Attila: The Gathering of the Storm

by William Napier

  Out on the plains each day, throughout the bitterest winter winds, and then more willingly in springtime, his band of warriors, numbering as yet only a few hundred, galloped and wheeled under command, and learned to stop at an invisible barrier signalled by their commander’s call. They learned to fire their arrows at unimaginable speed, and the few bowyers and fletchers left among the people with the art still in their hands and eyes were set to work with a vengeance once more. His band of warriors grew strong, and, more important, confident in their strength. They began to long for battle to try their skills, and the strength of their souls.

  One day one of the twenty chosen women returned, and went into the palace. It was many hours before she came out again, and she returned to her patient husband and her children with a pouch bulging with gold rings and a rare smile on her face. After that more came home, all that summer, bringing Attila the information that he wanted, and more.

  At last all forty spies had returned, not one having run into danger through his own folly or failed in her mission. Thus he learned what he needed to learn, and daily grew stronger. The people too, the women as much as men, sensed this strange, growing power and energy among them and smiled more fiercely. The women sang their ancient harp-songs again, praising their men curtly for feats of arms, but scorning them lavishly and at length for weakness or doubt.

  Their implacable king settled back upon his plain wooden throne in his wooden palace and, smiling, considered. For now it was time. The years pass, he thought, and all things ripen into sweetness. And there is a time, there is a time, to pluck the sweet ripe fruit of Rome. Or rather, to knock it from the tree and trample on it, for it is grown overripe and rotten and is no good to man or beast. And it is time. For I have counsel and strength for war. I shall make my people strong, and a mighty name among the nations. They shall no more be a laughing-stock, nor a footstool under the feet of foreign kings. Do not even the Christians in their holy book say that there is a time for love, and a time for hate, a time for war and a time for peace? Behold, my hand is strong; and I make my lands ready for war. From those sorrowful boyhood years of penal servitude in Rome, he could quote the Romans’ scriptures back at them as fluently as the Devil.

  He smiled. Now it was a time for war. The gods must, after all, be entertained. Like their creature, man, straining forward in the arena to see the action ... the gods, too, must be entertained.

  7

  THE EMPRESS AND THE GENERAL

  This was how things stood, as Attila learned from his spies, in the late summer of the year which by Christian reckoning was called AD 442.

  The years after 410 and the Sack of Rome had been bitter years. Yet it seemed to some in those days that at last the world had grown tired of faction and war. How wrong we were. As Plato said, only the dead know nothing of war. The living will never tire of it.

  There were six days of sacking and looting, of a kind which surprised the city’s emaciated inhabitants in its restraint - King Alaric had given orders that no place of Christian worship should be touched. Then the Gothic armies withdrew from the city and turned south.

  Only a few days later Alaric was dead, in mysterious circumstances. There was talk of a plot, of poison, of covert assassination . . . But nothing was ever known for certain.

  Emperor Honorius’ sister, the cold-eyed, brilliant Galla Placidia, married a dull Illyiran general and had two children: a son called Valentinian, born in 419, and a daughter called Honoria, born three years later. Valentinian soon appeared to be as foolish and high-strung as his uncle, Honorius. Honoria was cleverer, playful, sharp-witted, a little charmer. Both children would in time have an untold effect upon their times.

  Honorius had no children of his own, and his poor, neglected wife had died young. And then His Divine Majesty began to show more than a purely brotherly affection for his sister.

  Emperors’ loves run not infrequently to members of their own family: Nero’s excessive affection for his mother and Caligula’s for his sisters are well known. Even Julius Caesar dreamed once of ravishing his own mother, although the soothsayers calmed his fears by assuring him that this symbolised that he should conquer his Mother Earth. Since the emperor was himself divine, however, perhaps he felt that only a fellow divinity was fit to share his bed. Moreover, so many were constantly plotting to kill him, that maybe the only ones he could trust in his bed were his own flesh and blood. Although, since it was so often his own flesh and blood who were the plotters, this policy of safety-in-incest was perhaps ill-advised.

