Attila:The Scourge of God

by Ross Laidlaw

  But Eudoxius could sting in return. ‘Very well, Your Majesty,’ he snapped, his face flushing with anger. ‘Your fine suggestion amounts to this: the Huns to become the paid lackeys of a Roman general, one who by his folly cost the lives of sixty thousand Huns. We all know he was long your friend. It seems you place a higher value upon propping up that broken reed than on the welfare of your people. Otherwise, why has Attila withheld the contents of a certain letter from the Council?’

  It was a shrewd and telling blow, Attila conceded silently, one he had not foreseen. He had assumed that only he was privy to Honoria’s missive. How had Eudoxius found out about it, and how much did he know? The bearer, a Persian eunuch, had seemed trustworthy enough. Presumably, Eudoxius had noticed the man’s arrival and had waylaid him on his departure. This was a supremely dangerous moment; unlike a Roman Emperor, a barbarian leader ruled ultimately by consent. Once perceived to be weak or unsuccessful, he was finished. Attila dared not call Eudoxius’ bluff. Though it was unlikely that Honoria had confided in the bearer, Eudoxius might have forced him to reveal that the letter was from the disgraced sister of the Western Emperor, and that it came with a ring enclosed — a symbol which could have but one meaning. If Eudoxius’ suggestion that important information was being kept from the Council, Attila’s position would be severely compromised. There was only one way to draw the serpent’s fangs before they could inflict a deadly bite: by forestalling him. But that would force Attila to follow the course he was least willing to adopt. However, there was now no help for it. The wily renegade had won.

  ‘Ungrateful wretch, is this how you repay our hospitality?’ he said icily, his words all the more menacing for being uttered softly. ‘Suborning a king’s messenger: in a Hun that would be treason. In a guest it is an inexcusable breach of trust which places you beyond the protection of immunity. Have you forgotten what happened to Constantius? Perhaps I should ask the Council to pronounce a fitting sentence.’

  Eudoxius, realizing he had over-reached himself, and in so doing both forfeited his influence with the assembly and put his life in danger, turned ashen-faced. ‘I. . I beg your forgiveness, Sire,’ he croaked, all his truculence deserting him. ‘I but saw the messenger arrive. I know nothing of what it is he brought.’

  ‘As well for you,’ responded Attila sternly. ‘On this occasion I will spare your worthless life. From now, keep silence. Break it, and I may not be merciful a second time.’ Turning from the trembling Roman, he addressed the assembly, now become quiet and receptive. ‘This poor apology for a man’ — he nodded at Eudoxius — ‘has presumed to anticipate the purpose of this meeting. Which was to inform you of the contents of the letter he dared to speak of. But before I told you of it, you first had to know all other options, that together we may choose the best path for our nation to follow. The letter is from the Augusta Honoria, wrongfully imprisoned these fourteen years in Constantinople by her jealous brother Valentinian, the puppet who disgraces the throne of Ravenna. In it, she entreats me to release her from a cruel bondage, offering in return her hand in marriage. And as a pledge of her affection and good faith, she included with her letter a ring.’ Attila looked round the faces of his audience, now hanging on his every word. ‘Should we decide to follow up the lady’s offer,’ he said with a judicious smile, ‘I think we could reasonably insist on a substantial dowry — say, half the Western Empire. Shall we accept?’

  The roar of acclamation that followed answered the King’s question. He had survived, his leadership unscathed — indeed, strengthened. But at a bitter personal price.

  That evening, sitting his horse by the banks of the Tisa, Attila withdrew from a bag suspended from his saddle-bow the silver dish that was the gift of Aetius. He retraced in his mind the scenes depicted on it, each representing a stage in a long and eventful friendship. Now circumstances had decreed that it was impossible for him to keep it. Instead, it would become a worthy votive offering to Murduk, the great God of War. ‘Goodbye, Aetius, old friend,’ he murmured in sorrow. ‘This is the hardest day of Attila’s life, for from this moment we two are enemies.’ He flung the dish high in the air above the water. It spun in a glittering arc, then plunged with a splash into the river. For a moment, he glimpsed its fading sheen beneath the surface, then it vanished from his sight.

