The Might Of Attila

The Ostrogoths under the Huns--The three royal brothers--Attila king of

the Huns--He menaces the Eastern Empire--He strikes at Gaul--Battle of

the Catalaunian plains--Invasion of Italy--Destruction of

Aquileia--Death of Attila and disruption of his Empire--Settlement of

the Ostrogoths in Pannonia.





For eighty years the power of the Ostrogoths suffered eclipse under the

shadow of Hunnish barba ism. As to this period we have little historical

information that is of any value. We hear of resistance to the Hunnish

supremacy vainly attempted and sullenly abandoned. The son and the

grandson of Hermanric figure as the shadowy heroes of this vain

resistance. After the death of the latter (King Thorismund) a strange

story is told us of the nation mourning his decease for forty years,

during all which time they refused to elect any other king to replace

him whom they had lost. There can be little doubt that this legend veils

the prosaic fact that the nation, depressed and dispirited under the

yoke of the conquering Huns, had not energy or patriotism enough to

choose a king; since almost invariably among the Teutons of that age,

kingship and national unity flourished or faded together.



At length, towards the middle of the fifth century after Christ, the

darkness is partially dispelled, and we find the Ostrogothic nation

owning the sovereignty of three brothers sprung from the Amal race, but

not direct descendants of Hermanric, whose names are Walamir, Theudemir,

and Widemir. Beautiful it was, says the Gothic historian, to behold

the mutual affection of these three brothers, when the admirable

Theudemir served like a common soldier under the orders of Walamir; when

Walamir adorned him with the crown at the same time that he conveyed to

him his orders; when Widemir gladly rendered his services to both of his

brothers.[9] Theudemir, the second in this royal brotherhood, was the

father of our hero, Theodoric.



The three Ostrogothic brethren, kings towards their own countrymen, were

subjects--almost, we might say, servants--of the wide-ruling king of the

Huns, who was now no longer one of those forgotten chiefs by whom the

conquering tribe had been first led into Europe, but ATTILA, a name of

fear to his contemporaries and long remembered in the Roman world. He,

with his brother Bleda, mounted the barbarian throne in the year 433,

and after twelve years the death of Bleda (who was perhaps murdered by

order of his brother) left Attila sole wielder of the forces which made

him the terror of the world. He dwelt in rude magnificence in a village

not far from the Danube, and his own special dominions seem to have

pretty nearly corresponded with the modern kingdom of Hungary. But he

held in leash a vast confederacy of nations--Teutonic, Sclavonic, and

what we now call Turanian,--whose territories stretched from the Rhine

to the Caucasus, and he is said to have made the isles of the Ocean,

which expression probably denotes the islands and peninsulas of

Scandinavia, subject to his sway. Neither, however, over the Ostrogoths

nor over any of the other subject nations included in this vast dominion

are we to think of Attila's rule as an organised, all-permeating,

assimilating influence, such as was the rule of a Roman Emperor. It was

rather the influence of one great robber-chief over his freebooting

companions. The kings of the Ostrogoths and Gepidae came at certain times

to share the revelries of their lord in his great log-palace on the

Danubian plain; they received his orders to put their subjects in array

when he would ride forth to war, and woe was unto them if they failed to

stand by his side on the day of battle; but these things being done,

they probably ruled their own peoples with little interference from

their over-lord. The Teutonic members of the confederacy, notably the

Ostrogoths and the kindred tribe of Gepidae seem to have exercised upon

the court and the councils of Attila an influence not unlike that

wielded by German statesmen at the court of Russia during the last

century. The Huns, during their eighty years of contact with Europe, had

lost a little of that utter savageness which they brought with them from

the Tartar deserts. If they were not yet in any sense civilised, they

could in some degree appreciate the higher civilisation of their

Teutonic subjects. A Pagan himself, with scarcely any religion except

some rude cult of the sword of the war-god, Attila seems never to have

interfered in the slightest degree with the religious practices of the

Gepidae or the Ostrogoths, the large majority of whom were by this time

Christians, holding the Arian form of faith. And not only did he not

discourage the finer civilisation which he saw prevailing among these

German subjects of his, but he seems to have had statesmanship enough to

value and respect a culture which he did not share, and especially to

have prized the temperate wisdom of their chiefs, when they helped him

to array his great host of barbarians for war against the Empire.