  Galla could have managed a rift with any other. But a rift with her own brother, the emperor, she could neither foresee nor manage.

  There was in the court at that time a young cavalry officer of some twenty-five summers, the eldest son of a distinguished master-general of cavalry on the Danube frontier called Gaudentius, now deceased. Tall, straight-limbed, grave and sober beyond his years, the young officer had been promoted with astonishing swiftness from commander of an eighty-strong cavalry ala to legionary tribune to legate. Now, without having committed a single error in the field or, even more importantly, in the courts of power where politics and soldiery so abrasively mixed, and having inflicted a sequence of crushing defeats on tribe after tribe of Rome’s borderland enemies, he was raised to the rank of general. He was the youngest general in over two hundred years.

  General Aëtius.

  Aëtius was praised and respected in all quarters. It was said he would sooner die than break his word. When he gave a promise, it was as unbreakable as the great chain that lay across the harbour of the Golden Horn in Constantinople in time of war.

  As handsome as Apollo but as tough as saddlehide, like Caesar he marched and rode and slept just like his men, and they revered him for it. When it hammered with rain or pelted hail in the high Alpine passes in early spring or late autumn, and most generals took to their covered wagons or carriages, General Aëtius bowed his head, pulled up his woollen cloak greased with goosefat, and rode on into the storm, no more protected from the savagery of the elements than his humblest legionary. He rode as hard and as far. He took command in the endless frontier skirmishes with Rome’s barbarian neighbours, and he fought alongside his own men in the fury of the battleline, to the disapproval of his fellow generals. Each year he acquired new scars.

  A stern and implacable commander, he made it clear to his men that should they ever disobey him, or a single one of them ever break rank and flee before the face of the enemy, he would mete out the ancient punishment of decimation upon the entire legion. That is to say, one in ten men would be taken from the ranks at random, and the rest should club them to death where they stood on the parade ground, so that all should be punished for the cowardice of one. None doubted that he would do as he said. But the time of proof never came. No coward ever served under General Aëtius.

  Under his command and his steady blue-eyed gaze, it seemed the army was regaining some of the former strength and spirit that it had not possessed since perhaps the catastrophe of Adrianople, back in 378, when the legions had been cut to pieces by the newly arrived Gothic hordes whom the Romans had recently admitted within their borders as refugees and immigrants. It was a blow from which the Roman war-machine had still not recovered. For years now, the drill had been sloppy, the engagements with the enemy only fitful and inconclusive, and peace with the barbarians had been won more often by gold than grim battle. Even the legionaries’ armour grew thinner yearly.

  Aëtius saw to it that the imperial armouries were once again well supplied with the finest metals, and visited them, at random and unannounced, to check their work. Any man he found slacking he punished without mercy. He drilled his troops relentlessly, and he pushed them harder and harder into battle with their numberless foes. The army grew in strength and discipline; and as is the way with men of martial bent, grew more fiercely happy with each passing year, sensing in themselves their own growing force and power.

  The general was not an unwavering tr
aditionalist in everything, however. When the time came to punish a rebellious town or tribe, he departed from the ancient Roman custom of putting to the sword every man, woman and child of that tribe, every cow and goat, every cat and dog. ‘The ruin of Carthage,’ he observed laconically, ‘was before the time of Christ.’ Instead he was content simply to slay all men of an age to bear arms, and sell the rest into slavery. His mercifulness towards Rome’s enemies was renowned.

  He was a man of few words, swift actions and deep passions. His duty was all to Rome.

  And yet there was perhaps one woman ...

  Although three years his senior, and twice a widow, it was clear to court observers that Galla was drawn to Aëtius by more than his martial renown and his calm authority beyond his years. No scurrilous gossip attached to Galla and the young General, then, but it was amusing to see how often Galla felt it necessary to call Aëtius to her private consistory, and how often she demanded his presence at imperial meetings.

