271) Dacia, for untold
centuries, was the arena of the wildest international struggles known to
history, and these could not have been outlived by any nomad people
remaining there.
centuries, was the arena of the wildest international struggles known to
history, and these could not have been outlived by any nomad people
remaining there.
Cambridge Medieval History - v1 - Christian Roman Empire and Teutonic Kingdoms
And because the plundered husbandman could not pursue
the fleet mounted nomad into the trackless desert, he remained unpro-
tected. The fertile districts on the edge of the Sahara and the Arabian
desert were also in this frightful position, and Iran felt this calamity all
the harder, because the adjoining deserts of Turan are the most extensive
and terrible, and their inhabitants the wildest of all the nomads of the
world.
No better fared the peoples inhabiting East Europe, on the western
boundaries of the steppe-zone. As early as the fourth century B. C.
Ephorus stated that the customs, according to the individual peoples,
of the Scythians and the Sarmatians (both names covered the most
medley conglomerations of nomads and peasants) were very dissimilar.
Some even ate human beings (as the Massagetae ate their sick or aged
parents), others abstained from all animals. A thousand years later
, .
Pseudo-Caesarius of Nazianzus tells of a double people, that of the Sklavenes
(Slavs) and Phisonites on the lower Danube, of whom the Sklavenes
abstained from meat eating. And Constantine Porphyrogenitus in the
year 952 stated that the Russians (*Pôs, North Germanic Varangians, who
coming from Scandinavia held sway over the Slavs of Russia) bought
horses, cattle and sheep from their terrible nomadic neighbours the
Patzinaks, because they had none of these animals themselves (i. e. in
the Slav lands which they dominated). In certain districts of East
Europe therefore vegetarianism was permanent among the peasant folk,
who for more than two thousand years had been visited by the Altaians
with rapine and murder; this can be proved from original sources to have
been the case from the fourth century B. c. to the tenth century A. D. —that
is, for 1400 years! It is exactly the same state of things as in Ferghana
in modern times.
As long as a nomad horde finds sufficient room in the steppe it does
not think of emigration, and always returns home from its raids richly
laden with the plunder. But if the steppe-zone is thrown into a ferment
by struggles for the winter pastures or by other causes, the relatively
weakest horde gets pushed out of the steppe, and must conquer a new
home outside the zone. For it is only weak against the remaining nomad
hordes, but against any other State upon which it falls it is irresistible.
All the nomads of history who broke into Europe, the Scythians, Sarma-
tians, Huns, Bulgarians, Avars, Magyars, Cumans, were the weakest in
the steppes and had to take to fight, whence they became assailants of
CH. XII.
## p. 350 (#380) ############################################
350
Conquests
the world, before whom the strongest States tottered. With an energetic
Khan at their head, who organised them on military lines, such a horde
transformed itself into an incomparable army, compelled by the instinct
of self-preservation to hold fast together in the midst of the hostile
population which they subjugated; for however superfluous a central
government may be in the steppe, it is of vital importance to
a conquering nomad horde outside it. Consequently, while that part
of the people which remained in the steppe was split up into loose
clan associations, the other part, which emigrated, possessed itself of
immense territories, exterminated the greater part of entire nations
and enslaved the rest, scattered them as far as they pleased, and
founded a despotically governed State with a ridiculously, small band
of horsemen.
The high figures in the chronicles are fictions exaggerated by terror
and imagination, seeing that large troops of horsemen, who recklessly
destroyed everything around them, would not have found in a narrow
space even the necessary pasture for their many horses. Each Mongol
under Chinghiz Khan, for example, was obliged to take with him 18
horses and mares', so as always to have a fresh steed and sufficient mare's
milk and horse's blood for food and drink. Two corps under the
command of Sabutai and Chebe sufficed this great conqueror for the
overthrow of West Asia? . In four years they devastated and in great
part depopulated Khorasan, North Persia, Azerbaidjan, Georgia,
Armenia, Caucasia, the Crimea, and the Volga territories, took hundreds
of towns, and utterly defeated in bloody engagements the large armies
of the Georgians, Lesghians, Circassians, and Cumans, and the united
forces of the Russian princes. But they spared themselves as much as
possible, by driving those of the subjugated people who were capable
of bearing arms into the fight before them (as the Huns and Avars
did previously), and cutting them down at once when they hesitated.
But what the Altaian armies lacked in numbers was made up for by
their skill in surprises, their fury, their cunning, mobility, and elusiveness,
and the panic which preceded them and froze the blood of all peoples.
On their marvellously fleet horses they could traverse immense distances,
and their scouts provided them with accurate local information as to the
remotest lands and their weakness. Add to this the enormous advantage
that among them even the most insignificant news spread like wildfire
from aul to aul by means of voluntary couriers surpassing any intelligence-
department, however well organised. The tactics of the Mongols are
described by Marco Polo in agreement with Plano Carpini and all
the other writers as follows: “They never let themselves come to
close quarters, but keep perpetually riding round and shooting into
the enemy. And as they do not count it any shame to run away in
i Marco Polo (Ramusio's edition), 1. p. 48.
2 Vámbéry, Türkenvolk, p. 180; Bretschueider, 1. p. 294.
## p. 351 (#381) ############################################
Conquests
351
ܪܪ
battle, they will sometimes pretend to do so, and in running away they
turn in the saddle and shoot hard and strong at the foe, and in this way
make great havoc. Their horses are trained so perfectly that they will
double hither and thither, just like a dog, in a way that is quite
astonishing. Thus they fight to as good purpose in running away as if
they stood and faced the enemy, because of the vast volleys of arrows
that they shoot in this way, turning round upon their pursuers, who are
fancying that they have won the battle. But when the Tartars see that
they have killed and wounded a good many horses and men, they wheel
round bodily and return to the charge in perfect order and with loud
cries; and in a very short time the enemy are routed. In truth they are
stout and valiant soldiers and inured to war. And you perceive that it
is just when the enemy sees them run, and imagines that he has gained
the battle, that he has in reality lost it; for the Tartars wheel round in
a moment when they judge the right time has come. And after this
fashion they have won many a fight. ” The chronicler, Peter of Zittau,
in the year 1315, described the tactics of the Magyars in exactly the
same way.
When a vigorous conqueror like Attila or Chinghiz arose among the
mounted nomads and combined several hordes for a cyclonic advance,
they swept all before them on the march, like a veritable avalanche of
peoples. · The news of the onward rolling food scared the bravest
people, and compelled them to fly from their homes ; thus their neigh-
bours, too, were set in tumultuous motion, and so it went on until
some more powerful State took defensive measures and stemmed the
tide of peoples. Now the fugitives had to face the assailant. A battle
of nations was fought, the flower of famous peoples strewed the field,
and powerful nations were wiped out. The deserted or devastated
territories were occupied by peoples hitherto often quite unknown,
or settled by nations forcibly brought there by the conqueror; States,
generally without duration and kept together only by the one powerful
hand, were founded. The giant State, having no cohesion from within,
fell to pieces at the death of the conqueror or shortly after ; but the
sediment of peoples, together with a stratum of their nomad oppressors
which remained from the flood, could not be pushed back again, and
immense areas of a continent received once again an entirely new ethno-
graphy—the work of one single furious conqueror.
Oftener and longer than in Europe successive Altaian empires held
together in Asia, where the original population had long become
worn out by eternal servitude and the central zone of the steppes
supplied a near and secure base for plundering hordes. That some of
these Asiatic empires attained to a high degree of prosperity is not
due to the conquerors, who indeed quickly demongolised themselves
by marriage with aliens, but was the consequence of the geographical
position, the productivity of the soil, and the resigned tractableness and
CH, XII.
## p. 352 (#382) ############################################
352
Altaian Empires
adaptability of the subjugated who, in spite of all the splendour of their
masters, were forced to languish in helpless servitude.
Out of Central Asia from time immemorial one nomad horde after
another broke into the steppes of South Russia and of Hungary, and
after exterminating or pushing out their predecessors and occupying
their territories, used this new base to harry and enslave the surrounding
peoples far and wide, forcibly transforming their whole being, as in
Ferghana.
But the bestial fury of the nomads not only laid bare the country,
recklessly depopulated enormous tracts, dragged off entire peoples and
forcibly transplanted and enslaved them, but where their sway was of any
duration they brought their subjects down to the level of brutes, and
extirpated every trace of nobler feeling from their souls. Central Asia
of to-day, as Vámbéry states from personal observation, is a sink
of all vices. And Franz von Schwarz draws the following cheerless
picture of the Turkestan Sarts, among whom he lived for fifteen years :
With respect to character they are sunk as low as man possibly can be.
But this is not at all to be wondered at, as for thousands of years they
were oppressed and enslaved by all possible peoples, against whom they
could only maintain themselves by servility, cunning, and deceit. The
Sart is cowardly, fawning, cringing, reticent, suspicious, deceitful,
revengeful, cruel, and boastful. At the same time he shews in his
appearance and manner a dignity and bearing that would compel the
uninitiated to regard him as the ideal of a man of honour. In the
former native States, as in Bokhara and Khiva to-day, the entire system
of government and administration was based exclusively on lying, deceit,
and bribery, and it was quite impossible for a poor man to get justice.
The opposite of the Sart is his oppressor the Kirghiz, who is shy,
morose, and violent, but also honourable, upright, good-hearted, and
brave. The terrible slave-hunting Turkoman is distinguished from all
other Central Asiatics by his bold and piercing glance and proud bearing.
In wild bravery no other race on earth can match itself with him, and
as a horseman he is unsurpassed. He has an unruly disposition and
recognises no authority, but his word can be absolutely relied upon'.
What a tragic fate for an enslaved people. Although its lowest
degradation is already behind it, how long yet will it be the object of
universal and not unnatural contempt, while its former oppressor, void
of all humane feeling, a professional murderer and cattle-thief, remains
as a hero and ideal super-man?
So long as the dominant nomad horde remains true to its wandering
life, it lives in the midst of the subjugated only in winter, and proceeds
in spring to the summer pastures. But it is wise enough to leave behind
overseers and guards, to prevent revolts. The individual nomad has no
.
need to keep many slaves ; besides, he would have no occupation and no
1 Schwarz, Turkestan, pp. 25 ff.
## p. 353 (#383) ############################################
Social Consequences of the Servitude
353
food for them, and so an entire horde enslaves entire peoples, who must
provide food for themselves. In so far as he does not winter directly
among them, the nomad only comes to plunder them regularly, leaving
them nothing but what is absolutely indispensable.
The peasantry had to supply the nomads and their herds who wintered
among them with all that was demanded. For this purpose they stored
up grain and fodder during the summer, for in Central and East Europe
the snow falls too deep for the herds to be left to scrape out fodder alone.
During the winter the wives and daughters of the enslaved became a prey
to the lusts of the yellow-skins, by whom they were incessantly violated,
and thus every conjugal and family tie and as a further consequence the
entire social organisation was seriously loosened. The ancient Indo-
European patriarchal principle, which has exclusively prevailed among
the Altaians also from the earliest times, languished among the enslaved
just because of the violation and loosening of the conjugal bond, which
often continued for hundreds of years. The matriarchal principle
came into prominence, for the Altaian adulterer repudiated bastards,
and still more did the husband where there was one, so the children
followed the mother. Where therefore matriarchal phenomena occur
among Indo-Europeans, usually among the lower strata of popula-
tion, they are not survivals of pre-patriarchal times, but probably
arose later from the corruption of married life by systematic adultery.
Thus the subjugated Indo-Europeans became_here more, there less-
mongolised' by the mixture of races, and in places the two superimposed
races became fused into a uniform mixed people.
Indo-European usage and law died out, and the savage wilfulness of
the Altaians had exclusive sway. Revolutions among the people driven
.
to despair followed, but they were quelled in blood, and the oppression
exercised still more heavily. Even if here and there the yoke was
successfully shaken off, the emancipated, long paralysed and robbed of
all capability of self-organisation, were unable to remain independent.
