, he created Attilus,
prefect of the city, emperor. But the imprudent measures of his puppet
sovereign exasperated Alaric. Attilus was formally deposed in 410, and
the infuriated Goth besieged and sacked Rome, and ravaged Italy. The
spoil that the barbarians carried away with them comprised nearly all
the movable wealth of the city.

The ancient capital was devastated, the exquisite works of art
destroyed, and nearly all the monuments of a glorious past sacrificed to
the insatiate greed of the conquerors. Fire helped to complete the ruin
wrought by the Goths, and it is not easy to compute the multitude of
citizens who, from an honourable station and a prosperous fortune, were
suddenly reduced to the miserable condition of captives and exiles.

The complete ruin of Italy was prevented by the death of Alaric in 410.

During the reign of Honorius, the Goths, Burgundians, and Franks were
settled in Gaul. The maritime countries, between the Seine and the
Loire, followed the example of Britain in 409, and threw off the yoke of
the empire. Aquitaine, with its capital at Aries, received, under the
title of the seven provinces, the right of convening an annual assembly
for the management of its own affairs.

Honorius died in 423, and was succeeded by Valentinian III. His long
reign was marked by a series of disasters, which foretold the rapidly
approaching dissolution of the western empire.

Genseric, king of the Vandals, in 429 crossed into Africa, conquered the
province, and set up in the depopulated territory, with Carthage as his
capital, a new rule and government. Italy was filled with fugitives from
Africa, and a barbarian race, which had issued from the frozen regions
of the north, established their victorious reign over one of the fairest
provinces of the empire. Two years later, in 441, a new and even more
terrible danger threatened the empire.

The Goths and Vandals, flying before the Huns, had oppressed the western
World. The hordes of these barbarians, now gathering strength in their
union under their king, Attila, threatened an attack upon the eastern
empire. In appearance their chieftain was terrible in the extreme; his
portrait exhibits the genuine deformity of a modern Calmuck: a large
head, a swarthy complexion, small, deep-seated eyes, a flat nose, a few
hairs in the place of a beard, broad shoulders, and a short, square body
of nervous strength, though of a disproportionate form. He had a custom
of fierc