Alaric

“ In course of time they became a very powerful nation, and in the year 394 they chose as their king one of the chiefs named Al'a-ric. He was a brave man and a great soldier. Even when a child he took delight in war, and at the age of sixteen he fought as bravely as the older soldiers.
One night, not long after he became king, Alaric had a very strange dream. He thought he was driving in a golden chariot through the streets of Rome amid the shouts of the people, who hailed him as emperor. ”

“ In the saints the aspiration leaps from earth to Heaven, for their eyes are opened to the reality and the shadow; but even among mortals denied the Divine Spark, this hunger for the best takes on something of the sublime and translates itself in actions not to be altogether accounted for by merely human motives. Such a mortal was Alaric, the Visigoth, whose name still sounds to us across the ages with compelling power. ”

“ Alaric the Goth, Attila, Ezzelin, all fought with the rebellious Paduans on those gray stones. All the Venetian generals and the princes of old Verona and the terrible Visconti of Milan—all have left the traces of their iron tread upon the patch of meadow where the pink daisies open their eyes, and the red clover calls to the bees from the base of the dingy statues, and the boys lie on the grass and play at morra or sit for hours with their bare brown legs hanging over the moat fishing for the infant minnows. What wonder that the great square echoes with battle-cries and the clash of steel! ”

“ Sack of Rome by Alaric (A.D. 410) .—Upon retiring from Rome, Alaric established his camp in Etruria. Here he was joined by great numbers of fugitive slaves, and by fresh accessions of barbarians from beyond the Alps. The Gallic king now demanded for his followers lands of Honorius, but the emperor treated all the proposals of the barbarian with foolish insolence. Rome paid the penalty. Alaric turned upon the devoted city, determined upon its sack and plunder. The barbarians broke into the capital by night, "and the inhabitants were awakened by the tremendous sound of the Gothic trumpet." ”

“ Suspicion made the timid Emperor writhe with terror through sleepless nights. It seemed to him that he would never know peace of mind again until he had rid himself of his formidable commander-in-chief; and so by his orders Stilicho was put to death and Italy lay at the mercy of Alaric and his followers.
Sweeping across the Alps, the Visigoths paused at last before the gates of Rome. ‘We are many in number and prepared to fight,’ boldly began the ambassadors sent out from the city. ‘Thick grass is easier to mow than thin,’ replied Alaric. ”

“ An Italian hermit, whose zeal and sanctity were respected by the Barbarians themselves, encountered the victorious monarch, and boldly denounced the indignation of heaven against the oppressors of the earth; but the saint himself was confounded by the solemn asseveration of Alaric, that he felt a secret and preternatural impulse, which directed, and even compelled, his march to the gates of Rome. He felt that his genius and his fortune were equal to the most arduous enterprises ”

“ Christianity stepped into its deserted inheritance. The Christians occupied the temples, transforming them into churches."
The Death of Alaric.—After withdrawing his warriors from Rome, Alaric led them southward. As they moved slowly on, they piled still higher the wagons of their long trains with the rich spoils of the cities and villas of Campania and other districts of Southern Italy. In the villas of the Roman nobles the rough barbarians spread rare banquets from the stores of their well-filled cellars, and drank from jewelled cups the famed Falernian wine. ”

“ Deserted by our Emperor and crushed by pestilence and famine, nothing is now left to us but to perish in unavailing resistance beneath the walls of Rome! It was in the power of Alaric to win everlasting renown by moderation to the unfortunate of an illustrious nation; but he has preferred to attempt the spoiling of a glorious city and the subjugation of a suffering people! Yet let him remember, though destruction may sate his vengeance, and pillage enrich his hoards, the day of retribution will yet come. ”

“ What do you want? Have you seen my Gretchen? Where did you learn to sing 'Muss i denn'?"
"In Germany, of course, where everybody sings it," replied Alaric, answering the last question first, and speaking in the man's own language. "And I didn't think you would mind if we took possession of your camp until your return; for you see we are in great trouble."
"Ach no! All who are in trouble should come with me; for I too have many, many troubles," replied the man, his blue eyes losing their fierce look and filling with tears. ”