Commonly they fell into anarchy and then voluntarily gave themselves
up to another milder-seeming servitude, or became once more the prey
of an if possible rougher conqueror.
In consequence of the everlasting man-hunting and especially the
carrying off of women in foreign civilised districts there ensued a strong
mixing of blood, and the Altaian race-characteristics grew fainter,
especially to the south and west. The Greeks by the time of
Alexander the Great were no longer struck by the Mongol type-
already much obliterated—of the nomads pasturing in the district
between the Oxus and the Jaxartes. This led to the supposition that
these nomads had belonged to the Indo-European race and had originally
been settled peasants, and that they had been compelled to limit them-
selves to animal rearing and to become nomads only after the conversion
The Mongol type of features extends westward to Bavaria and Württemberg.
23
C. MED. H. VOL. I. CH. XII.
## p. 354 (#384) ############################################
354
Mixture of Races.
The Scythians
1
1
1
of their fields to deserts through the evaporation of the water-basins? .
This supposition is false, as we have seen before.
The steppes and deserts of Central Asia are an impassable barrier
for the South Asiatics, the Aryans, but not for the North Asiatic,
the Altaian; for him they are an open country providing him with the
indispensable winter pastures. On the other hand, for the South Asiatic
Aryan these deserts are an object of terror, and besides he is not
impelled towards them, as he has winter pastures near at hand. It is
this difference in the distance of summer and winter pastures that makes
the North Asiatic Altaian an ever-wandering herdsman, and the grazing
part of the Indo-European race cattle-rearers settled in limited
districts. Thus, while the native Iranian must halt before the trackless
region of steppes and deserts and cannot follow the well-mounted robber-
nomad thither, Iran itself is the object of greatest longing to the nomadic
Altaian. Here he can plunder and enslave to his heart's delight, and if
he succeeds in maintaining himself for a considerable time among the
Aryans, he learns the language of the subjugated people, and by mingling
with them loses his Mongol characteristics more and more.
If the
Iranian is now fortunate enough to shake off the yoke, the dispossessed
iranised Altaian intruder inflicts himself upon other lands. So it was
with the Scythians.
Leaving their families behind in the South Russian steppes, the
Scythians invaded Media C. B. C. 630 and advanced into Mesopotamia
and Syria as far as Egypt. In Media they took Median wives and learned
the Median language. After being driven out by Cyaxares, on their
return some twenty-eight years later, they met with a new generation,
the offspring of the wives and daughters whom they had left behind,
and slaves of an alien race. A thorough mixture of race within
a single generation is hardly conceivable. A hundred and fifty years
later Hippocrates found them still so foreign, so Mongolian, that he
could say that they were “ very different from the rest of mankind, and
only like themselves, as are also the Egyptians. ” He remarked their
yellowish-red complexion, corpulence, smooth skins, and their consequent
eunuch-like appearance—all typically Mongol characteristics. Hippo-
crates was the most celebrated physician and natural philosopher of
the ancient world. His evidence is unshakable, and cannot be in-
validated by the Aryan speech of the Scythians. Their Mongol type
was innate in them, whereas their Iranian speech was acquired and is no
refutation of Hippocrates' testimonya. On the later Greek vases from
South Russian excavations they already appear strongly demongolised
and the Altaian is only suggested by their hair, which is as stiff as a
horse's mane-hence Aristotle's epithet ejdúspexes—the characteristic
that survives longest among all Ural-Altaian hybrid peoples.
1 Ukert, Geographie, 11. 2, p. 275; Schwarz, Sintflath, pp. 346, 489 ff.
2 Peisker. Beziehungen, pp. 22 ff.
## p. 355 (#385) ############################################
The Scythians and Magyars
355
If a nomad army is obliged to take foreign non-nomadic wives,
there occurs at once a dualism, corresponding to the two sexes, in
the language and way of living of each individual household. The new
wives cannot live in the saddle, they do not know how to take down the
tent, load it on the beasts of burden, and set it up again, and yet they
must share the restless life of the herdsman. Consequently, where the
ground admits of it, as in South Russia, the tent is put on wheels and
drawn by animals. Thus the Scythian women were hamaxobiotic (wagon-
inhabiting), the men however remained true to their horse-riding life and
taught their boys too, as soon as they could keep themselves in the saddle.
But the dualism in language could not maintain itself; the children held
to the language of the mother, the more easily because even the fathers
understood Medish, and so the Altaian Scythian people, with their
language finally iranised, became Iranian. But their mode of life re-
mained unchanged: the consumption of horse-flesh, soured horse's milk
(kumiz) and cheese of the same, the hemp vapour bath for men (the women
bathed differently), singeing of the fleshy parts of the body as a cure for
rheumatism, poisoning of the arrow-tips, wholesale human offerings and
slaughter of favourite wives at the burials of princes, the placing on
horseback of the stuffed bodies of murdered warriors round the grave,
etc. —all such customs as are found so well defined among the Mongols
of the Middle Ages.
The modern Tartars of the Crimea, whose classical beauty sometimes
rivals that of the Greeks and Romans, underwent, in the same land, the
same change to the Aryan type.
The same is the case with the Magyars whose mounted nomadic mode
of life and fury, and consequently their origin, was Turkish, but their
language was a mixture of Ugrian and Turkish on an Ugrian basis? .
Evidently a Magyar army, Turkish in blood, formerly advanced far to the
north where it subdued an Ugrian people and took Ugrian wives ; the
children then blended the Ugrian speech of their mothers with the
Turkish speech of their fathers. But they must also once have dominated
Indo-European peoples and mixed themselves very strongly with them,
for Gardēzī's original source from the middle of the ninth century
describes them as “handsome, stately men. ” At that time they
'
were leading the nomad existence in the Pontic Steppe—the old
Scythia—whence they engaged in terrible slave-hunting among the
neighbouring Slavs; and as they were notorious women-hunters, they
must have assimilated much Slav, Alan, and Circassian blood, and
thus became “handsome, stately men? . ” However the change did
not end there. At the end of the ninth century their army, on its
return from a predatory expedition, found their kindred at home totally
exterminated by their deadly enemies, the Patzinaks, a related stock.
v. the table of languages above, p. 333.
2 Marquart, pp. 144 ff. , 466 ff.
-
1
CH. XII.
23-2
## p. 356 (#386) ############################################
356
The Magyars and Roumanians
Consequently the whole body had again to take foreign wives, and they
occupied the steppes of Hungary. Before this catastrophe the Magyars
are said to have mustered 20,000 horsemen- an oriental exaggeration,
for this would assume a nomad people of 200,000 souls. Consequently
only a few thousand horsemen could have fled to Hungary. There they
mixed themselves further with the medley race-conglomeration settled
there, which had formed itself centuries before, and assimilated stragglers
from the related Patzinak stock. By this absorption the Altaian type
asserted itself so predominantly that the Frankish writers were never tired
of depicting their ugliness and loathsomeness in the most horrifying
colours. Their fury was so irresistible that in sixty-three years they were
able with impunity to make thirty-two great predatory expeditions as far
as the North Sea, and to France, Spain, Italy, and Byzantium. Thus the
modern Magyars are one of the most varied race-mixtures on the face of
the earth, and one of the two chief Magyar types of to-day-traced to
the Árpád era by tomb-findings—is dolichocephalic with a narrow
visage. There we have before us Altaian origin, Ugrian speech, and
Indo-European type combined.
Such metamorphoses are typical for all nomads who, leaving their
families at home, attack foreign peoples and at the same time make war
on one another. In the furious tumult in which the Central Asiatic
mounted hordes constantly swarmed, and fought one another for the
spoils, it is to be presumed that nearly all such people, like the
Scythians and Magyars, at least once sustained the loss of their wives
and children. The mounted nomads could, therefore, remain a pure
race only where they constantly opposed their own kin, whereas to the
south and west they were merged so imperceptibly in the Semitic and
Indo-European stock, that no race-boundary is perceivable.
The most diversified was the destiny of those mounted nomads who
became romanised in the Balkan peninsula (Roumanians or Vlakhs,
Baúxou), but, surprising as it may be outside the steppe region, remain
true to this day to their life as horse and sheep nomads wherever this is
still at all possible. During the summer they grazed on most of the
mountains of the Balkan peninsula, and took up their winter quarters
on the sea-coasts among a peasant population speaking a different
language. Thence they gradually spread, unnoticed by the chroniclers,
along all the mountain ranges, over all the Carpathians of Transyl-
vania, North Hungary, and South Galicia to Moravia ; towards the
north-west from Montenegro onwards over Herzegovina, Bosnia, Istria,
as far as South Styria ; towards the south over Albania far into Greece.
In the entire Balkan peninsula there is scarcely a span of earth which
they have not grazed. And like the peasantry among which they
wintered (and winter) long enough, they became (and become) after
1 Vámbéry, Ursprung, pp. 128 ff. , 320 ff. , 407 ff. ; A magyarság, pp. 152 ff.
## p. 357 (#387) ############################################
The Roumanians
357
a transitory bilingualism, Greeks, Albanians, Servians, Bulgarians,
Ruthenians, Poles, Slovaks, Chekhs, Slovenes, Croatians, seeing that
they appeared there not as a compact body, but as a mobile nomad
stratum among a strange-tongued and more numerous peasant element,
and not till later did they gradually take to agriculture and themselves
become settled. In Istria they are still bilingual. On the other hand
they maintain themselves in Roumania, East Hungary, Bukovina,
Bessarabia for the following reasons: the central portion of this region,
the Transylvanian mountain belt, sustained with its rich summer-
pastures such a number of grazing-camps (Roumanian catun, Mongol.
khotun), that the nomads in the favourable winter quarters of the
Roumanian plain were finally able to absorb the Slav peasantry,
already almost wiped out by the everlasting passage through them of
other wild nomad peoples. In Macedonia, too, a remainder of them still
exists. Were they not denationalised, the Roumanians to-day would
be by far the most numerous—but also the most scattered-people of
South Europe,-not less than twenty million souls.
The Roumanians were not descendants of Roman colonists of Dacia
left behind in East Hungary and Transylvania? Their nomadic life is
a confutation of this, for the Emperor Trajan (after A. D. 107) transplanted
settled colonists from the entire Roman Empire. And after the removal
and withdrawal of the Roman colonists (c. A. D.
271) Dacia, for untold
centuries, was the arena of the wildest international struggles known to
history, and these could not have been outlived by any nomad people
remaining there. To be sure, some express the opinion that the
Roumanian nomad herdsmen fled into the Transylvanian mountains
at each new invasion (by the Huns, Bulgarians, Avars, Magyars,
Patzinaks, Cumans successively) and subsequently always returned.
But the nomad can support himself in the mountains only during the
summer, and he must descend to pass the winter. On the other hand,
each of these new invading nomad hordes needed these mountains for
summer grazing for their own herds. Thus the Roumanians could not
have escaped, and their alleged game of hide-and-seek would have been
in vain. But south of the Danube also the origin of the Roumanians
must not be sought in Roman times, but much later, because nomads
are never quickly denationalised. For in the summer they are quite
alone on the otherwise uninhabited mountains, having intercourse with
one another in their own language, and only in their winter quarters
among the foreign-speaking peasantry are they compelled in their deal-
ings with them to resort to the foreign tongue. Thus they remain for
centuries bilingual before they are quite denationalised, and this can
be proved from original sources precisely in the case of the Roumanians
(Vlakhs) in the old kingdom of Servia. Accordingly the romanising of
the Roumanians presupposes a Romance peasant population already
1 Hunfalvy. On the contrary, Jorga, Ghergel, etc
CH. XII.
