the
chosen squadrons of the Huns, wheeling round in measured evolutions,
chanted a funeral song to the memory of a hero, glorious in his life,
invincible in his death, the father of his people, the scourge of
his enemies, and the terror of the world. According to their national
custom, the Barbarians cut off a part of their hair, gashed their faces
with unseemly wounds, and bewailed their valiant leader as he deserved,
not with the tears of women, but with the blood of warriors. The remains
of Attila were enclosed within three coffins, of gold, of silver, and
of iron, and privately buried in the night: the spoils of nations were
thrown into his grave; the captives who had opened the ground were
inhumanly massacred; and the same Huns, who had indulged such excessive
grief, feasted, with dissolute and intemperate mirth, about the recent
sepulchre of their king. It was reported at Constantinople, that on the
fortunate night on which he expired, Marcian beheld in a dream the bow
of Attila broken asunder: and the report may be allowed to prove, how
seldom the image of that formidable Barbarian was absent from the mind
of a Roman emperor.

The revolution which subverted the empire of the Huns, established the
fame of Attila, whose genius alone had sustained the huge and disjointed
fabric. After his death, the boldest chieftains aspired to the rank of
kings; the most powerful kings refused to acknowledge a superior; and
the numerous sons, whom so many various mothers bore to the deceased
monarch, divided and disputed, like a private inheritance, the sovereign
command of the nations of Germany and Scythia. The bold Ardaric felt and
represented the disgrace of this servile partition; and his subjects,
the warlike Gepidae, with the Ostrogoths, under the conduct of three
valiant brothers, encouraged their allies to vindicate the rights of
freedom and royalty. In a bloody and decisive conflict on the banks of
the River Netad, in Pannonia, the lance of the Gepidae, the sword of the
Goths, the arrows of the Huns, the Suevic infantry, the light arms of
the Heruli, and the heavy weapons of the Alani, encountered or supported
each other; and the victory of the Ardaric was accompanied with the
slaughter of thirty thousand of his enemies. Ellac, the eldest son of
Attila, lost his life and crown in the memorable battle of Netad: his
early valor had raised him to the throne of the Acatzires, a Scythian
people, whom he subdued; and his fathe