If, in the battle of Chalons, Attila and his Huns had been victorious over the combined forces of the semi-Christianized Visigoths under Theoderic and the Romans under ?tius—then Hungvari influence rather than Teutonic would have dominantly determined the progress of the civilized world.
Rome had fallen: effete in her withered hand lay the rod of empire: and swarming about her, now quarrelling among themselves and with her, now fraternizing, but always more or less in awe of her prostrate majesty were her barbarous children—Franks, Burgundians, Alans, Lombards, Gauls, Alemanni, Visigoths, and Ostrogoths. These had known Rome in the hour of her pride and power; they revered the Rome that was for the sake of the Rome that had been; they had imbibed something of her culture, her military discipline, her laws, her religion. Semi-civilized, semi-Christianized, with the bold Teutonic virtues yet pristine from the Black Forests of Germany,—they were the possible material of an excellence surpassing that of Rome, even when Rome could boast of excellence.
But about 450 A. D. hordes, innumerable hordes, velut unda supervenit undam (even as wave upon wave) of hideously ugly, lithe, little, wiry, imp-like men poured into Europe from the Asiatic lands north of the Black Sea. By their numbers, their lightning-like rapidity, their uncanny appearance, and their brute ferocity, they quickly swept the countries before them, put to flight the Alans, the Ostrogoths, and other tribes dwelling along the course of the Danube, and finally under their terrible[49] leader Atzel (Attila), Scourge of God, they confronted the civilized and semi-civilized world in arms on the plain of Chalons.
Battle.
From early dawn even until darkness frowned over the field the blood-feast flowed: and Death was satiated.
Attila withdrew to his camp. He left an effective guard around his wagons and outposts and made every thing ready for a prolonged and obstinate resistance to the attack anticipated at early dawn. Nevertheless he built for himself a massive funeral pile, placed upon it his most valued treasures and his favorite wives, and was fully prepared and resolute to apply the torch, ascend the pyre, and so perish in the flames—should defeat fall to his fortune on the following day.
Morning dawned. The awful work of death on the preceding day appalled both armies; miles upon miles of outstretched plain lay covered with carnage; the all-night-writhing mounds of men were ominously still. Sullenly did foe gaze upon foe; but each recoiled from renewal of the slaughter.
Still the advantage was with the allies; for Attila, so late the fierce aggressor, was barricaded in his camp—tho’ grimly awaiting attack indeed, and prepared to resist to the end and die like a lion in his den.
Did the Romans know of that funeral pile? They may not, indeed, have known the peculiar manner in which Attila would seek death, but they knew that he would die by his own hand—if the worst came. Cato had done so and Varus and Brutus and Cassius and Hannibal and Anthony and Cleopatra—ad infinitum.
Addison, in his tragedy Cato, has graphically portrayed the conflicting thoughts and emotions in the mind of a man who[50] feels that life cannot longer be borne and yet shrinks back from the horror and the dread unknown.
Cato had lost the battle of Utica. He had been true to Pompey, he had fought the last battle for the cause of Pompey—and lost. And C?sar was indeed god of this world, and the morrow held no place on all this so vast earth for Cato; this lost-battle night must end it all. He read Plato’s discourse on the immortality of the soul, and in the lines of Addison, thus soliloquized:
“It must be so. Plato, thou reason’st well:
Else whence this pleasing hope, this fond desire,
This longing after immortality?
Or whence this secret dread and inward horror
Of falling into naught? Why shrinks the soul
Back on herself and startles at destruction?
’Tis the divinity that stirs within us;
’Tis Heaven itself that points out an hereafter,
And intimates eternity to man.
* * * * *
The soul, secured in her existence, smiles
At the drawn dagger and defies its point.
The stars shall fade away, the sun himself
Grow dim with age and nature sink in years;
But thou shalt flourish in immortal youth
Unhurt amidst the war of elements,
The wreck of matter and the crash of worlds.”
But Attila did not mount his funeral pile. The day passed without attack upon Attila’s formidable position. King Theodoric lay dead upon the plain and his son Prince Thorismund, who had distinguished himself in the battle, was victoriously proclaimed King of the Visigoths.
?tius, Valentinian’s able general, held in leash both the Romans and the Visigoths even while Attila slowly broke up camp and withdrew in long lines leading northward.
Effect.
The effect was that of victory for the allies. Rome was saved from a fresh infusion of barbarism whilst her Teutonic element[51] was still semi-barbarous. The German characteristics—love of liberty, independence, and reverential regard for women—thus dominated the Christian civilization which now began to flourish vigorously out from the decadence of pagan Rome.
