Chapter XXVI: Progress of The Huns.—Part II

The Huns, who under the reign of Valens threatened the empire of
Rome, had been formidable, in a much earlier period, to the
empire of China. 27 Their ancient, perhaps their original, seat
was an extensive, though dry and barren, tract of country,
immediately on the north side of the great wall. Their place is
at present occupied by the forty-nine Hords or Banners of the
Mongous, a pastoral nation, which consists of about two hundred
thousand families. 28 But the valor of the Huns had extended the
narrow limits of their dominions; and their rustic chiefs, who
assumed the appellation of _Tanjou_, gradually became the
conquerors, and the sovereigns of a formidable empire. Towards
the East, their victorious arms were stopped only by the ocean;
and the tribes, which are thinly scattered between the Amoor and
the extreme peninsula of Corea, adhered, with reluctance, to the
standard of the Huns. On the West, near the head of the Irtish,
in the valleys of Imaus, they found a more ample space, and more
numerous enemies. One of the lieutenants of the Tanjou subdued,
in a single expedition, twenty-six nations; the Igours, 29
distinguished above the Tartar race by the use of letters, were
in the number of his vassals; and, by the strange connection of
human events, the flight of one of those vagrant tribes recalled
the victorious Parthians from the invasion of Syria. 30 On the
side of the North, the ocean was assigned as the limit of the
power of the Huns. Without enemies to resist their progress, or
witnesses to contradict their vanity, they might securely achieve
a real, or imaginary, conquest of the frozen regions of Siberia.
The _Northern Sea_ was fixed as the remote boundary of their
empire. But the name of that sea, on whose shores the patriot
Sovou embraced the life of a shepherd and an exile, 31 may be
transferred, with much more probability, to the Baikal, a
capacious basin, above three hundred miles in length, which
disdains the modest appellation of a lake 32 and which actually
communicates with the seas of the North, by the long course of
the Angara, the Tongusha, and the Jenissea. The submission of so
many distant nations might flatter the pride of the Tanjou; but
the valor of the Huns could be rewarded only by the enjoyment of
the wealth and luxury of the empire of the South. In the third
century 3211 before the Christian æra, a wall of fifteen hundred
miles in length was constructed, to defend the frontiers of China
against the inroads of the Huns; 33 but this stupendous work,
which holds a conspicuous place in the map of the world, has
never contributed to the safety of an unwarlike people. The
cavalry of the Tanjou frequently consisted of two or three
hundred thousand men, formidable by the matchless dexterity with
which they managed their bows and their horses: by their hardy
patience in supporting the inclemency of the weather; and by the
incredible speed of their march, which was seldom checked by
torrents, or precipices, by the deepest rivers, or by the most
lofty mountains. They spread themselves at once over the face of
the country; and their rapid impetuosity surprised, astonished,
and disconcerted the grave and elaborate tactics of a Chinese
army. The emperor Kaoti, 34 a soldier of fortune, whose personal
merit had raised him to the throne, marched against the Huns with
those veteran troops which had been trained in the civil wars of
China. But he was soon surrounded by the Barbarians; and, after a
siege of seven days, the monarch, hopeless of relief, was reduced
to purchase his deliverance by an ignominious capitulation. The
successors of Kaoti, whose lives were dedicated to the arts of
peace, or the luxury of the palace, submitted to a more permanent
disgrace. They too hastily confessed the insufficiency of arms
and fortifications. They were too easily convinced, that while
the blazing signals announced on every side the approach of the
Huns, the Chinese troops, who slept with the helmet on their
head, and the cuirass on their back, were destroyed by the
incessant labor of ineffectual marches. 35 A regular payment of
money, and silk, was stipulated as the condition of a temporary
and precarious peace; and the wretched expedient of disguising a
real tribute, under the names of a gift or subsidy, was practised
by the emperors of China as well as by those of Rome. But there
still remained a more disgraceful article of tribute, which
violated the sacred feelings of humanity and nature. The
hardships of the savage life, which destroy in their infancy the
children who are born with a less healthy and robust
constitution, introduced a remarkable disproportion between the
numbers of the two sexes. The Tartars are an ugly and even
deformed race; and while they consider their own women as the
instruments of domestic labor, their desires, or rather their
appetites, are directed to the enjoyment of more elegant beauty.
A select band of the fairest maidens of China was annually
devoted to the rude embraces of the Huns; 36 and the alliance of
the haughty Tanjous was secured by their marriage with the
genuine, or adopted, daughters of the Imperial family, which
vainly attempted to escape the sacrilegious pollution. The
situation of these unhappy victims is described in the verses of
a Chinese princess, who laments that she had been condemned by
her parents to a distant exile, under a Barbarian husband; who
complains that sour milk was her only drink, raw flesh her only
food, a tent her only palace; and who expresses, in a strain of
pathetic simplicity, the natural wish, that she were transformed
into a bird, to fly back to her dear country; the object of her
tender and perpetual regret. 37

