m

thousand soldiers, who marched against the barbarians, thirty thousand only returned in safety to the feet of their master. These losses, however, were compensated by splendid and decisive success. The Chinese generals improved the superiority which they derived from the temper of their arms, their chariots of war, and the service of their Tartar auxiliaries. The camp of the Tanjou was surprised in the midst of sleep and intemperance: and, though the monarch of the Huns bravely cut his way through the ranks of the enemy, he left above fifteen thousand of his subjects on the field of battle. Yet this signal victory, which was preceded and follow

of ineffectual marches. A regular payment of money, and silk, was stipulated as the condition of a temporary and precarious peace; and the wretched expedient of disguising a real tribute, under the names of a gift or a subsidy, was practised by the emperors of China, as well as by those of Rome. But there still remained a more disgraceful article of tribute, which violated the sacred feelings of humanity and nature. The hardships of the savage life, which destroy in their infancy the children who are born with a less healthy and robust constitution, introduce a remarkable disproportion between the numbers of the two sexes. The Tartars are an ugly and even deformed race; and, while they considered by many bloody engagements, contributed much their own women as the instruments of domestic labour, their desires, or rather their appetites, are directed to the enjoyment of more elegant beauty. A select band of the fairest maidens of China was annually devoted to the rude embraces of the Huns ;" and the alliance of the haughty Tanjous was secured by their marriage with the genuine, or adopted, daughters of the imperial family, which vainly attempted to escape the sacrilegious pollution. The situation of these unhappy victims is described in the verses of a Chinese princess, who laments that she had been condemned by her parents to a distant exile, under a barbarian husband; who complains❘ that sour milk was her only drink, raw flesh her only food, a tent her only palace; and who expresses, in a strain of pathetic simplicity, the natural wish, that she were transformed into a bird, to fly back to her dear country; the object of her tender and perpetual regret."

Decline and fall

Ant. Christ.

The conquest of China has been

of the Huns. twice achieved by the pastoral tribes of the north: the forces of the Huns were not inferior to those of the Moguls, or of the Mantcheoux; and their ambition might entertain the most sanguine hopes of success. But their pride was humbled, and their progress was checked, by the arms and policy of Vouti," the fifth emperor of the powerful dynasty of the Han. In his long reign 141-87. of fifty-four years, the barbarians of the southern provinces submitted to the laws and manners of China: and the ancient limits of the monarchy were enlarged, from the great river of Kiang, to the port of Canton. Instead of confining himself to the timid operations of a defensive war, his lieutenants penetrated many hundred miles into the country of the Huns. In those boundless deserts, where it is impossible to form magazines, and difficult to transport a sufficient supply of provisions, the armies of Vouti were repeatedly exposed to intolerable hardships: and, of one hundred and forty

m See a free and ample memorial, presented by a mandarin to the emperor Venti (before Christ 180-157.) in Duhalde, (tom. ii. p. 412426) from a collection of state papers, marked with the red pencil by Kamhi himself, (p. 384–612.) Another memorial from the minister of war, (Kang-Mou, tom. ii. p. 555.) supplies some curious circumstances of the manners of the Huns.

n A supply of women is mentioned as a customory article of treaty and tribute. (Hist. de la Conquête de la Chine, par les Tartares Manicheoux, tom. i. p. 186, 187. with the note of the editor.)

o De Guignes, Hist. des Huns, tom. ii. p. 62.

p See the reign of the emperor Vouti, in the Kang-Mou, tom. iii. p.

less to the destruction of the power of the Huns,
than the effectual policy which was employed to de-
tach the tributary nations from their obedience.
Intimidated by the arms, or allured by Ant. Christ. 70.
the promises, of Vouti and his succes-
sors, the most considerable tribes, both of the east
and of the west, disclaimed the authority of the
Tanjou. While some acknowledged themselves the
allies or vassals of the empire, they all became the
implacable enemies of the Huns: and the numbers
of that haughty people, as soon as they were re-
duced to their native strength, might, perhaps, have
been contained within the walls of one of the great
and populous cities of China. The desertion of his
subjects, and the perplexity of a civil war, at length
compelled the Tanjou himself to renounce the dig
nity of an independent sovereign, and the freedom
of a warlike and high-spirited nation. Ant. Christ. 51.
He was received at Sigan, the capital

of the monarchy, by the troops, the mandarins, and
the emperor himself, with all the honours that could
adorn and disguise the triumph of Chinese vanity."
A magnificent palace was prepared for his reception;
his place was assigned above all the princes of the
royal family; and the patience of the barbarian
king was exhausted by the ceremonies of a banquet,
which consisted of eight courses of meat, and of
nine solemn pieces of music. But he performed, on
his knees, the duty of a respectful homage to the
emperor of China; pronounced, in his own name,
and in the name of his successors, a perpetual oath
of fidelity; and gratefully accepted a seal, which
was bestowed as the emblem of his regal depend-
ance. After this humiliating submission, the Tan-
jous sometimes departed from their allegiance, and
seized the favourable moments of war and rapine;
but the monarchy of the Huns gradually declined,
till it was broken, by civil dissension, into two hos-
tile and separate kingdoms. One of
the princes of the nation was urged,

A. D. 48.

1-98. His various and inconsistent character seems to be impartially drawn.

