READING HALL

BIOGRAPHY UNIVERSAL LIBRARY

ATTILA, KING OF THE HUNS, AND HIS PREDECESSORS

CHAPTER VIII

Retreat of Attila before the Lord of Pope Leo I

56. Eutropia. St. Ursula and the tale of the slaughtered virgins.

The Huns who were left to defend and complete the reduction of  Belgium are said to have been commanded by Giulas, who commenced his career by the sack of Rheims, of which the inhabitants had given great offence by harassing the Hunnish army before the battle of Châlons. The citizens in extreme distress crowded round their bishop Nicasius, imploring his advice in the fatal alternative of hopeless resistance, or surrender to the certain vengeance of the barbarians. Nicasius admonished them that the success of Attila was permitted on account of their sins; but that they were destined to brief torments in the hands of the tyrant to obtain salvation and heavenly life. He exhorted them to follow and imitate his example.

His sister Eutropia, a pious virgin of exceeding beauty, seconded his exhortations; and many of the citizens animated by their enthusiastic piety accompanied them to the church of the Virgin Mary, singing hymns and psalms, in the midst of which Nicasius was butchered by the Huns. The beauty of Eutropia excited the desires of the conqueror who had slain her brother, but she is said to have torn out both his eyes, and was slain with all the Christians who had taken refuge in the church. Rheims was demolished, but Attila was not present. Diogenes, bishop of Arras, was also killed by the Huns and the town destroyed. Tongres underwent the same fate, notwithstanding the sanctity and prayers of St. Servatius. Maastricht suffered either before or after the battle of Châlons.

After the destruction of Tongres, the Huns are said to have undertaken the siege of Cologne, which has been rendered famous by the alleged martyrdom of St. Ursula and 11,010 virgins, an absurd fable, which it will be however proper to notice, as the lady has obtained a place in the calendar. If the eyes of the Hunnish general had been extinguished, he could scarcely have commanded in the subsequent operations; supposing them to have been lacerated by Eutropia, it is not improbable that he may have acted very ferociously and butchered many young women at Cologne, but the story of Ursula is utterly absurd, and the name Giulas seems like a corruption of Julius borrowed from an older tale, and was probably not the real name of a Hunnish commander.

Sigebertus, who flourished at the end of the eleventh century, is probably the first writer extant who detailed the story as relating to Ursula. The tale is given with some variation by different authors.

The account of Nicolas Olaus is as follows: Ursula was the only daughter of the king of Britannia; she was courted by Ethereus son of the king of the Angli, who requested her father to betroth her to him, on condition that she should be permitted to travel for three years according to her vow, requiring from Ethereus ten virgins of undoubted chastity for her companions, to each of whom as well as to herself a thousand maidens should be attached. The 11,011 virgins entered the mouth of the Rhine on board eleven large ships, and proceeded to Cologne and Basle, whence they journeyed on foot to Rome, and, having visited all the shrines in that quarter, according to her vow, they returned with Cyriac pope of Rome to Basle and Cologne, where the whole party were intercepted and massacred by the Huns under Giulas.

Gobelin Persona (born AD 1358), in Cosmodrom, fully exposes the absurdity of the story, and shows that there never was such a pope or bishop of Rome, and that such visitations to Rome were unknown at that period. He says the tale was derived from a recluse of Shonaugia about the year 1156; and Pray, trusting to G. Persona, says that Elizabetha Shonaugiensis, in her revelations in the 12th century, first added its present form to the story of the virgins, which is untrue, for she did not even place the event in the age of Attila. It is certain that Ursula’s name was in the calendar of saints before the time of Elizabeth, and that she did not invent the tale, because she mentions having seen what she relates in a vision on the day of the feast of the 11,000 holy virgins.

Cardinal Desericius found at Rome an old and imperfect MS. which refers the event to the year 237, saying that Alexander Severus sent Maximin the Thracian from Illyria to repress the Germans near the Rhine. The former being killed, Maximin proclaimed himself emperor. He employed Julius prefect of the Rhine to besiege Cologne, and, through hatred to the Romans, caused the virgins returning from Rome to be massacred by Julius. It states another account to be that when Maximin moved to the siege of Aquileia, where he perished, Julius collected a band of Suni (a people of Germany mentioned by Pliny, Tacitus, and Cluverius), and slew the virgins, and that Suni was afterwards confounded with Hunni, who were called according to the Latin orthography Chuni. The MS. quotes Lampridius and Julius Capitolinus falsely. Another account in Baronius (Ann. eccles.) refers the tale to the year 381. He says that Gratian having conciliated the Huns, wished that part of them should attack Great Britain with a fleet, and part enter Gaul in concert with the Alans; that Conan, a petty king in Great Britain, accompanied Maximus from thence to Gaul, and persuaded him to locate the British troops in the territory evacuated by the Armoricans, and to send over to Dinoc king of Cornwall for Ursula who was betrothed to Conan, and 11,000 virgins for wives to the soldiers who were to form the new colony; that Gaunus a Hunnish, and Melga a Pictish, pirate intercepted them, and, as they preferred death to the loss of virginity, slew them all. Baronius probably derived the account from Geoffrey of Monmouth, and it originated in the Brut or Chronicle of the kings of Britain, which says that Maximus and Cynan having killed Hymblat king of the Gauls, Maximus gave Armorica to Cynan, who sent to the earl of Cornwall for 11,000 daughters of noble Britons, 60 daughters of foreigners, and servant maids. Their ships were dispersed and some sank. Two were seized by Gwnass and Melwas, the former commander of the Huns, the latter of the Picts, who were at sea with crews in support of Gratian. Another manuscript of the Brut says that Cynan was enamored of the daughter of Dunawd king of Cornwall, and sent for her with a large number of British women.