## p. 358 (#388) ############################################
358
Altaian Origin of Nomads
existing there for a long time and of different race, through the
influence of which they first became bilingual and then very gradually
,
after some centuries, forgot their own language. In what district could
this have taken place ? For nomads outside the salt-steppe the sea-
coast offers-precisely on account of the salt, and the mild winter-
the most suitable winter quarters, and, as a matter of fact, from the
earliest times certain shores of the Adriatic, the Ionian, Aegean, and
Marmora, were crowded with Vlakhian catuns, and are partly so at the
present time. Among all these sea-districts, however, only Dalmatia
had remained so long Romanic as to be able entirely to romanise a
nomad people'. From this district the expansion of the Roumanians
had its beginning, so that the name Daco-Roumanians is nothing but
a fiction.
The Spanish and Italian nomad shepherds too can have had no
other origin. Alans took part in Radagaisus' invasion of Italy in 405,
and, having advanced to Gaul, founded in 411 a kingdom in Lusitania
which was destroyed by the Visigoths. The remainder advanced into
Africa with the Vandals in 429. Traces of the Alans remained for a
long time in Gaul. Sarmatian and Bulgarian hordes accompanied
Alboin to Italy in 568, and twelve places in northern Italy are still
called Bolgaro, Bolgheri, etc. A horde of Altaian Bulgars fled to Italy
later, and received from the Lombard Grimoald (662-672) extensive
and hitherto barren settlements in the mountains of Abruzzi and their
neighbourhood. In the time of Paulus Diaconus (+ 797) they also
spoke Latin, but their mother tongue was still intact, for only on their
winter pastures in Apulia and Campania, in contact with Latin peasants
in whose fields they encamped, were they compelled to speak Latin. The
old Roman sheep-rearing pursued by slaves has no connexion with
nomadism.
Therefore neither the non-Mongol appearance, nor the Semitic, Indo-
European or Finno-Ugrian language of any historical mounted nomad
people can be held as a serious argument for their Semitic, Indo-European,
or Finno-Ugrian origin. Everything speaks for one single place of origin
for the mounted nomads, and that is in the Turanian-Mongol steppes
and deserts. These alone, by their enormous extent, their unparalleled
severity of climate, their uselessness in summer, their salt vegetation
nourishing countless herds, and above all by their indivisible economic
connexion with the distant grass-abounding north—these alone give rise
| Jireček (Denkschriften Acad. Wien, XLVIII. pp. 20, 34) assigns the centre of
the oldest Roumanians to Servia and its neighbourhood (where the district in
which the Latin language was spoken was most extended) because the Roumanian
language is very different from the dialect of the ancient Dalmatians. But because
these central lands offer few suitable winter pastures on account of their raw climate
and heavy snowfall, it must be assumed that the district in which the Romanic
speech adopted by the ancestors of the Roumanians was spoken, somewhere reached
notwithstanding to the Adriatic Sea.
4
H4
## p. 359 (#389) ############################################
The place of the Nomads in Hislory
359
to a people with the ineradicable habits of mounted nomads. The
Indo-European vocabulary reveals no trace of a former mounted
nomadism; there is no ground for speaking of Indo-European, Semitic,
Finno-Ugrian nomads, but only of nomads who have remained Altaic
or of indo-europeanised, semiticised, ugrianised nomads. The Scythians
became Iranian, the Magyars Ugrian, the Avars and Bulgarians Slavic,
and so on.
The identical origin of all the mounted nomads of historic and modern
times is also demonstrated by the identity of their entire mode of life,
even in its details and most trivial particulars, their customs, and their
habits. One nomad people is the counterfeit of the other, and after more
than two thousand years no change, no differentiation, no progress is to
be observed among them. Accordingly we can always supplement our not
always precise information about individual historical hordes, and the
consequences of their appearance, by comparisons with the better known
hordes. We are best informed about the Mongols of the thirteenth
century, and that by Rogerius Canon of Varad, Thomas Archdeacon of
Spalato, Plano Carpini, Rubruquis, Marco Polo and others, whose
accounts are therefore indispensable for a correct estimation of all
earlier nomadic invaders of Europe.
This is the role of nomadism in the history of the world: countries
too distant from its basis it could only ravage transitorily, with robbery,
murder, fire, and slavery, but the stamp which it left upon the peoples
which it directly dominated or adjoined remains uneffaceable. The
Orient, the cradle and chief nursery of civilisation, it delivered over to
barbarism ; it completely paralysed the greater part of Europe, and it
transformed and radically corrupted the race, spirit, and character of
countless millions for incalculable ages to come.
That which is called
the inferiority of the East European is its work, and had Germany or
France possessed steppes like Hungary, where the nomads could also
have maintained themselves and thence completed their work of destruc-
tion, in all probability the light of West European civilisation would
long ago have been extinguished, the entire Old World would have been
barbarised, and at the head of civilisation to-day would be stagnant
China.
OH, XII.
## p. 360 (#390) ############################################
360
The Huns
[433–445
(B)
ATTILA.
The Huns, who were divided into numerous distinct tribes ruled
by separate princes, had since the beginning of the fifth century begun
to draw together into a closer political union. King Rua (Rugilas)
had already united a large part of the nation under his sceptre; he
ruled especially over the tribes that inhabited the plains of Hungary.
Numerous alien barbaric peoples (Slavs, Germans, Sarmatians, etc. ) were
under his sway. The Eastern Empire paid him a yearly tribute. He was
on friendly terms with Aëtius, the general of the Western Empire, who
on this account gave up to him a part of Pannonia, the province of
Savia. Rua's successors were his nephews, Bleda and Attila, the sons of
Mundzuk (c. 433).
They first of all reigned jointly, each ruling over a definite number
of tribes but maintaining the unity of their empire, while in questions of
foreign politics both rulers co-operated. Bleda's personality traditionally
fades into obscurity beside Attila's. Attila was hideous to look upon,
little, broad-shouldered, with big head, flat nose and scanty beard. He
was covetous, vain and, like all despots, careful in the preservation of the
outward appearance of dignity; he was superstitious, unable to read or
write, but of penetrating intellect; he was cunning, audacious and skilled
in all the arts of diplomacy. He is most fitly compared to the for-
midable Mongol king, Chinghiz Khan ; like him he was a mere
conqueror who aimed at destruction and plunder; his supremacy had
therefore only the effect of a devastating tornado, not that of a purifying
thunderstorm which wakes Nature to new life. Certainly he did not
rival the Mongol in cruelty and violence; a wise calculation prevented
him from totally laying waste the territory given over to him; he
respected the law of nations and could be just and magnanimous towards
his enemies. Though surrounded by great pomp he remained simple
and moderate in his manner of life; he would sit at meals with a stern
and earnest countenance, without taking any part in the revelry going
on around him.
The policy of concentrating authority within the nation and ex-
tending it externally which was introduced by Rua was consciously
developed by Bleda and Attila, especially by the latter after he had
in 444 or 445 attained to exclusive dominion by setting aside his
brother and co-ruler. About the year 435 the Sorasgi, possibly a
people of Turkish origin domiciled in South Russia, as well as other
Scythian ” races, were subdued. The Akatziri, living in the district to
a
## p. 361 (#391) ############################################
436–461]
Attila's Policy
361
the north of the Black Sea, who hitherto had been in alliance with the
Huns, were obliged to acknowledge Attila's rule, and he placed his eldest
son Ellak at their head as sub-king (c. 447). The king of the Huns
even thought of extending the eastern frontier of his empire to Media
and Persia. Among the barbarians tributary to him were, besides, the
Alani (on the Don), numerous Slav tribes, some of which lived east of
the Vistula while others, driven out by the Huns, had settled in the
Danubian lands, as had in particular, the Teutons of the Danube basin :
Gepidae, Ostrogoths, Heruli, Rugii, Sciri, Turcilingi, Suevi (Quadi).
Certainly other names of German tribes are mentioned as under Attila's
dominion: Marcomanni, Bastarnae, Burgundians, Bructeri, Franks
(Ripuarii), and perhaps Alemanni on the Neckar, but it is doubtful to
whom they were subject. The Burgundians (on the east Rhine) who had
previously in the year 430 successfully repelled a Hunnic host, the Bructeri
(between the Lippe and the Ruhr), the Franks and Germans on the
Neckar must have voluntarily joined the Huns during the great march
to Gaul (451), so that we are scarcely justified in advancing the western
frontier of the Huns as far as the Rhine. The Germans occupy a con-
spicuous place in the circle around Attila ; it is related of Ardaric, the king
of the Gepidae, that he enjoyed especial consideration from Attila on
account of his fidelity, and that his advice was not without influence on
the decisions of the king of the Huns. Among his trusted counsellors is
mentioned, besides, the famous warrior prince of the Sciri, Edeco (Edica),
Odovacar's father, who in the year 449 was sent to Constantinople as
ambassador. The Ostrogoth king Walamir also is said—though by a
biassed and not unimpeachable authority (Jordanes)—to have enjoyed
Attila's favour. Thus the German peoples mostly maintained their auto-
nomy and were generally only obliged to serve in the army, while other
inferior subject races, in particular the Slavs, forfeited their independence
and were compelled to feed their rulers with the produce of their farms
and cattle. Yet Attila looked upon all subjugated peoples as his slaves
and asserted an absolute right of disposing of their life and property.
All attempts to withdraw from his sovereignty he punished with terrible
cruelty ; the demand for the delivery of fugitives therefore played an
important part in his negotiations with the Romans.
We are, as is natural, most accurately informed of his relations with
the two halves of the Roman Empire. Like Rua Attila maintained a
friendship with Aëtius, at whose disposal he repeatedly placed Hunnish
mercenaries. This relationship was partly brought about by personal
conditions, partly by the endeavour of Attila to divide the Roman power.
With such auxiliaries the general of the Western Empire destroyed
at Worms (435–436) the Burgundian kingdom of legendary fameman
event which later tradition and saga have turned into an expedition
of Attila's against the Burgundians. Numbers of Huns served in the
Roman Army which, in the same way, in 436-439 fought against the
CH. XII,
## p. 362 (#392) ############################################
362
Attila and the Eastern Empire
[433–441
N
Visigoths. On his side Aëtius sent to the king a learned Roman scribe,
Constantius, as private secretary and gave him his own son, Carpilio, as
hostage, for which in return he was honoured with gifts. The office,
also, of a magister militum which Attila held he seems to have obtained
through the Western Empire. The tribute which was paid to him
from thence was disguised under the name of a salary as Roman General-
in-chief. But at the end of the year 440 serious troubles already
disturbed these relations, because Attila repeatedly annoyed the Western
Empire and terrified it with threats under the pretext that fugitives
from his dominion had found refuge there.
