Attila:The Scourge of God

by Ross Laidlaw

  Written at Ariminum, in the consulships of Aetius and Valerius, II Nones Jul.5 Titus Valerius to Gaius Valerius Rufinus, greetings.

  Honoured Father, I write in haste and sorrow, sending this by the hand of one who leaves for Gaul tonight. By the time you read this, I should myself be on my way to join you, for it is no longer safe for me to remain in Italia, within range of the Augusta’s malice. Boniface is dead, slain (some say by the hand of Aetius himself) in a battle fought near here yesterday. Under cover of a prearranged meeting between them, Aetius planned to ambush Boniface; however, we had discovered his intentions, and were able to turn this knowledge to our advantage. (As you know from previous letters of mine, I took your advice and left the service of Aetius for that of Boniface.)

  At the point where the meeting was to take place (near that fateful stream the Rubicon), a great expanse of reeds adjoined the road. These beds were criss-crossed by a network of cuniculi drainage channels — potential cover for an army (which in fact is exactly what they became), the tall reeds providing perfect concealment. It transpired that the night before the meeting, Aetius had dispatched a federate advance force to take up position in the cuniculi. Knowing this, we fired the reeds, which were tinder-dry after weeks of scorching weather. Father, it was dreadful: within moments the reedbeds had become a roaring inferno, incinerating the poor wretches hiding there. I shall carry their screams in my head until my dying day. A few charred horrors struggled to the causeway, and were cut down; surely a merciful release from a lingering death in agony. A terrible, perhaps indefensible, way to make war, you may think. Yet what choice had we? It was Aetius, by his treachery, who forced our hand.

  With half of Aetius’ force destroyed, the outcome of the battle was never in doubt. But our victory was robbed of any triumph by our leader’s death. Rumours are flying thicker than snow in January, that Aetius cut his way through our van and killed Boniface in a hand-to-hand fight. I cannot confirm or deny the truth of this, for I was too busy relaying messages during the fray to witness what happened. But I find the story scarcely credible: two modern Roman generals engaged in single combat — like Homeric heroes in the Trojan War! Yet I suppose it may be true. Aetius is a driven man. Fury and despair at the ruin of his plan may have pushed him to the verge of madness, prompting him to desperate action. And Boniface, ever careless of personal safety, was never averse to adopting a heroic role. Also, many swear to have seen the incident. But you, Father, more than most, know how it is with soldiers. When Constantine declared he’d seen a vision of Christ’s cross in the sky, within an hour half the army swore they’d seen it too!

  This was indeed a black day for Rome. Despite his blunders in Africa, I believe that Boniface alone had the stature and the vision to heal the Western Empire’s wounds, and make it strong again. Who is left to steer the ship of state? Placidia? Valentinian? Then is the vessel dismasted and heading for the reefs! What now? Aetius’ star has surely fallen. Should he escape, he will be outlawed, his life and property forfeit. His only course then will be to seek refuge with his friends the Huns. As for myself, I will make for Upper Germany with all speed, calling at the Villa Fortunata on my way, to check that all is well. My love to Clothilde and little Marcus. God willing, Father, I shall see you soon. Farewell.

  1 Not to be confused with Ammianus Marcellinus, the fourth-century soldier and historian.

  2 Rhone valley; Lyon.

  3 Genevre Pass

  4 Turin.

  5 6 July 432.

  SIXTEEN

  He possessed the genuine courage that can despise not only dangers but injuries

  Renatus Profuturus Frigeridus, Eulogy of Aetius, fifth century

  Head held high, the lead bull stared at Aetius with coldly hostile little eyes. The huge creature presented a formidable sight. Powerfully muscled, its head and fore-parts covered in a dense, shaggy mat of brown hair, it towered a full seven feet at the crest of the massive hump that rose behind its neck. This was the wild ox known to the Romans as bonasus, and to the barbarians variously as Wisent, Bisund, or bison — the largest and most powerful animal in Europe. Behind the leader walked the herd, shrouded in the dust-cloud stirred up by twelve thousand hooves.

