oil, who were hunters and shepherds,
dwelling in tents, in waggons, and on horseback.[9] Imagination can
hardly take in the extent of his empire. In the West he interfered with
the Franks, and chastised the Burgundians, on the Rhine. On the East he
even sent ambassadors to negotiate an equal alliance with the Chinese
Empire. The north of Asia was the home of his race, and on the north of
Europe he ascended as high as Denmark and Sweden. It is said he could
bring into the field an army of 500,000 or 700,000 men.

You will ask perhaps how he gained this immense power; did he inherit
it? the Russian Empire is the slow growth of centuries; had Attila a
long line of royal ancestors, and was his empire, like that of Haroun,
or Soliman, or Aurunzebe, the maturity and consummation of an eventful
history? Nothing of the kind; it began, as it ended, with himself. The
history of the Huns during the centuries immediately before him, will
show us how he came by it. It seems that, till shortly before the
Christian era, the Huns had a vast empire, from a date unknown, in the
portion of Tartary to the east of Mount Altai. It was against these
formidable invaders that the Chinese built their famous wall, 1,500
miles in length, which still exists as one of the wonders of the world.
In spite of its protection, however, they were obliged to pay tribute to
their fierce neighbours, until one of their emperors undertook a task
which at first sight seems an exception to what I have already laid down
as if a universal law in the history of northern warfare. This Chinese
monarch accomplished the bold design of advancing an army as much as 700
miles into the depths of the Tartar wilderness, and thereby at length
succeeded in breaking the power of the Huns. He succeeded;--but at the
price of 110,000 men. He entered Tartary with an army 140,000 strong; he
returned with 30,000.

The Huns, however, though broken, had no intention at all of being
reduced. The wild warriors turned their faces westward, and not knowing
whither they were going, set out for Europe. This was at the end of the
first century after Christ; in the course of the following centuries
they pursued the track which I have already marked out for the
emigrating companies. They passed the lofty Altai; they gradually
travelled along the foot of the mountain-chain in which it is seated;
they arrived at the edge of the high table-land which bounds Tartary on
the west; then turning southw