This expression is used in the memorial to the emperor Venti. (Duhalde, tom. ii. p. 417.) Without adopting the exaggerations of Marco Polo and Isaac Vossius, we may rationally allow for Pekin, two mil lions of inhabitants. The cities of the south, which contain the manu. factures of China, are still more populous.

r See the Kang-Mou, tom. iii. p. 150 and the subsequent events under the proper years. This memorable festival is celebrated in the Eloge de Moukden, and explained in a note by the P. Gaubil, p. 89, 90.

march, and the return, of those wandering Tartars, whose united camp consists of fifty thousand tents or families, illustrate the distant emigrations of the ancient Huns.e Their conquest It is impossible to fill the dark inof the Alani. terval of time which elapsed, after the Huns of the Volga were lost in the eyes of the Chinese, and before they showed themselves to those of the Romans. There is some reason, however, to apprehend, that the same force which had driven them from their native seats, still continued to impel their march towards the frontiers of Europe. The power of the Sienpi, their implacable enemies, which extended above three thousand miles from east to west,' must have gradually oppressed them by the weight and terror of a formidable neighbour-❘ hood; and the flight of the tribes of Scythia would inevitably tend to increase the strength, or to contract the territories, of the Huns. The harsh and obscure appellations of those tribes would offend the ear, without informing the understanding, of the reader; but I cannot suppress the very natural suspicion, that the Huns of the north derived a considerable reinforcement from the ruin of the dynasty of the south, which, in the course of the third cen- | tury, submitted to the dominion of China; that the bravest warriors marched away in search of their free and adventurous countrymen; and that, as they had been divided by prosperity, they were easily reunited by the common hardships of their adverse fortune. The Huns, with their flocks and herds, their wives and children, their dependants and allies, were transported to the west of the Volga, and they boldly advanced to invade the country of the Alani, a pastoral people, who occupied, or wasted, an extensive tract of the deserts of Scythia. The plains between the Volga and the Tanais were covered with the tents of the Alani, but their name and manners were diffused over the wide extent of their conquests; and the painted tribes of the Agathyrsi and Geloni were confounded among their vassals. Towards the north, they penetrated into the frozen regions of Siberia, among the savages who were accustomed, in their rage or hunger, to the taste of human flesh; and their southern inroads were pushed as far as the confines of Persia and India. The mixture of Sarmatic and German blood had contributed to improve the features of the Alani, to whiten their swarthy complexions, and to tinge their hair with a yellowish cast, which is seldom found in the Tartar race. They were less

e This great transmigration of 300,000 Calmucks, or Torgouts, happened in the year 1771. The original narrative of Kien-long, the reigning emperor of China, which was intended for the inscription of a column, has been translated by the missionaries of Pekiu. (Memoire sur la Chine, tom i. p. 401–418.) The emperor affects the smooth and specious language of the Son of Heaven, and the Father of his people.

f The Kang-Mou (tom. iii. p. 447.) ascribes to their conquests a space of 14,000 lis. According to the present standard, 200 lis (or more accurately 193) are equal to one degree of latitude, and one English mile consequently exceeds three miles of China. But there are strong reasons to believe that the ancient li scarcely equalled one-half of the modern. See the elaborate researches of M. d'Anville, a geographer, who is not a stranger in any age, or climate, of the globe. (Memoires de l'Acad. tom. ii. p. 125-502. Mesures Itineraires, p. 154-167.)

