Part 32

Stilicho was loudly reviled because he could not save Gaul; and moreover he had awakened the mistrust of Honorius and his court ever since his son Eucherius was grown up. Honorius had married one after another two daughters of Stilicho, Maria and Thermantia; and as the former of these had died without issue, and no one thought that Thermantia would have children, it had been the more generally believed that Stilicho would make his son emperor. Yet there is not a shadow of proof that Stilicho sought the life of Honorius: he would much rather have waited for his death, when it would have been quite the regular course for Eucherius to succeed. Stilicho indeed was the mainstay of the empire: he alone kept Alaric in awe. Honorius notwithstanding conspired against him,—just as Louis XIII. did against one of his subjects,—and, after having first got up an insurrection of the army, he sent assassins to fall upon him in his palace. His friends having been slain before him, Stilicho fled into a church; but was dragged out of it and murdered, as was also his son: Serena his widow, was condemned to death by the base senate.

To Alaric the murder of Stilicho became a pretext for again invading Italy. Honorius now took up his abode in the inaccessible city of Ravenna, which at that time was built on islands, like Venice now, being separated by lagunes from the main land, with which it was only connected by an isthmus. Without troubling himself to besiege Ravenna, Alaric marched on the Flaminian road against Rome, which he blockaded. Here, before long, the most horrible famine was seen: people murdered to feed on the corpses, so that even children are said to have been eaten by their own parents: besides which there broke out a plague, the necessary consequence of this state of things. At last a capitulation was concluded, though one cannot understand why Alaric acceded to it: perhaps he did so because the summer had already come on, and was severely felt by the army, which may likewise have suffered from epidemics. Rome having ransomed itself, negociations for peace were to be set on foot between the court of Ravenna and Alaric, it being proposed that the emperor should appoint Alaric commander-in-chief of the whole of the western empire. As these negociations did not lead to any result, Alaric turned himself for the second time towards Rome. The senate fell off from Honorius; Alaric proclaimed Attalus, the _præfectus prætorio_, emperor, and marched with him to Ravenna; and Honorius was so faint-hearted as to acknowledge Attalus as his colleague. When, however, in the meanwhile, reinforcements had landed in the port of Ravenna, and Attalus had fallen into disgrace with the Gothic chief, Honorius again broke off the negociations, and Alaric returned for the third time to Rome. On the 24th August, 410, was that awful burning of Rome which is still so famous in the world’s history, the Salarian gate, which is yet standing, having been opened to the Goths by treachery. Although Rome had to suffer many of the horrors of a town taken by storm, little blood was shed: many were led away as prisoners. The lust and rapine of the Goths hardly knew any bounds: the inhabitants were racked to make them show where they had hidden their treasures. The churches only were not plundered. After a pillage of three days, the evacuation began, which was completed by the sixth day. Alaric marched to Rhegium, intending to go also to Sicily; but he turned back. Two years after the taking of Rome, he died in Cosenza. (To this refers the beautiful poem of Count Platen, “The Tomb at Busento.”) The command of the army fell to his brother-in-law Adolphus, who, quite unlike Alaric, had a fondness for the Romans: he left Italy and marched to Languedoc. On both sides of the Pyrenees, over part of Languedoc and Catalonia, he reigned as an independent prince, the ally of the Romans. There he married Placidia, Honorius’ sister, who had been led away as a captive, and who now so closely knit the alliance, that it changed into real friendship. Adolphus, who had already led his troops into Spain, where he conquered the Vandals, Sueves, and Alans, and drove them into Asturias, Galicia, and Lusitania; gave back to the Roman empire the provinces which he did not occupy himself. He also did very good service against Jovinus, a usurper, and his brother Sebastianus.

In Britain, whilst Alaric was in Italy, an officer of the name of Constantine had been proclaimed Augustus by the soldiers, and had been favourably received in Gaul. Against him arose Gerontius, another usurper, who placed Maximus, a friend of his, on the throne; but in Gaul there came forth an army of Honorius under Constantius, ostensibly to the assistance of Constantine, which was quite a sound policy. Constantius compelled Gerontius and Maximus, who were besieging Arles, to put an end to their own lives; then he afterwards went on with the war against Constantine, and thus regained Gaul and Spain for the Romans. For this, after the death of Adolphus, he was rewarded with the hand of Galla Placidia. The friendship between the Western Goths and the Romans now ceased again: Singeric and Wallia broke off with them, and the Visigoths, who were very jealous of their independence, returned to their former attitude towards them. Thenceforth, except that her coasts were pillaged by Genseric, Italy had peace until the invasion of Attila: yet we may easily imagine how little she was able to recover herself. Honorius died in 423.