There appears no reason to doubt the veracity of this narrative, which accounts for the subsequent connection between Britany and Cornwall; and it appears by a letter of St Ambrose to Maximus that the Huns were employed at that time by the Roman emperor; and from another it is evident that the Huns had been desired to enter Gaul, but were diverted by Valentinian. Sigebertus in his chronicle says that in 389 Gnamus and Melga were leaders of the Huns and Britons employed by Gratian against Maximus, and laid waste Great Britain, but were driven into Ireland by a detachment sent by Maximus. 

The Huns as a nation had certainly no navy or maritime habits, but it is not improbable that, when they overran the North, some of them may have adventured as sea-rovers after the example of the Northmen. Vegnier, Vertot, Dubos, Turner, &c deny the migration of Britons into Armorica in the time of Maximin, and maintain that the first Briton who settled there was one Rhivallon who fled from the encroachments of the Saxons in 513. The Loire is the southern boundary of Britany, and the words of Sidonius Apollinaris who wrote in the 5th century, and says that Euric king of Thoulouse was advised to invade and conquer the Britons situated above the Loire, is decisive as to the error of their assertion. Their king appears to have been Riothamus, to whom a letter addressed by Sidonius is extant, and he is mentioned by Jornandes as Riothimus king of the Britons amongst the Bituriges in France. The upshot of the whole appears to be that when Maximus founded a British colony in Britany in the 4th century, some of the wives or intended brides of the colonists were intercepted by a Hunnish and Pictish pirate in the service of Gratian; that in the following century the general of Attila, having had his eyes lacerated by Eutropia, perhaps butchered some women at Cologne, called Colonia Ubiorum; that Ursula the bride of the prince of the British colony, having been killed by the pirates, had been sanctified as a martyr; and that in the 11th or 12th centuries the stories were confounded, the women who were slain having in both instances belonged to a colony, (Colon ia) and suffered for resisting the incontinency of the Huns.

That such is the real history of this fable appears further from this, that Floras, Ado, and Wandelbert, writers of the 8th and 9th centuries on martyrology, state the murder of the virgins at Cologne, but nothing about Great Britain, Ursula, Ethereus, or any names of virgins or anything concerning a pilgrimage to Rome. That Cologne (Agrippina Colonia Ubiorum) was destroyed by the Huns is affirmed by Sigonius, Herm. Fleinius in vit. SS. ad 21 Oct and Harseus ap. Vales. and others besides the Hungarian writers.

57. Return to Pannonia. Attila advances against Italy.

 From Troyes Attila probably returned directly to Pannonia, through either Strasbourg or Basle, continuing his course along the Danube. He passed the ensuing winter at his capital Sicambria, which was perhaps the ancient Buda. It is fabulously stated to have been founded by Antenor the Trojan.

When Attila either built or enlarged Sicambria, he is said to have wished to bestow his own name upon it, and the fatal quarrel between him and his brother is stated to have arisen from a dispute whether it should be called Attila or Budawar. Bleda is by some writers named Buda, and in Scandinavian sagas Buddla is given as the name of the father of Attila, and perhaps it may be considered as having some reference to the name Buddha, the oriental title of Woden or Odin, who seems to have been on some occasions identified with Attila himself in ancient Scandinavian legends. The winter was employed in recruiting his forces, and at the opening of the spring of 453, Attila had under his command a more powerful army, than that with which he had entered Gaul. Early in the season he set this mighty host in motion for the overthrow of Rome. As he mounted on his horse to take the command of this momentous expedition, a crow is said to have perched on his right shoulder, and immediately afterwards to have risen so high into the air, that it could no longer be discerned.

The augury was accepted with joy, and the soldiers anticipated nothing less than the subjugation and plunder of Italy. It will be remembered that the God Odin is fabled to have had two crows or ravens which flew every day round the world to do his missions, and returned at evening to his heavenly mansion; nor were these messengers unknown to the Greek and Roman mythology. Plutarch relates that two crows were sent out by Jupiter, one to the east, the other to the west, and, having flown round the world, met at Delphi. Livy writes that when Valerius, hence called Corvinus, was engaged in contest with a powerful Gaul, a crow lighted on his helmet, and gave him the victory by assailing the eyes of his antagonist; and we know from Prudentius that this was one of the Delphic crows, sacred to Apollo.

It is stated by Strabo that when Alexander the Great was in danger of perishing amidst the sands of the desert, on his way from Parsetonium to the temple of Jupiter Ammon, he was delivered by the guidance of two crows; nor will it be forgotten that ravens brought food to Elijah. With these recollections it seems not improbable that Attila may have practised some imposture in the sight of his army, or at least that such a tale was purposely circulated amongst his followers, to promote the superstitious belief of a communication having been made to him by the Deity. There is much discrepancy in the various accounts of the route by which he entered Italy, but from the enormous bulk of his army it is probable that they may all be founded in truth, and that his army advanced in several columns which were to reunite after having passed the Alps.

The Byzantine emperor Marcian, who had the administration of the provinces on the north-west of the Adriatic, had left their numerous towns ungarrisoned. Attila crossed the Drave and the Save, and the whole of Styria, Carinthia, Illyria, and Dalmatia, was overrun by his forces without any serious opposition. Aetius, who commanded the armies of Rome, whether from treasonable views, or because Valentinian  kept the main forces of the empire for the immediate defence of Rome, whither he had withdrawn from Ravenna upon the alarm of an approaching invasion, certainly made no attempt to oppose the progress of the great antagonist whom he had so lately discomfited on the plain of Châlons; but the whole tenor of his life seems to mark that he must have been consulting his own personal aggrandizement, and utterly disregarding the interests of his country.