27 (return) [ M. de Guignes (tom. ii. p. 1—124) has given the
original history of the ancient Hiong-nou, or Huns. The Chinese
geography of their country (tom. i. part. p. lv.—lxiii.) seems to
comprise a part of their conquests. * Note: The theory of De
Guignes on the early history of the Huns is, in general, rejected
by modern writers. De Guignes advanced no valid proof of the
identity of the Hioung-nou of the Chinese writers with the Huns,
except the similarity of name. Schlozer, (Allgemeine Nordische
Geschichte, p. 252,) Klaproth, (Tableaux Historiques de l’Asie,
p. 246,) St. Martin, iv. 61, and A. Remusat, (Recherches sur les
Langues Tartares, D. P. xlvi, and p. 328; though in the latter
passage he considers the theory of De Guignes not absolutely
disproved,) concur in considering the Huns as belonging to the
Finnish stock, distinct from the Moguls the Mandscheus, and the
Turks. The Hiong-nou, according to Klaproth, were Turks. The
names of the Hunnish chiefs could not be pronounced by a Turk;
and, according to the same author, the Hioung-nou, which is
explained in Chinese as _detestable slaves_, as early as the year
91 J. C., were dispersed by the Chinese, and assumed the name of
Yue-po or Yue-pan. M. St. Martin does not consider it impossible
that the appellation of Hioung-nou may have belonged to the Huns.
But all agree in considering the Madjar or Magyar of modern
Hungary the descendants of the Huns. Their language (compare
Gibbon, c. lv. n. 22) is nearly related to the Lapponian and
Vogoul. The noble forms of the modern Hungarians, so strongly
contrasted with the hideous pictures which the fears and the
hatred of the Romans give of the Huns, M. Klaproth accounts for
by the intermingling with other races, Turkish and Slavonian. The
present state of the question is thus stated in the last edition
of Malte Brun, and a new and ingenious hypothesis suggested to
resolve all the difficulties of the question.
Were the Huns Finns? This obscure question has not been
debated till very recently, and is yet very far from being
decided. We are of opinion that it will be so hereafter in
the same manner as that with regard to the Scythians. We
shall trace in the portrait of Attila a dominant tribe or
Mongols, or Kalmucks, with all the hereditary ugliness of
that race; but in the mass of the Hunnish army and nation
will be recognized the Chuni and the Ounni of the Greek
Geography. the Kuns of the Hungarians, the European Huns, and
a race in close relationship with the Flemish stock. Malte
Brun, vi. p. 94. This theory is more fully and ably
developed, p. 743. Whoever has seen the emperor of Austria’s
Hungarian guard, will not readily admit their descent from
the Huns described by Sidonius Appolinaris.—M]

28 (return) [ See in Duhalde (tom. iv. p. 18—65) a circumstantial
description, with a correct map, of the country of the Mongous.]

29 (return) [ The Igours, or Vigours, were divided into three
branches; hunters, shepherds, and husbandmen; and the last class
was despised by the two former. See Abulghazi, part ii. c. 7. *
Note: On the Ouigour or Igour characters, see the work of M. A.
Remusat, Sur les Langues Tartares. He conceives the Ouigour
alphabet of sixteen letters to have been formed from the Syriac,
and introduced by the Nestorian Christians.—Ch. ii. M.]

30 (return) [ Mémoires de l’Académie des Inscriptions, tom. xxv.
p. 17—33. The comprehensive view of M. de Guignes has compared
these distant events.]

31 (return) [ The fame of Sovou, or So-ou, his merit, and his
singular adventurers, are still celebrated in China. See the
Eloge de Moukden, p. 20, and notes, p. 241—247; and Mémoires sur
la Chine, tom. iii. p. 317—360.]