Placidia had borne to Constantius two children, Placidus Valentinianus and Justa Grata Honoria, both of them a curse to the empire. Constantius indeed had extorted from Honorius his being acknowledged as Augustus; but he died immediately after, even before Honorius, at whose death Placidus was a boy of not more than four years old, and therefore not capable of taking to himself the throne. Arcadius also was already dead, and his rule was nominally in the hands of his very youthful son, Theodosius II., who his whole life long never became his own master, but really was in those of Pulcheria, the new emperor’s sister: thus the East was very badly governed. Galla Placidia fled with her children to Constantinople; but before succours arrived from thence, the government was seized by a usurper, Johannes, the first emperor with a Christian name.[73] He reigned two years. Theodosius, on the other hand, bestowed the crown on his cousin, the boy Valentinian III., and sent two armies to Italy under Ardaburius and Aspar, both of whom were Isaurians. This undertaking did not succeed at first, the fleet having been scattered by a storm; but Aspar advanced unresisted through Illyricum, which seems to have returned again beneath the sovereignty of the emperor, and Johannes was deserted by his troops, and Placidus[74] Valentinian proclaimed emperor. His mother Placidia now governed the West, in a way which indeed was not much to her credit, though things became worse after her death in the middle of the century, when her son ruled alone. Rome was then richer in distinguished men than it had been in the times of the better emperors; above all are the names of Boniface and Aëtius, neither of whom could have outvied the other without causing the fall of the empire. Who Boniface was, is little known: he seems to have been an Italian. Aëtius was from Scythia, that is to say, Lower Mœsia, somewhere in the neighbourhood of Silistria, and of Latin blood, notwithstanding his Greek name: his father was a man of rank who lost his life owing to treachery, or some tyrannical act of Alaric. The age of Aëtius cannot exactly be ascertained: he must have been between fifty and sixty, or more than sixty when he died; for as a young man he was with Alaric and the Huns as a hostage, and often afterwards as an ambassador: he commanded their respect, being their equal in bravery, and yet having the advantage of superior civilization as well. He was an extraordinary man, and those who were in power ought to have allowed him to have his own way; just as the Athenian people did Alcibiades: but he was by no means without blemish, and he behaved unjustly and spitefully towards Boniface, by which he brought the empire into great trouble. His influence over Placidia and Valentinian being unbounded, he got Boniface, who was governor (_comes_) of Africa, recalled, and summoned to Ravenna where the court then was. As Boniface had to expect to lose his life if he went, he formed the accursed resolution of calling the Vandals, who at that time were in the west of Spain, over into Africa: they came under Gonderic, and the consequence was the devastation of Africa from the Straits of Gibraltar to Carthage. No German people has carried on war with such faithlessness and doggedness: hitherto Africa had suffered but little. They found support among the Donatists, who had been driven to despair by a frightful persecution, though they were only impracticable seceders who had gone out in Diocletian’s reign on account of the election of a bishop: these were a rude sect, but noble-hearted fanatics, and they were horribly dealt with. There is no doubt that their persecution lasted even later than this, and that the Arabs in their turn found partisans among them: they looked upon the barbarians as their deliverers. Their example may well be a lesson to those who shut their eyes to the misery to which intolerance, or, rather, to call it by its right name, injustice gives birth: the dreadful persecution of the Donatists had now lasted more than a hundred years. Genseric, who had succeeded his brother Gonderic, took the whole country, with the exception of a few places (429). The Moorish tribes he left alone; they were perfectly free: the Vandal rule only extended over the province of Tunis, and the maritime towns. The eyes of Boniface were now opened to the fearful calamity of which he had been the cause, and he tried in vain to check the stream. He met with confidence from Placidia, who in this instance behaved nobly: she sent him troops, which, however, were beaten in two decisive battles. After some years a truce, and then a peace was made, in which Rome gave up the greatest part of Africa; all indeed but Carthage, and some other places. This peace the faithless Genseric did not keep; but, on the contrary, took advantage of it to make himself master of Carthage.—Carthage, next to Rome, was the largest town in the Western Empire, being to that capital, as Hadrianople was to Constantinople. Its extent was considerable, and it was built on the spot where the gardens of Old Carthage had been, outside the walls of the old town. Salvian of Marseilles shows what a place it was; yet he says, that one ought rather to rejoice at its having been taken by the barbarians, than grieve over it, as immorality had reached the highest pitch, and it was inconceivable how the city could have called itself Christian. In former times, Christianity had certainly done a great deal of good to many individuals; but since the masses had adopted it, the church was no longer a select community, and therefore it had ceased to have any influence upon morals. It is remarkable how thoughtlessly at that time whole towns became christian, just as if a new ruler were proclaimed, the people remaining at heart as bad as they ever were. It is the greatest misfortune for the world and for Christianity itself, that Constantine should have been in such haste to make the faith universal: the hierarchy thus grew worse and worse, and although there were still Popes like Leo the Great, there were likewise many bad bishops.

