o the civil and ecclesiastical
society of the Christians. During the life of Arnulph, the Hungarians
were checked by gratitude or fear; but in the infancy of his son Lewis
they discovered and invaded Bavaria; and such was their Scythian speed,
that in a single day a circuit of fifty miles was stripped and consumed.
In the battle of Augsburgh the Christians maintained their advantage
till the seventh hour of the day, they were deceived and vanquished by
the flying stratagems of the Turkish cavalry. The conflagration spread
over the provinces of Bavaria, Swabia, and Franconia; and the Hungarians
promoted the reign of anarchy, by forcing the stoutest barons to
discipline their vassals and fortify their castles. The origin of walled
towns is ascribed to this calamitous period; nor could any distance be
secure against an enemy, who, almost at the same instant, laid in ashes
the Helvetian monastery of St. Gall, and the city of Bremen, on the
shores of the northern ocean. Above thirty years the Germanic empire,
or kingdom, was subject to the ignominy of tribute; and resistance was
disarmed by the menace, the serious and effectual menace of dragging the
women and children into captivity, and of slaughtering the males above
the age of ten years. I have neither power nor inclination to follow the
Hungarians beyond the Rhine; but I must observe with surprise, that
the southern provinces of France were blasted by the tempest, and that
Spain, behind her Pyrenees, was astonished at the approach of these
formidable strangers. The vicinity of Italy had tempted their early
inroads; but from their camp on the Brenta, they beheld with some terror
the apparent strength and populousness of the new discovered country.
They requested leave to retire; their request was proudly rejected by
the Italian king; and the lives of twenty thousand Christians paid the
forfeit of his obstinacy and rashness. Among the cities of the West, the
royal Pavia was conspicuous in fame and splendor; and the preeminence
of Rome itself was only derived from the relics of the apostles. The
Hungarians appeared; Pavia was in flames; forty-three churches were
consumed; and, after the massacre of the people, they spared about two
hundred wretches who had gathered some bushels of gold and silver (a
vague exaggeration) from the smoking ruins of their country. In these
annual excursions from the Alps to the neighborhood of Rome and Capua,
the churches, that yet escaped, resou