  Riding homewards, Attila said a final farewell also to his dream of building a Greater Scythia. Nothing now remained for him except to lead his people in a bleak and bloody cycle of warfare, plunder, and destruction. He who rides a tiger. . Of a sudden, the third part of Wu Tze’s prophecy echoed in his brain: ‘The wounded eagle turns on the ass, which leaves it to attack the first eagle.’ The wounded eagle: the eagle of East Rome, whose empire he had ravaged. The ass: the wild ass of the plains — in other words, the Huns. The first eagle: the symbol of imperial Rome, the Empire of the West. It all fitted together. The East had mauled the Huns at the Utus, and were now refusing tribute; the Huns had then decided to switch their attack to the Western Empire. What was the last part of the seer’s prophecy? Resolutely, Attila closed his mind against recall. Perhaps his actions were indeed already written in the scroll of Fate. But he would continue to act as though he alone controlled his destiny.

  When Attila’s intentions (and consequently the tenor of Honoria’s fatal letter) became public knowledge, the guilty princess was sent away, an object of horror, from Constantinople to Italia. Her life was spared, but she was married off in indecent haste to an obscure nobody, who was happy to receive a generous fee in return for going through the forms of marriage as her nominal husband. Then, safely insured against the marriage claims of her would-be deliverer, Honoria was consigned to perpetual imprisonment.

  FORTY-FIVE

  Attila’s terrible horde: warlike Rugians, savage Gepids, Scyri, Huns, Thuringians. . poured across your plains, O Belgica

  Sidonius Apollinaris, The Panegyric of Avitus, 458

  Gripping the shaft of his late father’s angon, a wickedly barbed javelin with a long iron head, Cleph crouched behind an oak on the edge of the clearing, which was bisected by the path along which Gisulf should soon come riding. The silence of the great Thuringian Forest, which covered much of his tribe’s, the Thuringi’s territory, was broken only by the patter of raindrops on the ground, still carpeted in early spring from the autumn’s fall of leaves.

  With a cold, controlled fury, Cleph thought of his father’s death last summer at the hands of Gisulf, an arrogant young lout of the local chieftain’s comitatus. Cleph’s father, a kerl or peasant farmer, had remonstrated with Gisulf when the latter had carelessly ridden through his field of standing wheat. Gisulf’s response was to club the older man aside with his spear-butt. The heavy iron cap-spike had connected with his temple, delivering an unintentionally fatal blow. Later, confronting Cleph, Gisulf had tossed a Roman solidus at the lad’s feet.

  ‘Wergeld, in payment for your father’s life,’ the warrior had declared loftily. ‘A lot more than his man-worth, considering he was only a kerl.’

  ‘I refuse it,’ replied Cleph, spitting on the gold coin, ‘as is my right.’

  Clearly dismissing as an empty threat the implied claim to exact blood-vengeance, Gisulf shrugged and rode on laughing, leaving the solidus glinting in the mud.

  But Cleph had been content to bide his time. Over many weeks he had noted Gisulf’s habitual movements, while at the same time allowing the warrior to become lulled into a false sense of security. Of late, Gisulf had taken to keeping a tryst on each Wotan’s-day with a wealthy widow in a nearby hamlet. Cleph knew the route his enemy would take, having trailed him on several occasions, and now from his hiding-place listened for the sound of Gisulf’s approach.

  At last it came, muffled by the damp earth of the track: the thud of hooves. Then into the clearing cantered Gisulf, a heavy-set young man mounted on a rawboned destrier. Hefting the angon, Cleph drew back his throwing-arm, waiting for the moment when the other would have just passed level, exposing his bro
ad back as a perfect target.

  Suddenly Cleph heard a faint, muffled booming — the moot-horn! This was the prearranged call to arms for all owing allegiance to Etzel,1, whether Huns or subject Germans, a summons which, issuing from the dread King of the Huns, would brook not the slightest of delays. Instantly lowering the angon, Cleph turned and made off through the trees at his best pace, in the direction of the horn-blast. His vengeance would keep, he told himself. Gisulf was living on borrowed time, which would elapse as soon as campaigning with Etzel should be over.

