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advancing towards the Baltic, shared with the Germans the first spoils of the empire. The Huns,' greatly strengthened by the junction of the Alans and some other tribes, attacked the Goths, whose sway reached from the Euxine to the Baltic. The Goths were defeated in several engagements; and so terrified by the ferocity and hideous aspect of the victors, that the bulk of the nation, seized with a panic, rushed to the banks of the Danube; believing they could not be saved, unless its broad stream were interposed between them and their dreaded foe.

"In the year 376,2 the emperor Valens, when at Antioch," says Gibbon, "was informed that the north was agitated by a furious tempest; that the irruption of the Huns, an unknown and monstrous race of savages had subverted the power of the Goths; and that the suppliant multitude of that warlike nation, whose pride was now humbled to the dust, covered a space of many miles along the banks of the river." They supplicated for an asylum; and they protested, if they were permitted to cultivate the waste lands of Thrace, they would be faithful to the empire in peace and in war. Valens consented to give them the settlement they desired, on these, and the additional, conditions of delivering up their arms and their children as hostages. The condition of giving up their arms was eluded; and 200,000 Gothic warriors, with arms in their hands, and their families, in all about one million of people, were transported by the Roman government into the heart of the empire.

Misunderstandings, acts of injustice, mutual jealousies and complaints, soon sprung up between the Goths and Romans, which were speedily followed by war. Shortly after its commencement, the Goths retreated towards the most southern mouth of the Danube, where they engaged the Romans in a bloody and doubtful battle." "The imperial generals," says

"The numbers, the strength, the rapid motions, and the implacable fury 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, uncouth gestures, and the strange deformity of the Huns."Decline and Fall, c. xxxvi. 3 Ib. vol. iii., xxvi.,

2 Decline and Fall, vol. iii., c. xxvi.,

Gibbon, "prepared to confine the Visigoths in the narrow angle of land between the Danube and the desert of Scythia and mountains of Hamus, till their strength and spirit should be insensibly wasted by the inevitable operation of famine.”1

But new swarms of barbarians, passing the unguarded Danube, the Romans were compelled to retreat. The Goths immediately broke up their camp, and, being joined by hordes of Ostrogoths, Taifalæ, Huns, Alans, and Sarmatians, devastated the country from the Danube to the Hellespont. A decisive battle was at last fought near Hadrianople, on the 9th of August, a. D. 376. between the Goths and Romans, when the latter were routed, Valens slain, and two-thirds of his army cut to pieces.

"The Goths," says Gibbon, "were now undisputed masters of the provinces from Constantinople to the foot of the Julian Alps. The important pass of Succi was betrayed by the fear or the misconduct of Maurus; and the barbarians who had no longer any resistance to apprehend from the scattered and vanquished troops of the empire, spread themselves over the face of a fertile and cultivated country, as far as the confines of the Hadriatic Sea."*

Theodosius the Great, who succeeded Valens, reduced the Goths, after a war of three years; they continued faithful to him as long as he lived, but on his death, A. D. 395, they revolted a second time.

Alaric was now their king or leader. In 396, he traversed the plains of Macedonia and Thessaly without resistance, and entered Greece by the unguarded straits of Thermopyla.

"The fertile fields of Phocis and Bæotia,"3 says Gibbon, "were instantly covered by a deluge of barbarians, who massacred the males of an age to bear arms, and drove away the beautiful females with the spoil and cattle of the flaming villages. The whole territory of Attica, from the promontory of Sunium to the town of Megara, was blasted by his baleful presence. The confidence of the cities of Peloponnesus

in their natural rampart had tempted them to neglect the care of their antique walls. Corinth, Argos, Sparta, yielded without resistance to the arms of the Goths; and the most fortunate of the inhabitants

1 Decline and Fall, c. xxvi.

2 Ib.

3 Ib., c. xxx.

were saved, by death, from beholding the slavery of their families, and the conflagration of their cities."1

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"The scarcity of fact," says Gibbon,2 "and the uncertainty of dates, oppose our attempt to describe the first invasion of Italy, by the arms of Alaric; his march, perhaps, from Thessalonica through the warlike and hostile country of Pannonia, as far as the foot of the Julian Alps; his passage of these mountains which were strongly guarded by troops and entrenchments; the siege of Aquileia and the conquest of the provinces of Istria and Venetia, appear to have employed a considerable time. Unless his operations were extremely cautious and slow, the length of the interval would suggest a probable suspicion that the Gothic king retreated towards the banks of the Danube with fresh swarms of barbarians, before he again attempted to penetrate into the heart of Italy, and reinforced his army."

The Goths having been defeated at Pollentia and Verona, Alaric was compelled to retreat from Italy.