  Aetius had known real fear only a few times in his life; now was another of those moments. Licking his lips, he looked to Attila, next to him in the line of dismounted Huns, willing his friend to give the signal that would, he hoped, halt the herd’s advance. But Attila was much enjoying seeing him sweat, Aetius thought furiously, as the other grinned at him. (The stop-line’s mounts which, even when ridden by such master horsemen as the Huns, would panic and bolt in face of a bison herd, had been tethered some distance away.)

  At last, to Aetius’ enormous relief, when the leader was barely ten paces away, Attila raised his long whip and cracked it with a deafening report. All down the line, whip-cracks and shouting broke out. The herd-bull halted, snorting and pawing the ground; behind him the herd milled uncertainly, filling the air with sharp grunts. Attila raised a hand, then, followed by the others, took a step forward. Slowly, step by step, to the accompaniment of shouts and snapping whips, the line began to advance. Suddenly, the bull turned and, lowering his great head, lumbered away on a course parallel to the line of Huns. Gradually, the whole herd wheeled round and took off after its leader. The earth began to tremble as the great beasts broke into a gallop, their hoofs lifting to head-level, reminding Aetius of the high-stepping gait of the imperial white horses used on state occasions or the now-banned pagan processions. Swiftly retrieving their mounts, the Huns galloped in pursuit, overtaking the herd and riding along its flank, to ensure that it maintained its direction.

  As, beneath him, Bucephalus settled into a mile-eating stride, the events of the past few weeks unrolled themselves in Aetius’ mind.

  Defeat by Boniface, followed by disgrace, outlawry, and flight from Italia — all that should, by any calculation, have resulted in overwhelming rage and shame. Instead, once into Pannonia and across the River Sava, Aetius found to his surprise that his chief feeling was one of liberation, of an oppressive burden having been lifted from him. For a time, at least, he was freed from the strain of alternately placating and cajoling the German federates in Gaul, of plotting to stay one jump ahead of Placidia in Ravenna, of campaigning against a powerful rival. Pannonia was safe territory, which he’d forced a reluctant Placidia to cede to his friends the Huns, as a consequence of his coup following Iohannes’ abortive usurpation.

  He’d followed Tiberius’ road from Istria, north-east through a deserted landscape studded with ruined villas and abandoned forts, past the long, long Balaton lake and the wooded slopes of the Bakeny Wald, to Aquincum on the Danubius — the old imperial frontier. On the way, the only signs of life had been occasional sightings of the nomads’ flocks and herds. At Aquincum, now virtually abandoned to squatters, he’d hired a boat to take himself and his tiny entourage across the river to where began the vast prairieland of the western steppes, part of the Huns’ domain, which now extended from the Sava to the Mare Caspium.

  Meeting a party of Huns, who seemed in some strange way to be apprised of his presence, he and his followers were conducted eastwards to the Hun ‘capital’ near the foothills of the Transylvanian Alpes, in what had once been the Roman province of Dacia — abandoned these hundred and fifty years. This settlement was in fact a mobile camp, its centre a prefabricated wooden palace, which could be dismantled and re-assembled as the nomads switched pasture. Aetius noted considerable changes since he had last solicited the Huns’ help seven years previously. Clans had coalesced into tribes, tribes into confederacies. These, three in number, had recently become a single confederacy under the rule of Rua, the uncle of Attila, Aetius’ old friend from his youth as a hostage with the Huns. Hierarchical trends were emerging in what had been a society of equals: chiefs styling themselves ‘nobles’, and their families becoming a quasi-aristocracy; a hereditary dynasty in process of forming; a permanent Council of
influential leaders beginning to displace the assembly of all adult males.