  How tedious he found them.

  At the announcement of each new imperial decree, the entire court had to rise to their feet and proclaim, ‘We give thanks for this regulation of Yours!’

  Twenty-three times over.

  And then, in one voice, ‘You have removed the ambiguities of the imperial constitution!’ again repeated twenty-three times.

  And then ‘Let numerous copies of this code be kept in the provincial government offices!’ repeated thirteen times.

  Aëtius could barely disguise his contempt for such absurdities. But he did his duty, as always, and repeated the appointed mantras with the rest of them.

  At dinner parties, too, it was noted, Galla talked and exchanged witticisms with Aëtius more than was strictly necessary, sometimes to the neglect of other guests. It surprised none that she should feel like this towards her general. Many of the women of the court felt likewise. There was in him a rare combination of integrity, courage, already slightly battered good looks, effortless nobility, and a certain underlying melancholy that made him irresistible. It was as if, they said, he had been born out of his time. He should have been born in the stern and simple days of the old Republic.

  What Aëtius’ feelings towards Galla were, none could tell. Like many men of deep, passionate natures, he concealed his powerful feelings beneath formality and reserve; only the shallow raise their voices in continual argument and complaint. Aëtius certainly enjoyed Galla’s company more than he enjoyed the wearisome rituals of the court - though less than he loved the camp and the battlefield. But it seemed unlikely that he felt any more than that. He could have married Galla and made himself the next emperor with little difficulty. A more ambitious, less principled man would have married Galla anyway, regardless of his feelings. Not Aëtius. He remained deeply loyal to her. But no more.

  In time their relationship grew more complex. Whether it would be fair to describe Galla as resenting the general for his high-principled neglect of her as a woman, who can say? Their relationship was always close, but not always happy. Sometimes flirtatious, sometimes fraught and uneasy, sometimes even bitterly antagonistic.

  Honorius began to manifest signs of jealousy of the general. On one occasion Aëtius actually had to flee the court of Rome, and leave Italy for the frontier, on hearing substantive rumours that Honorius was plotting his death.

  On his return, it was clear that the emperor’s attachment to his sister was growing out of hand. All courtiers greeted one another with a kiss on the lips, of course; male and female, young and old, friend or relative. But Honorius’ kissing of his sister, morning, afternoon and most of all at night, around the bibulous dining tables, was more than courtesy required. Furthermore, he caressed her in a manner that embarrassed all onlookers. The gossip became scandal, until it was half believed even by those loyal to her. The chronicler Olympiodorus speaks of ‘continual sensual caresses and little kisses’. Galla recoiled in disgust and perplexity, and before long there was bitter recrimination between brother and sister.

  Some tale-bearers and scandal-mongers whispered that the princess responded readily enough to her brother’s amorous advances, and was only infuriated when the scandal leaked out. For my part, though such things are by no means uncommon among ruling families, I do not think Galla was guilty. One thing she was not was a slave to her own desires. She was slave to nothing and no one.

  The poor woman, so haughtily controlled in almost every situation which fate had so far thrown at her in her short but turbulent life, seemed quite bewildered as to what to do. This was the Divine Ruler of the empire, after all. What if he should actually demand, one hot night, flushed with wine and illicit passion . . . ? It was unthinkable, yet to refuse him would be perilous in the extreme.

  There was only one alternative. To leave his presence. To flee, as Aëtius himself had fled before from the unpredictable mad impulses of the emperor, and hope he would forget her in whatever new passion his wavering heart set upon.

  So one moonless night, Galla took ship from Ravenna for Constantinople with her three-year-old son, Valentinian, and little Honoria, still a babe in arms. At Spoleto, across the Adriatic, a small party of soldiers joined them. One of them wore the fine scarlet cloak of a general.

  ‘On time as ever, General Aëtius,’ Galla observed as he stepped aboard at the head of his men.

  He jumped easily down from the gangplank. ‘As always, for you, Your Majesty.’