  From the Mare Suevicum to the Danubius, from the Rhenish lands to the Imaus Mons,2 wherever the war-horns sounded, men ceased whatever task they were engaged in, and hastened to their local muster. A fisherman casting his nets off the mouth of the Viadua river3 abandoned them and rowed for shore; a shepherd in the Carpates foot-hills left his flocks; a farmer ploughing in a forest clearing in Boiaria4 unyoked his oxen and hurried from his field; a fowler in the marshes of the River Vistula laid down his snares unset; a hunter in the Caucasus, about to loose an arrow at an ibex, let down his draw. . Such was the effect of Attila’s huge authority. Obedience, instant, total, was the one inalienable condition he demanded from his subjects, the least infraction of which was punishable by crucifixion or impalement. But his rule could be generous as well as stern: devoted or courageous service often rewarded with a costly gift such as a mail shirt, a jewelled cup, a golden dish.

  From every quarter of Attila’s vast realm, rivers of armed men began flowing towards the upper Danubius: Gepid horsemen from the Carpathus foothills, dark-skinned Alans, blue-eyed Sciri and Thuringians, mounted Ostrogoths, above all countless Huns from the limitless steppelands above the Mare Caspium, the Pontus Euxinus, and the lower Danubius. All these, and many other, lesser tribes, who acknowledged Attila as overlord, merged at last into one enormous horde as they converged on the assembly place, the northern shore of Pannonia’s Lake Neusiedler.

  When the last contingents had arrived, the great host, headed by Attila himself, clad in a simple coat of skins and carrying no weapon, began to move north-west towards the Belgic provinces of Gaul.

  1 The Germans’ name for Attila.

  2 The Urals.

  3 The Oder.

  4 The Carpathians; Bavaria.

  FORTY-SIX

  Very many cities have been destroyed: Aluatica, Metis. . 1

  Hydatius, Chronicles, sixth century

  Even in March of that fateful year, the consulships of Marcian Augustus and Adelphius, and the one thousand, two hundred and fifth from the founding of Rome,2 ice-floes still dotted the Rhenus at its junction with the Nicer.3 On a hill-top overlooking the confluence, Bauto, an Alamann shepherd, drew his cloak more closely around him and scanned his flock with anxious eyes. After such a bitter winter, he would have to be especially vigilant with newborn lambs these next few weeks: the foxes’ hunger would make them bold. Just then his keen eyes picked up something strange, what appeared to be a bank of mist obscuring the foothills of the Wotanwald, whose peaks defined the eastern horizon. Odd, he thought. The day was cold and cloudless; even distant objects stood out sharply. Not a day for mist, that was sure. What was that sound, like a far-off murmuring? Must be the wind. But the murmur grew in volume to a steady reverberation like a roll of drums or rumble of thunder. It seemed to be coming from the mist, which was rapidly getting nearer. In fact it was not mist at all, he realized, but a line of billowing dust-clouds among which sparked and glinted a myriad points of light. It was an army. But an army such as no man had seen before, for surely it could not be numbered in mere thousands, but only in scores, perhaps hundreds of thousands. Bauto watched in awed fascination as the vast host poured through the mountain-passes and rolled in a spreading tide towards the Rhenus. Forgetting his sheep, he turned and began to run downhill with loping strides, to warn the villagers of Mannheim.

  ‘Attila has no quarrel with the Romans, only with the Visigoths,’ declared Valentinian to Aetius. They were in the reception chamber of the palace of Ravenna’s imperial apartments. The Emperor waved a roll of parchment. ‘He guarantees it in this letter, which expressly states that he wishes to be my friend. My friend,’ he went on in spiteful triumph. ‘He makes no mention of you, Patrician.’

  ‘This is folly, sir,’ rejoined Aetius wearily; he was unable to bring himself to address Valentinian, whom he despised, as ‘Your Serenity’. ‘Are you so blind that you can’t see what his game is? Divide and rule, or in his case conquer. He’s trying to set the Visigoths against the Romans and vice versa, also you against myself. In your case, he’s obviously succeeding. I imagine Theoderic in Tolosa has also received a letter such as you have there, assuring him that Attila’s only quarrel is with the Romans.’ He pressed on bluntly, ‘I notice you’ve omitted what the letter goes on to say: that Attila insists on his marriage to Honoria taking place, together with a dowry of half the Western Empire — terms which the government has naturally refused. Also that he replace myself as Master of Soldiers in Gaul.’

  Valentinian stared at Aetius in astonished fury. ‘How do you know this?’ he shouted. ‘The letter is privy to myself.’