We may figure to ourselves the reminiscences of that great and dissembling commander, while, stretching his hopes to the acquisition of power exceeding that of the mightiest emperors, he lay in purposed inactivity before Rome, awaiting the effects of intemperance and disorganization on the force of Attila, and distraction and imbecility on the imperial counsels. We may fancy him bringing to mind the early instructions of his Scythian father, and of his mother who was descended from one of the most illustrious families of Latium; the youthful energy which had led him to excel in every exercise of the field or forest; his first and early military achievements; his sojourn as a hostage in the court of Alaric, and afterwards of Rhuas the Hunnish monarch; the hypocrisy with which he had pretended to embrace Christianity, while his heart was imbued with the leaven of paganism; his initiation of his son Carpileo into all the orgies of idolatry in the capital of Attila; his abode in the palace of John the usurper; his advance at the head of a Hunnish army towards Ravenna, the consternation with which he heard of the sudden destruction of John, and the art with which he made his peace with Valentinian; the military titles which were the reward of his treason, extorted from his imbecile rulers; his command in Gaul, where in three campaigns he rescued Aries from the Visigoths, the Rhine from Clodion, and overwhelmed the Juthungians of Bavaria; the treachery by which he had compromised Boniface, and the ruin he brought thereby on the Roman authority in Africa; his personal conflict with Boniface, and mortification at the only defeat he suffered in his life, and the malignant joy with which he heard of the subsequent death of his rival; his flight from the arm of justice to Ms pagan ally, and the authority which he again obtained through the influence of the enemies of his country; his further successes in Gaul and Burgundy; the art with which he reconciled Theodoric to the Roman arms; the energy with which he inspired his allies; the mighty conflict of Châlons; the skill with which he diverted Torismond from avenging his father, and persuaded Meroveus to remain content with the Parisian kingdom; his secret negotiations with Attila, and all the vast and daring projects which had been since fermenting in his mind. If we place this picture before us, we shall probably have filled up the outline of historical truth with no unreal imaginations.

The heart sickens, when we bring to mind the praises lavished by Gibbon upon this evil man, the outbreaking of whose treachery was probably anticipated by the jealousy of his roaster, and his sudden destruction. The existence of a coin bearing the superscription Flavius Aetius imperator, gives reason to suspect that he had even committed an overt act of treason before he was cut short by Valentinian. 

58. Enters Carnia.

The defence of the Julian Alps, through which the Huns were preparing to enter Italy, was entrusted to a small number of Visigothic auxiliaries under Alaric and Antal or Athal. Emona a flourishing town at the foot of the Alps was evacuated by its inhabitants on the approach of the invaders, by whom it was so completely destroyed, that no author recognizes its existence after that period. The Roman auxiliaries delayed the advance of Attila a little through the Goritian forest; but, after many conflicts, they were forced to abandon the mountain passes, and multitudes of barbarians poured through them with overwhelming impetuosity on the delightful district of Forum Julii. On the first alarm of an intended invasion, Valentinian had taken measures to put the important city of Aquileia in a state to resist the advance of the enemy. About the year 190 before the birth of Christ, the Gauls, having entered Carnia from Germany, had founded a city near the site of Aquileia, which was soon destroyed by the Romans. The Istri invaded the province four years after, whereupon the senate determined to build a town for the defence of the neighboring territory, and in the year 181 before Christ Aquileia was founded by a colony from Rome. Augustus Caesar adorned Aquileia with temples and theatres, fortified the harbor, and paved the roads. He increased its circuit to twelve miles, or, as some say, to fifteen.

The remains of a double wall were to be seen in tolerable preservation in the 17th century, running directly east, eleven miles in length, like two parallel lines, composed of stones piled up, but not cemented by any kind of mortar. Aquileia stood on the banks and at the mouth of the river Natissa, which washed a large part of its wall. Sabellicus supposes that the name of the Sontius was lost after its junction with the Natissa, (whereas on the contrary the modern name of the Natisone is lost in the Isonzo) or else that the Natissa did not in ancient times fall into the Sontius, or that a stream flowed by a subterraneous channel out of the Natissa into the sea, because both Pliny and Strabo mention the mouth of the Natissa.

He adds that in his time only a church of the Virgin Mary, and the huts of a few peasants and fishermen remained on the site of Aquileia; but that many monuments, public ways, magnificent and sumptuous paved roads, aqueducts, sepulchers, and pavements, were still extant, by which the great size and distinguished appearance of the ancient town might be easily ascertained. The territory of Aquileia was called Forum Julii and also Carnia. The Carnians were a people inhabiting the mountains, where they led a pastoral life, their country being too rugged for tillage. In the year of our Lord 167 the physician Galen followed M. Aurelius and L. Commodus to Aquileia, and wrote his commentaries there.

In 361 in the reign of Julian his general Immon besieged Aquileia, and finding that the citizens derived great advantage from the river as a defence and means of obtaining provisions, he discontinued the siege, and employed his army by an immense exertion to excavate a new bed for the river, and conduct it to the sea at a considerable distance from the town. The inhabitants were however supplied by plenty of cisterns and wells, and did not suffer from the loss of water. Aquileia underwent another siege subsequently, when Maximin was discomfited before its walls and put to death by his own troops.

Herodian, who gives an account of this siege, states that Aquileia was a city of the first magnitude, with an abundant population, being situated on the seashore in front of all the Illyrian nations, as the emporium of Italy, delivering to navigators the produce of the continent brought down by land or by the rivers, and furnishing seaborne necessaries, especially wine, to the upper countries, which were less fertile than the southern provinces from severity of climate.