"In the year 405," says Gibbon,3 "the north must again have been agitated and alarmed by an invasion of the Huns; and the nations who retreated before them must have pressed with incumbent weight on the confines of Germany. The inhabitants of those regions which the ancients have assigned to the Suevi, the Vandals, and the Burgundians, might embrace the resolution of abandoning to the fugitives of Sarmatia their woods and morasses; or at least to discharge their superfluous numbers on the provinces of the empire The Vandals, the Suevi, and

the Burgundians formed the strength of this mighty host; but the Alans, who had found a hospitable reception in their new seat, added their active cavalry to the heavy infantry of the Germans; and the Gothic adventurers crowded so eagerly to the standard of Radagaisus, that by some historians he has been styled the king of the Goths. The whole multitude, which was no less than two hundred thousand fighting men, might be increased by the accession of women and children, to the amount of

"The invasion of the Goths, instead of vindicating the honour, contributed, at least accidentally, to extirpate the last remains of Paganism; and the mysteries of Ceres, which had subsisted eighteen hundred years, did not survive the destruction of Eleusis, and the calamities of Greece."-Decline and Fall, c. xxx.

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four hundred thousand persons. This formidable emigration issued from the same coast of the Baltic which had poured forth the myriads of the Cimbri and the Teutones, to assail Rome and Italy in the vigour of the Republic. The correspondence of nations was, in that age, so imperfect and precarious that the revolutions of the north might escape the knowledge of the court of Ravenna, till the cloud which was collected along the coast of the Baltic, burst in thunder upon the banks of the Upper Danube. The safety of Rome was entrusted to the

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counsels and the sword of Stilicho. The king of the confederate Germans passed without resistance, the Alps, the Po and the Apennines; leaving, on the one hand, the inaccessible palace of Honorius, securely buried among the marshes of Ravenna; and on the other, the camp of Stilicho, who had fixed his head quarters at Ticinum or Pavia, but who seems to have avoided a decisive battle till he had assembled his distant forces. Many cities of Italy were pillaged or destroyed; and the siege of Florence by Radagaisus is one of the earliest events in that celebrated republic, whose firmness checked and delayed the unskilful fury of the barbarians."

Radagaisus was defeated and taken prisoner by Stilicho.

"After his defeat, two parts of the German host, which must have exceeded the number of one hundred thousand men, still remained in arms between the Apennine and the Alps, or between the Alps and the Danube. It is uncertain whether they attempted to revenge the death of their general; but their irregular fury was soon diverted by the prudence and firmness of Stilicho, who opposed their march and facilitated their retreat; who considered the safety of Rome and Italy as the great object of his care, and who sacrificed, with too much indifference, the wealth and tranquillity of the distant provinces. The barbarians acquired from some Pannonian deserters, the knowledge of the country and of the roads; and the invasion of Gaul which Alaric had designed, was executed by the remains of the great army of Radagaisus. On the last day of the year, in a season when the waters of the Rhine were most probably frozen, they entered without opposition the defenceless provinces of Gaul. This memorable passage of the Suevi, the Vandals, the Alani, and the Burgundians, who never afterward retreated, may be considered the fall of the Roman empire in the countries beyond the Alps; and the barriers which had so long separated the savage and the civilized nations of the earth, were from that fatal moment levelled to the ground. The banks of the Rhine were crowned, like those of the Tiber, with elegant

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houses and well cultivated farms; and if a poet descended the river, he might express his doubt on which side was situated the territory of the Romans. This scene of peace and plenty was suddenly turned into a desert; and the prospect of the smoking ruins could alone distinguish the solitude of nature from the desolation of man. The flourishing city of Mentz was surprised and destroyed, and many thousand Christians were inhumanly massacred in the church. Worms perished after a long and obstinate siege. Strasburg, Spires, Rheims, Tournay, Arras, Amiens, experienced the cruel oppression of the German yoke; and the consuming flames of war spread from the banks of the Rhine over the greatest part of the seventeen provinces of Gaul. That rich and extensive country, as far as the ocean, the Alps and the Pyrrenees, was delivered to the barbarians, who drove before them in a promiscuous crowd, the bishop, the senator, and the virgin, laden with the spoils of their houses and altars."

In the year 409 this destroying host passed into Spain.

"The irruption of these nations was followed by the most dreadful calamities; as the barbarians exercised their indiscriminate cruelty on the fortunes of the Romans and the Spaniards; ravaging with equal fury the open country. The progress of famine reduced the miserable inhabitants to feed upon the flesh of their fellow-creatures; and even the wild beasts, who multiplied without control in the desert, were exasperated by the taste of blood and the impatience of hunger, boldly attacked their human prey. Pestilence soon appeared, the inseparable companion of famine."1

In the year 408, Alaric again invaded Italy. In 409, he was joined by his brother-in-law Adolphus, who, with reinforcements of Goths and Huns, had forced his way from the Danube to the Tiber. The Goths now advanced to Rome, which they besieged three times; the siege was raised twice, but the third time, the city was taken and given up to pillage.

"At the hour of midnight, on the 25th of August, 410, the Salarian gate was silently opened, and the inhabitants were awakened by the tremendous sound of the Gothic trumpet. Eleven hundred and sixtythree years after the foundation of Rome, the imperial city, which had subdued and civilized so considerable a part of mankind, was delivered

1 Decline and Fall, xxx. xxxi.

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