From his position in Central Europe, Attila, like Alaric before him, was

able to threaten either the Eastern or the Western Empire at pleasure.

For almost ten years (440-450) he seemed to be bent on picking a quarrel

with Theodosius II., the feeble and unwarlike prince who reigned at

Constantinople. He laid waste the provinces south of the Danube with his

desolating raids; he worried the Imperial Court with incessant

embassies, each more exacting and greedy than the last (for the favour

of the rude Hunnish envoy had to be purchased by large gifts from the

Imperial Treasury); he himself insisted on the payment of yearly

stipendia by the Emperor; he constantly demanded that these payments

should be doubled; he openly stated that they were nothing else than

tribute, and that the Roman Augustus who paid them was his slave.



These practices were continued until, in the year 450 the gentle

Theodosius died. He was succeeded by his sister Pulcheria and her

husband Marcian, who soon gave a manlier tone to the counsels of the

Eastern Empire. Attila marked the change and turned his harassing

attentions to the Western State, with which he had always a sufficient

number of pretexts for war ready for use. In fact he had made up his

mind for war, and no concessions, however humiliating, on the part of

Valentinian III., the then Emperor of the West, would have availed to

stay his progress. Not Italy however, to some extent protected by the

barrier of the Alps, but the rich cities and comparatively unwasted

plains of Gaul attracted the royal freebooter. Having summoned his vast

and heterogeneous army from every quarter of Central and North-eastern

Europe, and surrounded himself by a crowd of subject kings, the captains

of his host, he set forward in the spring of 451 for the lands of the

Rhine. The trees which his soldiers felled in the great Hercynian forest

of Central Germany were fashioned into rude rafts or canoes, on which

they crossed the Rhine; and soon the terrible Hun and his horde of

many-nationed spoilers were passing over the regions which we now call

Belgium and Lorraine in a desolating stream. The Huns, not only

barbarians, but heathens, seem in this invasion to have been animated by

an especial hatred to Christianity. Many a fair church of Gallia Belgica

was laid in ashes: many a priest was slain before the altar, whose

sanctity was vain for his protection. The real cruelties thus committed

are wildly exaggerated by the mythical fancy of the Middle Ages, and

upon the slenderest foundations of historical fact arose stately

edifices of fable, like the story of the Cornish Princess Ursula, who

with her eleven thousand virgin companions was fabled to have suffered

death at the hands of the Huns in the city of Cologne.



The barbarian tide was at length arrested by the strong walls of

Orleans, whose stubborn defence saved all that part of Gaul which lies

within the protecting curve of the Loire from the horrors of their

invasion. At midsummer Attila and his host were retiring from the

untaken city, and beginning their retreat towards the Rhine, a retreat

which they were not to accomplish unhindered. The extremity of the

danger from these utterly savage foes had welded together the old Empire

and the new Gothic kingdom, the civilised and the half-civilised power,

in one great confederacy, for the defence of all that was worth saving

in human society. The tidings of the approach of the Gothic king had

hastened the departure of Attila from the environs of Orleans, and,

perhaps about a fortnight later, the allied armies of Romans and Goths

came up with the retreating Huns in the Catalaunian plains not far

from the city of Troyes. The general of the Imperial army was Aetius;

the general and king of the Visigoths was Theodoric, a namesake of our

hero. Both were capable and valiant soldiers. On the other side,

conspicuous among the subject kings who formed the staff of Attila, were

the three Ostrogothic brethren, and Ardaric, king of the Gepidae. The

loyalty of Walamir, the firm grasp with which he kept his master's

secrets, and Ardaric's resourcefulness in counsel were especially prized

by Attila. And truly he had need of all their help, for, though it is

difficult to ascertain with any degree of accuracy the numbers actually

engaged (162,000 are said to have fallen on both sides), it is clear

that this was a collision of nations rather than of armies, and that it

required greater skill than any that the rude Hunnish leader possessed,

to win the victory for his enormous host. After a battle ruthless,

manifold, gigantic, obstinate, such as antiquity never described when

she told of warlike deeds, such as no man who missed the sight of that

marvel might ever hope to have another chance of beholding,[10] night

fell upon the virtually defeated Huns. The Gothic king had lost his

life, but Attila had lost the victory. All night long the Huns kept up a

barbarous dissonance to prevent the enemy from attacking them, but their

king's thoughts were of suicide. He had prepared a huge funeral pyre, on

which, if the enemy next day successfully attacked his camp, he was

determined to slay himself amid the kindled flames, in order that

neither living nor dead the mighty Attila might fall into the hands of

his enemies. These desperate expedients, however, were not required. The

death of Theodoric, the caution of Aetius, some jealousy perhaps between

the Roman and the Goth, some anxiety on the part of the eldest Gothic

prince as to the succession to his father's throne,--all these causes

combined to procure for Attila a safe but closely watched return into

his own land.