“ The barbarians, surrounded by well guarded entrenchments, were forced to surrender, after many had perished from want of food. The chief was beheaded; his surviving followers were sold as slaves. Meantime, Alaric, the Gothic king, had been taken into the pay of the Empire. "Renouncing the service of the Emperor of the East, Alaric concluded with the Court of Ravenna a treaty of peace and alliance, by which he was declared master-general of the Roman armies throughout the præfecture of Illyricum ”

“ Alaric then quarrels with his puppet, deprives him of the insignia of the Empire, and sends them to Honorius; quarrels again with Honorius, reënters Rome and pillages it, marches to Southern Italy, dies, and his small army is dismembered.
There is the story of Alaric as it appears from documents and as it was in reality. There is the truth underlying the false picture with which most educated men were recently provided by the anti-Roman bias of recent history. ”

“ To this place came Alaric, king of 157 Visigoths, with the wealth of all Italy which he had taken as spoil, and from there, as we have said, he intended to cross over by way of Sicily to the quiet land of Africa. But since man is not free to do anything he wishes without the will of God, that dread strait sunk several of his ships and threw all into confusion. ”

“ They are men out of the darkness, savages of the forest, wild dwellers amid the ice-mountains and the swamps. They have known no civilizing influences; they are nature’s children, and hardy as the rock and granite. They have reason, it is true; but it does not guide them on their strange, savage mission. They are all driven on by an instinct that is irresistible.
The words of Alaric are the expression of the feelings of all those wild warriors. As the Gothic leader is marching towards Rome at the head of his army, a solitary goes out from his grotto to arrest him in his course. ”

“ At the same time he glanced curiously at Alaric's white hands and neatly fitting coat. "You don't look like a fellow who is looking for work."
"I am, though," laughed Alaric: "and as I have just spent the last cent of money I had in the world, I must find something to do right away. That's the reason I want to get back to the States ”

“ Alaric, being prevailed on by the letters he received both from the emperor and Jovius, and being advanced as far as Ariminum, thirty miles from Ravenna, Jovius hastened thither also (having been the friend and familiar acquaintance of Alaric in Epirus) , to treat concerning the alliance. The demands of Alaric were: a certain quantity of gold each year, and a quantity of corn; and that himself and the Barbarians who were with him should inhabit both the Venetias, Noricum, and Dalmatia. ”

“ But men did not yet realise, even in their dreams, the strange things to come, whereof this was the menace and the presage. When the rumour of Alaric and his Goths reached the homesteads of Britain, it [25] must have struck men’s ears as a thing far off, a trouble in which they could have no part. And the danger that stole upon the Empire was muffled and disguised. Alaric was a Goth, but at the same time he was an imperial general, a Master of Soldiers, a servant of the Roman State, profoundly loyal to the Empire, the integrity of which he was undermining. ”

“ Nor was this report a fictitious one; for the imperial forces were actually on their way; but Alaric, not waiting for the materialization of the rumor, decamped and escaped. It is said that as he was advancing towards Rome, a pious monk exhorted him not to delight in the perpetuation of such atrocities, and no longer to rejoice in slaughter and blood. To whom Alaric replied, ’I am not going on in this course of my own will; but there is a something that irresistibly impels me daily, saying, ‘Proceed to Rome, and desolate that city.’ Such was the career of this person. ”

“ Alaric had always been defeated when he was attacked. It was the failure of the West to attack him that gave him Rome at last. The Imperial advisers perhaps thought they had solved the question he had propounded to them, when, after Alaric’s death, they had obtained the retreat of the Barbarian across the Alps—a retreat he was as glad to carry out as they to order, [Pg 17] for he was in a sort of trap—and had secured at least his neutrality by admitting him into the service of the Empire. But the peace of more than a generation which followed their act was as illusory as it was contemptible. ”