59. Aquileia.

Immediately after crossing the Alps, Attila routed and utterly annihilated the Roman force which was opposed to him in the neighborhood of Tergeste, the modern Trieste, especially the cavalry under Forestus the distinguished ruler of Atestia, the modern Este, and other Italian troops which had been placed there by Menapus the governor of Aquileia to oppose his progress. The Huns then crossed the Sontius, and directed their whole might against Aquileia, which was at that time one of the fairest and most flourishing cities in the world, but was destined to be trampled under the relentless foot of Attila, and to become a desolation and a thing obliterated from the earth. Belenus, Felenus, or Belis had been the tutelary God of Aquileia, and, although the population was now at least nominally Christian, he was still held in great veneration as a guardian saint, if not an actual Deity. Herodian states that, when Maximin was engaged in the fruitless siege of Aquileia, before which he lost his life by the hands of his own soldiers, the besieged were encouraged by the oracles of their peculiar or provincial God Belin, or, if the word be inflected, Belis, whom they worshipped most religiously, and considered to be Apollo. The soldiers of Maximin affirmed that they beheld the likeness of the God in the air, fighting for the town, either superstitiously fancying that they saw something unusual, or making use of the fable to cover their own unwillingness.

Julius Capitolinus says that the discomfiture of Maximin was fortold by the augurs of the God Belenus, who is mentioned also by Ausonius. G. F. Palladio says that, when Maxentius was patriarch, about the year 841, a church and monastery of Benedictine monks was built out of the ruins of the temple of the false God of the province named Bellenus, not far from Aquileia, and was named L'Abbatia della Belligna, but was afterwards abandoned on account of malaria. The name given to the monastery and derived from that of the pagan God, out of the ruins of whose temple it was constructed, is very deserving of notice.

In the same manner the temple of Flora at Brescia became the chapel of St Floranus. These are amongst the numerous instances of the manner in which the Christians compounded with the pagans, not really converting them, but permitting the worship of their favorite idol under the licensed character of a saint. This baneful practice became a main source of the corruption of the church of Rome.

The Christianity of the Aquileians must have continued in a very unsettled state, for Stephen the patriarch in 517 was an Arian, and the epitaph of Elias the patriarch, who removed the see of Aquileia to Grado, states him to have been a Manichaean. Palladius gives eight inscriptions in which Belenus is named. The last is Apollini Beleno C. Aquileien. felix .... He adds that the church of St Felix the martyr stands where the temple of Belenus was; that the natives do not call it Felix, but Felus (non Felicem sed Felum) with an evident allusion, as he observes, to the ancient name of the God. He adds that there is another more certain reminiscence of Belenus, because there still exists a noble abbey of which the tutelary saint is called St. Martin, (and be it recollected that in Latin these saints were actually called Divi) but is universally called Belenus for no other reason than the recollection of the idol, which after so many centuries could not be extinguished by any rites of true religion. In fact it was the corrupt impropriety of those rites, which, by attributing divinity to the saint, nourished and appeared to justify the reminiscence of the idol. Palladius adds that in the first age of Christianity the Aquileians did not desist from worshipping Belenus with magnificent sacrifices, and were so prone to that superstition, that those who were initiated in it were a great obstacle to the spread of Christianity.

Sir John Reresby, who travelled in the time of Cromwell, speaking of Venice says: “The palace of the patriarchs is one of the first, where we saw some ancient statues of the Roman Gods, as of Bacchus, Mercury, Pallas, Venus, and others; as also some little couches or beds on which the Romans used to lie when they made feasts in honour of their Gods. Upon these are engraved certain characters, signifying vows made to the God Bellinus, formerly in great repute amongst the Aquileians, from whom these were taken with many other antiquities, at the razing of one of their chief cities and a Roman colony by Attila king of the Huns”.

This is a curious confirmation of the account given by Sabellicus and H. Palladium that Menapus governor of Aquileia removed the valuables and furniture of the town to the Venetian isle of Gradus before he evacuated it, written by a person who does not appear to have known that Aquileia itself had been sacked by Attila. Joannes Candidas, a lawyer of Venice, whose work was published in 1521, seven years after that of Sabellicus, discredits the accounts of Menapus and Oricus, but without any reason assigned, probably from indiscriminate disgust at the Atestine forgeries. H. Palladius gives a remarkable inscription found at Aquileia, and dated a few years before its destruction. Januarius who thus forewarned the inhabitants of the city of its approaching destruction by the scourge of God was patriarch before Nicetas, and died in 452 before the accomplishment of the visitation he foresaw.

60. Construction of Hunnium.

On the approach of the enemy Menapus ordered a simultaneous sally from two gates of the town, and slew many of the Huns who had advanced incautiously, and put their van to flight. The conflict was continued for many hours, when he was at last forced to give way before the increasing numbers of the enemy, and retreated safely into the town.

Attila fortified his encampment, and on the following day accompanied by a few followers is said to have reconnoitered the town. He had almost reached the river, when Menapus suddenly attacked him from the rear. Attila with difficulty escaped, wounded, and baring lost the ornament of his helmet, and the greater part, if not the whole, of his attendants. After this hazardous encounter he became more cautious, acted more through the agency of his generals, and exposed himself less to personal danger.

According to another account, he had been in the habit of going his rounds alone and disguised, to observe the most assailable points of the city, and having been induced by the apparent silence and loneliness of the wall to approach nearer than usual, he was surprised by a body of armed men, who, having observed him, had sallied through a sewer under the walls, not knowing him to be the great king, but desirous of extorting from a hostile spy the plans of the enemy, and learning what hopes they entertained of capturing the town.

They surrounded him, therefore, wishing to take him alive. He placed his back against a steep bank, so that he could only be assailed in front, and defended himself; but finding the Aquileians, who were not desirous of killing him, remiss in the attack, he suddenly sprang forward with a loud shout and slew two of them, and immediately vaulting over the wall of some buildings near the town, he escaped to his own troops. Those, who bad surrounded him, reported that, while he was looking round and collecting his strength for the assault, the appearance of his eyes was in a manner celestial, and sparks of fire glanced from them, like the energy attributed by heathen writers to the eyes of their Gods. The same anecdote is related by another historian, who states that he was on horseback, and that the circumstance took place near the end of the siege, the day before he observed the departure of the stork. He also speaks of the sparks emitted from his eyes, and says that when two of the assailants had been slain by him, the rest were daunted and suffered him to depart.

