religion except
some rude cult of the sword of the war-god, Attila seems never to have
interfered in the slightest degree with the religious practices of the
Gepidae or the Ostrogoths, the large majority of whom were by this time
Christians, holding the Arian form of faith. And not only did he not
discourage the finer civilisation which he saw prevailing among these
German subjects of his, but he seems to have had statesmanship enough to
value and respect a culture which he did not share, and especially to
have prized the temperate wisdom of their chiefs, when they helped him
to array his great host of barbarians for war against the Empire.

From his position in Central Europe, Attila, like Alaric before him, was
able to threaten either the Eastern or the Western Empire at pleasure.
For almost ten years (440-450) he seemed to be bent on picking a quarrel
with Theodosius II., the feeble and unwarlike prince who reigned at
Constantinople. He laid waste the provinces south of the Danube with his
desolating raids; he worried the Imperial Court with incessant
embassies, each more exacting and greedy than the last (for the favour
of the rude Hunnish envoy had to be purchased by large gifts from the
Imperial Treasury); he himself insisted on the payment of yearly
_stipendia_ by the Emperor; he constantly demanded that these payments
should be doubled; he openly stated that they were nothing else than
tribute, and that the Roman Augustus who paid them was his slave.

These practices were continued until, in the year 450 the gentle
Theodosius died. He was succeeded by his sister Pulcheria and her
husband Marcian, who soon gave a manlier tone to the counsels of the
Eastern Empire. Attila marked the change and turned his harassing
attentions to the Western State, with which he had always a sufficient
number of pretexts for war ready for use. In fact he had made up his
mind for war, and no concessions, however humiliating, on the part of
Valentinian III., the then Emperor of the West, would have availed to
stay his progress. Not Italy however, to some extent protected by the
barrier of the Alps, but the rich cities and comparatively unwasted
plains of Gaul attracted the royal freebooter. Having summoned his vast
and heterogeneous army from every quarter of Central and North-eastern
Europe, and surrounded himself by a crowd of subject kings, the captains
of his host, he set forward in the spring of 451 for the lands of the
Rhine. T