which they derived from the change of their complexions, soon abandoned the pastoral life of Scythia. Gorgo, which, under the appellation of Carizme, has since enjoyed a temporary splendour, was the residence of the king, who exercised a legal authority over an obedient people. Their luxury was maintained by the labour of the Sogdians; and the only vestige of their ancient barbarism was the custom which obliged all the companions, perhaps to the number of twenty, who had shared the liberality of a wealthy lord, to be buried alive in the same grave. 49 The vicinity of the Huns to the provinces of Persia involved them in frequent and bloody contests with the power of that monarchy. But they respected, in peace, the faith of treaties; in war, the dictates of humanity; and their memorable victory over Peroses, or Firuz, displayed the moderation, as The Huns well as the valour, of the Barbarians. The second division of Volga their countrymen,50 the Huns, who gradually advanced towards the North-west, were exercised by the hardships of a colder climate and a more laborious march. Necessity compelled them to exchange the silks of China for the furs of Siberia; the imperfect rudiments of civilized life were obliterated; and the native fierceness of the Huns was exasperated by their intercourse with the savage tribes, who were compared, with some propriety, to the wild beasts of the desert. Their independent

of the

spirit soon rejected the hereditary succession of the Tanjous; and, while each hord was governed by its peculiar mursa, their tumultuary council directed the public measures of the whole nation. As late as the thirteenth century, their transient residence on the Eastern banks of the Volga was attested by the name of Great Hungary. In the winter, they descended with their flocks and herds towards the mouth of that mighty river; and their summer excursions reached as high as the latitude of Saratoff, or perhaps the conflux of the Kama. Such at least

were the recent limits of the black Calmucks, 52 who remained

49 Procopius de Bell. Persico, 1. i. c. 3, p. 9.

50 [There is no evidence that the Huns of the Volga had migrated from the borders of China.]

51 In the thirteenth century, the monk Rubruquis (who traversed the immense plain of Kipzak, in his journey to the court of the Great Khan) observed the remarkable name of Hungary, with the traces of a common language and origin. Hist. des Voyages, tom. vii. p. 269.

52 Bell (vol. i. p. 29-34), and the editors of the Genealogical History (p. 539), have described the Calmucks of the Volga in the beginning of the present century.

about a century under the protection of Russia; and who have since returned to their native seats on the frontiers of the Chinese empire. The 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.53

quest of

It is impossible to fill the dark interval of time, which elapsed, Their conafter the Huns of the Volga were lost in the eyes of the Chinese, the Alani and before they shewed 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,54 must have gradually oppressed them by the weight and terror of a formidable neighbourhood; 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 century, 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.55 The Huns, with their flocks and herds, their wives and children, their dependents and allies, were transported to the West of the Volga, and they boldly advanced to invade the country of the

53 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 Pekin (Mémoire 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.

The Kang-Mou (tom. iii. p. 447) ascribes to their conquest 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. Mémoires de l'Acad. tom. ii. p. 125-502. Mesures Itinéraires, p. 154-167.

See the Histoire des Huns, tom. ii. p. 125-144. The subsequent history (p. 145-277) of three or four Hunnic dynasties evidently proves that their martial spirit was not impaired by a long residence in China.

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 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 scymetar, 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 pusillanimous warriors, who patiently expected the infirmities of age and the tortures of lingering disease. 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 [A.D. 372-3?] 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.57 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

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

men.

57 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).

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 enemies, proceeded, with an increase of numbers and confidence, to invade the limits of the Gothic empire.

tories over

A.D. 375

The great Hermanric, whose dominions extended from the Their vicBaltic to the Euxine, enjoyed, in the full maturity of age and the Goths. reputation, the fruit of his victories, when he was alarmed by the formidable approach of an host of unknown enemies,68 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 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.59 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

58 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 découvertes, &c. Zosimus, 1. iv. p. 224 [c. 20; after Eunapius], Sozomen, 1. vi. c. 37, Procopius [leg. Paulus], Hist. Miscell. c. 5 [leg. Bk. 12 (p. 933, ap. Migne, vol. 95)], Jornandes, c. 24, Grandeur et Décadence, &c., des Romains, c. 17.

Prodigiosa forma, et pandi; ut bipedes existimes bestias; vel quales in commarginandis pontibus, effigiati stipites dolantur incompti. Ammian. xxxi. 1. Jornandes (c. 24) draws a strong caricature of a Calmuck face. Species pavendâ nigredine... quaedam deformis offa, non facies; habensque magis puncta quam lumina. See Buffon, Hist. Naturelle, tom. iii. p. 380.

61

infernal spirits; and that the Huns were the offspring of this execrable conjunction.60 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 demons and witches might be supposed to inherit some share of the preternatural 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 oppression, 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 Withimer, 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 de[A.D. 374-5?] feated 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 [Danastris] the Danastus, or Dniester, a considerable river, which now separates the Turkish dominions from the empire of Russia. On the banks of the Dniester the prudent Athanaric, more

60 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. 1. iv. c. 9, &c.)

61 The Roxolani may be the fathers of the 'Pŵs, the Russians (d'Anville, Empire de Russie, p. 1-10), whose residence (A.D. 862) about Novgorod Veliki cannot be very remote from that which the Geographer of Ravenna (i. 12, iv. 4, 46, v. 28, 30) assigns to the Roxolani (A.D. 886). [Rosomoni is the name in Jordanes, Get. 24. A connexion with 'Pas is utterly wild.]