32 (return) [ See Isbrand Ives in Harris’s Collection, vol. ii.
p. 931; Bell’s Travels, vol. i. p. 247—254; and Gmelin, in the
Hist. Generale des Voyages, tom. xviii. 283—329. They all remark
the vulgar opinion that the _holy sea_ grows angry and
tempestuous if any one presumes to call it a _lake_. This
grammatical nicety often excites a dispute between the absurd
superstition of the mariners and the absurd obstinacy of
travellers.]

3211 (return) [ 224 years before Christ. It was built by
Chi-hoang-ti of the Dynasty Thsin. It is from twenty to
twenty-five feet high. Ce monument, aussi gigantesque
qu’impuissant, arreterait bien les incursions de quelques
Nomades; mais il n’a jamais empéché les invasions des Turcs, des
Mongols, et des Mandchous. Abe Remusat Rech. Asiat. 2d ser. vol.
i. p. 58—M.]

33 (return) [ The construction of the wall of China is mentioned
by Duhalde (tom. ii. p. 45) and De Guignes, (tom. ii. p. 59.)]

34 (return) [ See the life of Lieoupang, or Kaoti, in the Hist,
de la Chine, published at Paris, 1777, &c., tom. i. p. 442—522.
This voluminous work is the translation (by the P. de Mailla) of
the _Tong- Kien-Kang-Mou_, the celebrated abridgment of the great
History of Semakouang (A.D. 1084) and his continuators.]

35 (return) [ See a free and ample memorial, presented by a
Mandarin to the emperor Venti, (before Christ 180—157,) in
Duhalde, (tom. ii. p. 412—426,) from a collection of State papers
marked with the red pencil by Kamhi himself, (p. 354—612.)
Another memorial from the minister of war (Kang-Mou, tom. ii. p
555) supplies some curious circumstances of the manners of the
Huns.]

36 (return) [ A supply of women is mentioned as a customary
article of treaty and tribute, (Hist. de la Conquete de la Chine,
par les Tartares Mantcheoux, tom. i. p. 186, 187, with the note
of the editor.)]

37 (return) [ De Guignes, Hist. des Huns, tom. ii. p. 62.]

The conquest of China has been twice achieved by the pastoral
tribes of the North: the forces of the Huns were not inferior to
those of the Moguls, or of the Mantcheoux; and their ambition
might entertain the most sanguine hopes of success. But their
pride was humbled, and their progress was checked, by the arms
and policy of Vouti, 38 the fifth emperor of the powerful dynasty
of the Han. In his long reign of fifty- four years, the
Barbarians of the southern provinces submitted to the laws and
manners of China; and the ancient limits of the monarchy were
enlarged, from the great river of Kiang, to the port of Canton.
Instead of confining himself to the timid operations of a
defensive war, his lieutenants penetrated many hundred miles into
the country of the Huns. In those boundless deserts, where it is
impossible to form magazines, and difficult to transport a
sufficient supply of provisions, the armies of Vouti were
repeatedly exposed to intolerable hardships: and, of one hundred
and forty thousand soldiers, who marched against the Barbarians,
thirty thousand only returned in safety to the feet of their
master. These losses, however, were compensated by splendid and
decisive success. The Chinese generals improved the superiority
which they derived from the temper of their arms, their chariots
of war, and the service of their Tartar auxiliaries. The camp of
the Tanjou was surprised in the midst of sleep and intemperance;
and, though the monarch of the Huns bravely cut his way through
the ranks of the enemy, he left above fifteen thousand of his
subjects on the field of battle. Yet this signal victory, which
was preceded and followed by many bloody engagements, contributed
much less to the destruction of the power of the Huns than the
effectual policy which was employed to detach the tributary
nations from their obedience. Intimidated by the arms, or allured
by the promises, of Vouti and his successors, the most
considerable tribes, both of the East and of the West, disclaimed
the authority of the Tanjou. While some acknowledged themselves
the allies or vassals of the empire, they all became the
implacable enemies of the Huns; and the numbers of that haughty
people, as soon as they were reduced to their native strength,
might, perhaps, have been contained within the walls of one of
the great and populous cities of China. 39 The desertion of his
subjects, and the perplexity of a civil war, at length compelled
the Tanjou himself to renounce the dignity of an independent
sovereign, and the freedom of a warlike and high-spirited nation.
He was received at Sigan, the capital of the monarchy, by the
troops, the mandarins, and the emperor himself, with all the
honors that could adorn and disguise the triumph of Chinese
vanity. 40 A magnificent palace was prepared for his reception;
his place was assigned above all the princes of the royal family;
and the patience of the Barbarian king was exhausted by the
ceremonies of a banquet, which consisted of eight courses of
meat, and of nine solemn pieces of music. But he performed, on
his knees, the duty of a respectful homage to the emperor of
China; pronounced, in his own name, and in the name of his
successors, a perpetual oath of fidelity; and gratefully accepted
a seal, which was bestowed as the emblem of his regal dependence.
After this humiliating submission, the Tanjous sometimes departed
from their allegiance and seized the favorable moments of war and
rapine; but the monarchy of the Huns gradually declined, till it
was broken, by civil dissension, into two hostile and separate
kingdoms. One of the princes of the nation was urged, by fear and
ambition, to retire towards the South with eight hords, which
composed between forty and fifty thousand families. He obtained,
with the title of Tanjou, a convenient territory on the verge of
the Chinese provinces; and his constant attachment to the service
of the empire was secured by weakness, and the desire of revenge.
From the time of this fatal schism, the Huns of the North
continued to languish about fifty years; till they were oppressed
on every side by their foreign and domestic enemies. The proud
inscription 41 of a column, erected on a lofty mountain,
announced to posterity, that a Chinese army had marched seven
hundred miles into the heart of their country. The Sienpi, 42 a
tribe of Oriental Tartars, retaliated the injuries which they had
formerly sustained; and the power of the Tanjous, after a reign
of thirteen hundred years, was utterly destroyed before the end
of the first century of the Christian æra. 43

