ned by treachery,
served as a prelude to more honorable and decisive victories. The
Illyrian frontier was covered by a line of castles and fortresses; and
though the greatest part of them consisted only of a single tower,
with a small garrison, they were commonly sufficient to repel, or to
intercept, the inroads of an enemy, who was ignorant of the art, and
impatient of the delay, of a regular siege. But these slight obstacles
were instantly swept away by the inundation of the Huns. They destroyed,
with fire and sword, the populous cities of Sirmium and Singidunum,
of Ratiaria and Marcianopolis, of Naissus and Sardica; where every
circumstance of the discipline of the people, and the construction
of the buildings, had been gradually adapted to the sole purpose of
defence. The whole breadth of Europe, as it extends above five hundred
miles from the Euxine to the Hadriatic, was at once invaded, and
occupied, and desolated, by the myriads of Barbarians whom Attila led
into the field. The public danger and distress could not, however,
provoke Theodosius to interrupt his amusements and devotion, or to
appear in person at the head of the Roman legions. But the troops, which
had been sent against Genseric, were hastily recalled from Sicily; the
garrisons, on the side of Persia, were exhausted; and a military force
was collected in Europe, formidable by their arms and numbers, if the
generals had understood the science of command, and the soldiers the
duty of obedience. The armies of the Eastern empire were vanquished in
three successive engagements; and the progress of Attila may be traced
by the fields of battle. The two former, on the banks of the Utus, and
under the walls of Marcianopolis, were fought in the extensive plains
between the Danube and Mount Haemus. As the Romans were pressed by a
victorious enemy, they gradually, and unskilfully, retired towards the
Chersonesus of Thrace; and that narrow peninsula, the last extremity
of the land, was marked by their third, and irreparable, defeat. By the
destruction of this army, Attila acquired the indisputable possession
of the field. From the Hellespont to Thermopylae, and the suburbs of
Constantinople, he ravaged, without resistance, and without mercy,
the provinces of Thrace and Macedonia. Heraclea and Hadrianople might,
perhaps, escape this dreadful irruption of the Huns; but the words, the
most expressive of total extirpation and erasure, are applied to the
calamities whi