Menapus was a man of great activity and valor; he did not permit the Huns to enjoy a moment of rest by day or night, sometimes attacking them by surprise, sometimes openly, intercepting their foragers, capturing their stragglers, and carrying slaughter and tumult into their quarters by night Attila at the commencement of the siege had no instruments for taking towns with him except ladders, either because his people were not skilful in the construction of engines, or because he preferred, through excess of pride, to rely on their personal exertions. A desperate attack was however made by the Huns with ladders, which was repelled by the garrison, who threw stones, fire, and boiling water, on the assailants; Menapus everywhere exerting himself, exhorting and exciting his troops, rewarding valor and punishing remissness. After a great loss of men, Attila was forced to discontinue the assault, but it was renewed day after day with no better success, till at last the Huns found it necessary to make regular and scientific approaches, throwing up a bank and constructing vineo, which at that time were the usual protection of besiegers. At this period of the siege it is probable that Attila undertook the great work at Udine, which was at first called  Hunnium, and afterwards Utinum, as a place of safety for his sick and wounded, and a strong depot, whenever he might advance into Italy. The conical hill which he raised and fortified, remains to this day an imperishable monument of the immensity of his resources.

All writers concerning it agree that it was fortified by Attila during the siege, having been perhaps originally strengthened by Julius Caesar. H. Palladium gives an ample account of it to the following effect Attila raised it up and fortified it as a safe post during the siege, and a point of support for his future operations. During the beleaguerment of Aquileia, the concourse to Hunnium had been so great, that many had built themselves houses of wood and stone along the way to Aquileia. Attila feared that a sally from thence might overpower these defenseless houses, and he abstained from pressing the siege for a few days, while he marked out the site of a town, and surrounded it with a strong rampart and gates protected by towers. After the capture of Aquileia he built a wall on the new rampart, and raised the mound of the Julian fortress, not only the slaves and captives, but all the soldiers, bringing earth in the cavity of their shields, till it was sufficiently increased. H. Palladius had an opportunity of verifying this account, the earth having been excavated to make a tank, when the artificial nature of one side of the mound was evident, from the admixture of worked stones and fragments of tiles with the earth, and also by the discovery of an old helmet; whereas the other side of the mound consisted of dry rock.

61. Capture of Aquileia.

Having thus raised a secure defence for his own troops against the destructive sallies of the garrison, Attila pressed the siege with vigour. At the northern angle of the tower stood a tower of great antiquity, which, being occupied by a strong force, very much molested Attila. Menapus had strengthened its fortifications, and made a wall and ditch in front of it. It was a great object to Attila to gain possession of this outwork, because it commanded the whole town He therefore approached his works to it, and filled the ditch with earth and stones, and tried by his archery to drive the Aquileians from the walls, while he sent light troops across the ditch to break down the wall with hatchets. Having succeeded in clearing the walls by incessant vollies of arrows, they overleaped the fosse, singing barbarian omens of victory. Menapus came immediately to the relief of the tower, and hot iron, molten lead, and blazing pitch, were thrown upon the Huns. Attila goaded on fresh troops to the attack, compelling them not only by words of command, but by the sword, to advance to certain death. But at length they gained a footing on the inner side of the fosse, and began to destroy the wall, where the mortar of the new works was not perfectly hardened, and a narrow breach was made.

Menapus singly resisted in the breach, and sallied through it, followed by a great power of Aquileians, and they forced their way even to Attila himself through the flying enemy, throwing torches and firebrands amongst them. Oricus brother of the governor sallied at the same time through the nearest gate with the Roman cavalry, and made great havoc amongst the enemy, killing all stragglers, and increasing the disorder of the discomfited Huns. Attila immediately ordered his own cavalry to advance, and charged at their head. After a severe conflict near the villa of Mencetius, Oricus was either killed or mortally wounded, and his followers nearly all cut off.

Menapus, wounded, returned through the breach in the outer wall, and some of the Huns forced their way in, but their comrades were beat off by the engines of the garrison, and he got safe into the town. Night succeeded, and the Huns continued to sap the foundations of the tower, but, being only protected by their shields, they were at last forced to fall back with great loss of men. The Aquileians however had sacrificed their whole cavalry and its leader, a loss which outweighed all the previous slaughter of the enemy, and the town was become ruinous and almost untenable. Forestus and many other valiant men had fallen in its defence.

Menapus, therefore, despairing of successful resistance, as the army of Aetius remained inactive behind the Po, and no hopes of relief were held out to him, sent by night the children and women, and the wounded men to the nearest island, Gradus, with the patriarch Nicetas and the church utensils, being confident that the barbarians, who were unskilled in navigation, would not pursue their enemies by sea. He then attempted to repair the fortifications of the town and the wall in front of it.

The third month was now far spent, since Attila had commenced operations against Aquileia, and yet there was no certain prospect of taking the town. His troops murmured, and began to talk of raising the siege, when he observed a stork remove its young from the long contested tower. Thereupon he turned to his soldiers, and, auguring its speedy fell from that circumstance, he exhorted them to make a most vigorous attack upon it. Having been undermined and shaken before, it was at last beat out of the perpendicular by the immense stones thrown by the engines which he had caused to be constructed. It fell in the night time with a tremendous crash, which made the whole population start out of their beds; and, if Attila had immediately attacked the city, he might have taken it in the first moment of confusion.