38 (return) [ See the reign of the emperor Vouti, in the
Kang-Mou, tom. iii. p. 1—98. His various and inconsistent
character seems to be impartially drawn.]

39 (return) [ This expression is used in the memorial to the
emperor Venti, (Duhalde, tom. ii. p. 411.) Without adopting the
exaggerations of Marco Polo and Isaac Vossius, we may rationally
allow for Pekin two millions of inhabitants. The cities of the
South, which contain the manufactures of China, are still more
populous.]

40 (return) [ See the Kang-Mou, tom. iii. p. 150, and the
subsequent events under the proper years. This memorable festival
is celebrated in the Eloge de Moukden, and explained in a note by
the P. Gaubil, p. 89, 90.]

41 (return) [ This inscription was composed on the spot by
Parkou, President of the Tribunal of History (Kang-Mou, tom. iii.
p. 392.) Similar monuments have been discovered in many parts of
Tartary, (Histoire des Huns, tom. ii. p. 122.)]

42 (return) [ M. de Guignes (tom. i. p. 189) has inserted a short
account of the Sienpi.]

43 (return) [ The æra of the Huns is placed, by the Chinese, 1210
years before Christ. But the series of their kings does not
commence till the year 230, (Hist. des Huns, tom. ii. p. 21,
123.)]

The fate of the vanquished Huns was diversified by the various
influence of character and situation. 44 Above one hundred
thousand persons, the poorest, indeed, and the most pusillanimous
of the people, were contented to remain in their native country,
to renounce their peculiar name and origin, and to mingle with
the victorious nation of the Sienpi. Fifty-eight hords, about two
hundred thousand men, ambitious of a more honorable servitude,
retired towards the South; implored the protection of the
emperors of China; and were permitted to inhabit, and to guard,
the extreme frontiers of the province of Chansi and the territory
of Ortous. But the most warlike and powerful tribes of the Huns
maintained, in their adverse fortune, the undaunted spirit of
their ancestors. The Western world was open to their valor; and
they resolved, under the conduct of their hereditary chieftains,
to conquer and subdue some remote country, which was still
inaccessible to the arms of the Sienpi, and to the laws of China.
45 The course of their emigration soon carried them beyond the
mountains of Imaus, and the limits of the Chinese geography; but
_we_ are able to distinguish the two great divisions of these
formidable exiles, which directed their march towards the Oxus,
and towards the Volga. The first of these colonies established
their dominion in the fruitful and extensive plains of Sogdiana,
on the eastern side of the Caspian; where they preserved the name
of Huns, with the epithet of Euthalites, or Nepthalites. 4511
Their manners were softened, and even their features were
insensibly improved, by the mildness of the climate, and their
long residence in a flourishing province, 46 which might still
retain a faint impression of the arts of Greece. 47 The _white_
Huns, a name which they derived from the change of their
complexions, soon abandoned the pastoral life of Scythia. Gorgo,
which, under the appellation of Carizme, has since enjoyed a
temporary splendor, was the residence of the king, who exercised
a legal authority over an obedient people. Their luxury was
maintained by the labor of the Sogdians; and the only vestige of
their ancient barbarism, was the custom which obliged all the
companions, perhaps to the number of twenty, who had shared the
liberality of a wealthy lord, to be buried alive in the same
grave. 48 The vicinity of the Huns to the provinces of Persia,
involved them in frequent and bloody contests with the power of
that monarchy. But they respected, in peace, the faith of
treaties; in war, the dictates of humanity; and their memorable
victory over Peroses, or Firuz, displayed the moderation, as well
as the valor, of the Barbarians. The _second_ division of their
countrymen, the Huns, who gradually advanced towards the
North-west, were exercised by the hardships of a colder climate,
and a more laborious march. Necessity compelled them to exchange
the silks of China for the furs of Siberia; the imperfect
rudiments of civilized life were obliterated; and the native
fierceness of the Huns was exasperated by their intercourse with
the savage tribes, who were compared, with some propriety, to the
wild beasts of the desert. Their independent spirit soon rejected
the hereditary succession of the Tanjous; and while each horde
was governed by its peculiar mursa, their tumultuary council
directed the public measures of the whole nation. As late as the
thirteenth century, their transient residence on the eastern
banks of the Volga was attested by the name of Great Hungary. 49
In the winter, they descended with their flocks and herds towards
the mouth of that mighty river; and their summer excursions
reached as high as the latitude of Saratoff, or perhaps the
conflux of the Kama. Such at least were the recent limits of the
black Calmucks, 50 who remained about a century under the
protection of Russia; and who have since returned to their native
seats on the frontiers of the Chinese empire. The march, and the
return, of those wandering Tartars, whose united camp consists of
fifty thousand tents or families, illustrate the distant
emigrations of the ancient Huns. 51