  Galla turned away in the dark and smiled.

  8

  THE NEW ROME

  Thus Aëtius and Galla arrived together in the Golden City of Constantinople.

  How to describe this majestic metropolis, this city of gleaming towers and golden domes, of august monuments and smooth marble pavements, situated so superbly on the Golden Horn, overlooking the Bosphorus, that very nexus of two continents of Europe and Asia, as if both knelt as tributaries before her haughty feet? After Rome, I loved Constantinople above all other places. In its newness and its relative innocence beside the sunbright Sea of Marmara, I confess that sometimes this New Rome made the Old seem dark, and bloody, and corrupt, stained by the long centuries, and by the dark desires of men.

  At this time, Constantinople was a city of a million people, presiding over the finest natural harbour in the world. Founded by Constantine the Great nearly two centuries earlier, on the site of the ancient Greek fishing-port of Byzantium, it was declared the new capital of the Roman Empire and named after the God-Emperor himself. Constantine was never a man for false modesty.

  The proud new capital was a city of fantastic wealth and monumental architecture. The richness of its seas was legendary. You had only to throw a net into the water, it was said, and you would haul in a weighty catch. And with its free hospitals, state-employed doctors and teachers, its subsidised entertainments for the masses, elaborate postal services, rates, taxes, customs and excise, street lighting, price-fixing, and its inexhaustible obsession with sport, it was a very modern city indeed.

  Three things united the Byzantines above all: the Christian faith, Roman citizenship, and a passion for chariot racing. This last meant that everybody, from the emperor downwards, was either a Blue or a Green, depending on which chariot team they supported. And woe betide anyone bumping into a crowd of rival fans in a dark alley on race-day ...

  It was also a city of endless theological disputes. Whereas, historically, most mobs have rioted from hunger, injustice or cruel oppression, Byzantine mobs rioted over fine points of Christian theology, or minute changes to the liturgy. In vexation, various emperors involved themselves in these disputes, trying to comprehend the complexities and suggesting new doctrines which might unite the bitterly opposing factions. ‘Aphthartodocetism’ was one such doctrine, proposed by old Theodosius the Great, but it failed to catch on. The Christians remained just as factious and turbulent as the chariot teams.

  Had it not been only a few years earlier, in the Year of Grace 415, that the brilliant Hypatia was butchered in the streets of Alexand
ria by a mob of savage Christians, urged on by Bishop Cyril himself? Hypatia was one of the most brilliant women of her age, an astronomer, poet, physician, and philosopher. But a pagan. She had never accepted the deity of the Jewish carpenter, and could outwit and defeat any who argued against her, with the scintillating brilliance and deftness of a Cretan blade. At last the Christians grew sick of her clever, articulate, erudite scepticism - and perhaps her intellectual superiority, her high-minded passion, the purer fire that burned within her, her ardour for the truth, and her faith in things other than the primitive mystery cults of Palestine. Her unshakeable sweet reasonableness must certainly have enraged these devotees of their own blazing irrationality. So they set upon her in the street, and beat her to death. Then, still unsatisfied, these professors of the religion of brotherly love scraped the flesh from her bones with oyster shells, and heaped the remains of bleeding meat in the gutter for the dogs to eat as they had once devoured the flesh of the wicked Jezebel, according to their own blood-stained Scriptures.

  Even the theologians complained there was too much theology around. That great doctor of the Eastern Church, St Gregory of Nazianzus, said despairingly that you couldn’t even buy a loaf of bread in Constantinople without becoming embroiled in a theological disputation with the baker regarding the true relationship between the Father and the Son. Likewise, he continued, ‘The money-changer will talk about the Begotten and the Unbegotten instead of giving you your money, and if you want a bath, the bath-keeper assures you that the Son surely proceeds from nothing.’ Poor Gregory was made unwilling patriarch of the city by old Emperor Theodosius, but he lasted only a year before he fled back to his native village and became a hermit.