The same degrading treatment must have befallen the Eastern
Roman Empire which was under the sovereignty of the incapable
Emperor Theodosius II. A complete overthrow and destruction of
the Eastern Empire was not Attila's intention. His policy on the
contrary aimed at keeping it, by continual extortions of money and
actual depredations, in a state of permanent weakness and incapacity to
resist. And as he insisted that all deserters should be given up to him
he deprived the Romans of the means of strengthening their army by
recruiting among the barbaric peoples of the Danube lands. These
leading ideas came clearly to light at once in the first treaty which the
two kings of the Huns concluded with the Emperor soon after their
accession (c. 433). It was agreed that the Romans should no longer
receive fugitives from the Huns and that these, as well as the Roman
prisoners of war who had escaped from the country of the Huns, should
be given up unless a ransom was paid for each of the latter. Besides,
the Emperor must not assist any barbarian people that was fighting
against the Huns ; between both the kingdoms there was to be free
commercial intercourse; the tribute of the Romans was doubled and
raised to 700 lbs. of gold. It was clear that the Huns would not be
contented with success so easily gained; if they nevertheless kept
the peace for eight years, it was only because they were occupied with
the subjection of the various Scythian peoples to the north of
the Danube. In the year 441 they were on the war-path and
slaughtered the Romans who had come on account of a market to
the bank of the Danube. A direct reason for the opening of hostilities
was given to them by the East Roman expedition against the Vandals
which had occasioned a withdrawal of frontier troops. This coincidence
of events has given rise to the groundless supposition that Gaiseric and
Attila had at that time formed an alliance. To the Emperor's expostu-
lation the kings replied that the Romans had not paid the tribute regularly,
had sheltered deserters, and also that the bishop of Margus (Pussaro-
vitz) had robbed the Hunnish royal graves of their treasures, and they
threatened him with a continuation of the war unless the fugitives and
the bishop were handed over to them. As the imperial envoys refused
everything the Huns captured the Danube forts Ratiaria, Viminacium,
1
## p. 363 (#393) ############################################
443–448]
Ravages of the Huns
363
Singidunum (Belgrade) and Margus (the last through the treachery
of the bishop, who was afraid of being delivered up) and pressed,
devastating as they went, into the interior of the Balkan lands as far as
the neighbourhood of Constantinople, where they conquered cities like
Naissus (Nisch), Philippopolis and Arcadiopolis. Other Hunnish bands
joined with the Persians made an inroad at the same time over the
Caucasus into the frontier lands of the Eastern Empire. The Roman
army which had in the meantime been called from Sicily by Theodosius
was decisively beaten in the Thracian Chersonesus. The kings of the
Huns dictated peace; and its conditions were still more disgraceful
than before :—the yearly tribute was raised to 2100 lbs. of gold besides
the stipulation of the payment of an indemnity of 6000 lbs. of gold,
and the surrender of fugitives was insisted upon (443).
Already in the year 447 the Huns invaded once more, and again
brought the most terrible calamities upon the Balkan lands. Aregisclus,
the general who opposed the enemy, was beaten and killed after valiant
resistance on the river Utus (Wid) in Lower Moesia, after which the
Hunnish cavalry pressed up the valley of the river Margus (Morava) and
through Thessaly as far as Thermopylae. Some 70 cities and fortresses
are said to have fallen victims to them at that time. When in the year
448 peace was again concluded, Attila demanded that besides the usual
money payments a broad tract of a five days' journey on the right bank
of the Danube from Singidunum to Novae (Sistova) should be left waste;
the boundary was placed at Naissus. But even now Attila would not
leave the Emperor at peace. Embassy after embassy went to Con-
stantinople and, on the standing pretext that not all deserters had yet
been delivered up, continually asserted fresh humiliating claims, the king
being however chiefly desirous of giving his messengers an opportunity
of enriching themselves with the customary gifts. The Eastern Empire
was near a financial collapse; as it could not exert itself to armed
resistance the thought came to the Imperial Government, that is to say
to the court eunuch Chrysaphius in particular, of getting rid of the
king of the Huns by murder. For this deed the co-operation of the
Scirian prince Edeco was sought: he declared himself ready to assist
but immediately betrayed the plan to Attila. The king revenged
himself only by scorning the despicable enemy; the Roman envoys
who had come with Edeco to him, amongst whom was the historian
Priscus, he allowed to withdraw, respecting the law of nations ; he
promised besides to maintain the peace and give up the waste
frontier territory on the Danube, and he did not once press the
demand, made in his first anger, that Chrysaphius should be put to death.
But he sent word to the Emperor that as Attila was a king's son so
was Theodosius an emperor's son, but that as the latter had rendered
himself tributary to the former he thus became his slave and that it was
a shameful action that he, as such, should aim at the life of his master
CH. XIL
## p. 364 (#394) ############################################
364
Battle of the Mauriac Plain
[449–452
a
(449 ? ). Attila might rightly consider himself the lord of the whole
Roman Empire. His authority had been considerably enhanced among
his own people by the discovery, about that time, of a sword buried in
the ground which was regarded as the weapon of the god of war.
It was not until Theodosius died (28 July 450) that these wretched
conditions altered. His successor, the efficient Emperor Marcian, refused,
as soon as he succeeded to the throne, to continue the payment of the
tribute to the king of the Huns, and the Western Empire followed his
example. The outbreak of war was also due to the conduct of Gratia
Justa Honoria, the sister of the Western Emperor Valentinian. She
secretly offered herself as wife to the king of the Huns, but the fulfilment
of the offer was refused because Attila demanded that half of the
Western Empire should be given up to her as her inheritance from her
father. Attila hereupon determined to take possession of the Western
Empire and of Gaul first of all, for here he might reckon with certainty
on the support of the (Ripuarian) Franks who, being split up into two
sections on account of dynastic hostilities, called for his intervention,
and he could in all probability count on at least the benevolent
neutrality of the Visigoths. The story that Gaiseric, out of fear of
Theodoric's vengeance, stirred
up Attila to make war against the Visigoths,
is certainly a fable, for the African kingdom had nothing to fear from
an attack on this side ; nevertheless the Vandal king may have had a
hand in the matter in order to weaken the West Roman Empire still
further. Supposing, however, an agreement between the Goths and the
Romans to be possible, Attila wrote to Theodoric as well as to the
Western Emperor that he was not going to take the field against them
but against their enemies. The history of the Hunnic expedition which
ended in Attila's defeat on the Campus Mauriacus near Troyes (451) has
already been told in another connexion, p. 280. Without being followed
by the victors the Hunnic army returned to Hungary. Attila did not
venture to repeat the expedition into Gaul; on the contrary, in the
following year after having made good his losses he turned towards Italy
where he had not to fear Germanic heroism.
Without encountering any resistance the Hunnic army crossed the
Julian Alps in the spring of 452. After a long siege Aquileia was
a
taken by storm and destroyed; after which the most important fortresses
of Upper Italy, with the exception of Ravenna, easily fell into the
hands of the enemy.
A great many of the inhabitants of the terribly
devastated country sought refuge on the unassailable islands of the
lagoons along the Adriatic coast. Yet the real foundation of Venice
which tradition has connected with the Hunnic invasion can only be
traced back to the invasion of the Lombards (568). After this Attila
bethought himself of marching against Rome, but famine and disease,
which broke out in his army, and the arrival in Italy of succour from
the Eastern Empire, as well as superstitious fear, since the Visigoth
## p. 365 (#395) ############################################
453]
Death of Attila
365
king Alaric had died shortly after his capture of the Eternal City, kept
him from carrying out his plan. When therefore an embassy of the
.
Romans led by Pope Leo I appeared in his camp on the Mincio to
induce him to withdraw, he willingly shewed himself ready to conclude
peace and retire. A contemporary, the chronicler Prosper Tiro, who at
that time was living in the papal service at Rome, has ascribed the
retreat of the “scourge of God” to the influence of Leo's powerful
personality, and later ecclesiastical tradition has naturally further
enhanced the holy man's ostensible service and adorned it with all
manner of supernatural circumstances. But a dispassionate historical
inspection will not allow us to ascribe the saving of Italy solely to the
influence of the Pope. Having returned home Attila demanded of
Marcian the tribute paid by Theodosius, and on the refusal of the
Emperor prepared for war against Eastern Rome. But his sudden
death prevented the realisation of his scheme: he died of hemorrhage
when he was celebrating his wedding (453) with a maiden named
Ildico, the Kriemhild of the Nibelungenlied (the name is a diminutive of
Hilde). The inheritance was divided among his sons, those mentioned by
name being Ellak, Dengisich and Ernac the youngest, Attila's favourite.
But with this was foreshadowed the downfall of the Hunnic power,
which was too much dependent on the personal quality of its leader
to be able to endure.
Of the domestic life and polity of the Huns we have also accurate
knowledge through the genuine fragment of Priscus. The king's head-
quarters were on the Hungarian steppe between the Theiss and Körös
and covered a large area which was enclosed by a circular wooden fence.
In the middle stood the royal residence also fenced round, a wooden
erection consisting of one single hall, Attila's private and public dwelling,
of ingenious architecture and furnished within with great magnificence ?
Among the king's circle the logades were prominent, a nobility founded
on birth and service; these enjoyed the highest consideration with the
ruler and the right to choose from the booty the best spoils and the
richest prisoners, and they formed a kind of council of state. Out of
their midst the body-guard, the military leaders and the envoys were
taken. The highest position amongst them was occupied by Onegesius,
Attila's right hand and first minister, who lived in a palace at the
entrance to the court residence. Besides Huns there were also Germans
and Romans among the logades, who on account of their intelligence
and culture enjoyed especial consideration. At the king's Court therefore
the Latin and Gothic tongues were in predominant use together with
the Hunnic. Attila ruled over his people in a wholly patriarchal
manner; the administration of justice was executed through him per-
sonally in the simplest way, always just without respect of persons. .
1 Stephani gives a plan of the encampment. Der älteste deutsche Wohnbau
und seine Einrichtung, Leipsic, 1902, 1. pp. 173 ff.
>
CH. XII.
## p. 366 (#396) ############################################
366
Government of Attila
The freedom and legal protection which every subject enjoyed caused
many a Roman to leave his home and settle with the uncivilised bar-
barians who knew no kind of taxation. The Huns kept, as before, their
character as nomadic horsemen; they were in their element on the
steppes ; life in towns was repugnant to them. Justly appreciating
these conditions Attila had made no attempt to effect a change in the
mode of life of his people, and never thought of removing to civilised
districts and setting up there a new State. His object was fully attained
by keeping the Romans in subjection and making them fill his treasury.
## p. 367 (#397) ############################################
367
CHAPTER XIII,
(A)
ROMAN BRITAIN.
The character and history of Roman Britain, as of many other
Roman provinces, were predominantly determined by the facts of its
geography. To that cause, or set of causes, more than to any other,
we must attribute alike the Roman desire to conquer the province
and the actual stages of the conquest, the distribution of the troops
employed as permanent garrison, the quality and extent of the Romanised
civilisation, and, lastly, a great part of the long series of incidents by
which the island was lost to Rome and Roman culture.
Geologically, Britain forms the north-west side of a huge valley which
had its south-east side in northern and central France. Down the centre
of this valley ran two rivers, the one flowing south-west along a bed now
covered by the English Channel, the other flowing north-east through a
region now beneath the German Ocean. From these rivers, the land
sloped upwards, south-east to Vosges, Alps and Cevennes, north-west
to Cornwall, Wales and northern Britain. The two rivers have long
vanished. But the configuration of their valleys has lasted. Though
unquiet seas now divide England from north-western Europe, the two
areas, that were once the two sides of the valleys, still look to each
other. Their lowlands lie opposite; their main rivers flow out into the
intervening sea ; their easiest entrances face; each area lies open by
nature to the trade or the brute force of the other; each has its most
fertile, most habitable and least defensible districts next to those of the
other.
Hence comes the peculiar configuration of our island. In south-east
Britain there is little continuous hill-country that rises above the 600 foot
contour line. Instead, wide undulating lowlands, marked by no striking
physical feature and containing little to arrest or even divert the march
of ancient armies or of traders, stretch over all the south and east and
midlands. For hills, we must go north of Trent and Humber or west
of Severn and Exe. There we shall find almost the converse of the
south-east. Throughout a large, scattered region, extending from
Cornwall to the Highlands, the land lies mostly above, and much of
it high above, the 600 foot line; its soil and climate are ill-suited to
CH, XIII.
## p. 368 (#398) ############################################
368
Roman Britain: Conquest (B. C. 55-A. D. 140
[
agriculture; its deep valleys and gorges and wild moors and high peaks
oppose alike the soldier and the citizen.
Behind this upland lies the
Atlantic, and an Atlantic which meant of old the reverse of what it does
to-day. To the ancients, this hill-country was the end of the world;
for us—since Columbus—it is the beginning.