44 (return) [ The various accidents, the downfall, and the flight
of the Huns, are related in the Kang-Mou, tom. iii. p. 88, 91,
95, 139, &c. The small numbers of each horde may be due to their
losses and divisions.]

45 (return) [ M. de Guignes has skilfully traced the footsteps of
the Huns through the vast deserts of Tartary, (tom. ii. p. 123,
277, &c., 325, &c.)]

4511 (return) [ The Armenian authors often mention this people
under the name of Hepthal. St. Martin considers that the name of
Nepthalites is an error of a copyist. St. Martin, iv. 254.—M.]

46 (return) [ Mohammed, sultan of Carizme, reigned in Sogdiana
when it was invaded (A.D. 1218) by Zingis and his moguls. The
Oriental historians (see D’Herbelot, Petit de la Croix, &c.,)
celebrate the populous cities which he ruined, and the fruitful
country which he desolated. In the next century, the same
provinces of Chorasmia and Nawaralnahr were described by
Abulfeda, (Hudson, Geograph. Minor. tom. iii.) Their actual
misery may be seen in the Genealogical History of the Tartars, p.
423—469.]

47 (return) [ Justin (xli. 6) has left a short abridgment of the
Greek kings of Bactriana. To their industry I should ascribe the
new and extraordinary trade, which transported the merchandises
of India into Europe, by the Oxus, the Caspian, the Cyrus, the
Phasis, and the Euxine. The other ways, both of the land and sea,
were possessed by the Seleucides and the Ptolemies. (See l’Esprit
des Loix, l. xxi.)]

48 (return) [ Procopius de Bell. Persico, l. i. c. 3, p. 9.]

49 (return) [ In the thirteenth century, the monk Rubruquis (who
traversed the immense plain of Kipzak, in his journey to the
court of the Great Khan) observed the remarkable name of
_Hungary_, with the traces of a common language and origin,
(Hist. des Voyages, tom. vii. p. 269.)]

50 (return) [ Bell, (vol. i. p. 29—34,) and the editors of the
Genealogical History, (p. 539,) have described the Calmucks of
the Volga in the beginning of the present century.]

51 (return) [ This great transmigration of 300,000 Calmucks, or
Torgouts, happened in the year 1771. The original narrative of
Kien-long, the reigning emperor of China, which was intended for
the inscription of a column, has been translated by the
missionaries of Pekin, (Mémoires sur la Chine, tom. i. p.
401—418.) The emperor affects the smooth and specious language of
the Son of Heaven, and the Father of his People.]