The Vandal fleets from Africa pillaged Sicily, Sardinia, Corsica, and also the coast of Italy. This piracy was a fresh calamity for Italy, which had already begun to recover a little from its sufferings, although many parts had indeed remained waste, and the mass of the population had given themselves up as serfs to the great lords. And as ill luck would have it, most of the Roman nobles had their estates in Africa; so that these families, whose wealth sounds quite fabulous, were utterly ruined, as Genseric confiscated everything.

A new storm came from another quarter, even the Huns who had formerly driven away the Goths. Of their abodes in the times of Theodosius and his sons, we have no certain trace; perhaps they dwelled in the country between the banks of the Don and the borders of Wallachia: during the first years of Theodosius, they are to be found on the banks of the Danube, and even beyond the Theiss, as far as Pannonia. Concerning all these points, our sources are too scanty: as for the hypothesis of De Guignes, who traces them from China, I have already branded it as false; it is a view which in this day is justly rejected. The Huns being now met with as far as Pannonia, the Pannonian frontier must have been lost by the Romans. Bledas and Attila (Bledel and Etzel), the two sons[75] of Rugilas, appear with a formidable power as the kings of the Huns: the description of the might of Attila, however, is one of the weak points in Gibbon, as he believes the rule of Attila to have reached as far as China. It is indeed very likely that his sway extended beyond the Don even to the Volga: the German peoples paid homage to him, as one may see from our own poems; and as they were treated by him with forbearance, the lays are not bitter upon him. The main strength of his empire, according to a very correct remark of Friedrich Schlegel, was in German tribes: he himself, as Jornandes describes him, was a Mogul, and surrounded by Moguls. Yet this Mogul tribe is comparatively weak; so that, immediately after his death, the German tribes are free again. Until the middle of the fifth century, Attila had turned himself against the eastern empire only, which he made to suffer dreadfully by devastation, disgraceful treaties of peace, and tribute: Servia, and the greater part of Bulgaria, he altogether changed into a desert. The Huns carried on their frightful and bloodthirsty havoc in quite a different manner from the Goths, for instance: they were in the true sense of the word, destroyers. The western empire, being hard pressed by the Vandals, was not able to aid that of the East in this distress: there was even a sort of friendly relation between the former and the Huns, namely, by means of presents. Aëtius, having been banished, had betaken himself to the Huns, from whence, however, he returned: under their protection, he laid the foundations of his power in the empire, until he was so firmly established that he could do without them. He had revived the authority of Rome beyond all expectation: in Gaul, he had reduced the distant countries on the coast, which had made themselves independent; he also restored the frontier of the Rhine, though indeed the Franks still dwelled from Belgium to the Saone, and the Burgundians lived under their own kings, being tributary to the Romans. Provence, however, part of Dauphiné, Lower Languedoc, Lower Loire, Auvergne, and the north-west of Gaul, as well as Spain on the side of the Mediterranean, with the exception of Catalonia, were subject to the latter: the Visigoths had the South. No European country is so torn in pieces as the western empire then was: the countries there were for the most part covered with heaps of ruins, even as a land brought down to the deepest misery; of which we may form an idea by reading the poems of Logau at the end of the Thirty Years’ War.

Attila had been led by a quarrel with a Frankish royal house to march into Gaul. Here Aëtius united with the feeble forces of the empire against him, the warriors of the Visigoths, the ruling party of the Franks in Gaul under Merovæus, and the Burgundians: nearly all his troops were barbarians, but the spirit was his. Attila laid siege to Orleans, which was on the point of surrendering, and it would have been destroyed like the places on the banks of the Rhine, when Aëtius and Theodoric the king of the Visigoths came to its relief. Attila fell back into Champagne (_Campi Catalaunici_). The decisive battle in the year 451, is wrongly called the battle near Chalons, which I do not at all look upon as certain: _Campi Catalaunici_ mean Champagne; so that it does not necessarily follow that the battle was precisely near Chalons. In this mighty combat, Attila led the barbarians of the East, the majority of them being German tribes, against the barbarians of the West. Yet Aëtius had to contend not only against superior numbers, but also against treachery, as the Alans, who were placed in the centre of his host, gave way, and the Huns were enabled to break through his ranks. The Visigoths were about to be overpowered, Theodoric being dead; but Thorismund, his heir, made a decisive charge and Aëtius also conquered at last. The Huns were not driven back, but retreated behind their rampart of waggons, where Aëtius did not venture to attack them; so that both parties retired. The numbers which have been given of those who were killed and taken prisoners, are beyond all belief.

