“And the third angel sounded, and a great star fell from heaven, burning like a torch, and it fell on the third part of the rivers, and on the fountains of waters; and the name of the star is called Wormwood: and the third part of the waters became wormwood; and many men died by the waters, because they were made bitter.”—Rev. 8:10, 11.
The sounding of the third trumpet marks the advent of a third invader of the Roman empire. And such was Attila, the king of the Huns, who invaded Gaul A. D. 451. Gibbon says:—
“The kings and nations of Germany and Scythia, from the Volga perhaps to the Danube, obeyed the warlike summons of Attila. From the royal village in the plains of Hungary, his standard moved towards the west; [pg 087] and, after a march of seven or eight hundred miles, he reached the conflux of the Rhine and the Necker.” “The hostile myriads were poured with resistless violence into the Belgic provinces.” “The consternation of Gaul was universal.” “From the Rhine and the Moselle, Attila advanced into the heart of Gaul, crossed the Seine at Auxerre, and, after a long and laborious march, fixed his camp under the walls of Orleans.” “An alliance was formed between the Romans and Visigoths.” The hostile armies approached. “ ‘I myself,’ said Attila, ‘will throw the first javelin, and the wretch who refuses to imitate the example of his sovereign, is devoted to inevitable death.’ The spirit of the barbarians was rekindled by the presence, the voice, and the example, of their intrepid leader; and Attila, yielding to their impatience, immediately formed his order of battle. At the head of his brave and faithful Huns, Attila occupied, in person, the centre of the line.” The nations from the Volga to the Atlantic were assembled on the plains of Chalons; and there fought a battle, “fierce, various, obstinate, and bloody, such as could not be paralleled, either in the present, or in past ages! The number of the slain amounted to one hundred and sixty-two thousand, or according to another account, three hundred thousand persons; and these incredible exaggerations suppose a real or effective loss, sufficient to [pg 088] justify the historian's remark, that whole generations may be swept away, by the madness of kings, in the space of a single hour.”
Attila was compelled to retreat; but neither his forces nor reputation suffered. He “passed the Alps, invaded Italy, and besieged Aquileia with an innumerable host of barbarians.” “The succeeding generation could scarcely discover the ruins of Aquileia. After this dreadful chastisement, Attila pursued his march; and, as he passed, the cities of Altinum, Concordia, and Padua were reduced into heaps of stones and ashes. The inland towns, Vicenza, Verona, and Bergamo, were exposed to the rapacious cruelty of the Huns. Milan and Pavia submitted, without resistance, to the loss of their wealth;” and “applauded the unusual clemency which preserved from the flames the public as well as private buildings, and spared the lives of the captive multitude.” “Attila spread his ravages over the rich plains of modern Lombardy; which are divided by the Po, and bounded by the Alps and Apennines.” He took possession of the royal palace of Milan. “It is a saying worthy of the ferocious pride of Attila, that the grass never grew on the spot where his horse had trod.”
He advanced into Italy, only as far as the plains of Lombardy and the banks of the Po, reducing the cities he passed to stones and ashes; but there his ravages ceased. He concluded [pg 089] a peace with the Romans in the year of his invasion of Italy (451), and the next year he died. Thus he appeared like a fiery meteor, exerted his appointed influence upon the tongues and people, who were tributary to the Romans,—as rivers and fountains of waters are to the sea; and like a burning star, he as suddenly expired. As a specimen of the bitterness which followed his course, it is recorded of the Thuringians who served in his army, and who traversed, both in their march and in their return, the territories of the Franks, “that they massacred their hostages as well as their captives. Two hundred young maidens were tortured with exquisite and unrelenting rage; their bodies were torn asunder by wild horses, or were crushed under the weight of rolling wagons; and their unburied limbs were abandoned on public roads, as a prey to dogs and vultures.”
The Fourth Trumpet.
“And the fourth angel sounded, and the third part of the sun was smitten, and the third part of the moon, and the third part of the stars; so that the third part of them was darkened, and the day shone not for a third part of it, and the night in like manner.”—Rev. 8:12.
The sun, moon, and stars cannot here, any more than under the sixth seal (6:12,13), symbolize agents of their own order, but must [pg 090] represent the rulers of the Roman empire. Says Dr. Keith:—
“At the voice of the first angel, and the blast of his trumpet, the whole Roman world was in agitation, and ‘the storms of war’ passed over it all. ‘The union of the empire was dissolved;’ a third part of it fell; and the ‘transalpine provinces were separated from the empire.’ Under the second trumpet, the provinces of Africa, another, or the maritime, part, was in like manner reft from Rome, and the Roman ships were destroyed in the sea, and even in their harbors. The empire of Rome, hemmed in on every side, was then limited to the kingdom of Italy. Within its bounds, and along the fountains and rivers of waters, the third trumpet reëchoed from the Alps to the Apennines. The last barrier of the empire of Rome was broken. The plains of Lombardy were ravaged by a foreign foe: and from thence new enemies arose to bring to an end the strife of the world with the imperial city.
“ ‘In the space of twenty years since the death of Valentinian’ (two years subsequent to the death of Attila), ‘nine emperors had successively disappeared; and the son of Orestes, a youth recommended only by his beauty, would be the least entitled to the notice of posterity, if his reign, which was marked by the extinction of the Roman empire in the [pg 091] west, did not leave a memorable era in the history of mankind.’ ”