g See the Histoire des Huns, tom. ii. p. 125-144. The subsequent history (p. 145-277) of three or four Hunnic dynasties evidently proves,

deformed in their persons, less brutish in their manners, than the Huns; but they did not yield to those formidable barbarians in their martial and independent spirit; in the love of freedom, which rejected even the use of domestic slaves; and in the love of arms, which considered war and rapine as the pleasure and the glory of mankind. A naked cimeter, fixed in the ground, was the only object of their religious worship; the scalps of their enemies formed the costly trappings of their horses; and they viewed, with pity and contempt, the pusil| lanimous warriors, who patiently expected the infirmities of age, and the tortures of lingering disease.h On the banks of the Tanais, the military power of the Huns and the Alani encountered each other with equal valour, but with unequal success. The Huns prevailed in the bloody contest: the king of the Alani was slain; and the remains of the vanquished nation were dispersed by the ordinary alternative of flight or submission. A colony of exiles found a secure refuge in the mountains of Caucasus, between the Euxine and the Caspian; where they still preserve their name and their independence. Another colony advanced, with more intrepid courage, towards the shores of the Baltic, associated themselves with the northern tribes of Germany, and shared the spoil of the Roman provinces of Gaul and Spain. But the greatest part of the nation of the Alani embraced the offers of an honourable and advantageous union; and the Huns, who esteemed the valour of their less fortunate enemics, proceeded, with an increase of numbers and confidence, to invade the limits of the Gothic empire.

k

A. D. 375.

of age and reputation, the fruit of his victories, when he was alarmed by the formidable approach of an host of unknown enemies, on whom his barbarous subjects might, without injustice, bestow the epithet of barbarians. The numbers, the strength, the rapid motions, and the implacable cruelty of the Huns, were felt, and dreaded, and magnified, by the astonished Goths; who beheld their fields and villages consumed with flames, and deluged with indiscriminate slaughter. To these real terrors they added, the surprise and abhorrence which were excited by the shrill voice, the uncouth gestures, and the strange deformity, of the Huns. These savages of Scythia were compared (and the picture had that their martial spirit was not impaired by a long residence in China.

h Utque hominibus quietis et placidis otium est voluptabile, ita illos pericula juvant et bella. Judicatur ibi beatus qui in prœlio profuderit animam: senescentes etiam et fortuitis mortibus mundo digres sos, ut degeneres et ignavos conviciis atrocibus insectantur. We must think highly of the conquerors of such men.

i On the subject of the Alani, see Ammianus, (xxxi. 2.) Jornandes, (de Rebus Geticis, c. 24.) M. de Guignes, (Hist. des Huns, tom, ii. p. 279.) and the Genealogical History of the Tartars, (tom. ii. p. 617.)

k As we are possessed of the authentic history of the Huns, it would be impertinent to repeat, or to refute, the fables, which misrepresent their origin and progress, their passage of the mud or water of the Mæotis, in pursuit of an ox or stag, les Indes qu'ils avoient decouvertes, &c. (Zosimus, 1. iv. p. 224. Sozomen, 1. vi. c. 37. Procopius, Hist. Miscell. c. 5. Jornandes, c. 24. Grandeur et Decadence, &c. dea Romains, c. 17.)

Russia. On the banks of the Niester, the prudent Athanaric, more attentive to his own than to the general safety, had fixed the camp of the Visigoths; with the firm resolution of opposing the victorious barbarians, whom he thought it less advisable to provoke. The ordinary speed of the Huns was checked by the weight of the baggage, and the encumbrance of captives; but their military skill deceived, and almost destroyed, the army of Athanaric. While the judge of the Visigoths defended the banks of the Niester, he was encompassed and attacked by a numerous detachment of cavalry, who, by the light of the moon, had passed the river in a fordable place; and it was not without the utmost efforts of courage and conduct, that he was able to effect his retreat towards the hilly country. The undaunted general had already formed a new and judicious plan of defensive war; and the strong lines, which he was preparing to construct between the mountains, the Pruth and the Danube, would have secured the extensive and fertile territory that bears the modern name of Walachia, from the destructive inroads of the Huns. But the hopes and measures of the