  Attila’s father, Mundiuch, the brother of Rua, had led one of the three former confederacies, which made Attila a strong candidate to succeed Rua. Should he become ruler, Attila might prove a barbarian version of Plato’s philosopher king, reflected Aetius with some amusement, for he had always displayed an unfortunate trend towards kindness and consideration. These qualities might be liabilities in a ruler — especially if that ruler’s subjects were savage barbarians like the Huns, who above all respected strength and a leader’s power to enforce his will. Attila had confided to Aetius his intention, should he become king, to end the practices of stoning to death a warrior suspected of even the slightest degree of cowardice, and of killing off the aged. Aetius had argued that, brutal though they might seem, such traditions helped to keep a nation successful and vigorous — like animal packs or herds, where only the strong survived, or the ancient Spartans who exposed new-born infants if sickly or deformed. Attila, though he paid courteous attention to this reasoning, had seemed unconvinced.

  To Aetius’ appeal for help to reinstate him, Rua — recalling that previous assistance was rewarded with gold and Pannonia — had been sympathetic. A decision would be taken in Council, which consisted (though now only in theory) of all adult males, assembled on horseback.

  Meanwhile, all activities had been suspended for the duration of a great bison drive. As well as being an exciting diversion, if successful this would provide a welcome supplement to the Huns’ staple diet of goat-flesh and mutton. The herd had been spotted grazing near the Danubius but heading away from the river, near the famous Iron Gate gorge. The plan was to turn the herd back towards the Danubius, then stampede it over steep bluffs overlooking the water. The task of turning the herd was a dangerous privilege reserved for the boldest and most experienced. Once the bison were headed in the right direction, the main body of Huns would join in the chase, containing the herd on the flanks and at the rear.

  Racing alongside the galloping bison, Aetius whooped aloud in sheer release of tension. Like boulders surfacing in a river in spate, the humps of the great beasts rose and fell above the whirling dust-pall enveloping them, while the drumming of their hoof was a thunderous tattoo. Suddenly, Aetius was aware that ahead the horizon appeared to have foreshortened. The bluffs! With the other horsemen, he peeled away to the side, while the doomed herd charged on, its vanguard now aware of the peril but, driven on by the mass of animals behind, unable to stop.

  Drawing rein on the lip of the drop, Aetius watched in awed fascination as the bison hurtled over the edge in a brown waterfall, their bodies spinning and tumbling to crash far below on the beach bordering the river. Further upstream, where the bluffs gave way to sloping banks, the Huns descended to the river and galloped back to where the bison lay in heaps and windrows, many kicking feebly and uttering hoarse cries. Swiftly and efficiently, the hunters set about the task of dispatching and butchering, then loading the pelts and meat on to packhorses.

  Faintly through the din Aetius heard a cry. He looked up and saw a young tribesman struggling in the water: in all the confusion and violent activity, he must have overbalanced near the edge. Then things began to happen, in a sequence which somehow, in retrospect, seemed inevitable. Attila rode into the river and urged his horse towards the Hun, who was in the grip of a powerful current carrying him into midstream. Cursing Attila for his misplaced altruism which, for obvious political reasons he himself must be seen to support, Aetius raced along the beach towards a skiff drawn up on the shingle. He dragged it to the water, jumped in, pushed off with an oar and began to row towards Attila, whose horse, with the swimmer now clutching its bridle, was trying to fight its way back to shore. But the current was too strong; the horse with its double load ceased making headway, and started to move downstream.

  Suddenly, a cross-flow seized the skiff and swept it into the middle of the river. Pulling with all his might, Aetius managed to intercept the group as it was about to bob past him. Attila scrambled from the saddle into the boat, then both he and Aetius grabbed the third and hauled him over the side, leaving the horse to be carried helplessly away. Attila then picked up one of the poles lying on the floorboards and stationed himself at the stern, commanding Balamir, the young tribesman, to do likewise at the bow. ‘Keep her nose into the current,’ he called to Aetius above the noise of rushing water. ‘Our lives depend on that.’

  ‘Why don’t I just try to row us to the bank?’

  ‘Too late — the current’s got us. We’ll have to try to ride the river through the Iron Gate.’

  ‘Is that risky?’

  Attila laughed grimly. ‘Does iron sink? Pray to your triple-headed god, my friend; no one’s yet been known to get through the Iron Gate. Alive, that is.’