It is impossible to fill the dark interval of time, which
elapsed, after the Huns of the Volga were lost in the eyes of the
Chinese, and before they showed themselves to those of the
Romans. There is some reason, however, to apprehend, that the
same force which had driven them from their native seats, still
continued to impel their march towards the frontiers of Europe.
The power of the Sienpi, their implacable enemies, which extended
above three thousand miles from East to West, 52 must have
gradually oppressed them by the weight and terror of a formidable
neighborhood; and the flight of the tribes of Scythia would
inevitably tend to increase the strength or to contract the
territories, of the Huns. The harsh and obscure appellations of
those tribes would offend the ear, without informing the
understanding, of the reader; but I cannot suppress the very
natural suspicion, _that_ the Huns of the North derived a
considerable reenforcement from the ruin of the dynasty of the
South, which, in the course of the third century, submitted to
the dominion of China; _that_ the bravest warriors marched away
in search of their free and adventurous countrymen; _and_ that,
as they had been divided by prosperity, they were easily reunited
by the common hardships of their adverse fortune. 53 The Huns,
with their flocks and herds, their wives and children, their
dependents and allies, were transported to the west of the Volga,
and they boldly advanced to invade the country of the Alani, a
pastoral people, who occupied, or wasted, an extensive tract of
the deserts of Scythia. The plains between the Volga and the
Tanais were covered with the tents of the Alani, but their name
and manners were diffused over the wide extent of their
conquests; and the painted tribes of the Agathyrsi and Geloni
were confounded among their vassals. Towards the North, they
penetrated into the frozen regions of Siberia, among the savages
who were accustomed, in their rage or hunger, to the taste of
human flesh; and their Southern inroads were pushed as far as the
confines of Persia and India. The mixture of Samartic and German
blood had contributed to improve the features of the Alani, 5311
to whiten their swarthy complexions, and to tinge their hair with
a yellowish cast, which is seldom found in the Tartar race. They
were less deformed in their persons, less brutish in their
manners, than the Huns; but they did not yield to those
formidable Barbarians in their martial and independent spirit; in
the love of freedom, which rejected even the use of domestic
slaves; and in the love of arms, which considered war and rapine
as the pleasure and the glory of mankind. A naked cimeter, fixed
in the ground, was the only object of their religious worship;
the scalps of their enemies formed the costly trappings of their
horses; and they viewed, with pity and contempt, the
pusillanimous warriors, who patiently expected the infirmities of
age, and the tortures of lingering disease. 54 On the banks of
the Tanais, the military power of the Huns and the Alani
encountered each other with equal valor, but with unequal
success. The Huns prevailed in the bloody contest; the king of
the Alani was slain; and the remains of the vanquished nation
were dispersed by the ordinary alternative of flight or
submission. 55 A colony of exiles found a secure refuge in the
mountains of Caucasus, between the Euxine and the Caspian, where
they still preserve their name and their independence. Another
colony advanced, with more intrepid courage, towards the shores
of the Baltic; associated themselves with the Northern tribes of
Germany; and shared the spoil of the Roman provinces of Gaul and
Spain. But the greatest part of the nation of the Alani embraced
the offers of an honorable and advantageous union; and the Huns,
who esteemed the valor of their less fortunate enemies,
proceeded, with an increase of numbers and confidence, to invade
the limits of the Gothic empire.

52 (return) [ The Khan-Mou (tom. iii. p. 447) ascribes to their
conquests a space of 14,000 _lis_. According to the present
standard, 200 _lis_ (or more accurately 193) are equal to one
degree of latitude; and one English mile consequently exceeds
three miles of China. But there are strong reasons to believe
that the ancient _li_ scarcely equalled one half of the modern.
See the elaborate researches of M. D’Anville, a geographer who is
not a stranger in any age or climate of the globe. (Mémoires de
l’Acad. tom. ii. p. 125-502. Itineraires, p. 154-167.)]

53 (return) [ See Histoire des Huns, tom. ii. p. 125—144. The
subsequent history (p. 145—277) of three or four Hunnic dynasties
evidently proves that their martial spirit was not impaired by a
long residence in China.]

5311 (return) [ Compare M. Klaproth’s curious speculations on the
Alani. He supposes them to have been the people, known by the
Chinese, at the time of their first expeditions to the West,
under the name of Yath-sai or A-lanna, the Alanân of Persian
tradition, as preserved in Ferdusi; the same, according to
Ammianus, with the Massagetæ, and with the Albani. The remains of
the nation still exist in the Ossetæ of Mount Caucasus. Klaproth,
Tableaux Historiques de l’Asie, p. 174.—M. Compare Shafarik
Slawische alterthümer, i. p. 350.—M. 1845.]

