of Huns appears to have been a generic appellation of the remaining Turkish tribes of European Scythia, from the Don to the Eastern Carpathians, the very region of the Scythia of Herodotus; and it is one of the remarkable revolutions of history that the barbarians, who overran Media in very ancient times, and whom the founder of the Persian empire attempted to chastise in the fifth century before Christ, should have burst forth in the fifth century after Christ, to hasten the fall of the Western Empire. Nor does this appear to have been the first conflict of the Romans with the Turkish race. Whatever may have been the national affinities of the Dacians proper, there seems reason to believe that the royal tribe, with which Trajan waged war in Dacia, was a conquering horde of Turkish Huns, who had settled in the highlands of Transylvania. In that very region, Ptolemy expressly names Hunni or Chuni, between the Bastarnæ and Rhoxolani. In that region we may place the Scythian Agathyrsi of Herodotus, and it was into the territory of the Acatziri that the historian Priscus went as an ambassador to Attila. The Huns of Attila are styled Royal Scythians, the very name which Herodotus gives to the chief Scythian tribe. Attila's court and camp, the "Royal Village," as it is called, are fixed by clear evidence to the region between the Aluta and the Theiss, the district which was never Romanized between Roman Dacia and Roman Pannonia. Here, too, was the stronghold of Decebalus, whose name, as Dr. Latham has pointed out, is "strange to Gothic, strange to Slavonic, not strange to Turkish history. When the proper and specific TURKS first appear in the field of history, as they do in the reign of Justinian, the name of the first Turk Khan is that of the last Dacian king, Disbul in Gibbon, Dizabulus in Menander." The conclusion seems established that, as early as the sixth century before Christ, there were members of the Hunnish race in Transylvania, the head-quarters of Attila's power.

The extent of that power has been enormously exaggerated, on the one hand, by the oriental stories which for once captivated Gibbon's judgment,† on the other, by the romantic pictures which the early German poets draw of the great enemy of their The Etzel of the Nibelungen Lied and of the Norse Sagas, and the Attila of the Gothic Jornandes, is an enemy of gigantic

race.

See the full argument of Dr. Latham in the Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography, art. Hunni.

+ Niebuhr observes that “Gibbon's description of Attila's power is one of the weak parts of his work."

power and cruelty, whom fear regarded as the Scourge of God,* and to whom patriotism was not ashamed to have succumbed. "The more the Huns conquered, the less the shame to the Goths." But, in sober history, the Huns make their first appearance in the reign of Valens, as the conquerors of the Goths in Dacia. After the death of Hermanric, the Goths appear to have submitted to the Huns, whose power extended from the Don, or perhaps the Volga, to Transylvania, but how far to the north we cannot tell. The strength of Attila's kingdom was German, and chiefly Gothic, though his immediate followers were Turks.

Like the other Scythians, the Huns were a collection of family tribes, or hordes (as the Turks call them), each governed by its patriarchal chief, or Mursa, and all submitting to the authority of a Khagan or Khan, who earned the command by his prowess, and was raised to it by the voice of his peers. "The right of hereditary succession"-says Gibbon-" was long confined to the blood of the founder of the monarchy; and at this moment, all the Khans who reign from the Crimea to the Wall of China are the lineal descendants of the renowned Zingis." In A.D. 434, died Mundzuk, or Rugilas, Khan of the Huns, leaving two sons, ATTILA and BLEDA.† The miraculous discovery of the iron sword, which the Scythians worshipped as the God of War, marked Attila as the sovereign, and he is said to have put his brother to death. His first attack upon the Roman empire is ascribed to the invitation of Honoria, the sister of Valentinian III., who had been brought up at the court of Constantinople, and banished for a breach of chastity. In A.D. 441, Attila crossed the Danube, heralding himself, by a strange mixture of oriental and western superstition with imagery derived from Scripture, as "Attila, descendant of the great Nimrod; nurtured in Engaddi, by the grace of God, king of the Huns, the Goths, the Danes, and the Medes: the Dread of the World." The boast is ascribed to Attila, that where his horse's hoof had once struck the ground, the grass never grew again; and his hideous visage, of the strongest Scythian type, terrified all strangers who approached him. The rapid sweep of his conquests, followed by as rapid a subsidence, helps to form the popular idea of the mere destroyer; but, however suited to his Scythian followers, that idea does but

* This title is said to have been given to Attila by a hermit, who met him on his retreat from Orleans, and said to him :-"Thou art the scourge of God for the chastisement of the Christians ;" and he adopted it as an honour.

+ Attila is Etzel in German, Ethele in Hungarian; Bleda is Blödel in German.

partial justice to Attila himself. "When we turn"-says Creasy -"from the legendary to the historic Attila, we see clearly that he was not one of the vulgar herd of barbaric conquerors. Consummate military skill may be traced in his campaigns; and he relied far less on the brute force of armies for the aggrandisement of his empire, than on the unbounded influence over the affections of friends and the fears of foes, which his genius enabled him to acquire. Austerely sober in his private life,-severely just on the judgment seat,-conspicuous among a nation of warriors for hardihood, strength, and skill in every martial exercise,-grave and deliberate in counsel, but rapid and remorseless in execution,he gave safety and security to all who were under his dominion, while he waged a warfare of extermination against all who opposed or sought to escape from it. He watched the national passions, the prejudices, the creeds, and the superstitions of the varied nations over whom he ruled, and of those which he sought to reduce beneath his sway: all these feelings he had the skill to turn to his own account. His own warriors believed him to be the inspired favourite of their deities, and followed him with fanatic zeal his enemies looked on him as the pre-appointed minister of Heaven's wrath against themselves; and, though they believed not in his creed, their own made them tremble before him." It was owing to Attila's habit of relying on negociation as well as war, and to the skill with which Aëtius met his overtures, that Italy was preserved for ten years from the storm that swept over the Illyrian provinces. The eastern empire only obtained peace by the cession to the Huns of a belt of country on the south of the Danube, five days' journey in width, and extending from the Save to Novi in Thrace. The proper kingdom of Attila, besides the power which he wielded over his German and Slavonian allies, seems now to have included Eastern Rhætia, Pannonia, Northern Moesia, and Western Dacia.