The obscurity of the night and the ignorance of the Huns as to the actual state of the defenses gave the besieged a short respite, and Menapus quickly constructed an inner fortification with mud and stones, but he was aware that such a defence could not hold out long. At day break, Attila, having seen the state of things, made a bloody attack, and gained possession of the ruins of the tower; and, having driven the Aquileians behind the old wall, he began to strengthen the post, intending to use it for offensive operations against the town. Menapus now despaired of making good the defence of Aquileia; provisions were beginning to fail, and Valentinian had abandoned the outfit of a fleet which he had ordered to be equipped at Ravenna at the commencement of the siege. The governor therefore removed the greater part of his people to Gradus during the night, and placed statues or figures on the walls to look like sentinels, and prevent the enemy from noticing the evacuation of the city by the garrison.

When the day broke, the Huns at first wondered at the unusual silence, but at length observing birds alight on some of the figures, they perceived that the fortifications were abandoned. They immediately forced their way through the new wall, and killed all the men, children, and aged women, who were still remaining in the town; the younger women found in it were reserved for the embraces of the conquerors. Two matrons of high rank, and distinguished for beauty and chastity, having lost their husbands during the siege, had continued day and night mourning over their tombs, and refused to leave them, when the town was evacuated. Their names were Digna and Honoria. When the defences were stormed, to escape the incontinency of the Huns, Digna ascended an adjoining tower, which stood beside the river, and, having veiled her head, she threw herself into it and perished. Honoria, having thrown her arms round the stone sepulcher in which the remains of her husband were interred, clung to it with such perseverance, that she could not be dragged from it, till slain by the swords of the enemy. Thus fell Aquileia, 633 years after its foundation, perhaps the greatest town in the West after Rome.

Almost all the writers, who mention its overthrow, say that it was completely burnt and demolished, so that the barbarians seemed desirous of obliterating every vestige of its existence, but many circumstances contradict that assertion, which has been hastily adopted by modern historians. Aquileia is frequently mentioned as existing after the departure of Attila, and it is certain that the patriarchs continued to dwell there till the time of the invasion of the Lombards, from whom the last calamity of the town proceeded. Justinian, long after the time of Attila, calls Aquileia the greatest of all the cities of the West, as if it were still existing. Many particulars indeed are known concerning Aquileia, down to the period of the removal of the see. Nicetas, the patriarch, returned from Gradus, after the retreat of Attila, and exerted himself to restore the church and the town.

The fugitives began to reassemble from different quarters, and many of them, having been supposed to have died in the war, found their wives provided with other husbands. This led to a correspondence between Nicetas and Pope Leo, the patriarch complaining that many of the women had remarried, knowing that their husbands were in captivity, and not expecting them to return. Leo exculpated the women who really believed their husbands to be dead, and condemned the others as guilty of adultery, but he ordered all to return to their first husbands under pain of excommunication. He directed those who had been baptized by heretics, not having been before baptized, to be confirmed by imposition of hands as having taken the form of baptism without the sanctification, but he forbad rebaptism. The heretics alluded to were the Sabellians and Arians, of whom there were many in the army of Attila, and who appear to have made common cause with the pagans. The whole letter of Leo is extant, and proves that Nicetas did not fall, as has been asserted, in the siege. He died about the year 463, and his statue and epitaph were placed in the patriarchal hall at Udine.

62. Surrender of Ravenna. Marullus the Calabrian poet.

During the siege detachments from the army of Attila carried devastation far and wide in the adjoining territory, and treason was at work to betray into his hands several of the cities of Italy. Treviso, then Tarvisium, is said to have been yielded to the Huns through the means of its bishop Helinundus, who was probably inclined to the Arians, and of Araicus Tempestas, and Verona to have been given up by Diatheric or Theodoric, who has been celebrated in various Scandinavian and German romances under the name of Thidrek of Bern, meaning Verona, and has been much confounded with Theodoric the great, afterwards king of Italy, who was not then born. After the demolition of Aquileia, Attila marched immediately against Concordia, a flourishing town, of which the ruler Janus (who has become the hero of an Italian, perhaps originally a Provencal, romance) had probably molested him during the siege. Janus, with his wife Ariadne, fled to the nearest islands, and the conqueror entered and annihilated the deserted city. One church, that of St Stephen, and a few cottages were the only remains of Concordia at the end of the 15th century. 

Attila next exterminated Altinum. Patavium (Padua), Cremona, Vincentia (Vicenza), Mediolanum (Milan), Brixia (Brescia), and Bergomum (Bergamo), were successively captured. The fugitives from Aquileia had established themselves in the isle of Gradua, the Concordians fled to Crapulse, afterwards Caorli, the Altinates to Torcellum, Maiorbium, and Amorianum, and the Paduans to Rivus altus, which is now nearly the centre of Venice, and is recognized in the modern name of the Rialto.

The foundations of the bright city of the waters was then laid, upon the sedgy islands that fringed the Adriatic, by the refugees from the various towns of Italy that were dismantled by the barbarian. Valentinian had fled from his palace at Ravenna to the protection of the eternal city, and Attila, while besieging Padua, or at a later period of his progress, is said to have received John the Arian bishop of Ravenna, who came with hus clergy in white robes to solicit his mercy for their town and its population, and perhaps to offer him the assistance of the Arians to subjugate all Italy without a conflict, if he would adopt their faith. He is said to have answered that he would spare the town, but would throw down their gates and trample them under the feet of his cavalry, that the inhabitants might not in their vanity imagine their own strength to have been the cause of their preservation.

On his march to Concordia, Attila is said to have met some mountebanks, who, in the hope of obtaining money, jumped with singular skill and agility amongst some swords which were artfully arranged. Thinking the employment despicable for men who had evidently sufficient bodily power and activity to use the sword efficiently in warfare, he ordered them to be covered with armour and to imitate him in vaulting on horseback with the weight of metal on them, which they proved unable to perform; neither could they bend the bow properly, nor fix the arrow in the string. He therefore ordered their well-fed bodies to be reduced by spare diet and exercise, and enrolled them amongst his recruits.

