Chapter XVIII: The Fall of Aquileia

Thus the great festivals of the Church swept on, and spring had conquered winter in the natural and the Christian year.

All through those months the household on the Aventine knew that Aquileia was still holding her own, and trusted that there also the summer was beating back the winter.

Ethne remembered Orleans, with her brave garrison, and her brave aged Bishop Anianus and his victorious prayers; and Lupus with his peaceful victory over Attila at Troyes; and her hope was strong that victory must come for Aquileia also, through Aquileia for the Roman world.

Moreover, one more little volume of waxen tablets reached them from Marius, still within the unconquered city.

“We are holding our own,” he wrote; “the walls still stand unshattered, the heart of the enemy, they say, is failing, the besiegers seem to slacken at their work. Glorious it will be if this great host is driven back, baffled by one faithful stronghold. Despair not for us; hope and pray!”

But they had scarcely read these words of courage and hope, when another message brought the fatal tidings that Aquileia, the impregnable, had fallen, was being razed to the ground and burnt to ashes, and, with the terrible Hunnish genius of destruction, smitten to the dust never to rise any more.

A flight of storks had done it; a flock of harmless, innocent birds had accomplished the ruin of Aquileia.

Just as the assailants were wearying of their work, and murmurs of retreat were spreading in the camp, and Attila himself was pacing round the unbroken walls, moodily meditating whether to go or stay, the flapping of wings and the cry of birds arrested his attention. He looked up, and saw the white storks which had built their nests on the roofs of the city soaring high in the air, and alluring their callow young to follow them, evidently with the intention of abandoning the beleaguered city, and, contrary to their usual habits, betaking themselves to the open country. He caught at the augury. “Look there!” he cried to the dispirited soldiers; “see those birds, whose instinct tells them of the future; they are leaving the city which they foresee is to perish, the fortress which they know will fall.”

The courage of the Huns revived at his words. Once more they pushed their engines up to the walls, and plied their slings and catapults; and the walls yielded; and Aquileia, the impregnable, the city of the north wind, fell, as was the fate of cities that sank beneath the Huns, never to rise again.

There was need indeed now of Leo’s strong words in the sorrowful little family on the Aventine. The fellowship of the Passion was theirs; the cup of the martyrs was held to their lips. But it was Christ, the ever-living, the ever-loving, the all-conquering, not himself, that Leo had set before them; and He, “the Ransom from death, and the Cup of Life” (_pretium et poculum_), would not fail His Christians. All else in the world—emperors, armies, generals, statesmen—were failing Rome. Would Leo himself fail?

Leo did not fail!

The people of Rome had done well in electing him during his absence, and waiting the forty days for his return. Every one else among their rulers failed them, but not Leo.

The feeble Valentinian was present in the city; he had fled to Rome, it was said, as a safer refuge, for the moment, than his Imperial Ravenna, enclosed in her marshes. The port of Ravenna on the Adriatic was too near the fallen city of Aquileia, so long the queen of the Adriatic; too near the hordes of the Huns. Aetius, the great general, the Count of Italy, seemed to fail them. The foremost place which he obtained for himself by basely betraying his great rival Boniface, Count of Africa, had proved no post of ease or real power to him. The feeble Emperor himself had become his rival, using him (as was afterwards terribly proved) not a moment longer than the hour of danger lasted. Boniface was dead; Africa, through his treachery, was lost to the Empire, to civilization, and, as it was proved afterwards, to Christianity; and Italy lay bare to the foe. He himself had become the dread and detestation of the weak and wicked court, and now it seemed as if a palsy had fallen on his own strong will and clear intellect; it was rumoured that Aetius was counselling the Emperor that they should take flight together and abandon Rome to her fate.

Only Leo was left. But Leo stood firm, a rock of strength because he stood on the Rock. Still his protecting presence and his words of power were there—“Christ Himself has not abandoned the care of His beloved flock.”

“Throughout the universal Church Peter is still saying day by day, ‘Thou art the Christ, the Son of the Living God;’ and every tongue which confesses the Lord is clothed with the majesty of this voice. This faith overcomes the devil and dissolves the fetters of his captives; those who are torn away from the world it engrafts into heaven, and the gates of hell cannot prevail against it.”

And from day to day, in those days of earthquakes and storms, went up the prayer for ever associated with Leo’s name and with this great conflict—

“Grant, O Lord, we beseech Thee, that the course of this world may be so peaceably ordered by Thy governance, that Thy Church may serve Thee in all godly quietness, through Jesus Christ our Lord.”

Never could the world have seemed less peaceably ordered than then; yet it was indeed not under the governance of Valentinian, or of Aetius, or of Peter, but of God. Never could there have been less external quiet; but the Church, and Leo, kept the “godly quietness” within, in the presence of God. Never could the waves have seemed more likely to overwhelm the Rock than then; but it stood firm as ever. “Our fathers all ate the same spiritual meat, and all drank the same spiritual drink, for they drank of that spiritual Rock that followed them, and that Rock was Christ.”

And again from every basilica and every house rose Leo’s prayer—“Grant us the spirit to think and do always such things as be rightful, that we who cannot do anything that is good without Thee, may by Thee be enabled to live according to Thy Will.” Leo’s prayers were indeed fulfilled for him in the way his inmost soul desired. Of Leo personally scarcely a trace is left, as to the persons he loved, the life he lived, the death he died; his only monument, the rescue of his Rome, and the Rock of the great Apostle’s great confession of the Christ, on which he stood, and which he held for the Church.

Sorely indeed were the strong words of consolation needed in the household on the Aventine. No further sound reached them from Aquileia, no record of individual heroism or deliverance. What voice indeed could come from ashes and a charnel-house?

The fame of only one act seemed borne above that raging storm of murder and rapine; only one name was borne to them through the death-silence that succeeded. It was reported that the good and beautiful young matron Digna, the friend of their house and of Marius, had covered her head like a Roman matron of old, and from the tower on the walls adjoining her house had plunged into the glassy waters of the Natiso which flowed deep and strong below, to escape the insults of the Huns.

When these tidings reached them, for the first time Damaris uttered a cry of despair. “Alas! alas!” she said, “too surely our Marius is slain, or he would have saved her.”

But Fabricius shook his head.

“Fond mother’s thought! Against such a flood of furious savagery Marius would have been as powerless as when he lay a babe in thine arms;” and then, with a flash of the old patrician fire, he added, “It is not Digna only, it is our old Rome, who chose death rather than dishonour at Aquileia; our Rome has fallen, she is dead, but never could she have perished save by suicide. Our vices have killed us. Yet she has fallen fighting to the last, not as a slave and captive, but as free and the mother of the free. The brave garrison of Aquileia could not save our Rome from ruin, but they have saved it from the worst dishonour; Digna stands for ever as a symbol of her great old glory. And Marius, thank God, our Marius was there!”

But with those words the old man broke down; and the father and mother wept together.