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Their persuasions, with rich gifts and the promise of a tribute, availed. The army of Attila was weakened by sickness, and Aetius was approaching. The king of the Huns decided to retire to his forests.
Upon these doubts and ponderings of his supervened the stately presence of Leo, a man of holy life, firm will, dauntless courage that, be sure, Attila perceived in the first moments of their interview and, besides this, holding an office honored and venerated through all the civilized world.
After the four centuries of Roman rule came the incursions of the savage hordes of northern Europe, and of the great army of Huns, under Attila, who marched through Gaul in A.D. 451. The Romans with their auxiliaries engaged Attila at Chalons the battle in which fabulous numbers of men are said to have fallen on both sides.
In the hands of a wise legislator, such an industrious colony might have contributed to diffuse through the deserts of Scythia the rudiments of the useful and ornamental arts; but these captives, who had been taken in war, were accidentally dispersed among the hordes that obeyed the empire of Attila.
On his death, the German tribes refused longer to serve under the divided rule of his sons, and after a severe contest with the more barbarous Huns, the empire of Attila disappeared as one of the great powers of the world, and Italy was delivered forever from this plague of locusts. The battle of Netad, in which they suffered a disastrous defeat, was perhaps as decisive as the battle of Chalons.
The two men who had thus at last met by the banks of the Mincio are certainly the grandest figures whom the fifth century can show to us, at any rate since Alaric vanished from the scene. Attila we by this time know well enough; adequately to describe Pope Leo I, we should have to travel too far into the region of ecclesiastical history.
The Huns justified this outrage as an act of reprisal; alleged, that the bishop of Margus had entered their territories, to discover and steal a secret treasure of their kings; and sternly demanded the guilty prelate, the sacrilegious spoil, and the fugitive subjects, who had escaped from the justice of Attila.
In Leo's time the earth reeled beneath the tread of Attila, the city groaned beneath Genseric's hoof. And now three heretics despots, and ignoble despots, if ever such there were filled the sole imperial throne. Arians, closely connected by family ties and identical interests, divided the West among them.
Under this striking symbol we have a description of the third important step in the downward course of Rome the short but eventful career of Attila, with his terrible Scythians, or Huns.
One of the shepherds of the Huns perceived, that a heifer, who was grazing, had wounded herself in the foot, and curiously followed the track of the blood, till he discovered, among the long grass, the point of an ancient sword, which he dug out of the ground and presented to Attila.
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