphans.
The hostile armies met in vast numbers on the River Drave, not far from its entrance into the Danube. It was one of those battles which was to decide the fate of the world. Constantius, aware of the military ability of his antagonist, wisely, but not heroically, retired to the tower of a church where he could overlook the field. He left the conduct of the day to one of his veteran generals.
A fiercer battle than that which ensued was perhaps never fought. Roman and barbarian legions were intermingled, blending in the fight. The air was darkened with stones, arrows, and javelins. Clouds of horsemen, glittering in their polished armor, swept the field like moving statues of steel, trampling the dead and wounded beneath iron hoofs. Night terminated the conflict.
The army of Magnentius, overpowered by numbers, was almost annihilated. Fifty-four thousand were left dead upon the field. They sold their lives dearly. A still greater number of the troops of Constantius lay drenched in blood by their side. Over a hundred and twenty thousand perished in this one battle. Thus did Rome, in civil strife, devour her own children. Thus was the way opened for the irruption and triumph of the barbarians.
In the darkness of night, Magnentius, throwing aside his imperial mantle, mounted a fleet horse, and, accompanied by a few friends, attempted to escape through the Julian Alps. He reached the city of Aquileia, at the head of the Adriatic Sea, not far from the present city of Trieste. Here, amidst the pathless defiles of the mountains, he rallied his surviving troops around him, and made another stand.
But city after city abandoned his cause, and raised the bannerof the victorious Constantius. He then fled to Gaul. Constantius vigorously pursued him. At length, hedged in on every side, the wretched Magnentius, in despair, terminated his life by falling upon his own sword. He thus obtained an easier death than he could have hoped for from his foe.
Thus was the whole Roman world again brought under the sway of a single sovereign. Constantius, the son of Constantine the Great, reigned without a rival, from the western shores of Britain to the River Tigris, and from the unexplored realms of Central Germany to the interior of Africa. But over these wide realms there was nowhere happiness or peace. The benevolence of God seemed to be thwarted by the wickedness of mankind.
The Goths, in merciless bands, were sweeping over Gaul, leaving the path behind them crimsoned with blood, and blackened with smouldering ruins. Germanic tribes, pitiless as wolves, were flocking across the Danube, darkening the air with the smoke of burning villages, and rending the skies with the shrieks of their victims. From the vast plains of Tartary, bands of shaggy monsters, fierce as the beasts which roamed their wilds, came rushing across the eastern frontier into the war-scathed empire. There was peace nowhere. Every day brought its battles and its woes.
The ancient city of Rome, no longer the capital of the empire, was now crumbling to decay. Constantius, from curiosity, visited it. He found the population still immense, and was received by the inhabitants with great enthusiasm. The imperial palace which he occupied had entertained no royal guest for thirty-two years. After spending a month in the city, admiring the monuments of genius and art which were spread over the seven hills, he was suddenly recalled to meet an appalling irruption of the barbarians from the Danube. They were ravaging that wide and beautiful valley with every conceivable atrocity, and had already captured many thousand Romans,—men, women, and children,—whom they were carrying as slaves into their inaccessible wilds. Among these prisoners were men of the highest rank, and ladies of refinement and beauty.