The battle of the Catalaunian plains (usually but not quite correctly

called the battle of Chalons) was a memorable event in the history of

the Gothic race, of Europe, and of the world. It was a sad necessity

which on this one occasion arrayed the two great branches of the Gothic

people, the Visigoths under Theodoric, and the Ostrogoths under Walamir,

in fratricidal strife against each other. For Europe the alliance

between Roman and Goth, between the grandson of Theodosius, Emperor of

Rome, and the successor of Alaric, the besieger of Rome, was of

priceless value and showed that the great and statesmanlike thought of

Ataulfus was ripening in the minds of those who came after him. For the

world, yes even for us in the nineteenth century, and for the great

undiscovered continents beyond the sea, the repulse of the squalid and

unprogressive Turanian from the seats of the old historic civilisation,

was essential to the preservation of whatever makes human life worth

living. Had Attila conquered on the Catalaunian plains, an endless

succession of Jenghiz Khans and Tamerlanes would probably have swept

over the desolated plains of Europe; Paris and Florence would have been

even as Khiva and Bokhara, and the island of Britain would not have yet

attained to the degree of civilisation reached by the peninsula of

Corea.



In the year after the fruitless invasion of Gaul, Attila crossed the

Julian Alps and entered Italy, intending (452) doubtless to rival the

fame of Alaric by his capture of Rome, an operation which would have

been attended with infinitely greater ruin to



the seven-hilled city's pride,



than any which she had sustained at the hands of the Visigothic leader.

But the Huns, unskilful in siege work, were long detained before the

walls of Aquileia, that great and flourishing frontier city, hitherto

deemed impregnable, which gathered in the wealth of the Venetian

province, and guarded the north-eastern approaches to Italy. At length

by a sudden assault they made themselves masters of the city, which they

destroyed with utter destruction, putting all the inhabitants to the

sword, and then wrapping in fire and smoke the stately palaces, the

wharves, the mint, the forum, the theatres of the fourth city of Italy.

The terror of this brutal destruction took from the other cities of

Venetia all heart for resistance to the terrible invader. From

Concordia, Altino, Padua, crowds of trembling fugitives walked, waded,

or sailed with their hastily gathered and most precious possessions to

the islands, surrounded by shallow lagoons, which fringed the Adriatic

coast, near the mouths of the Brenta and Adige. There at Torcello,

Burano, Rialto, Malamocco, and their sister islets, they laid the humble

foundations of that which was one day to be the gorgeous and

wide-ruling Republic of Venice.



Attila meanwhile marched on through the valley of the Po ravaging and

plundering, but a little slackening in the work of mere destruction, as

the remembrance of the stubborn defence of Aquileia faded from his

memory. Entering Milan as a conqueror, and seeing there a picture

representing the Emperors of the Romans sitting on golden thrones, and

the Scythian barbarians crouching at their feet, he sought out a

Milanese painter, and bade the trembling artist represent him, Attila,

sitting on the throne, and the two Roman Emperors staggering under sacks

full of gold coin, which they bore upon their shoulders, and pouring out

their precious contents at his feet.



This little incident helps us to understand the next strange act in the

drama of Attila's invasion. To enjoy the luxury of humbling the great

Empire, and of trampling on the pride of her statesmen, seems to have

been the sweetest pleasure of his life. This mere gratification of his

pride, the pride of an upstart barbarian, at the expense of the

inheritors of a mighty name and the representatives of venerable

traditions, was the object which took him into Italy, rather than any

carefully prepared scheme of worldwide conquest. Accordingly when that

august body, the Senate of Rome, sent a consul, a prefect, and more than

all a pope, the majestic and fitly-named Leo, to plead humbly in the

name of the Roman people for peace, and to promise acquiescence at some

future day in the most unreasonable of his demands, Attila granted the

ambassadors an interview by the banks of the Mincio, listened with

haughty tranquillity to their petition, allowed himself to be soothed

and, as it were, magnetised by the words and gestures of the venerable

pontiff, accepted the rich presents which were doubtless laid at his

feet, and turning his face homewards recrossed the Julian Alps, leaving

the Apennines untraversed and Rome unvisited.



