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But the fall of Calleva and the fall of Næodunum are alike matters of inference. Geography shows that Calleva fell in the northern march of Cerdic, and the most speaking of all Roman relics, the treasured and hidden eagle, abides as a witness of the day when our fathers overthrew it. Næodunum seems to have undergone no such overthrow as those wrought by the Hun, the Avar, and the Saxon.
'Socially and politically, proceeds the passage, 'the Saracen empire was little better than the Gothic, Hunnish, and Avar monarchies; and that it proved more durable, with almost equal oppression, is to be attributed to the powerful enthusiasm of Mahomet's religion, which tempered for some time its avarice and tyranny. The same sentiment is repeated still more emphatically at p. 468 The political policy of the Saracens was of itself utterly barbarous; and it only caught a passing gleam of justice from the religious feeling of their prophet's doctrines.
When quiet had been restored, Attila was no more to be seen, for he had left the hall by a secret door. And now began the feast, which lasted till morning. When the sun rose, Orestes was still sitting and drinking with an Avar chief. The condition of the hall was indescribable, and most of the guests were dancing outside round the fire. "This is a wedding-feast indeed!" said Orestes.
The commerce on the Rhine had almost entirely ceased. The grandduchy of Berg was, until 1808, governed with great mildness by Avar, the French minister.
Finlay, in our mind, does right to class these barbarians as 'socially and politically little better than the Gothic, Hunnish, and Avar monarchies. But, on consideration, the Gothic monarchy embosomed the germs of a noble civilization; whereas the Saracens have never propagated great principles of any kind, nor attained even a momentary grandeur in their institutions, except where coalescing with a higher or more ancient civilization.
Passing rapidly through Armenia and Azerbijan without meeting an enemy that dared to dispute his advance, suffering no loss except from the guerilla warfare of some bold spirits among the mountaineers of those regions, he resolved, notwithstanding the defection of the Khazars, who declined to accompany him further south than Azerbijan, that he would cross the Zagros mountains into Assyria, and make a dash at the royal cities of the Mesopotamian region, thus retaliating upon Chosroes for the Avar attack upon Constantinople of the preceding year, undertaken at his instigation.
Throughout the whole period there came against Europe, out of the unknown wastes of central Asia, an endless succession of strange and terrible conqueror races whose mission was mere destruction Hun and Avar, Mongol, Tartar, and Turk. These fierce and squalid tribes of warrior horsemen flailed mankind with red scourges, wasted and destroyed, and then vanished from the ground they had overrun.
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