These physical features are reproduced plainly in the early history
of Britain. It was natural that about s. c. 50-A. D. 50 southern Britain
should be occupied by Keltic tribes and even families which had close
kindred in Gaul, and that a lively intercourse should exist between the
two. It was no less natural that, even before Rome had fully conquered
.
the fleet mounted nomad into the trackless desert, he remained unpro-
tected. The fertile districts on the edge of the Sahara and the Arabian
desert were also in this frightful position, and Iran felt this calamity all
the harder, because the adjoining deserts of Turan are the most extensive
and terrible, and their inhabitants the wildest of all the nomads of the
world.
No better fared the peoples inhabiting East Europe, on the western
boundaries of the steppe-zone. As early as the fourth century B. C.
Ephorus stated that the customs, according to the individual peoples,
of the Scythians and the Sarmatians (both names covered the most
medley conglomerations of nomads and peasants) were very dissimilar.
Some even ate human beings (as the Massagetae ate their sick or aged
parents), others abstained from all animals. A thousand years later
, .
Pseudo-Caesarius of Nazianzus tells of a double people, that of the Sklavenes
(Slavs) and Phisonites on the lower Danube, of whom the Sklavenes
abstained from meat eating. And Constantine Porphyrogenitus in the
year 952 stated that the Russians (*Pôs, North Germanic Varangians, who
coming from Scandinavia held sway over the Slavs of Russia) bought
horses, cattle and sheep from their terrible nomadic neighbours the
Patzinaks, because they had none of these animals themselves (i. e. in
the Slav lands which they dominated). In certain districts of East
Europe therefore vegetarianism was permanent among the peasant folk,
who for more than two thousand years had been visited by the Altaians
with rapine and murder; this can be proved from original sources to have
been the case from the fourth century B. c. to the tenth century A. D. —that
is, for 1400 years! It is exactly the same state of things as in Ferghana
in modern times.
As long as a nomad horde finds sufficient room in the steppe it does
not think of emigration, and always returns home from its raids richly
laden with the plunder. But if the steppe-zone is thrown into a ferment
by struggles for the winter pastures or by other causes, the relatively
weakest horde gets pushed out of the steppe, and must conquer a new
home outside the zone. For it is only weak against the remaining nomad
hordes, but against any other State upon which it falls it is irresistible.
All the nomads of history who broke into Europe, the Scythians, Sarma-
tians, Huns, Bulgarians, Avars, Magyars, Cumans, were the weakest in
the steppes and had to take to fight, whence they became assailants of
CH. XII.
## p. 350 (#380) ############################################
350
Conquests
the world, before whom the strongest States tottered. With an energetic
Khan at their head, who organised them on military lines, such a horde
transformed itself into an incomparable army, compelled by the instinct
of self-preservation to hold fast together in the midst of the hostile
population which they subjugated; for however superfluous a central
government may be in the steppe, it is of vital importance to
a conquering nomad horde outside it. Consequently, while that part
of the people which remained in the steppe was split up into loose
clan associations, the other part, which emigrated, possessed itself of
immense territories, exterminated the greater part of entire nations
and enslaved the rest, scattered them as far as they pleased, and
founded a despotically governed State with a ridiculously, small band
of horsemen.
The high figures in the chronicles are fictions exaggerated by terror
and imagination, seeing that large troops of horsemen, who recklessly
destroyed everything around them, would not have found in a narrow
space even the necessary pasture for their many horses. Each Mongol
under Chinghiz Khan, for example, was obliged to take with him 18
horses and mares', so as always to have a fresh steed and sufficient mare's
milk and horse's blood for food and drink. Two corps under the
command of Sabutai and Chebe sufficed this great conqueror for the
overthrow of West Asia? . In four years they devastated and in great
part depopulated Khorasan, North Persia, Azerbaidjan, Georgia,
Armenia, Caucasia, the Crimea, and the Volga territories, took hundreds
of towns, and utterly defeated in bloody engagements the large armies
of the Georgians, Lesghians, Circassians, and Cumans, and the united
forces of the Russian princes. But they spared themselves as much as
possible, by driving those of the subjugated people who were capable
of bearing arms into the fight before them (as the Huns and Avars
did previously), and cutting them down at once when they hesitated.
But what the Altaian armies lacked in numbers was made up for by
their skill in surprises, their fury, their cunning, mobility, and elusiveness,
and the panic which preceded them and froze the blood of all peoples.
On their marvellously fleet horses they could traverse immense distances,
and their scouts provided them with accurate local information as to the
remotest lands and their weakness. Add to this the enormous advantage
that among them even the most insignificant news spread like wildfire
from aul to aul by means of voluntary couriers surpassing any intelligence-
department, however well organised. The tactics of the Mongols are
described by Marco Polo in agreement with Plano Carpini and all
the other writers as follows: “They never let themselves come to
close quarters, but keep perpetually riding round and shooting into
the enemy. And as they do not count it any shame to run away in
i Marco Polo (Ramusio's edition), 1. p. 48.
2 Vámbéry, Türkenvolk, p. 180; Bretschueider, 1. p. 294.
## p. 351 (#381) ############################################
Conquests
351
ܪܪ
battle, they will sometimes pretend to do so, and in running away they
turn in the saddle and shoot hard and strong at the foe, and in this way
make great havoc. Their horses are trained so perfectly that they will
double hither and thither, just like a dog, in a way that is quite
astonishing. Thus they fight to as good purpose in running away as if
they stood and faced the enemy, because of the vast volleys of arrows
that they shoot in this way, turning round upon their pursuers, who are
fancying that they have won the battle. But when the Tartars see that
they have killed and wounded a good many horses and men, they wheel
round bodily and return to the charge in perfect order and with loud
cries; and in a very short time the enemy are routed. In truth they are
stout and valiant soldiers and inured to war. And you perceive that it
is just when the enemy sees them run, and imagines that he has gained
the battle, that he has in reality lost it; for the Tartars wheel round in
a moment when they judge the right time has come. And after this
fashion they have won many a fight. ” The chronicler, Peter of Zittau,
in the year 1315, described the tactics of the Magyars in exactly the
same way.
When a vigorous conqueror like Attila or Chinghiz arose among the
mounted nomads and combined several hordes for a cyclonic advance,
they swept all before them on the march, like a veritable avalanche of
peoples. · The news of the onward rolling food scared the bravest
people, and compelled them to fly from their homes ; thus their neigh-
bours, too, were set in tumultuous motion, and so it went on until
some more powerful State took defensive measures and stemmed the
tide of peoples. Now the fugitives had to face the assailant. A battle
of nations was fought, the flower of famous peoples strewed the field,
and powerful nations were wiped out. The deserted or devastated
territories were occupied by peoples hitherto often quite unknown,
or settled by nations forcibly brought there by the conqueror; States,
generally without duration and kept together only by the one powerful
hand, were founded. The giant State, having no cohesion from within,
fell to pieces at the death of the conqueror or shortly after ; but the
sediment of peoples, together with a stratum of their nomad oppressors
which remained from the flood, could not be pushed back again, and
immense areas of a continent received once again an entirely new ethno-
graphy—the work of one single furious conqueror.
Oftener and longer than in Europe successive Altaian empires held
together in Asia, where the original population had long become
worn out by eternal servitude and the central zone of the steppes
supplied a near and secure base for plundering hordes. That some of
these Asiatic empires attained to a high degree of prosperity is not
due to the conquerors, who indeed quickly demongolised themselves
by marriage with aliens, but was the consequence of the geographical
position, the productivity of the soil, and the resigned tractableness and
CH, XII.
## p. 352 (#382) ############################################
352
Altaian Empires
adaptability of the subjugated who, in spite of all the splendour of their
masters, were forced to languish in helpless servitude.
Out of Central Asia from time immemorial one nomad horde after
another broke into the steppes of South Russia and of Hungary, and
after exterminating or pushing out their predecessors and occupying
their territories, used this new base to harry and enslave the surrounding
peoples far and wide, forcibly transforming their whole being, as in
Ferghana.
But the bestial fury of the nomads not only laid bare the country,
recklessly depopulated enormous tracts, dragged off entire peoples and
forcibly transplanted and enslaved them, but where their sway was of any
duration they brought their subjects down to the level of brutes, and
extirpated every trace of nobler feeling from their souls. Central Asia
of to-day, as Vámbéry states from personal observation, is a sink
of all vices. And Franz von Schwarz draws the following cheerless
picture of the Turkestan Sarts, among whom he lived for fifteen years :
With respect to character they are sunk as low as man possibly can be.
But this is not at all to be wondered at, as for thousands of years they
were oppressed and enslaved by all possible peoples, against whom they
could only maintain themselves by servility, cunning, and deceit. The
Sart is cowardly, fawning, cringing, reticent, suspicious, deceitful,
revengeful, cruel, and boastful. At the same time he shews in his
appearance and manner a dignity and bearing that would compel the
uninitiated to regard him as the ideal of a man of honour. In the
former native States, as in Bokhara and Khiva to-day, the entire system
of government and administration was based exclusively on lying, deceit,
and bribery, and it was quite impossible for a poor man to get justice.
The opposite of the Sart is his oppressor the Kirghiz, who is shy,
morose, and violent, but also honourable, upright, good-hearted, and
brave. The terrible slave-hunting Turkoman is distinguished from all
other Central Asiatics by his bold and piercing glance and proud bearing.
In wild bravery no other race on earth can match itself with him, and
as a horseman he is unsurpassed. He has an unruly disposition and
recognises no authority, but his word can be absolutely relied upon'.
What a tragic fate for an enslaved people. Although its lowest
degradation is already behind it, how long yet will it be the object of
universal and not unnatural contempt, while its former oppressor, void
of all humane feeling, a professional murderer and cattle-thief, remains
as a hero and ideal super-man?
So long as the dominant nomad horde remains true to its wandering
life, it lives in the midst of the subjugated only in winter, and proceeds
in spring to the summer pastures. But it is wise enough to leave behind
overseers and guards, to prevent revolts. The individual nomad has no
.
need to keep many slaves ; besides, he would have no occupation and no
1 Schwarz, Turkestan, pp. 25 ff.
## p. 353 (#383) ############################################
Social Consequences of the Servitude
353
food for them, and so an entire horde enslaves entire peoples, who must
provide food for themselves. In so far as he does not winter directly
among them, the nomad only comes to plunder them regularly, leaving
them nothing but what is absolutely indispensable.
The peasantry had to supply the nomads and their herds who wintered
among them with all that was demanded. For this purpose they stored
up grain and fodder during the summer, for in Central and East Europe
the snow falls too deep for the herds to be left to scrape out fodder alone.
During the winter the wives and daughters of the enslaved became a prey
to the lusts of the yellow-skins, by whom they were incessantly violated,
and thus every conjugal and family tie and as a further consequence the
entire social organisation was seriously loosened. The ancient Indo-
European patriarchal principle, which has exclusively prevailed among
the Altaians also from the earliest times, languished among the enslaved
just because of the violation and loosening of the conjugal bond, which
often continued for hundreds of years. The matriarchal principle
came into prominence, for the Altaian adulterer repudiated bastards,
and still more did the husband where there was one, so the children
followed the mother. Where therefore matriarchal phenomena occur
among Indo-Europeans, usually among the lower strata of popula-
tion, they are not survivals of pre-patriarchal times, but probably
arose later from the corruption of married life by systematic adultery.
Thus the subjugated Indo-Europeans became_here more, there less-
mongolised' by the mixture of races, and in places the two superimposed
races became fused into a uniform mixed people.
Indo-European usage and law died out, and the savage wilfulness of
the Altaians had exclusive sway. Revolutions among the people driven
.
to despair followed, but they were quelled in blood, and the oppression
exercised still more heavily. Even if here and there the yoke was
successfully shaken off, the emancipated, long paralysed and robbed of
all capability of self-organisation, were unable to remain independent.