  ‘I have my sources; the Consistory does not consist entirely of servile fools,’ retorted Aetius. ‘There are some whose priority is to serve Rome, rather than seek advancement by flattering yourself.’

  ‘Who are these traitors?’ shrieked the Emperor, trembling with rage. ‘I demand their names. I will have them banished — no, executed.’

  ‘You don’t really expect me to tell you?’ responded Aetius with amused contempt. ‘Some of us have principles, even if you do not.’ Since Placidia’s death less than four months previously, Valentinian’s obsessive fears had increased alarmingly. Whatever her faults and limitations — and they were many — the Empress Mother had been a restraining influence on her son’s worst tendencies. With Placidia gone, the character of the young Emperor had degenerated markedly. Free to indulge his baser urges, he had begun to resemble, in his acts of wanton cruelty and unhealthy obsession with sorcery, two of his most infamous predecessors, Caligula and Heliogabalus. More serious, in Aetius’ view, was the rise of a pro-Valentinian faction among the courtiers and councillors of Ravenna. With the Western Empire facing its greatest ever crisis, the need for the Roman government to show a united front against Attila could hardly have been greater.

  ‘But all this is wasting time, sir,’ went on the general impatiently. ‘Even as we speak, the Belgic provinces are being overrun. Aluatica and Metis have fallen and their populations have been massacred. Attila, with a vast horde of Huns reinforced by subject Germans — Rugians, Heruls, Thuringians, and especially the Ostrogoths and Gepids — the whole host estimated to number anything up to half a million, has crossed the Sequana and laid siege to Aureliani.4 He has had to delay his advance by waiting until spring, for grass to provide fodder for his horses, granting us a vital respite. But we cannot afford to wait any longer. Unless we intercept him now, Attila will take the whole of Gaul.’

  ‘You have a plan, I suppose,’ sneered Valentinian.

  ‘On its own, the Roman army in Gaul is simply not strong enough to stop Attila,’ pointed out the general. ‘I have to persuade Theoderic to join us with his Visigoths. Together, we would have a chance.’

  ‘I told you, Attila’s intention is to destroy the Visigoths,’ snapped the Emperor, ‘the tribe that represents the biggest threat to Rome. ‘To seek to prevent him from achieving that is sheer perversity.’

  ‘You haven’t taken in a thing I’ve said,’ said Aetius in frustration. ‘Well, with or without your co-operation, I intend to march for Gaul. I’ll take what forces are readily available. That includes your palatine troops, sir.’

  ‘Permission refused, General,’ said the Emperor, smiling maliciously. ‘Try to insist, and I will personally order them to disobey you.’

  Aetius decided to let it go. It would be unfair to the scholae, the Emperor’s personal bodyguard, to subject them to a tes
t of loyalty. He would make do with whatever units of the Army of Italy, which consisted almost entirely of auxiliary regiments, he could get together at short notice. Bowing ironically in farewell, he murmured, ‘Mit der Dummheit, kampfen die Gotter selbst vergeblich.’

  ‘I heard that,’ said Valentinian sharply. ‘You will tell me what it means.’

  Aetius shrugged. ‘If you insist, sir,’ he replied, his expression blandly innocent. ‘It’s a saying attributed to Alaric, the illustrious father of our mutual friend Theoderic, when the Roman Senate foolishly rejected his generous peace terms after he’d invested Rome. That refusal resulted in Alaric losing patience, and his Goths taking and sacking the City. Its meaning is: “Against stupidity, even the Gods struggle in vain.”’ And, instead of backing out of the royal presence as protocol demanded, Aetius turned on his heel and strode from the chamber, his mood marginally improved.

  ‘Well, that’s that,’ said Aetius in calm resignation, as the door closed behind Theoderic’s ambassador. He and Titus were once more the sole occupants of the general’s office in his headquarters in the archbishop’s palace at Lugdunum. ‘We did our best, but it wasn’t enough. With Theoderic committed to defending only the Visigoth homeland in Aquitania, and refusing to join us in a combined operation against Attila, the outcome’s not hard to predict.’

  ‘You mean, we’re going to be defeated, sir?’

  ‘Almost certainly. Without the Visigoths, we haven’t a chance. Attila will engage us separately and crush each of us in turn.’

  ‘And what will happen then?’ Titus felt the first stirrings of dread, as the sombre reality of the position began to dawn on him.