Tartar conquerors, the only people who had ever subdued German men,
and then only by brute force of overpowering numbers. At Netad, upon
the great plain between the Drave and the Danube, they fought the
second Hunnenschlacht, and the Germans conquered. Thirty thousand
Huns fell on that dreadful day, and the rest streamed away into the
heart of Asia, into the infinite unknown deserts from whence the foul
miscreants had streamed forth, and left the Teutons masters of the
world. The battle of Netad; that, and not Chalons, to my mind, was
the saving battle of Europe.

So Rome was saved; but only for a few years. Puppet Valentinian
rewarded Aetius for saving Rome, by stabbing with his own hand in his
own palace, the hero of Chalons; and then went on to fill up the cup
of his iniquity. It is all more like some horrible romance than
sober history. Neglecting his own wife Eudoxia, he took it into his
wicked head to ravish her intimate friend, the wife of a senator.
Maximus stabbed him, retaliated on the beautiful empress, and made
himself Emperor. She sent across the seas to Africa, to Genseric the
Vandal, the cruel tyrant and persecutor. He must come and be her
champion, as Attila had been Honoria's. And he came, with Vandals,
Moors, naked Ausurians from the Atlas. The wretched Romans, in their
terror, tore Maximus in pieces; but it was too late. Eudoxia met
Genseric at the gates in royal robes and jewels. He stript her of
her jewels on the spot, and sacked Rome; and that was her reward.

This is the second sack. More dreadful far than the first--455 is
its date. Then it was that the statues, whose fragments are still
found, were hurled in vain on the barbarian assailants. Not merely
gold and jewels, but the art-treasures of Rome were carried off to
the Vandal fleet, and with them the golden table and the seven-