“ The Romans did not certainly know whether Alaric himself was present or not, or whether it was he who besieged the city. For they were deluded by a report that it was another person, who had been a friend of Stilico, which had occasioned him to come against their city. When the ambassadors came to him, they were ashamed of the ignorance in which the Romans had so long remained, but delivered the message of the senate. When Alaric heard it, and that the people having been exercised to arms were ready for war, he remarked, “The thickest grass is more easy to cut than the thinnest.” ”

“ An Alaric or an Attila, who marches with legions of barbarians for some gross view of plunder or ambition, is an instrument of divine power to effect a purpose of which he is wholly unconscious—he is carrying a strong race to improve a weak one, and giving energy to a debilitated population; and the deserts he makes in his passage will become in another age cultivated fields, and the solitude he produces will be succeeded by a powerful and healthy population. ”

“ Soon after, Alaric stationed himself among the Alps, at a distance of about sixty stadia from Ravenna, and held a conference with the emperor concerning the conclusion of a peace. Saros, a barbarian by birth, and highly practiced in the art of war, had only about three hundred men with him, but all well disposed and most efficient. He was suspicious of Alaric on account of their former enmity, and reasoned that a treaty between the Romans and Goths would be of no advantage to him. ”

“ In the arts of negotiation, as well as in those of war, the Gothic king maintained his superior ascendant over an enemy, whose seeming changes proceeded from the total want of counsel and design. From his camp, on the confines of Italy, Alaric attentively observed the revolutions of the palace, watched the progress of faction and discontent, disguised the hostile aspect of a Barbarian invader, and assumed the more popular appearance of the friend and ally of the great Stilicho: to whose virtues, when they were no longer formidable, he could pay a just tribute of sincere praise and regret. ”

“ Stilicho, the only hope of Rome, was assassinated, and Alaric once more saw all Italy within his grasp. It was not only the Goths who followed Alaric’s command. All the barbarians, of whatever name or race, who had been transplanted either as slaves or soldiers—Alans, Franks, and Germans—rallied round the advancing king, for the impolitic Honorius had issued an order for the extermination of all the tribes. There were Britons, and Saxons, and Suabians. It was an insurrection of all the manly elements of society against the indescribable depravation of the inhabitants of the Peninsula. ”

“ Alaric knew, what Clovis did not, that there was a ford at Lussac, and if he had any military foresight, he would plant a body of men across the road in the throat of the valley to intercept the Franks on their way. As it was, the Franks pushed on, and seeing a deer wade across the river at Lussac, raised exultant shouts, plunged into the Vienne, and crossed. ”

“ For this reason Alaric was compelled to do battle with the enemy before the Goths had as yet arrived. And the Germans, gaining the upper hand in this engagement, killed the most of the Visigoths and their ruler Alaric. 507 a.d.Then they took possession of the greater part of Gaul and held it; and they laid siege to Carcasiana with great enthusiasm, because they had learned that the royal treasure was there, which Alaric the elder in earlier times had taken as booty when he captured Rome. ”

“ Being highly incensed against the Romans for so impious a breach of promises they had made in the presence of the gods, they all resolved to join with Alaric, and to assist him in a war against Rome. Having therefore collected to the number of thirty thousand men, they fixed themselves in whatever place they pleased. But Alaric was not sufficiently excited even by these men to undertake a war, but still preferred peace, being still mindful of the league into which he had entered with Stilico. ”

“ Alaric advances to Rome. The Gothic king, in his distant camp, beheld with joy the intrigues and factions which deprived the emperor of his best and last defender, and prepared for a new invasion of Italy. He descended like an avalanche upon the plains of Italy, and captured the cities of Aquileia, [pg 637] Concordia, and Cremona. He then ravaged the coasts of the Adriatic, and following the Flaminian way, crossed the Appennines, devastated Umbria, and reached, without obstruction, the city which for six hundred years had not seen a foreign enemy at her gates. ”