Commonly they fell into anarchy and then voluntarily gave themselves
up to another milder-seeming servitude, or became once more the prey
of an if possible rougher conqueror.
In consequence of the everlasting man-hunting and especially the
carrying off of women in foreign civilised districts there ensued a strong
mixing of blood, and the Altaian race-characteristics grew fainter,
especially to the south and west. The Greeks by the time of
Alexander the Great were no longer struck by the Mongol type-
already much obliterated—of the nomads pasturing in the district
between the Oxus and the Jaxartes. This led to the supposition that
these nomads had belonged to the Indo-European race and had originally
been settled peasants, and that they had been compelled to limit them-
selves to animal rearing and to become nomads only after the conversion
The Mongol type of features extends westward to Bavaria and Württemberg.
23
C. MED. H. VOL. I. CH. XII.
## p. 354 (#384) ############################################
354
Mixture of Races.
The Scythians
1
1
1
of their fields to deserts through the evaporation of the water-basins? .
This supposition is false, as we have seen before.
The steppes and deserts of Central Asia are an impassable barrier
for the South Asiatics, the Aryans, but not for the North Asiatic,
the Altaian; for him they are an open country providing him with the
indispensable winter pastures. On the other hand, for the South Asiatic
Aryan these deserts are an object of terror, and besides he is not
impelled towards them, as he has winter pastures near at hand. It is
this difference in the distance of summer and winter pastures that makes
the North Asiatic Altaian an ever-wandering herdsman, and the grazing
part of the Indo-European race cattle-rearers settled in limited
districts. Thus, while the native Iranian must halt before the trackless
region of steppes and deserts and cannot follow the well-mounted robber-
nomad thither, Iran itself is the object of greatest longing to the nomadic
Altaian. Here he can plunder and enslave to his heart's delight, and if
he succeeds in maintaining himself for a considerable time among the
Aryans, he learns the language of the subjugated people, and by mingling
with them loses his Mongol characteristics more and more.
If the
Iranian is now fortunate enough to shake off the yoke, the dispossessed
iranised Altaian intruder inflicts himself upon other lands. So it was
with the Scythians.
Leaving their families behind in the South Russian steppes, the
Scythians invaded Media C. B. C. 630 and advanced into Mesopotamia
and Syria as far as Egypt. In Media they took Median wives and learned
the Median language. After being driven out by Cyaxares, on their
return some twenty-eight years later, they met with a new generation,
the offspring of the wives and daughters whom they had left behind,
and slaves of an alien race. A thorough mixture of race within
a single generation is hardly conceivable. A hundred and fifty years
later Hippocrates found them still so foreign, so Mongolian, that he
could say that they were “ very different from the rest of mankind, and
only like themselves, as are also the Egyptians. ” He remarked their
yellowish-red complexion, corpulence, smooth skins, and their consequent
eunuch-like appearance—all typically Mongol characteristics. Hippo-
crates was the most celebrated physician and natural philosopher of
the ancient world. His evidence is unshakable, and cannot be in-
validated by the Aryan speech of the Scythians. Their Mongol type
was innate in them, whereas their Iranian speech was acquired and is no
refutation of Hippocrates' testimonya. On the later Greek vases from
South Russian excavations they already appear strongly demongolised
and the Altaian is only suggested by their hair, which is as stiff as a
horse's mane-hence Aristotle's epithet ejdúspexes—the characteristic
that survives longest among all Ural-Altaian hybrid peoples.
1 Ukert, Geographie, 11. 2, p. 275; Schwarz, Sintflath, pp. 346, 489 ff.
2 Peisker. Beziehungen, pp. 22 ff.
## p. 355 (#385) ############################################
The Scythians and Magyars
355
If a nomad army is obliged to take foreign non-nomadic wives,
there occurs at once a dualism, corresponding to the two sexes, in
the language and way of living of each individual household. The new
wives cannot live in the saddle, they do not know how to take down the
tent, load it on the beasts of burden, and set it up again, and yet they
must share the restless life of the herdsman. Consequently, where the
ground admits of it, as in South Russia, the tent is put on wheels and
drawn by animals. Thus the Scythian women were hamaxobiotic (wagon-
inhabiting), the men however remained true to their horse-riding life and
taught their boys too, as soon as they could keep themselves in the saddle.
But the dualism in language could not maintain itself; the children held
to the language of the mother, the more easily because even the fathers
understood Medish, and so the Altaian Scythian people, with their
language finally iranised, became Iranian. But their mode of life re-
mained unchanged: the consumption of horse-flesh, soured horse's milk
(kumiz) and cheese of the same, the hemp vapour bath for men (the women
bathed differently), singeing of the fleshy parts of the body as a cure for
rheumatism, poisoning of the arrow-tips, wholesale human offerings and
slaughter of favourite wives at the burials of princes, the placing on
horseback of the stuffed bodies of murdered warriors round the grave,
etc. —all such customs as are found so well defined among the Mongols
of the Middle Ages.
The modern Tartars of the Crimea, whose classical beauty sometimes
rivals that of the Greeks and Romans, underwent, in the same land, the
same change to the Aryan type.
The same is the case with the Magyars whose mounted nomadic mode
of life and fury, and consequently their origin, was Turkish, but their
language was a mixture of Ugrian and Turkish on an Ugrian basis? .
Evidently a Magyar army, Turkish in blood, formerly advanced far to the
north where it subdued an Ugrian people and took Ugrian wives ; the
children then blended the Ugrian speech of their mothers with the
Turkish speech of their fathers. But they must also once have dominated
Indo-European peoples and mixed themselves very strongly with them,
for Gardēzī's original source from the middle of the ninth century
describes them as “handsome, stately men. ” At that time they
'
were leading the nomad existence in the Pontic Steppe—the old
Scythia—whence they engaged in terrible slave-hunting among the
neighbouring Slavs; and as they were notorious women-hunters, they
must have assimilated much Slav, Alan, and Circassian blood, and
thus became “handsome, stately men? . ” However the change did
not end there. At the end of the ninth century their army, on its
return from a predatory expedition, found their kindred at home totally
exterminated by their deadly enemies, the Patzinaks, a related stock.
v. the table of languages above, p. 333.
2 Marquart, pp. 144 ff. , 466 ff.
-
1
CH. XII.
23-2
## p. 356 (#386) ############################################
356
The Magyars and Roumanians
Consequently the whole body had again to take foreign wives, and they
occupied the steppes of Hungary. Before this catastrophe the Magyars
are said to have mustered 20,000 horsemen- an oriental exaggeration,
for this would assume a nomad people of 200,000 souls. Consequently
only a few thousand horsemen could have fled to Hungary. There they
mixed themselves further with the medley race-conglomeration settled
there, which had formed itself centuries before, and assimilated stragglers
from the related Patzinak stock. By this absorption the Altaian type
asserted itself so predominantly that the Frankish writers were never tired
of depicting their ugliness and loathsomeness in the most horrifying
colours. Their fury was so irresistible that in sixty-three years they were
able with impunity to make thirty-two great predatory expeditions as far
as the North Sea, and to France, Spain, Italy, and Byzantium. Thus the
modern Magyars are one of the most varied race-mixtures on the face of
the earth, and one of the two chief Magyar types of to-day-traced to
the Árpád era by tomb-findings—is dolichocephalic with a narrow
visage. There we have before us Altaian origin, Ugrian speech, and
Indo-European type combined.
Such metamorphoses are typical for all nomads who, leaving their
families at home, attack foreign peoples and at the same time make war
on one another. In the furious tumult in which the Central Asiatic
mounted hordes constantly swarmed, and fought one another for the
spoils, it is to be presumed that nearly all such people, like the
Scythians and Magyars, at least once sustained the loss of their wives
and children. The mounted nomads could, therefore, remain a pure
race only where they constantly opposed their own kin, whereas to the
south and west they were merged so imperceptibly in the Semitic and
Indo-European stock, that no race-boundary is perceivable.
The most diversified was the destiny of those mounted nomads who
became romanised in the Balkan peninsula (Roumanians or Vlakhs,
Baúxou), but, surprising as it may be outside the steppe region, remain
true to this day to their life as horse and sheep nomads wherever this is
still at all possible. During the summer they grazed on most of the
mountains of the Balkan peninsula, and took up their winter quarters
on the sea-coasts among a peasant population speaking a different
language. Thence they gradually spread, unnoticed by the chroniclers,
along all the mountain ranges, over all the Carpathians of Transyl-
vania, North Hungary, and South Galicia to Moravia ; towards the
north-west from Montenegro onwards over Herzegovina, Bosnia, Istria,
as far as South Styria ; towards the south over Albania far into Greece.
In the entire Balkan peninsula there is scarcely a span of earth which
they have not grazed. And like the peasantry among which they
wintered (and winter) long enough, they became (and become) after
1 Vámbéry, Ursprung, pp. 128 ff. , 320 ff. , 407 ff. ; A magyarság, pp. 152 ff.
## p. 357 (#387) ############################################
The Roumanians
357
a transitory bilingualism, Greeks, Albanians, Servians, Bulgarians,
Ruthenians, Poles, Slovaks, Chekhs, Slovenes, Croatians, seeing that
they appeared there not as a compact body, but as a mobile nomad
stratum among a strange-tongued and more numerous peasant element,
and not till later did they gradually take to agriculture and themselves
become settled. In Istria they are still bilingual. On the other hand
they maintain themselves in Roumania, East Hungary, Bukovina,
Bessarabia for the following reasons: the central portion of this region,
the Transylvanian mountain belt, sustained with its rich summer-
pastures such a number of grazing-camps (Roumanian catun, Mongol.
khotun), that the nomads in the favourable winter quarters of the
Roumanian plain were finally able to absorb the Slav peasantry,
already almost wiped out by the everlasting passage through them of
other wild nomad peoples. In Macedonia, too, a remainder of them still
exists. Were they not denationalised, the Roumanians to-day would
be by far the most numerous—but also the most scattered-people of
South Europe,-not less than twenty million souls.
The Roumanians were not descendants of Roman colonists of Dacia
left behind in East Hungary and Transylvania? Their nomadic life is
a confutation of this, for the Emperor Trajan (after A. D. 107) transplanted
settled colonists from the entire Roman Empire. And after the removal
and withdrawal of the Roman colonists (c. A. D.
271) Dacia, for untold
centuries, was the arena of the wildest international struggles known to
history, and these could not have been outlived by any nomad people
remaining there. To be sure, some express the opinion that the
Roumanian nomad herdsmen fled into the Transylvanian mountains
at each new invasion (by the Huns, Bulgarians, Avars, Magyars,
Patzinaks, Cumans successively) and subsequently always returned.
But the nomad can support himself in the mountains only during the
summer, and he must descend to pass the winter. On the other hand,
each of these new invading nomad hordes needed these mountains for
summer grazing for their own herds. Thus the Roumanians could not
have escaped, and their alleged game of hide-and-seek would have been
in vain. But south of the Danube also the origin of the Roumanians
must not be sought in Roman times, but much later, because nomads
are never quickly denationalised. For in the summer they are quite
alone on the otherwise uninhabited mountains, having intercourse with
one another in their own language, and only in their winter quarters
among the foreign-speaking peasantry are they compelled in their deal-
ings with them to resort to the foreign tongue. Thus they remain for
centuries bilingual before they are quite denationalised, and this can
be proved from original sources precisely in the case of the Roumanians
(Vlakhs) in the old kingdom of Servia. Accordingly the romanising of
the Roumanians presupposes a Romance peasant population already
1 Hunfalvy. On the contrary, Jorga, Ghergel, etc
CH. XII.