If, as Byron says,
“Cervantes laughed Spain’s chivalry away,”
then also it may be said that Lucan laughed Rome’s gods and goddesses away. The laugh is the most insidiously potent of all destructive forces when the laugher is loved and the times are attuned to hear. Not satire, not personal bitterness, not even the withering invectives of a Juvenal are as sweepingly effective as the quills of ridicule, the inescapable miasma of the laugh. Once let the grin distort the frown of Zeus and majesty trembles, awe smiles, reverence dies.
And so the pagan deities were dead; their temples empty and meaningless; and thundering Jove and jealous Juno and murderous Mars and all the other deifications of the all too human heart of man were impotently silent under the spell of the solemn central figure of the new religion—Christ on the Cross.
And the Church in the name and with the power of that sublime Sufferer taught the reverse of all that paganism had taught; of all that the world had hitherto heard and heeded; of all that the all too human heart of man held as dearest and best. “Love your enemies,” said the Church to the men who had fought at Chalons. “Blessed are the merciful, Blessed are the clean of heart, Blessed are the peacemakers”, reiterated the Church to her semi-barbarous children. And they understood only in part, and they did deeds of appalling atrocity even while acquiescing to her teachings: for the will to do good was, indeed, emotionally present with them, but the power so to do failed them crucially. Yet their sins were of surface-passions[52] not of the inmost heart; for they were ever in reverential awe of the sublime Sufferer on the Cross; for he spoke as no man ever yet had spoken, and he lived what he said, and he died praying for his murderers: and all this is not of man—as none knew better than they who knew the naked human heart.
Attila.
History has not done justice to Attila. History has not done justice to any lost cause. For the winners, not the losers, are the writers as well as the makers of history, and all forces combine to make them unjust to the lost cause.
Herodotus gives us the story of Marathon, Thermopyl?, Plat?a, Salamis; Persia had no Herodotus: Homer extols the exploits of the Grecian army, the valor of Achilles; but Hector had no Homer: Roman historians tell the story of the Punic wars; Carthage from her desolate site sown with salt cares not what they say, whilst Hannibal, bravest of the brave, and supreme military genius, speaks on the historic page only from the lips of the hated Romans.
When Protestantism finally won in England and the long able reign of Elizabeth established it firmly upon a political basis, then were fulminated against the Church of Rome all those unjust accusations and gross misrepresentations which, crystallized in history and in literature, seem ineradicable as fate. But truth is older than history or literature, and more analytically powerful than the synthetic forces of crystallization, and patiently prevalent even over fate.
Elizabeth’s very legitimacy depended upon the establishment of Protestantism in England and the overthrow of Catholicity; and to this two-fold end the energies of the very astute daughter of Henry VIII. were undeviatingly directed.
It takes about three hundred years from the time of a cataclysmic[53] upheaval of any kind before the minds of men can view it dispassionately or estimate it without bias. But what are three hundred years to age-old Truth?
Elizabeth possessed, in addition to the terse Tudor qualities, the rare gift of foresight. She knew the power of the pen and the possibilities for fame or infamy in the men of genius of her time. And so her court was open to the great men of that day and her smile of patronage was ever ready to welcome poet, artist, dramatist, politician, warrior, traveler, historian, and statesman: she became all to all and she won all.
As Gloriana in Spenser’s immortal “F?rie Queen” she reigns forever. Bacon, Spenser, Sidney Smith, Raleigh, Voltaire—as Voices having a thousand echoes throughout the years—have amply rewarded that patient foresight and have fixed her in fame as—what she was to them—Good Queen Bess.
And so Attila and his Huns in low long sinuously winding northern lines left behind them the carnage strewn plain of Chalons, and the camp with its ominous pyre, and the dazed foe. And thus victory remained to ?tius, last of the Romans: and the field of Chalons which saved civilization and semi-civilization from an untimely intrusion of rank barbarism; which secured domination to the Teutonic race rather than to the Sarmatic; which freed Europe from Asia—was the last victory of imperial Rome.
Attila died two years later; some say as the victim of poison secretly mixed with his food by ?tius’ ever vigilant spies. With him his vast empire passed away: and the leader who once claimed as proud titles,—“Atzel, Descendant of the Great Nimrod. By the Grace of God, King of the Huns, the Goths, the Danes, and the Medes. The Dread of the World”—died ignominiously one carousal wedding night: and history, ever unjust to a lost cause, writes his name among the Almosts and calmly commends the destiny by which Attila and his Hunnish hordes were defeated in the great battle of Chalons.