  The bluffs on either hand changed to towering walls of naked rock which, closing in, compressed the channel to a width of little more than a hundred paces. The river became a raging torrent on which the little boat was borne along like a twig. Fighting panic, Aetius strove to keep the bows parallel with the current; should the skiff be buffeted sideways, it would immediately start shipping water. High up on the rock face to his right, Aetius glimpsed the rotting remains of cantilevered planking — put there three centuries before to widen the road carved out of the cliff by Trajan’s artificers, he realized inconsequently. And there was the Tabula traiana, the emperor’s great rock-cut inscription showing shipping regulations for the Danube.

  Such fleeting observations were forgotten as an ominous booming filled the air. Ahead, fangs and ledges of rock broke the surface of the river, which was transformed into a seething chaos of whirlpools and eddies. Next moment they were in the maelstrom, fighting desperately with oars and poles to keep the boat on course and from smashing against boulders.

  ‘We’re through!’ shouted Aetius exultantly as they emerged, miraculously unscathed, from the boiling turbulence into a calmer stretch, where the river became a smoothly speeding millrace. But Attila pointed ahead, and Aetius saw that the river disappeared in a wall of spray. Seconds later, half blinded by spray and deafened by the crash of falling water, he gasped in horror as the skiff slid over the lip of a cataract.

  Down swooped the boat in a sickening rush, to smash into the plunge pool at the bottom. It surfaced groggily, half full of water, but there was no respite for baling; plucked downstream by the savage current, the fragile craft was swept down a series of rapids. Time after time it hurtled towards rocks, disaster being averted only by the heroic efforts of Attila and Balamir, their poles bending like bows with the pressure of fending off.

  Then suddenly the ordeal was over. The boat shot from the final rapid and whirled round a bend into a broad and placid reach. Thanks to a combination of nerve, luck, judgement, and the skill of the Danubian boat-builders, they were through the Iron Gate.

  At their next Council assembly, the Huns unanimously supported Rua’s proposal that they provide Aetius with military backing towards his restoration.

  Aetius hummed the soldiers’ song ‘Lalage’ as he made the familiar journey from the imperial palace back to his re-requisitioned headquarters near Ravenna. The meeting with Placidia had yielded all he’d planned for. Humiliated and furious, the Empress had been forced to climb down and accede to his demands that he be promoted to the rank of Patrician, and made Master of both Horse and Footsoldiers — in fact Emperor in all but name. The newly created Master chuckled to himself as he urged Bucephalus into a canter; with a huge force of Huns at his back, she’d had little choice. It would, he supposed, have been simple enough to depose Valentinian and assume the purple himself. But it was more prudent to leave that odious youth on the throne; that way, constitutional stability would be preserved, while the real power was wielded by himself.

  Now he could concentrate on furthering his plans. These were simple: to take whatever steps were necessary to consolidate his position as master of Gaul, as Magnus Maximus had so nearly d
one before him, and Carausius had succeeded for a time in doing in Britain. With Boniface gone, his allies the Huns behind him, and Ravenna in his pocket to provide a screen of legitimacy, there was no one in the empire strong enough to stop him. Forget all that high-sounding rhetoric he’d spouted to Litorius about recovering Africa et cetera. That had been intended merely to preserve his persona of ‘Saviour of the Republic’. Actually, the empire was probably doomed; it was only blind fools like Boniface who refused to face that reality. Best to salvage what you could, before the ship of state struck the rocks.

  Angrily, Aetius tried to suppress inner voices which urged a different course, the voices of his father, Gaudentius, a distinguished cavalry commander who had devoted his career to the service of the Empire; of his gentle mother from a noble Roman family which, in a cynical and degenerate age, continued to uphold the worthy standards of an earlier time; of Titus Valerius, who had left his service in disgust; of Boniface, good man and well-intentioned patriot, whose downfall and death he had brought about. ‘Rome has made you what you are,’ they said. ‘Can you then act as though you owe her nothing?’ With an effort, Aetius willed himself not to listen, and, as if obedient to his command, they fell silent. For the moment. But they would return, he knew with a feeling almost of guilty dread. As surely as the sun was going to rise next morning, they would return.