54 (return) [ Utque hominibus quietis et placidis otium est
voluptabile, ita illos pericula juvent et bella. Judicatur ibi
beatus qui in prœlio profuderit animam: senescentes etiam et
fortuitis mortibus mundo digressos, ut degeneres et ignavos,
conviciis atrocibus insectantur. [Ammian. xxxi. 11.] We must
think highly of the conquerors of _such_ men.]

55 (return) [ On the subject of the Alani, see Ammianus, (xxxi.
2,) Jornandes, (de Rebus Geticis, c. 24,) M. de Guignes, (Hist.
des Huns, tom. ii. p. 279,) and the Genealogical History of the
Tartars, (tom. ii. p. 617.)]

The great Hermanric, whose dominions extended from the Baltic to
the Euxine, enjoyed, in the full maturity of age and reputation,
the fruit of his victories, when he was alarmed by the formidable
approach of a host of unknown enemies, 56 on whom his barbarous
subjects might, without injustice, bestow the epithet of
Barbarians. The numbers, the strength, the rapid motions, and the
implacable cruelty of the Huns, were felt, and dreaded, and
magnified, by the astonished Goths; who beheld their fields and
villages consumed with flames, and deluged with indiscriminate
slaughter. To these real terrors they added the surprise and
abhorrence which were excited by the shrill voice, the uncouth
gestures, and the strange deformity of the Huns. 5611 These
savages of Scythia were compared (and the picture had some
resemblance) to the animals who walk very awkwardly on two legs
and to the misshapen figures, the _Termini_, which were often
placed on the bridges of antiquity. They were distinguished from
the rest of the human species by their broad shoulders, flat
noses, and small black eyes, deeply buried in the head; and as
they were almost destitute of beards, they never enjoyed either
the manly grace of youth, or the venerable aspect of age. 57 A
fabulous origin was assigned, worthy of their form and manners;
that the witches of Scythia, who, for their foul and deadly
practices, had been driven from society, had copulated in the
desert with infernal spirits; and that the Huns were the
offspring of this execrable conjunction. 58 The tale, so full of
horror and absurdity, was greedily embraced by the credulous
hatred of the Goths; but, while it gratified their hatred, it
increased their fear, since the posterity of dæmons and witches
might be supposed to inherit some share of the præternatural
powers, as well as of the malignant temper, of their parents.
Against these enemies, Hermanric prepared to exert the united
forces of the Gothic state; but he soon discovered that his
vassal tribes, provoked by oppression, were much more inclined to
second, than to repel, the invasion of the Huns. One of the
chiefs of the Roxolani 59 had formerly deserted the standard of
Hermanric, and the cruel tyrant had condemned the innocent wife
of the traitor to be torn asunder by wild horses. The brothers of
that unfortunate woman seized the favorable moment of revenge.

The aged king of the Goths languished some time after the
dangerous wound which he received from their daggers; but the
conduct of the war was retarded by his infirmities; and the
public councils of the nation were distracted by a spirit of
jealousy and discord. His death, which has been imputed to his
own despair, left the reins of government in the hands of
Withimer, who, with the doubtful aid of some Scythian
mercenaries, maintained the unequal contest against the arms of
the Huns and the Alani, till he was defeated and slain in a
decisive battle. The Ostrogoths submitted to their fate; and the
royal race of the Amali will hereafter be found among the
subjects of the haughty Attila. But the person of Witheric, the
infant king, was saved by the diligence of Alatheus and Saphrax;
two warriors of approved valor and fiedlity, who, by cautious
marches, conducted the independent remains of the nation of the
Ostrogoths towards the Danastus, or Niester; a considerable
river, which now separates the Turkish dominions from the empire
of Russia. On the banks of the Niester, the prudent Athanaric,
more attentive to his own than to the general safety, had fixed
the camp of the Visigoths; with the firm resolution of opposing
the victorious Barbarians, whom he thought it less advisable to
provoke. The ordinary speed of the Huns was checked by the weight
of baggage, and the encumbrance of captives; but their military
skill deceived, and almost destroyed, the army of Athanaric.
While the Judge of the Visigoths defended the banks of the
Niester, he was encompassed and attacked by a numerous detachment
of cavalry, who, by the light of the moon, had passed the river
in a fordable place; and it was not without the utmost efforts of
courage and conduct, that he was able to effect his retreat
towards the hilly country. The undaunted general had already
formed a new and judicious plan of defensive war; and the strong
lines, which he was preparing to construct between the mountains,
the Pruth, and the Danube, would have secured the extensive and
fertile territory that bears the modern name of Walachia, from
the destructive inroads of the Huns. 60 But the hopes and
measures of the Judge of the Visigoths was soon disappointed, by
the trembling impatience of his dismayed countrymen; who were
persuaded by their fears, that the interposition of the Danube
was the only barrier that could save them from the rapid pursuit,
and invincible valor, of the Barbarians of Scythia. Under the
command of Fritigern and Alavivus, 61 the body of the nation
hastily advanced to the banks of the great river, and implored
the protection of the Roman emperor of the East. Athanaric
himself, still anxious to avoid the guilt of perjury, retired,
with a band of faithful followers, into the mountainous country
of Caucaland; which appears to have been guarded, and almost
concealed, by the impenetrable forests of Transylvania. 62 6211