some resemblance) to the animals who walk very awkwardly on two legs; and to the misshapen figures, the Termini, which were often placed on the bridges of antiquity. They were distinguished from the rest of the human species by their broad shoulders, flat noses, and small black eyes, deeply buried in the head; and as they were almost destitute of beards, they never enjoyed either the manly graces of youth, or the venerable aspect of age. A fabulous origin was assigned, worthy of their form and manners; that the witches of Scythia, who, for their foul and deadly practices, had been driven from society, had copulated in the desert with infernal spirits; and that the Huns were the offspring of this execrable conjunction." The tale, so full of horror and absurdity, was greedily embraced by the credulous hatred of the Goths; but, while it gratified their hatred, it increased their fear, since the posterity of dæmons and witches might be supposed to inherit some share of the præternatural powers, as well as of the malignant temper, of their parents. Against these enemies, Hermanric prepared to exert the united forces of the Gothic state; but he soon discovered that his vassal tribes, provoked by oppres-judge of the Visigoths were soon disappointed, by sion, were much more inclined to second, than to repel, the invasion of the Huns. One of the chiefs of the Roxolani" had formerly deserted the standard of Hermanric, and the cruel tyrant had condemned the innocent wife of the traitor to be torn asunder by wild horses. The brothers of that unfortunate woman seized the favourable moment of revenge. The aged king of the Goths languished some time after the dangerous wound which he received from their daggers; but the conduct of the war was retarded by his infirmities; and the public councils of the nation were distracted by a spirit of jealousy and discord. His death, which has been imputed to his own despair, left the reins of government in the hands of Whithimer, who, with the doubtful aid of some Scythian mercenaries, maintained the unequal contest against the arms of the Huns and the Alani, till he was defeated and slain, in a decisive battle. The Ostrogoths submitted to their fate: and the royal race of the Amali will hereafter be found among the subjects of the haughty Attila. But the person of Witheric, the infant king, was saved by the diligence of Alatheus and Saphrax; two warriors of approved valour and fidelity; who by cautious marches, conducted the independent remains of the nation of the Ostrogoths towards the Danastus, or Niester; a considerable river, which now separates the Turkish dominions from the empire of

m This execrable origin, which Jornandes (c. 24.) describes with the rancour of a Goth, might be originally derived from a more pleasing fable of the Greeks. (Herodot. I. iv. c. 9, &c.)

n The Roxolani may be the fathers of the Pee, the Russians, (d'An. ville, Empire de Russie, p. 1-10.) whose residence (A. D. 862.) about Novogrod Veliki cannot be very remote from that which the Geogra pher of Ravenna (i. 12. iv. 4. 46. v. 28, 30.) assig us to the Roxolani. (A. D. 886.)

The text of Ammianus seems to be imperfect or corrupt; but the

the trembling impatience of his dismayed countrymen; who were persuaded by their fears, that the interposition of the Danube was the only barrier that could save them from the rapid pursuit, and invincible valour, of the barbarians of Scythia. Under the command of Fritigern and Alavivus, the body of the nation hastily advanced to the banks of the great river, and implored the protection of the Roman emperor of the east. Athanaric himself, still anxious to avoid the guilt of perjury, retired, with a band of faithful followers, into the mountainous country of Caucaland; which appears to have been guarded, and almost concealed, by the impenetrable forests of Transylvania."

r

The Goths implore the protec. tion of Valens, A. D. 376.

After Valens had terminated the Gothic war with some appearance of glory and success, he made a progress through his dominions of Asia, and at length fixed his residence in the capital of Syria. The five years which he spent at Antioch were employed to watch, from a secure distance, the hostile designs of the Persian monarch; to check the depredations of the Saracens and Isaurians; to enforce, by arguments more prevalent than those of reason and eloquence, the belief of the Arian theology; and to satisfy his anxious suspicions by the promiscuous execution of the innocent and the guilty. But the attention of the emperor was most nature of the ground explains, and almost defines, the Gothic rampart. Memoires de l'Academie, &c. tom. xxviii, p. 444–462.

p M. de Buat (Hist. des Peuples de l'Europe, tom. vi. p. 407.) has conceived a strange idea, that Alavivus was the same person as Ulphilas the Gothic bishop: and that Ulphilas, the grandson of a Cappadocian captive, became a temporal prince of the Goths.

Ammianus (xxxi. 3.) and Jornandes (de Rebus Geticis, c. 24.) describe the subversion of the Gothic empire by the Huns.

r The chronology of Ammianus is obscure and imperfect. Tillemont has laboured to clear and settle the annals of Valens.

8 Zosimus, 1. iv. p. 223. Sozomen, I. vi. c. 38. The Isaurians, each winter, infested the roads of Asia Minor, as far as the neighbourhood of Constantinople. Basil, Epist. ccl. apud Tillemont, Hist. des Em. pereurs, tom. v. p. 106.

A. D. 375.

|

their service was accepted by the imperial court; and orders were immediately despatched to the civil and military governors of the Thracian diocese, to make the necessary preparations for the passage and subsistence of a great people, till a proper and sufficient territory could be allotted for their future residence. The liberality of the emperor was accompanied, however, with two harsh and rigorous conditions, which prudence might justify on the side of the Romans, but which distress alone could extort from the indignant Goths. Before they passed the Danube, they were required to deliver their arms; and it was insisted, that their children should be taken from them, and dispersed through the provinces of Asia; where they might be civilized by the arts of education, and serve as hostages to secure the fidelity of their parents.

