Attila and the Huns

In the ruin of the secular Roman administration which the last fifty years had seen, in the terror which the threat of Attila’s armies upon the Rhine roused everywhere in the great and noble province of Gallia, it would appear that many, if not all, of the cities still Roman, and above all Christian, found in some constant and dominating mind a substitute for, and a successor to, their ruined institutions. We see this in Tongres, in Metz, in Rheims, in Orleans, above all we see it, as we might expect, in Paris. The fate of these cities, the way they met their fate is illuminating; and if it is inexplicable and to our scepticism almost incredible, it is none the less certainly indicative of the condition, spiritual and political, of that still Roman society. It was Christianity which defeated Attila in Gaul as certainly as it alone was able later to turn him back from the destruction of Italy. The real victory, in spite of the great strokes of Aetius, was a spiritual victory; a victory of Christianity over heathenism.

I forbear to draw the parallel with the struggle in which we are at present engaged. Happily the most striking fact of the present contest is that the Allies have at once seen through and cast from them the brutal and hopeless philosophy of blasphemy and bosh, of “necessity” and “frightfulness” which is the most violent form of atheism that has yet attacked European society. Germany will perish by her “Kultur” as certainly as the Huns did by their heathenism. Indeed, in action they are identical and rest upon the same hopelessness, the denial of the divinity not of God only but of man.

That the defeat of Attila was a Christian victory is obvious at once, if we follow his footsteps. He began his attack from the crossing of the Rhine at Confluentes and fell upon Belgic Gaul. Metz fell. “On the very vigil of the blessed Easter,” says Gregory of Tours, “the Huns crossing out of Pannonia, burning as they came, entered Metz. They gave the city to the flames, massacred the people, putting all to the sword, killing even the priests before the altar of God. In all the city nothing remained save the oratory of the blessed Stephen the Protomartyr and Levite.” He asserts further that this chapel was spared only because St. Stephen himself invoked the aid of SS. Peter and Paul, who here already had superseded Romulus and Remus, it might seem, as the representatives of Rome, as Rome herself was about to become less the capital of the world than of the Catholic Church.

All Lorraine lay under the torch of the Hun. He passed on into Champagne. Rheims fell. The inhabitants had fled to the woods. St. Nicasius the bishop was cut down before the altar as he recited a part of the 118th Psalm: Adhaesit pavimento anima mea; vivifica me secundum verbum tuum. His sister, named Eutropia, fearing the brutality of the invaders, struck the murderer in the face and was cut down with her brother. Suddenly, we read, the church was filled with a strange thunder, the Huns fled in superstitious fear, deserting the half-destroyed town. On the following day the inhabitants returned to their ruins.

From Rheims the Hunnish flood swept on to St. Quentin and even to Tongres; all northern Gaul from the Marne to the Rhine was laid waste, everyone was a fugitive,—ruined, helpless. The peoples of the smaller towns fled first to the greater, and then with the peasants fled into the hills and the woods. It is in the fate of one of these little towns later to be so famous, indeed the capital of the West, Lutetia or Paris, that we have the most characteristic as it is the most amazing episode of the defence.

Of St. Geneviève’s life we know little apart from the legend which has transformed the wonderful reality into a delightful tale. St. Germanus of Auxerre found her under the hill of Valerian, a little girl of seven years, and his delight in her was but the first example of the influence her character was to have upon men and events. She was the spirit of Christian France incarnate. Joan of Arc is, as it were, but a repetition of her, and over that later and more famous maid she has this advantage; she was of Paris when Paris only had meaning, as it were, in her and her act.

Of her legend one can never have enough; but here I will only give that part of it which concerns this moment. “Tidings came to Paris,” says Voragine, who has summed up in his marvellous narrative all the earlier hagiographers: “Tidings came to Paris that Attila the felon king of the Huns had enterprised to destroy and waste parts of France and to subdue them to his domination. The burgesses of Paris, for great dread that they had, sent their goods into other cities more sure. St. Geneviève warned and admonished the good women of the town that they should wake in fastings and in orisons by which they might assuage the ire of Our Lord and eschew the tyranny of their enemies, like as did sometime the holy women Judith and Esther. They obeyed her and were long and many days in the church in wakings, fastings and in orisons. She said to the burgesses that they should not remove their goods, nor send them out of the town of Paris, for the other cities that they supposed should be more sure, should be destroyed and wasted, but by the Grace of God Paris should have no harm. And some had indignation at her and said that a false prophet had arisen and appeared in their time and began among them to ask and treat whether they should not drown her or stone her. Whilst they were thus treating, as God would, came to Paris after the decease of St. Germain, the archdeacon of Auxerre, and when he understood that they treated together of her death he came to them and said: ‘Fair sirs, for God’s sake do not this mischief, for she of whom ye treat, St. Germain witnesseth that she was chosen of God in her mother’s belly and lo, here be letters that he hath sent to her in which he recommendeth him to her prayers.’ When the burgesses heard these words recited by him of St. Germain and saw the letters, they marvelled and feared God and left their evil counsel and did no more thereto. Thus Our Lord kept her from harm, which keepeth always them that be his, and defendeth after that the apostle saith, and for her love did so much that the Tyrants approached not Paris, Thanks and glory to God and honour to the Virgin.”

