At the beginning of the fifth century an enormous horde of yellow
Mongolians, known as Huns, poured down into Europe with avowed intent to
burn and destroy all the good work which Rome had wrought in the world;
and terrible was the havoc they effected in the course of fifty years.
If Attila had carried his point, it has been thought that the work of
European civilization might have had to be begun over again. But near
Chalons-on-the-Marne, in the year 451, in one of the most obstinate
struggles of which history preserves the record, the career of the
"Scourge of God" was arrested, and mainly by the prowess of Gauls and of
Visigoths whom the genius of Rome had tamed. That was the last day on
which barbarism was able to contend with civilization on equal terms. It
was no doubt a critical day for all future history; and for its
favourable issue we must largely thank the policy adopted by Caesar five
centuries before. By the end of the eighth century the great power of
the Franks had become enlisted in behalf of law and order, and the Roman
throne was occupied by a Frank,--the ablest man who had appeared in the
world since Caesar's death; and one of the worthiest achievements of
Charles the Great was the conquest and conversion of pagan Germany,
which threw the frontier against barbarism eastward as far as the Oder,
and made it so much the easier to defend Europe.
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