After the capture of Padua, a distinguished poet named Marullus the Calabrian, and who was probably the same person whose poem detailing the latter part of the siege of Troy which had been “left untold by the blind bard of Greece”, has descended to us under the name of Quintus Calaber, recited a poem in his praise, which gave him such offence, because it referred his origin to the gods of Greece and Rome, that he ordered it to be burnt and the poet put to death, but he remitted the latter part of the sentence. This anecdote, which was probably extracted from the MS. of Priscus, has been misunderstood by those who imagined from it that he repudiated divine honors, whereas the offence was the connecting him with a worship he detested, and with Bacchus or some other deity of the Pelasgians. Herodotus relates that Scylas, king of the Scythians, was beheaded by his own subjects in Borysthenes, and his palace, which was adorned with marble sphinxes and gryphons, fulminated and burnt by the god of the Scythians, because he adopted the Bacchic rites, which were held in abhorrence amongst them. That furnishes an explanation to the indignation of Attila.

63. Florence. Brescia.

During the attack of Florence, a statue of the god Mars, which notwithstanding the edict of Caesar still occupied an elevated station in the town, having been, however, removed from the temple which was dedicated to St. John, fell into the Arno, probably knocked down by the engines of the besiegers. At Vincentia Attila met with a stout resistance, and, finding his men hesitate, he leaped into the fosse, and wading through the water, which was breast-deep, led them to the assault, and was the first who scaled the rampart. But at Brixia he met with more dangerous opposition, and received a wound in the hand, which induced him to consign that city to more complete destruction than the rest of the conquered places. Yet Brixia was a town in which paganism appears to have lingered particularly. The temple of Flora had been converted into a church dedicated to St Floranus, to accommodate the heathens who adhered to their tutelary divinity, furnishing, like the dedication of the temple of Belis, or Felus, to St. Felix at Aquileia, one of the many instances in which the Church of Rome compromised with the pagans, whom it admitted within its pale without really converting them from idolatry, thus laying the foundation of its own corruption; but, in the Triumpline valley hard by, the iron statue of the god Tyllinus had escaped amidst the general destruction of idols, and remained after the days of Attila. Milan submitted to the conqueror, and a curious anecdote is related m a fragment of Priscus, for the preservation of which we are indebted to his having used an uncommon word for a bag, which caused it to be quoted by the lexicographer Suidas. Attila having observed in Milan a picture of the Roman emperors seated upon a throne of gold, and Scythians prostrate before them, ordered himself to be painted on a throne, and the Roman emperors bearing sacks on their shoulders and pouring out gold from them at his feet. After inflicting this lesson upon the pride of the Caesars he continued his victorious career, plundering Ticinum (Pavia), Mantua, Placentia, Parma, and Ferrara, and, as Jornandes asserts, demolished almost all Italy, which gives some color to the improbable assertion of the Hungarian writers, that he despatched his general Zowar to ravage Apulia, Calabria, and the whole coast of the Adriatic, destroying a town named Catona, as having been founded by Cato. Geminianus, bishop of Mutina (Modena), afterwards sanctified, is said to have played the same game as Lupus and John of Ravenna, and by submission to have conciliated the favor of the invader and saved the town. Attila is particularly stated to have laid waste Emilia (which must mean the country traversed by the via Emilia, between Aquileia and Rimini, Pisa and Tortona) and Marchia, which has been explained to signify the territory of Bergamo, but was in truth used to designate the March of Ancona. Ferrara is said to have been destroyed, though, perhaps, at an earlier period of the campaign.

64. Embassy from Rome.

Thus far had Attila proceeded without meeting any material obstacle after the reduction of Aquileia, but Aetius had probably a considerable force under his command for the protection of Rome, and, since the Huns had crossed the Po, he had not ceased to hang upon their flanks, and to take every opportunity of cutting off their stragglers. A course of desultory victories and continual plunder had probably contributed to relax the discipline and diminish the numbers of the army of Attila. He deliberated whether or not to proceed against Rome, and such deliberations generally end by the adoption of the weaker counsel.

Evil forebodings had become prevalent amongst his vassal kings, who represented to him that Alaric had not long survived the invasion and plunder of the Romulean capital, and the mind of Attila appears at that time to have been influenced by a vague superstitious apprehension. He halted, as the later authorities assert near the confluence of the Mincio and the Po, but it has been presumed from the relation of Jornandes who names the place Acroventus Mambuleius, where the Mincio is forded by travelers, that it must have been where the great Roman road crossed the river at Ardelica, the modern Peschiera, near the point where it issues from the Benacus or Lago di Garda, close to the farm of Virgil, and the Sirmian peninsula of Catullus. It is however by no means improbable that the river might have been forded at some place to the south of Mantua, though the opinion of Maffei has led to the supposition that the place designated was close to Peschiera. Governolo, near the confluence of the Mincio and the Po, is a much more probable situation for the halt of Attila, after having ravaged the southern banks of the Po; for if he had actually fallen back as far as the Benacus before he received the embassy, he must have previously abandoned the prosecution of his enterprise, which is not even surmised by any writer on the subject.

While he was hesitating, whether to advance and attempt the complete subjugation of Rome, or to give way to the forebodings of his advisers, Zowar is said to have returned with great plunder from the coast of the Adriatic, and at the same moment an embassy from Valentinian, who had despatched Leo the pope or bishop of Rome, Avienus a man of consular dignity, and the praetorian prefect Trigetius, arrived at the camp of Attila. Leo is stated by his biographer and some other writers to have thrown himself at the feet of Attila, and to have delivered a speech of the most abject and unconditional submission. He is made to say, after the manner of Lupus, that evil men had felt his scourge, and to pray that the suppliants who addressed him might feel his clemency.