When the winter was over, Attila made his appearance in Italy. Here Aëtius could only oppose to him the feeble, uncertain forces of a land which had become utterly unwarlike. Aquileia, Padua, and other towns were destroyed; all who did not flee, were murdered: people took refuge in the marshes, which was the occasion of the founding of Venice. The details which we have concerning the first tribunes of Venice, &c., are fabulous. Attila had been invited by the princess Honoria into Italy.

The death of Attila, which soon followed, would perhaps have given rest to Italy, had not Aëtius, the only support of Rome, met with his death at the same time. Aëtius, had he wished to rebel, might long ago have taken the throne for himself; but he was satisfied with being the acknowledged and actual ruler of the empire: his title was that of Patrician; but he is also mentioned in the chronicles as _Dux Romanorum_. His younger son Gaudentius was betrothed to Eudoxia, the daughter of Valentinian, both of them being very young; without doubt Aëtius thereby wished to secure the succession for Gaudentius. Valentinian, however, who was not yet old, expected that this would put an end to his own dominion; and therefore he formed a plot against Aëtius. The latter, suspecting nothing, went to the imperial palace at Rome on the Palatine, and there Valentinian stabbed him with his own hand: very likely, no one was allowed to present himself with arms before the emperor, as was the case in Constantinople. His son also, and many of his friends were murdered. One is tempted to think that this led to the rise of Ricimer; at least, he very soon after is met with in Aëtius’ place. Rome was now deprived of the great man, who alone could guarantee the safety of the empire: all the successors of Valentinian were merely emperors in name. Valentinian filled the measure of his wretchedness by an outrage on the wife of Petronius Maximus. He treacherously decoyed her into the palace, to gratify his infamous lusts; and by this deed he drove the injured husband into a conspiracy. Valentinian was murdered in the Field of Mars, and Petronius was proclaimed emperor.

Petronius’ wife having died in the meanwhile, he compelled Valentinian’s widow, Eudoxia, to marry him. She, however, had loved her former husband in spite of his profligacy, and she brooded over schemes of revenge: she invited Genseric to come to Rome and to achieve its conquest. This was so easily done, that one wonders at his not having made it before, and frequently afterwards: the co-operation of the empress is quite evident. When Genseric appeared, the clergy and the senate went out to meet him, imploring his mercy: whereupon he promised not to destroy the people. Notwithstanding this, the outrages of the soldiers were nearly as wanton as if the city had been taken by sword; only there was not quite so much bloodshed. Fourteen whole days was the city pillaged: all the silver, all the bronze was taken away; the golden plates, and the gilt tiles on the Capitol, nay, all that had any value, and could be moved, was carried away to the Vandal ships at Ostia. Petronius himself was slain in the tumult. The conquerors had left Rome exhausted, like a body bled to death: the senate had not even the spirit to proclaim a new emperor.

And now, the senator M. Mæcilius Avitus, a very rich and accomplished nobleman in Auvergne, declared himself emperor in Gaul, and crossed the Alps. No one indeed had really proclaimed him. The state of things had become very strange: it was not the army in the province, that proclaimed the emperor; but a peculiar right had then sprung up by which, when there was no hereditary claim, the senate would elect, the people give its assent by acclamation, and the soldiers acknowledge the choice. Avitus came to Rome, and was recognised; but Ricimer, a Sueve of royal race, was even then all-powerful there. All the barbarians who acted a part in Rome, must not be looked upon as mere savages: they were Christians, and understood and spoke the _Volgare_, which even then came nearer to the modern Italian, than to the Latin; and they were quite as civilized as our own ancestors were in the middle ages. Some few of them had a tinge of classical knowledge, like Theodoric the Visigoth and the younger Alaric; but it was otherwise with Ricimer and those of his class, who undoubtedly had a hearty contempt for the Roman civilisation. All those Germans, alas! were not a whit better than the degenerate Italians: they were just as faithless, just as cruel. Ricimer soon became false to Avitus; and the latter took possession of the see of Placentia, from whence he also soon fled: he seems to have died a natural death, owing to a sickness brought on by the persecutions which he had had to suffer.