Even in the act of granting peace Attila used words which showed that it

would be only a truce, and that (452) if there were any failure to abide

by any one of his conditions, he would return and work yet greater

mischief to Italy than any which she had yet suffered at his hands. But

he had missed the fateful moment, and the delight of standing on the

conquered Palatine, and seeing the smoke ascend from the ruined City of

the World, was never to be his. In the year after his invasion of Italy

he died suddenly at night, apparently the victim of the drunken debauch

with which the polygamous barbarian had celebrated the latest addition

to the numerous company of his wives.



With Attila's death the might of the Hunnish Empire was broken. The

great robber-camp needed the ascendancy of one strong chief-robber to

hold it together, and that ascendancy no one of the multitudinous sons

who emerged from the chambers of his harem was able to exert. Unable to

agree as to the succession of the throne, they talked of dividing the

Hunnish dominions between them, and in the discussions which ensued they

showed too plainly that they looked upon the subject nations as their

slaves, to be partitioned as a large household of such domestics would

be partitioned among the heirs of their dead master. The pride of the

Teutons was touched, and they determined to strike a blow for the

recovery of their lost freedom. Ardaric, king of the Gepidae, so long the

trusty counsellor of Attila, was prime mover in the revolt against his

sons. A battle was fought by the banks of the river Nedao[11] between

the Huns (with those subject allies who still remained faithful to them)

and the revolted nations.



[Footnote 11: Situation unknown, except that it was in Pannonia, that

is, probably in Hungary, somewhere between the Save and the Danube.]



Among these revolted nations there can be but little doubt that the

Ostrogoths held a high place, though the matter is not so clearly stated

as we should have expected, by the Gothic historian, and even on his

showing the glory of the struggle for independence was mainly Ardaric's.

After a terrible battle the Gepidae were victorious, and Ellak, eldest

son of Attila, with, it is said, thirty thousand of his soldiers, lay

dead upon the field. He had wrought a great slaughter of his enemies,

and so glorious was his end, says Jordanes, that his father might well

have envied him his manner of dying.



The battle of Nedao, whatever may have been the share of the Ostrogoths

in the actual fighting, certainly brought them freedom. From this time

the great Hunnish Empire was at an end, and there was a general

resettlement of territory among the nations which had been subject to

its yoke. While the Huns themselves, abandoning their former

habitations, moved, for the most part, down the Danube, and became the

humble servants of the Eastern Empire, the Gepidae, perhaps marching

southward occupied the great Hungarian plains on the left bank of the

Danube, which had been the home of Attila and his Huns; and the

Ostrogoths going westwards (perhaps with some dim notion of following

their Visigothic kindred) took up their abode in that which had once

been the Roman province of Pannonia, now doubtless known to be

hopelessly lost to the Empire.



Pannonia, the new home of the Ostrogoths, was the name of a region,

rectangular in shape, about two hundred miles from north to south and

one hundred and sixty miles from east to west, whose northern and

eastern sides were washed by the river Danube, and whose north-eastern

corner was formed by the sudden bend to the south which that river

makes, a little above Buda-Pest. This region includes Vienna and the

eastern part of the Archduchy of Austria, Graetz, and the eastern part of

the Duchy of Styria, but it is chiefly composed of the great

corn-growing plain of Western Hungary, and contains the two considerable

lakes of Balaton and Neusiedler See. Here then the three Ostrogothic

brethren took up their abode, and of this province they made a kind of

rude partition between them, while still treating it as one kingdom, of

which Walamir was the head. The precise details of this division of

territory cannot now be recovered,[12] nor are they of much importance,

as the settlement was of short duration. We can only say that Walamir

and Theudemir occupied the two ends of the territory, and Widemir dwelt

between them. What is most interesting to us is the fact that

Theudemir's territory included Lake Balaton (or Platten See), and that

his palace may very possibly have stood upon the shores of that noble

piece of water, which is forty-seven miles in length and varies from

three to nine miles in width. To the neighbourhood of this lake, in the

absence of more precise information, we may with some probability assign

the birth-place and the childish home of Theodoric.[13]