In the following year, Theodosius II. died, in the forty-third year of his reign (July 28th, A.D. 450). He must not be dismissed without a mention of his war with the Persian king Varanes V., surnamed the Wild Ass, a fierce persecutor of the Christians, which was concluded in A.D. 422 by a truce for 100 years. The name of Theodosius will live in history by the body of Roman law published in A.D. 438 under the title of the Theodosian Code. Theodosius was succeeded by his sister Pulcheria, who bestowed her hand and the purple on the senator MARCIAN, an old soldier of Illyrian origin, who had the courage to refuse the tribute imposed

by the Huns on Theodosius. But the boast," that he had iron for Attila, but not gold," might have cost Marcian dear, had not Attila's face been already turned to the West.

Aëtius, exiled, as we have seen, for the death of Boniface, returned from the tents of the Huns, about the time of Attila's accession, at the head of a Scythian host, which enabled him at once to secure his power at the court of Ravenna, and to cope with the barbarians in the West. In A.D. 435, he protected Italy from a Vandal invasion by a treaty with Genseric, and proceeded to make war with the Burgundians and Goths in Gaul. The former were reduced to obedience, and peace was made with the latter, after the two exploits, on either side, of the relief of Narbo by Aëtius (A.D. 437), and the defeat of the Roman general Litorius by Theodoric before Tolosa (A.D. 439). The defeat of the Burgundians gave the FRANKS on the Lower Rhine the opportunity to extend their power over Belgic Gaul as far as the Somme, in spite of a check which they also received in battle from Aëtius. On the death of their king Clodion, the succession was disputed between his two sons, of whom the younger was Meroveus, the founder of the famed dynasty of Merovingians. Meroveus was supported by the Romans, while the elder brother asked aid from Attila. Starting from his "Royal Village," the Hun performed a march of 700 or 800 miles from East to West, with the double object of overthrowing the Roman and Gothic powers in Gaul. Military critics have praised his advance in three bodies; his right wing forming a junction with the Franks, and his left falling upon the weakened Burgundians, and menacing the passes into Italy, while with the centre he pushed on to force the line of the Loire (A.D. 451). He had already laid siege to Orleans, when Aëtius effected a junction with Theodoric on the south of the river. Attila fell back towards the Marne to form a junction with his wings, and his united host took up a position, admirably adapted to his cavalry, in the great plain of Champagne, near Châlons (the Campi Catalaunici).

In the centre, Attila took post with his own Huns, opposed to their kinsmen the Alans, whose fidelity Aëtius doubted. On the

The establishment of the French kingdom by the Merovingians took place just twenty years after the fall of the Western Empire. It was in A.D. 496 that CLOVIS, having united under his dominion the Frankish tribes of Northern Gaul, conquered the Alemanni, who occupied both banks of the middle Rhine, and received Christian baptism. The various disguises of the Latin Clovis and Ludovicus, the German Ludwig, and the French Louis, conceal the old German name of the Frank conqueror, Chlodowig.

right, the Ostrogoths confronted the Visigoths of Theodoric; while on the left, the Gepida and other allies faced the flower of the Roman army under Aëtius, who had secured the vantage of the higher ground. The battle began by an attempt to dislodge him from this position; but Aëtius kept his advantage. Attila was more successful in the centre; while, on his right, Goth fought with fury against Goth. Theodoric, charging at the head of his cavalry, was killed by a javelin; but his son Thorismund led on the Visigoths with redoubled fury, and the rout of the Ostrogoths left Attila assailed upon both flanks. He retired to his camp, where, behind his entrenchments and waggons he had raised a pyramid of the wooden saddles, heaped up with all his spoils and treasures. On this pyre he placed his wives and children, and stood upon the summit, ready to make the whole a flaming sacrifice, the moment his defences should be forced. But the multitudes who had fallen with Theodoric, and the wily policy of Aëtius, forbade further extremities. The patrician persuaded Thorismund to retire to his capital, while he suffered Attila to retreat unmolested. The Hun seemed at first disposed to make Italy pay for his defeat in Gaul. But, after taking Aquileia, and ravaging Lombardy, he again listened to negociation. The salvation of Rome is ascribed to the embassy of Pope Leo the Great (A.D. 452); and in the following year the career of the conqueror who had shed seas of gore was ended by the bursting of a blood vessel (A.D. 453). The whole fabric of his empire was dissolved with his death. The chief powers that rose upon its ruins were the German kingdoms of the Ostrogoths, the Gepida, and the Lombards (Langobardi); but the power of the Huns was revived in its old seats under other names by the Bulgarians, the Avars, and the Khazars; and to the present day the Hunnish blood is still abundant, in some cases predominant, in Bulgaria, Hungary, the Danubian Principalities, Volhynia, Podolia, Cherson, Taurida, and the Crimea. The momentous question decided upon the plains of Châlons was, whether the inheritance of the dying Roman empire was to fall to the German or the Scythian race; and the triumph of the former laid the foundation for the civilization of modern Europe. The Gothic races had now ceased to be mere destroyers. In the intercourse of four centuries, they had received from Rome those elements of refinement and Christianity, to the development of which they brought their unexhausted energies. Their moral superiority to the Asiatic hordes has been ably traced by our great ethnologist:-" In two remarkable traits the Germans differ