That is, as I say, the most characteristic and the most significant episode, as it is the most amazing, of the defence. Paris was not to fall, was not even to be attacked. Attila was surfeited with destruction and loot, he was forced now to concentrate his attention upon the attack on the Visigoths of the south lest Rome and Aetius should stand in his way and imperil his whole campaign. His plan must be to defeat the Visigoths before he was forced to face Aetius coming up out of Italy, and with this on his mind he set out from Metz with his main army, passed through Toul and Rheims, which were gutted, through Troyes and Sens, which he was in too great haste to destroy, and over the Sologne, held then by his ally the King of the Alans, Sangibanus, and marched directly upon Orleans. That march represented the work of a whole month. He left Metz in the early days of April, he arrived before Orleans in the early days of May.

Orleans stands upon the most northern point of the Loire, the great river which divides Gaul east and west into a northern and a southern country. It has been the point around which the destinies of the Gauls have so often been decided—one has only to recall the most famous instance of all, the deliverance under Joan of Arc—that it is without surprise we see it fulfilling its rôle in the time of Attila also. From time immemorial, before the beginning of history, it had been an important commercial city, for it stood not only on one of the greatest and most fruitful rivers of western Europe, but, as I have said, upon the marches of the north and south, whose gate it was. No one could pass without its leave, at least in safety. Anciently it was known as Genabum and there had been planned and conceived the great revolt which so nearly engulfed Julius Cæsar, who burnt it to the ground. It stood then, as later when it rose again, upon the northern bank of the river and was joined with the south by a great bridge. The resurrection after that burning was not long delayed, but it seems to have been less magnificent than might have been expected and it certainly suffered much from war, so that in 272, in the time of Aurelian, it was rebuilt with a wall about it, and for this cause took the name of the Emperor. Times, however, were sadly changed with the great city when Attila came into Gaul. Much certainly was in ruin, the municipal government in full decadence or transition and it was therefore with a dreadful fear in her heart that Orleans watched the oncoming of the Huns. Nevertheless the city put herself into a state of defence. The first direct assault upon her was made by that Sangibanus, King of the Alans, and Attila’s ally, who requested to be allowed to garrison it. Orleans refused and closed her gates. At the same time she sent forth her bishop (and this is as significant of the true state of affairs of government in Gaul as the facts about Tongres, Rheims and Paris) into the south, still Roman, to Arles to learn when Aetius might be expected in relief and how far the Visigoths would move, not for their own defence only, but against the common enemy.

Anianus, for such was the bishop’s name, thus appears as the representative, the ambassador and the governor of the city. In Arles, to his delight, he found not only a secure and even splendid Roman government, but the great general himself, Aetius, who received him with impress. Anianus urged the necessity of an immediate assistance. He reckoned that it would be possible to hold out till the middle of June, but no longer. Aetius heard him patiently and promised that by then he would relieve the city. Anianus was not too soon, he had scarce returned to Orleans when Attila began the siege.

It will be asked, and with reason, why it was that Rome had waited so long before interfering to defend her great western province against this “wild beast”? Why had Aetius not marched out of Italy at the head of his armies months before? why had he waited till all the North was a ruin before he carried the eagles over the Alps and confronted this savage and his hordes with the ordered ranks of the army of civilisation? The answer may be found in the war we are fighting to-day against a similar foe. The French failed to defend the North against the modern Attila because they were too long uncertain which way he would come and where he would strike hardest. They could not be sure which was the decisive point of the German attack. This it was that kept so great a proportion of their armies in Alsace and upon that frontier. They credited the German with more subtlety than he possessed. They failed to grasp the gigantic simplicity of the Barbarian plan; the mighty hammer-stroke that shattered Belgium and plunged in to destroy all the North of France. They looked for something less blindly brutal and more wise. They could not believe that the German would destroy his whole case and outrage the moral consciousness of the world by violating the neutrality of Belgium. They failed to comprehend the essential stupidity of the Barbarian. They were wrong.

Aetius was wrong also, but with perhaps more excuse. He could not make up his mind where the real attack of Attila upon the Empire was to be delivered. What if the descent upon Gaul were but a feint and Italy were the real objective, Lombardy the true battlefield? There was this also; in Africa, Genseric, Attila’s ally, waited and threatened to descend upon the coast. Aetius overrated the intelligence of his enemy as much as did Joffre. Neither understood the force which opposed him, which it was to be their business and their glory to meet and to break.