## p. 358 (#388) ############################################
358
Altaian Origin of Nomads
existing there for a long time and of different race, through the
influence of which they first became bilingual and then very gradually
,
after some centuries, forgot their own language. In what district could
this have taken place ? For nomads outside the salt-steppe the sea-
coast offers-precisely on account of the salt, and the mild winter-
the most suitable winter quarters, and, as a matter of fact, from the
earliest times certain shores of the Adriatic, the Ionian, Aegean, and
Marmora, were crowded with Vlakhian catuns, and are partly so at the
present time. Among all these sea-districts, however, only Dalmatia
had remained so long Romanic as to be able entirely to romanise a
nomad people'. From this district the expansion of the Roumanians
had its beginning, so that the name Daco-Roumanians is nothing but
a fiction.
The Spanish and Italian nomad shepherds too can have had no
other origin. Alans took part in Radagaisus' invasion of Italy in 405,
and, having advanced to Gaul, founded in 411 a kingdom in Lusitania
which was destroyed by the Visigoths. The remainder advanced into
Africa with the Vandals in 429. Traces of the Alans remained for a
long time in Gaul. Sarmatian and Bulgarian hordes accompanied
Alboin to Italy in 568, and twelve places in northern Italy are still
called Bolgaro, Bolgheri, etc. A horde of Altaian Bulgars fled to Italy
later, and received from the Lombard Grimoald (662-672) extensive
and hitherto barren settlements in the mountains of Abruzzi and their
neighbourhood. In the time of Paulus Diaconus (+ 797) they also
spoke Latin, but their mother tongue was still intact, for only on their
winter pastures in Apulia and Campania, in contact with Latin peasants
in whose fields they encamped, were they compelled to speak Latin. The
old Roman sheep-rearing pursued by slaves has no connexion with
nomadism.
Therefore neither the non-Mongol appearance, nor the Semitic, Indo-
European or Finno-Ugrian language of any historical mounted nomad
people can be held as a serious argument for their Semitic, Indo-European,
or Finno-Ugrian origin. Everything speaks for one single place of origin
for the mounted nomads, and that is in the Turanian-Mongol steppes
and deserts. These alone, by their enormous extent, their unparalleled
severity of climate, their uselessness in summer, their salt vegetation
nourishing countless herds, and above all by their indivisible economic
connexion with the distant grass-abounding north—these alone give rise
| Jireček (Denkschriften Acad. Wien, XLVIII. pp. 20, 34) assigns the centre of
the oldest Roumanians to Servia and its neighbourhood (where the district in
which the Latin language was spoken was most extended) because the Roumanian
language is very different from the dialect of the ancient Dalmatians. But because
these central lands offer few suitable winter pastures on account of their raw climate
and heavy snowfall, it must be assumed that the district in which the Romanic
speech adopted by the ancestors of the Roumanians was spoken, somewhere reached
notwithstanding to the Adriatic Sea.
4
H4
## p. 359 (#389) ############################################
The place of the Nomads in Hislory
359
to a people with the ineradicable habits of mounted nomads. The
Indo-European vocabulary reveals no trace of a former mounted
nomadism; there is no ground for speaking of Indo-European, Semitic,
Finno-Ugrian nomads, but only of nomads who have remained Altaic
or of indo-europeanised, semiticised, ugrianised nomads. The Scythians
became Iranian, the Magyars Ugrian, the Avars and Bulgarians Slavic,
and so on.
The identical origin of all the mounted nomads of historic and modern
times is also demonstrated by the identity of their entire mode of life,
even in its details and most trivial particulars, their customs, and their
habits. One nomad people is the counterfeit of the other, and after more
than two thousand years no change, no differentiation, no progress is to
be observed among them. Accordingly we can always supplement our not
always precise information about individual historical hordes, and the
consequences of their appearance, by comparisons with the better known
hordes. We are best informed about the Mongols of the thirteenth
century, and that by Rogerius Canon of Varad, Thomas Archdeacon of
Spalato, Plano Carpini, Rubruquis, Marco Polo and others, whose
accounts are therefore indispensable for a correct estimation of all
earlier nomadic invaders of Europe.
This is the role of nomadism in the history of the world: countries
too distant from its basis it could only ravage transitorily, with robbery,
murder, fire, and slavery, but the stamp which it left upon the peoples
which it directly dominated or adjoined remains uneffaceable. The
Orient, the cradle and chief nursery of civilisation, it delivered over to
barbarism ; it completely paralysed the greater part of Europe, and it
transformed and radically corrupted the race, spirit, and character of
countless millions for incalculable ages to come.
That which is called
the inferiority of the East European is its work, and had Germany or
France possessed steppes like Hungary, where the nomads could also
have maintained themselves and thence completed their work of destruc-
tion, in all probability the light of West European civilisation would
long ago have been extinguished, the entire Old World would have been
barbarised, and at the head of civilisation to-day would be stagnant
China.
OH, XII.
## p. 360 (#390) ############################################
360
The Huns
[433–445
(B)
ATTILA.
The Huns, who were divided into numerous distinct tribes ruled
by separate princes, had since the beginning of the fifth century begun
to draw together into a closer political union. King Rua (Rugilas)
had already united a large part of the nation under his sceptre; he
ruled especially over the tribes that inhabited the plains of Hungary.
Numerous alien barbaric peoples (Slavs, Germans, Sarmatians, etc. ) were
under his sway. The Eastern Empire paid him a yearly tribute. He was
on friendly terms with Aëtius, the general of the Western Empire, who
on this account gave up to him a part of Pannonia, the province of
Savia. Rua's successors were his nephews, Bleda and Attila, the sons of
Mundzuk (c. 433).
They first of all reigned jointly, each ruling over a definite number
of tribes but maintaining the unity of their empire, while in questions of
foreign politics both rulers co-operated. Bleda's personality traditionally
fades into obscurity beside Attila's. Attila was hideous to look upon,
little, broad-shouldered, with big head, flat nose and scanty beard. He
was covetous, vain and, like all despots, careful in the preservation of the
outward appearance of dignity; he was superstitious, unable to read or
write, but of penetrating intellect; he was cunning, audacious and skilled
in all the arts of diplomacy. He is most fitly compared to the for-
midable Mongol king, Chinghiz Khan ; like him he was a mere
conqueror who aimed at destruction and plunder; his supremacy had
therefore only the effect of a devastating tornado, not that of a purifying
thunderstorm which wakes Nature to new life. Certainly he did not
rival the Mongol in cruelty and violence; a wise calculation prevented
him from totally laying waste the territory given over to him; he
respected the law of nations and could be just and magnanimous towards
his enemies. Though surrounded by great pomp he remained simple
and moderate in his manner of life; he would sit at meals with a stern
and earnest countenance, without taking any part in the revelry going
on around him.
The policy of concentrating authority within the nation and ex-
tending it externally which was introduced by Rua was consciously
developed by Bleda and Attila, especially by the latter after he had
in 444 or 445 attained to exclusive dominion by setting aside his
brother and co-ruler. About the year 435 the Sorasgi, possibly a
people of Turkish origin domiciled in South Russia, as well as other
Scythian ” races, were subdued. The Akatziri, living in the district to
a
## p. 361 (#391) ############################################
436–461]
Attila's Policy
361
the north of the Black Sea, who hitherto had been in alliance with the
Huns, were obliged to acknowledge Attila's rule, and he placed his eldest
son Ellak at their head as sub-king (c. 447). The king of the Huns
even thought of extending the eastern frontier of his empire to Media
and Persia. Among the barbarians tributary to him were, besides, the
Alani (on the Don), numerous Slav tribes, some of which lived east of
the Vistula while others, driven out by the Huns, had settled in the
Danubian lands, as had in particular, the Teutons of the Danube basin :
Gepidae, Ostrogoths, Heruli, Rugii, Sciri, Turcilingi, Suevi (Quadi).
Certainly other names of German tribes are mentioned as under Attila's
dominion: Marcomanni, Bastarnae, Burgundians, Bructeri, Franks
(Ripuarii), and perhaps Alemanni on the Neckar, but it is doubtful to
whom they were subject. The Burgundians (on the east Rhine) who had
previously in the year 430 successfully repelled a Hunnic host, the Bructeri
(between the Lippe and the Ruhr), the Franks and Germans on the
Neckar must have voluntarily joined the Huns during the great march
to Gaul (451), so that we are scarcely justified in advancing the western
frontier of the Huns as far as the Rhine. The Germans occupy a con-
spicuous place in the circle around Attila ; it is related of Ardaric, the king
of the Gepidae, that he enjoyed especial consideration from Attila on
account of his fidelity, and that his advice was not without influence on
the decisions of the king of the Huns. Among his trusted counsellors is
mentioned, besides, the famous warrior prince of the Sciri, Edeco (Edica),
Odovacar's father, who in the year 449 was sent to Constantinople as
ambassador. The Ostrogoth king Walamir also is said—though by a
biassed and not unimpeachable authority (Jordanes)—to have enjoyed
Attila's favour. Thus the German peoples mostly maintained their auto-
nomy and were generally only obliged to serve in the army, while other
inferior subject races, in particular the Slavs, forfeited their independence
and were compelled to feed their rulers with the produce of their farms
and cattle. Yet Attila looked upon all subjugated peoples as his slaves
and asserted an absolute right of disposing of their life and property.
All attempts to withdraw from his sovereignty he punished with terrible
cruelty ; the demand for the delivery of fugitives therefore played an
important part in his negotiations with the Romans.
We are, as is natural, most accurately informed of his relations with
the two halves of the Roman Empire. Like Rua Attila maintained a
friendship with Aëtius, at whose disposal he repeatedly placed Hunnish
mercenaries. This relationship was partly brought about by personal
conditions, partly by the endeavour of Attila to divide the Roman power.
With such auxiliaries the general of the Western Empire destroyed
at Worms (435–436) the Burgundian kingdom of legendary fameman
event which later tradition and saga have turned into an expedition
of Attila's against the Burgundians. Numbers of Huns served in the
Roman Army which, in the same way, in 436-439 fought against the
CH. XII,
## p. 362 (#392) ############################################
362
Attila and the Eastern Empire
[433–441
N
Visigoths. On his side Aëtius sent to the king a learned Roman scribe,
Constantius, as private secretary and gave him his own son, Carpilio, as
hostage, for which in return he was honoured with gifts. The office,
also, of a magister militum which Attila held he seems to have obtained
through the Western Empire. The tribute which was paid to him
from thence was disguised under the name of a salary as Roman General-
in-chief. But at the end of the year 440 serious troubles already
disturbed these relations, because Attila repeatedly annoyed the Western
Empire and terrified it with threats under the pretext that fugitives
from his dominion had found refuge there.
