harsh and humiliating conditions
of peace:

I. The Emperor of the East resigned, by an express or tacit convention,
an extensive and important territory, which stretched along the southern
banks of the Danube, from Singidunum, or Belgrade, as far as Novae, in
the diocese of Thrace. The breadth was defined by the vague computation
of fifteen days' journey; but, from the proposal of Attila to remove
the situation of the national market, it soon appeared that he
comprehended the ruined city of Naissus within the limits of his
dominions.

II. The King of the Huns required and obtained that his tribute or
subsidy should be augmented from seven hundred pounds of gold to the
annual sum of two thousand one hundred; and he stipulated the immediate
payment of six thousand pounds of gold to defray the expenses or to
expiate the guilt of the war. One might imagine that such a demand,
which scarcely equalled the measure of private wealth, would have been
readily discharged by the opulent Empire of the East; and the public
distress affords a remarkable proof of the impoverished, or at least of
the disorderly, state of the finances. A large proportion of the taxes
extorted from the people was detained and intercepted in their passage,
through the foulest channels, to the treasury of Constantinople. The
revenue was dissipated by Theodosius and his favorites in wasteful and
profuse luxury, which was disguised by the name of imperial magnificence
or Christian charity. The immediate supplies had been exhausted by the
unforeseen necessity of military preparations. A personal contribution,
rigorously but capriciously imposed on the members of the senatorian
order, was the only expedient that could disarm, without loss of time,
the impatient avarice of Attila; and the poverty of the nobles compelled
them to adopt the scandalous resource of exposing to public auction the
jewels of their wives and the hereditary ornaments of their palaces.

III. The King of the Huns appears to have established, as a principle of
national jurisprudence, that he could never lose the property, which he
had once acquired, in the persons who had yielded either a voluntary or
reluctant submission to his authority. From this principle he concluded,
and the conclusions of Attila were irrevocable laws, that the Huns, who
had been, taken prisoners in war, should be released without delay and
without ransom; that every Roman captive who had presumed to escape
should