General History for Colleges and High Schools

by P. V. N. Myers

The Romans and their Gothic conquerors laid aside their animosities, and made common cause against the common enemy. The Visigoths were rallied by their king, Theodoric; the Italians, the Franks, the Burgundians, flocked to the standard of the Roman general Ætius. Attila drew up his mighty hosts upon the plain of Chalons, in the north of Gaul, and there awaited the onset of the Romans and their allies. The conflict was long and terrible. Theodoric was slain; but at last fortune turned against the barbarians. The loss of the Huns is variously estimated at from 100,000 to 300,000 warriors. Attila succeeded in escaping from the field, and retreated with his shattered hosts across the Rhine (A.D. 451).

This great victory is placed among the significant events of history; for it decided that the Christian Germanic races, and not the pagan Scythic Huns, should inherit the dominions of the expiring Roman Empire, and control the destinies of Europe.

THE DEATH OF ATTILA.—The year after his defeat at Chalons, Attila again crossed the Alps, and burned or plundered all the important cities of Northern Italy. The Veneti fled for safety to the morasses at the head of the Adriatic (A.D. 452). Upon the islets where they built their rude dwellings, there grew up in time the city of Venice, the "eldest daughter of the Roman Empire," the "Carthage of the Middle Ages."

The conqueror threatened Rome; but Leo the Great, bishop of the capital, went with an embassy to the camp of Attila, and pleaded for the city. He recalled to the mind of Attila the fact that death had overtaken the impious Alaric soon after he had given the Imperial City to be sacked, and warned him not to call down upon himself the like judgment of heaven. To these admonitions of the Christian bishop was added the persuasion of a golden bribe from the Emperor Valentinian; and Attila was induced to spare Southern Italy, and to lead his warriors back beyond the Alps. Shortly after he had crossed the Danube, he died suddenly in his camp. His followers gradually withdrew from Europe into the wilds of their native Scythia, or were absorbed by the peoples they had conquered.

SACK OF ROME BY THE VANDALS (A.D. 455).—Rome had been saved a visitation from the spoiler of the North, but a new destruction was about to burst upon it by way of the sea from the South. Africa sent out another enemy whose greed for plunder proved more fatal to Rome than the eternal hate of Hannibal. The kings of the Vandal Empire in Northern Africa had acquired as perfect a supremacy in the Western Mediterranean as Carthage ever enjoyed in the days of her commercial pride. Vandal corsairs swept the seas and harassed the coasts of Sicily and Italy, and even plundered the maritime towns of the Eastern provinces. In the year 455 a Vandal fleet, led by the dread Genseric, sailed up the Tiber.

Panic seized the people; for the name of Vandal was pronounced with terror throughout the world. Again the great Leo, who had once before saved his flock from the fury of an Attila, went forth to intercede in the name of Christ for the Imperial City. Genseric granted to the pious bishop the lives of the citizens, but said that the plunder of the capital belonged to his warriors. For fourteen days and nights the city was given over to the ruthless barbarians. The ships of the Vandals, which almost hid with their number the waters of the Tiber, were piled, as had been the wagons of the Goths before them, with the rich and weighty spoils of the capital. Palaces were stripped of their ornaments and furniture, and the walls of the temples denuded of their statues and of the trophies of a hundred Roman victories. From the Capitoline sanctuary were borne off the golden candlestick and other sacred articles that Titus had stolen from the Temple at Jerusalem.

The greed of the barbarians was sated at last, and they were ready to withdraw. The Vandal fleet sailed for Carthage, bearing, besides the plunder of the city, more than 30,000 of the inhabitants as slaves. [Footnote: The fleet was overtaken by a storm and suffered some damage, but the most precious of the relics it bore escaped harm. "The golden candlestick reached the African capital, was recovered a century later, and lodged in Constantinople by Justinian, and by him replaced, from superstitious motives, in Jerusalem. From that time its history is lost." —Merivale.] Carthage, through her own barbarian conquerors, was at last avenged upon her hated rival. The mournful presentiment of Scipio had fallen true (see p. 271). The cruel fate of Carthage might have been read again in the pillaged city that the Vandals left behind them.

FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE IN THE WEST (A.D. 476).—Only the shadow of the Empire in the West now remained. All the provinces—Illyricum, Gaul, Britain, Spain, and Africa—were in the hands of the Goths, the Vandals, the Franks, the Burgundians, the Angles and Saxons, and various other intruding tribes. Italy, as well as Rome herself, had become again and again the spoil of the insatiable barbarians. The story of the twenty years following the sack of the capital by Genseric affords only a repetition of the events we have been narrating. During these years several puppet emperors were set up by the different leaders of the invading tribes. A final seditious movement placed upon the shadow-throne a child of six years, named Romulus Augustus. Chiefly because of the imperial farce he was forced to play, this child-emperor became known as Augustulus, "the little Augustus." He had reigned only a year, when Odoacer, the leader of a tribe of German mercenaries, dethroned him, and abolishing the title of emperor, took upon himself the government of Italy.

The Roman Senate now sent an embassy to Constantinople, with the royal vestments and the insignia of the imperial office, to represent to the Emperor Zeno that the West was willing to give up its claims to an emperor of its own, and to request that the German chief, with the title of "Patrician," might rule Italy as his viceroy. This was granted; and Italy now became in effect a province of the Empire in the East (A.D. 476). The Roman Empire in the West had come to an end, after an existence from the founding of Rome of 1229 years.

[Illustration: THE APPIAN WAY. (From a photograph).]