Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol 3 (1897).djvu/485

 OF THE KOMAN EMPIRE 463 past glory, their actual danger, and their future hopes. The same fortune which opened the deserts and morasses of Scythia to their unarmed valour, which had laid so many warlike nations prostrate at their feet, had reserved the joy.v of this memorable field for the consummation of their victories. The cautious steps of their enemies, their strict alliance, and their advantageous posts, he artfully represented as the effects, not of prudence, but of fear. The Visigoths alone were the strength and nerves of the opposite army ; and the Huns might securely trample on the degenerate Romans, whose close and compact order betrayed their apprehensions, and who were equally incapable of sup- porting the dangers or the fatigues of a day of battle. The doctrine of predestination, so favourable to mai'tial virtue, was carefully inculcated by the king of the Huns, who assured his subjects that the warriors, protected by Heaven, were safe and invulnerable amidst the darts of the enemy ; but that the unerr- ing Fates would strike their victims in the bosom of inglorious peace. "I myself," continued Attila, "will throw the first javelin, and the wretch who refuses to imitate the example of his sovereign is devoted to inevitable death.'' The spirit of the Barbarians was rekindled by the presence, the voice, and the example, of their intrepid leader ; and Attila, yielding to their impatience, immediately formed his order of battle. At the head of his brave and faithful Huns he occupied in person the centre of the line. The nations subject to his empire, the Rugians, the Heruli, the Thuringians, the Franks, the Burgun- dians, were extended, on either hand, over the ample space of the Catalaunian fields ; the right wing was commanded by Ardaric, king of the Gepidae ; and the three valiant brothers who reigned over the Ostrogoths were posted on the left to oppose the kindred tribes of the Visigoths. The disposition of the allies was regulated by a different principle. Sangiban, the faithless king of the Alani, was placed in the centre ; where his motions might be strictly watched, and his treachery might be instantly punished. Aetius assumed the command of the left, and Theodoric of the right wing ; while Torismond still con- tinued to occupy the heights which appear to have stretched on the flank, and perhaps the rear, of the Scythian army. The nations from the Volga to the Atlantic were assembled on the plain of Chalons ; but many of these nations had been divided by faction, or conquest, or emigration ; and the appearance of similar arms and ensigns, which threatened each other, pre- sented the image of a civil war.