The same degrading treatment must have befallen the Eastern
Roman Empire which was under the sovereignty of the incapable
Emperor Theodosius II. A complete overthrow and destruction of
the Eastern Empire was not Attila's intention. His policy on the
contrary aimed at keeping it, by continual extortions of money and
actual depredations, in a state of permanent weakness and incapacity to
resist. And as he insisted that all deserters should be given up to him
he deprived the Romans of the means of strengthening their army by
recruiting among the barbaric peoples of the Danube lands. These
leading ideas came clearly to light at once in the first treaty which the
two kings of the Huns concluded with the Emperor soon after their
accession (c. 433). It was agreed that the Romans should no longer
receive fugitives from the Huns and that these, as well as the Roman
prisoners of war who had escaped from the country of the Huns, should
be given up unless a ransom was paid for each of the latter. Besides,
the Emperor must not assist any barbarian people that was fighting
against the Huns ; between both the kingdoms there was to be free
commercial intercourse; the tribute of the Romans was doubled and
raised to 700 lbs. of gold. It was clear that the Huns would not be
contented with success so easily gained; if they nevertheless kept
the peace for eight years, it was only because they were occupied with
the subjection of the various Scythian peoples to the north of
the Danube. In the year 441 they were on the war-path and
slaughtered the Romans who had come on account of a market to
the bank of the Danube. A direct reason for the opening of hostilities
was given to them by the East Roman expedition against the Vandals
which had occasioned a withdrawal of frontier troops. This coincidence
of events has given rise to the groundless supposition that Gaiseric and
Attila had at that time formed an alliance. To the Emperor's expostu-
lation the kings replied that the Romans had not paid the tribute regularly,
had sheltered deserters, and also that the bishop of Margus (Pussaro-
vitz) had robbed the Hunnish royal graves of their treasures, and they
threatened him with a continuation of the war unless the fugitives and
the bishop were handed over to them. As the imperial envoys refused
everything the Huns captured the Danube forts Ratiaria, Viminacium,
1
## p. 363 (#393) ############################################
443–448]
Ravages of the Huns
363
Singidunum (Belgrade) and Margus (the last through the treachery
of the bishop, who was afraid of being delivered up) and pressed,
devastating as they went, into the interior of the Balkan lands as far as
the neighbourhood of Constantinople, where they conquered cities like
Naissus (Nisch), Philippopolis and Arcadiopolis. Other Hunnish bands
joined with the Persians made an inroad at the same time over the
Caucasus into the frontier lands of the Eastern Empire. The Roman
army which had in the meantime been called from Sicily by Theodosius
was decisively beaten in the Thracian Chersonesus. The kings of the
Huns dictated peace; and its conditions were still more disgraceful
than before :—the yearly tribute was raised to 2100 lbs. of gold besides
the stipulation of the payment of an indemnity of 6000 lbs. of gold,
and the surrender of fugitives was insisted upon (443).
Already in the year 447 the Huns invaded once more, and again
brought the most terrible calamities upon the Balkan lands. Aregisclus,
the general who opposed the enemy, was beaten and killed after valiant
resistance on the river Utus (Wid) in Lower Moesia, after which the
Hunnish cavalry pressed up the valley of the river Margus (Morava) and
through Thessaly as far as Thermopylae. Some 70 cities and fortresses
are said to have fallen victims to them at that time. When in the year
448 peace was again concluded, Attila demanded that besides the usual
money payments a broad tract of a five days' journey on the right bank
of the Danube from Singidunum to Novae (Sistova) should be left waste;
the boundary was placed at Naissus. But even now Attila would not
leave the Emperor at peace. Embassy after embassy went to Con-
stantinople and, on the standing pretext that not all deserters had yet
been delivered up, continually asserted fresh humiliating claims, the king
being however chiefly desirous of giving his messengers an opportunity
of enriching themselves with the customary gifts. The Eastern Empire
was near a financial collapse; as it could not exert itself to armed
resistance the thought came to the Imperial Government, that is to say
to the court eunuch Chrysaphius in particular, of getting rid of the
king of the Huns by murder. For this deed the co-operation of the
Scirian prince Edeco was sought: he declared himself ready to assist
but immediately betrayed the plan to Attila. The king revenged
himself only by scorning the despicable enemy; the Roman envoys
who had come with Edeco to him, amongst whom was the historian
Priscus, he allowed to withdraw, respecting the law of nations ; he
promised besides to maintain the peace and give up the waste
frontier territory on the Danube, and he did not once press the
demand, made in his first anger, that Chrysaphius should be put to death.
But he sent word to the Emperor that as Attila was a king's son so
was Theodosius an emperor's son, but that as the latter had rendered
himself tributary to the former he thus became his slave and that it was
a shameful action that he, as such, should aim at the life of his master
CH. XIL
## p. 364 (#394) ############################################
364
Battle of the Mauriac Plain
[449–452
a
(449 ? ). Attila might rightly consider himself the lord of the whole
Roman Empire. His authority had been considerably enhanced among
his own people by the discovery, about that time, of a sword buried in
the ground which was regarded as the weapon of the god of war.
It was not until Theodosius died (28 July 450) that these wretched
conditions altered. His successor, the efficient Emperor Marcian, refused,
as soon as he succeeded to the throne, to continue the payment of the
tribute to the king of the Huns, and the Western Empire followed his
example. The outbreak of war was also due to the conduct of Gratia
Justa Honoria, the sister of the Western Emperor Valentinian. She
secretly offered herself as wife to the king of the Huns, but the fulfilment
of the offer was refused because Attila demanded that half of the
Western Empire should be given up to her as her inheritance from her
father. Attila hereupon determined to take possession of the Western
Empire and of Gaul first of all, for here he might reckon with certainty
on the support of the (Ripuarian) Franks who, being split up into two
sections on account of dynastic hostilities, called for his intervention,
and he could in all probability count on at least the benevolent
neutrality of the Visigoths. The story that Gaiseric, out of fear of
Theodoric's vengeance, stirred
up Attila to make war against the Visigoths,
is certainly a fable, for the African kingdom had nothing to fear from
an attack on this side ; nevertheless the Vandal king may have had a
hand in the matter in order to weaken the West Roman Empire still
further. Supposing, however, an agreement between the Goths and the
Romans to be possible, Attila wrote to Theodoric as well as to the
Western Emperor that he was not going to take the field against them
but against their enemies. The history of the Hunnic expedition which
ended in Attila's defeat on the Campus Mauriacus near Troyes (451) has
already been told in another connexion, p. 280. Without being followed
by the victors the Hunnic army returned to Hungary. Attila did not
venture to repeat the expedition into Gaul; on the contrary, in the
following year after having made good his losses he turned towards Italy
where he had not to fear Germanic heroism.
Without encountering any resistance the Hunnic army crossed the
Julian Alps in the spring of 452. After a long siege Aquileia was
a
taken by storm and destroyed; after which the most important fortresses
of Upper Italy, with the exception of Ravenna, easily fell into the
hands of the enemy.
A great many of the inhabitants of the terribly
devastated country sought refuge on the unassailable islands of the
lagoons along the Adriatic coast. Yet the real foundation of Venice
which tradition has connected with the Hunnic invasion can only be
traced back to the invasion of the Lombards (568). After this Attila
bethought himself of marching against Rome, but famine and disease,
which broke out in his army, and the arrival in Italy of succour from
the Eastern Empire, as well as superstitious fear, since the Visigoth
## p. 365 (#395) ############################################
453]
Death of Attila
365
king Alaric had died shortly after his capture of the Eternal City, kept
him from carrying out his plan. When therefore an embassy of the
.
Romans led by Pope Leo I appeared in his camp on the Mincio to
induce him to withdraw, he willingly shewed himself ready to conclude
peace and retire. A contemporary, the chronicler Prosper Tiro, who at
that time was living in the papal service at Rome, has ascribed the
retreat of the “scourge of God” to the influence of Leo's powerful
personality, and later ecclesiastical tradition has naturally further
enhanced the holy man's ostensible service and adorned it with all
manner of supernatural circumstances. But a dispassionate historical
inspection will not allow us to ascribe the saving of Italy solely to the
influence of the Pope. Having returned home Attila demanded of
Marcian the tribute paid by Theodosius, and on the refusal of the
Emperor prepared for war against Eastern Rome. But his sudden
death prevented the realisation of his scheme: he died of hemorrhage
when he was celebrating his wedding (453) with a maiden named
Ildico, the Kriemhild of the Nibelungenlied (the name is a diminutive of
Hilde). The inheritance was divided among his sons, those mentioned by
name being Ellak, Dengisich and Ernac the youngest, Attila's favourite.
But with this was foreshadowed the downfall of the Hunnic power,
which was too much dependent on the personal quality of its leader
to be able to endure.
Of the domestic life and polity of the Huns we have also accurate
knowledge through the genuine fragment of Priscus. The king's head-
quarters were on the Hungarian steppe between the Theiss and Körös
and covered a large area which was enclosed by a circular wooden fence.
In the middle stood the royal residence also fenced round, a wooden
erection consisting of one single hall, Attila's private and public dwelling,
of ingenious architecture and furnished within with great magnificence ?
Among the king's circle the logades were prominent, a nobility founded
on birth and service; these enjoyed the highest consideration with the
ruler and the right to choose from the booty the best spoils and the
richest prisoners, and they formed a kind of council of state. Out of
their midst the body-guard, the military leaders and the envoys were
taken. The highest position amongst them was occupied by Onegesius,
Attila's right hand and first minister, who lived in a palace at the
entrance to the court residence. Besides Huns there were also Germans
and Romans among the logades, who on account of their intelligence
and culture enjoyed especial consideration. At the king's Court therefore
the Latin and Gothic tongues were in predominant use together with
the Hunnic. Attila ruled over his people in a wholly patriarchal
manner; the administration of justice was executed through him per-
sonally in the simplest way, always just without respect of persons. .
1 Stephani gives a plan of the encampment. Der älteste deutsche Wohnbau
und seine Einrichtung, Leipsic, 1902, 1. pp. 173 ff.
>
CH. XII.
## p. 366 (#396) ############################################
366
Government of Attila
The freedom and legal protection which every subject enjoyed caused
many a Roman to leave his home and settle with the uncivilised bar-
barians who knew no kind of taxation. The Huns kept, as before, their
character as nomadic horsemen; they were in their element on the
steppes ; life in towns was repugnant to them. Justly appreciating
these conditions Attila had made no attempt to effect a change in the
mode of life of his people, and never thought of removing to civilised
districts and setting up there a new State. His object was fully attained
by keeping the Romans in subjection and making them fill his treasury.
## p. 367 (#397) ############################################
367
CHAPTER XIII,
(A)
ROMAN BRITAIN.
The character and history of Roman Britain, as of many other
Roman provinces, were predominantly determined by the facts of its
geography. To that cause, or set of causes, more than to any other,
we must attribute alike the Roman desire to conquer the province
and the actual stages of the conquest, the distribution of the troops
employed as permanent garrison, the quality and extent of the Romanised
civilisation, and, lastly, a great part of the long series of incidents by
which the island was lost to Rome and Roman culture.
Geologically, Britain forms the north-west side of a huge valley which
had its south-east side in northern and central France. Down the centre
of this valley ran two rivers, the one flowing south-west along a bed now
covered by the English Channel, the other flowing north-east through a
region now beneath the German Ocean. From these rivers, the land
sloped upwards, south-east to Vosges, Alps and Cevennes, north-west
to Cornwall, Wales and northern Britain. The two rivers have long
vanished. But the configuration of their valleys has lasted. Though
unquiet seas now divide England from north-western Europe, the two
areas, that were once the two sides of the valleys, still look to each
other. Their lowlands lie opposite; their main rivers flow out into the
intervening sea ; their easiest entrances face; each area lies open by
nature to the trade or the brute force of the other; each has its most
fertile, most habitable and least defensible districts next to those of the
other.
Hence comes the peculiar configuration of our island. In south-east
Britain there is little continuous hill-country that rises above the 600 foot
contour line. Instead, wide undulating lowlands, marked by no striking
physical feature and containing little to arrest or even divert the march
of ancient armies or of traders, stretch over all the south and east and
midlands. For hills, we must go north of Trent and Humber or west
of Severn and Exe. There we shall find almost the converse of the
south-east. Throughout a large, scattered region, extending from
Cornwall to the Highlands, the land lies mostly above, and much of
it high above, the 600 foot line; its soil and climate are ill-suited to
CH, XIII.
## p. 368 (#398) ############################################
368
Roman Britain: Conquest (B. C. 55-A. D. 140
[
agriculture; its deep valleys and gorges and wild moors and high peaks
oppose alike the soldier and the citizen.
Behind this upland lies the
Atlantic, and an Atlantic which meant of old the reverse of what it does
to-day. To the ancients, this hill-country was the end of the world;
for us—since Columbus—it is the beginning.
These physical features are reproduced plainly in the early history
of Britain. It was natural that about s. c. 50-A. D. 50 southern Britain
should be occupied by Keltic tribes and even families which had close
kindred in Gaul, and that a lively intercourse should exist between the
two. It was no less natural that, even before Rome had fully conquered
.