During this suspense of a doubtful They are transand distant negociation, the impatient Danube into the ported over the Goths made some rash attempts to pass Roman empire. the Danube, without the permission of the government, whose protection they had implored. Their motions were strictly observed by the vigilance of the troops which were stationed along the river; and their foremost detachments were defeated with con

seriously engaged, by the important intelligence | most distant countries of the globe, a numerous and which he received from the civil and military officers invincible army of strangers, to defend the throne of who were intrusted with the defence of the Danube. Valens; who might now add to the royal treasures He was informed, that the north was agitated by a the immense sums of gold supplied by the provinfurious tempest; that the irruption of the Huns, an cials to compensate their annual proportion of reunknown and monstrous race of savages, had sub-cruits. The prayers of the Goths were granted, and verted the power of the Goths; and that the suppliant multitudes of that warlike nation, whose pride was now humbled in the dust, covered a space of many miles along the banks of the river. With outstretched arms, and pathetic lamentations, they loudly deplored their past misfortunes and their present danger; acknowledged, that their only hope of safety was in the clemency of the Roman government; and most solemnly protested, that if the gracious liberality of the emperor would permit them to cultivate the waste lands of Thrace, they should ever hold themselves bound, by the strongest obligations of duty and gratitude, to obey the laws, and to guard the limits, of the republic. These assurances were confirmed by the ambassadors of the Goths, who impatiently expected from the mouth of Valens an answer that must finally determine the fate of their unhappy countrymen. The emperor of the east was no longer guided by the wisdom and authority of his elder brother, whose Nov. 17. death happened towards the end of the preceding year: and as the distressful situation of the Goths required an instant and peremptory decision, he was deprived of the favourite resources of feeble and timid minds; who consider the use of dilatory and ambiguous measures as the most admi-siderable slaughter: yet such were the timid counrable efforts of consummate prudence. As long as the same passions and interests subsist among mankind, the questions of war and peace, of justice and policy, which were debated in the councils of anti-ployments, and narrowly escaped the loss of their quity, will frequently present themselves as the subject of modern deliberation. But the most experienced statesman of Europe has never been summoned to consider the propriety, or the danger, of admitting, or rejecting, an innumerable multitude of barbarians, who are driven by despair and hunger to solicit a settlement on the territories of a civilized nation. When that important proposition, so essen-tially connected with the public safety, was referred to the ministers of Valens, they were perplexed and divided; but they soon acquiesced in the flattering sentiment which seemed the most favourable to the pride, the indolence, and the avarice of their sovereign. The slaves, who were decorated with the titles of præfects and generals, dissembled or disregarded the terrors of this national emigration, so extremely different from the partial and accidental colonies, which had been received on the extreme limits of the empire. But they applauded the liberality of fortune, which had conducted, from the

t The passage of the Danube is exposed by Ammianus, (xxxi. 3, 4.) Zosimus, (1. iv. p. 223, 224.) Eunapius in Excerpt. Legat. (p. 19, 20.) and Jornandes, (c. 25, 26.) Ammianus declares (c. 5.) that he means only, ipsas rerum digerere summitates. But he often takes a false measure of their importance; and his superfluous prolixity is disagreeably balanced by his unseasonable brevity.

u Chishull, a curious traveller, has remarked the breadth of the Danube, which he passed to the south of Bucharest, near the conflux of

cils of the reign of Valens, that the brave officers who had served their country in the execution of their duty, were punished by the loss of their em

heads. The imperial mandate was at length received for transporting over the Danube the whole body of the Gothic nation; but the execution of this order was a task of labour and difficulty. The stream of the Danube, which in those parts is above a mile broad," had been swelled by incessant rains; and, in this tumultuous passage, many were swept away, and drowned, by the rapid violence of the current. A large fleet of vessels, of boats, and of canoes, was provided; many days and nights they passed and repassed with indefatigable toil; and the most strenuous diligence was exerted by the officers of Valens, that not a single barbarian, of those who were reserved to subvert the foundations of Rome, should be left on the opposite shore. It was thought expedient that an accurate account should be taken of their numbers; but the persons who were employed soon desisted, with amazement and dismay, from the prosecution of the endless and impracticable task:* and the principal historian of the age most the Argish, (p. 77.) He admires the beauty and spontaneous plenty of Mæsia, or Bulgaria.

x Quem si scire velit, Libyci velit æquoris idem Scire quam multæ Zephyro truduntur harenæ. Ammianus has inserted, in his prose, these lines of Virgil, (Georgic. 1. ii.) originally designed by the poet to express the impossibility of numbering the different sorts of vines. See Plin. Hist. Natur. I. xiv,