Like Joffre, too, when Aetius at last found himself face to face with the reality of the situation he must have dared only not to despair. The successes of the Huns had decided the Visigoths to remain on the defence within their own confines; they refused to attack. Everywhere the Roman delay had discovered treason among the tribes who should have been their allies against a common foe. Aetius could only not despair. He addressed the Visigoths, though perhaps with more right, much as we might address to-day the Americans. “If we are beaten you will be the next to be destroyed; while if you help us to win yours will be the glory.” The Visigoths replied as America is doing to-day: “It is not our business; see you to it.”

They were wrong, the victory of Rome was as necessary for the future as our victory is to-day.

Much indeed was already achieved to that end by the mere presence of Aetius in Gaul. Suddenly the whole country was changed, everywhere the peoples sprang to arms, the noble and the peasant, the bourgeois of the cities, the bond and the free. From Armorica came an heroic company, the Ripuarian Franks and the Salian Franks having seen the ruin of the Roman cities of the country they had been permitted to occupy, the Burgundians also returned to, if they had indeed ever left, their old allegiance. So successful at last was the diplomacy of Rome that when even Sangibanus appeared Aetius feigned to be ignorant of his treason. The great general prepared with a good heart for the attack, but was determined to do everything possible to mobilise the Visigoths with his other forces. It was with this object that at last he sought the aid of Avitus, the senator, a very great Gaulish nobleman who lived in the city of Clermont, the chief town of the Auvergne.

In Avitus we have a figure which at once arrests our attention amid all the welter of Barbarians of which even Gaul was full. In him we see, and are assured, that the civilisation of Rome was still a living thing in the West, that it had not been overwhelmed by savages or lost in a mist of superstition. Avitus indeed seems to have stepped suddenly out of the great Roman time, he reminds us of what we have learned to expect a Roman noble of the time of Marcus Aurelius, or for that matter of St. Ambrose, to be. In him we see one we can greet as a brother; we should have been able to discuss with him the decline of the Empire. A rich man, coming of a noble family which for long had enjoyed the highest honour and the heaviest official responsibility, a scholar, a connoisseur, above all a somewhat bored patriot, he was also a soldier distinguished for his personal courage. He had already in 439 been successful in arranging a treaty for Rome with the Visigoths, and it was to him in this hour of enormous peril that Aetius turned again. He found him in his beautiful, peaceful and luxurious villa of Avitacum amid the foothills of the mountains of Auvergne, living as so many of our great nobles of the eighteenth century lived, half a farmer, half a scholar, wholly epicurean and full of the most noble self-indulgence, surrounded by his family, his son and daughter, and his friends, poets and scholars and delightful women. His son Ecdicius was the heir both of his wealth and his responsibilities, his daughter Papianella had married Sidonius Apollinaris of Lyons, a man already famous as a poet and coming of a distinguished Gallo-Roman family. It was this man who in the moment of crisis appeared on behalf of civilisation at the Visigoths’ Court—we could not have had a more noble representative.

His mission was wholly successful; but the time spent in showing the Visigoths where their interests lay was to cost Orleans dear. The devoted city wholly surrounded and every day submitted to the assaults and the clouds of arrows of the Huns, hearing no news of any relief, was in despair. In vain the Bishop Anianus went in procession through the streets, and even among the troops on the ramparts, bearing the relics of his church; they called him traitor. Still firm in his faith in God and in the promise of Aetius, daily he made men climb the last high tower in expectation of deliverance. None came, no sign of the armies of Aetius could be discerned. Day after day the mighty roads southward lay in the sun white and empty of all life. At last he sent by stealth a messenger to Aetius with this message: “My son, if you come not to-day it will be too late.” That messenger never returned. Anianus himself began to doubt and at last heard counsels of surrender almost without a protest; indeed consented himself to treat with the Huns. But Attila was beside himself at the length of the resistance, he would grant no terms. Nothing remained but death or worse than death.

Upon the following morning, the week having been full of thunder, the first rude cavalry of the Huns began to enter the city through the broken gates. The pillage and massacre and rape began, and, as to-day in Belgium, we read with a certain order and system. Nothing was spared, neither the houses of the citizens, nor their holy places, neither age nor sex. It seemed as though all would perish in a vast and systematic vandalism and murder.

Suddenly a cry rose over the noise of the butchery and destruction. The Eagles! The Eagles! And over the mighty bridge that spans the Loire thundered the cavalry of Rome, and the tumultuous standards of the Goths. They came on; nothing might stop them. Step by step they won the bridge head, they fought upon the shore, in the water, through the gates. Street by street, fighting every yard, the Imperial troops pushed on, the glistening eagles high overhead. House by house, alley by alleyway was won and filled with the dead; the Huns broke and fled, the horses stamped out their faces in the byways, in the thoroughfares there was no going, the Barbarian carrion was piled so high; Attila himself was afraid. He sounded the retreat.

That famous and everlasting day was the 14th of June, for Aetius had kept his word. Orleans had begun the deliverance of Gaul and of the West.