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
Chálons-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. In the thirteenth
century this frontier was permanently carried forward to the Vistula by
the Teutonic Knights who, under commission from the emperor Frederick
II., overcame the heathen Prussians and Lithuanians; and now it began to
be shown how greatly the military strength of Europe had increased. In
this same century Batu, the grandson of Jinghis Khan, came down into
Europe with a horde of more than a million Mongols, and tried to repeat
the experiment of Attila. Batu penetrated as far as Silesia, and won a
great battle at Liegnitz in 1241, but in spite of his victory he had to
desist from the task of conquering Europe. Since the fifth century the
physical power of the civilized world had grown immensely; and the
impetus of this barbaric invasion was mainly spent upon Russia, the