56 (return) [ As we are possessed of the authentic history of the
Huns, it would be impertinent to repeat, or to refute, the fables
which misrepresent their origin and progress, their passage of
the mud or water of the Mæotis, in pursuit of an ox or stag, les
Indes qu’ils avoient découvertes, &c., (Zosimus, l. iv. p. 224.
Sozomen, l. vi. c. 37. Procopius, Hist. Miscell. c. 5. Jornandes,
c. 24. Grandeur et Décadence, &c., des Romains, c. 17.)]

5611 (return) [ Art added to their native ugliness; in fact, it
is difficult to ascribe the proper share in the features of this
hideous picture to nature, to the barbarous skill with which they
were self-disfigured, or to the terror and hatred of the Romans.
Their noses were flattened by their nurses, their cheeks were
gashed by an iron instrument, that the scars might look more
fearful, and prevent the growth of the beard. Jornandes and
Sidonius Apollinaris:—

Obtundit teneras circumdata fascia nares, Ut galeis cedant.

Yet he adds that their forms were robust and manly, their height
of a middle size, but, from the habit of riding, disproportioned.

Stant pectora vasta, Insignes humer, succincta sub ilibus alvus.
Forma quidem pediti media est, procera sed extat Si cernas
equites, sic longi sæpe putantur Si sedeant.]

57 (return) [ Prodigiosæ formæ, et pandi; ut bipedes existimes
bestias; vel quales in commarginandis pontibus, effigiati
stipites dolantur incompte. Ammian. xxxi. i. Jornandes (c. 24)
draws a strong caricature of a Calmuck face. Species pavenda
nigredine... quædam deformis offa, non fecies; habensque magis
puncta quam lumina. See Buffon. Hist. Naturelle, tom. iii. 380.]

58 (return) [ This execrable origin, which Jornandes (c. 24)
describes with the rancor of a Goth, might be originally derived
from a more pleasing fable of the Greeks. (Herodot. l. iv. c. 9,
&c.)]

59 (return) [ The Roxolani may be the fathers of the the
_Russians_, (D’Anville, Empire de Russie, p. 1—10,) whose
residence (A.D. 862) about Novogrod Veliki cannot be very remote
from that which the Geographer of Ravenna (i. 12, iv. 4, 46, v.
28, 30) assigns to the Roxolani, (A.D. 886.) * Note: See, on the
origin of the Russ, Schlozer, Nordische Geschichte, p. 78—M.]

60 (return) [ The text of Ammianus seems to be imperfect or
corrupt; but the nature of the ground explains, and almost
defines, the Gothic rampart. Mémoires de l’Académie, &c., tom.
xxviii. p. 444—462.]

61 (return) [ M. de Buat (Hist. des Peuples de l’Europe, tom. vi.
p. 407) has conceived a strange idea, that Alavivus was the same
person as Ulphilas, the Gothic bishop; and that Ulphilas, the
grandson of a Cappadocian captive, became a temporal prince of
the Goths.]

62 (return) [ Ammianus (xxxi. 3) and Jornandes (de Rebus Geticis,
c. 24) describe the subversion of the Gothic empire by the Huns.]

6211 (return) [ The most probable opinion as to the position of
this land is that of M. Malte-Brun. He thinks that Caucaland is
the territory of the Cacoenses, placed by Ptolemy (l. iii. c. 8)
towards the Carpathian Mountains, on the side of the present
Transylvania, and therefore the canton of Cacava, to the south of
Hermanstadt, the capital of the principality. Caucaland it is
evident, is the Gothic form of these different names. St. Martin,
iv 103.—M.]