That the senate and Roman people, once conquerors of the world, but now defeated, humbly asked pardon and safety from Attila the king of kings; that nothing amid the exuberant glory of his great actions, could have befallen him more conducive to the present luster of his name or to its future celebrity, than that the people, before whose feet all nations and kings had lain prostrate, should now be suppliant before his. That he had subdued the whole world, since it had been granted to him to overthrow the Romans, who had conquered all other nations. That they prayed him who had subdued all things to subdue himself; that, as he had surpassed the summit of human glory, nothing could render him more like to Almighty God, than to will that security should be extended through his protection to the many whom he had subdued.

The letters however of Leo, which are extant, upon various subjects chiefly connected with church discipline, seem to testify a right-judging and upright mind, and render it very improbable that he should have debased himself and the government which he then represented by such mean and contemptible adulation. Whether he addressed the mighty Hun in the language of abject submission, or strove to conciliate him by a more rational and dignified appeal, he was completely successful in obtaining the object of his mission.

The king is said to have stood silent and astonished, moved by veneration at the appearance, and affected by the tears, of the pontiff; and, when he was afterwards questioned by his vassals, why he had conceded so much to the entreaties of Leo, to have answered that he did not reverence him, but had seen another man in sacerdotal raiment, more august in form and venerable from his grey hairs, who held a drawn sword, and threatened him with instant death, unless he granted everything that Leo demanded. The vision was reputed to be that of St Peter, and according to Nicolas Olaus he saw two figures, who were reported to have been St. Paul and St Peter.

This celebrated anecdote, the memory of which is said to have been made illustrious by the works of Raphael and Algarve, is to be looked upon as an ecclesiastical fiction, but Attila seems to have been alarmed by a superstitious dread of the fate which overtook Alaric speedily after the subjugation of Rome. A joke is related as having been prevalent against Attila amongst his followers, founded on the names of the two bishops Lupus and Leo, that as in Gaul he had yielded to the wolf, he now gave way before the lion. He had probably more weighty reasons for his retreat, than the venerable aspect of the lion, the visions of the apostles, or the fate of the Gothic conqueror. His army was enervated by the sack of the Italian towns, and a grievous pestilence had thinned its ranks; the devastation of the country had rendered it difficult to obtain subsistence, and his troops were suffering from famine, as well as disease; the recollection of Radagais, who had not long before in the plenitude of his power been starved into unconditional surrender on the heights of Faesulae, may have furnished him with rational grounds of apprehension, while the army of Aetius, fresh and unbroken, was hanging upon his skirts, intercepting his foragers, cutting off his stragglers, and watching opportunity to inflict some more important injury.

An ample donation of gold, according to the base practice of that period, was probably added to the causes which induced Attila to forego for that season at least the attack of Rome; and he consented to withdraw his forces, threatening however that he would return in the ensuing spring to inflict the most determined vengeance on the Romans, unless Honoria and her portion of the imperial inheritance were conceded to him. Cassiodorius and Carpileo probably transacted the details of the treaty after the first audience of the ambassadors.

Theodoric king of Italy, in a rescript to the Roman senate, announcing the elevation of M. A. Cassiodorius to the patriciate, asserts that the conclusion of the peace was mainly attributable to the skill and intrepidity of the elder Cassiodorius his father. He speaks in high praise of him, saying that his mental qualities were equal to those of Aetius, and that on account of his wisdom and glorious exertions on behalf of the state he was associated with that distinguished commander, and was therefore deputed with Carpileo son of Aetius to “Attila the armipotent”. “Fearless (continues Theodoric) he beheld the man who was dreaded by the empire; confiding in the truth he disregarded his terrible and threatening countenance. He found the king haughty, but left him appeased; and so completely overthrew his calumnious allegations by the force of truth, that he disposed him to seek conciliation, whose interest was not to be at peace with a state so wealthy. By his firmness he raised up the timid party, nor could those be looked upon as faint-hearted, who were defended by such fearless negotiators. He returned with a treaty, which the nation had despaired of obtaining”. Theodoric bears no mean testimony to the magnanimity of Attila, when he asserts, that the truth spoken by a foe could disarm him in the full career of his hostility. Cassiodorius, to whom we are indebted for the preservation of Theodoric’s account of his father’s distinguished ability in conducting the negotiation, says in his chronicle that pope Leo made the peace under the direction of Valentinian.

65. Honoria. Retreat of Attila.

Whether or not Honoria was afterwards delivered up to Attila is a point that admits of doubt, though no mention of her having been given to him is made by the Roman writers; but the Hungarians speak of a son Chaba borne to him by Honoria after his death. Nothing is recorded concerning her after this period, and she most probably died in prison, unless, having been sent to him, she finished her life amongst the heathens.

She was not amongst the ladies of the imperial family whom Genseric afterwards carried off from the sack of Rome to Africa. The steps which had been taken on the discovery of the correspondence of Honoria with Attila are buried in oblivion with the lost work of Priscus, but the expression of Jornandes that Attila asserted that Honoria had done (or, strictly, admitted) nothing which should disqualify her from marrying him, induces me to believe that she was immediately compelled to undergo a mock ceremony of marriage, probably never consummated, for the purpose of preventing her union with him. 

A medal has been preserved, and engraved by Angeloni, in which she bears the title of Augusta, which was perhaps struck at this time to appease and gratify Attila, for at no other time was Valentinian likely to have permitted it. After the pacification had been concluded between Attila and the Roman legates, he fell back with his whole force towards Pannonia. At the passage of the Lycus or Lech, a fanatical woman, perhaps one of the prophetesses who are described as always accompanying the Hunnish armies, is said to have suddenly crossed his path, and, seizing hold of the bridle of his horse, to have three times cried out, “Back, Attila!”, but notwithstanding that warning he continued his course to his Hungarian capital, from whence he was never again to take the field against the Romans.

CHAPTER IX

Death of Attila