THE CAMBRIDGE MEDIEVAL HISTORY I 216

Civil War and the Second Coming of Aetius

14-10. Civil War and the Second Coming of Aetius

It was Aetius who was the cause of the recall of Boniface to Italy in 432; for the summons of Placidia was dictated by the desire to find a counterpoise to the influence which Aetius had by this time acquired. After his struggle with the Goths, and the treaty which ended the struggle in 426, Aetius had still been occupied in Gaul by hostilities with the Franks While Africa was being lost, Gaul was being recovered; Tours was relieved; the Franks were repelled from Arras, and, in 428, driven back across the Rhine. Aetius even carried his arms towards the Danube, and won success in a campaign in Rhaetia and Noricum in the year 430, in the course of which he inflicted heavy losses on the Juthungi, a tribe which had crossed the Danube from the north. Like Julius Caesar five centuries before, he now acquired, as the result of his Transalpine campaigns, a commanding position at Rome. In 429 he became magister equitum per Gallias, but Felix, with the title of patricius, still stood at the head of affairs.

In 430, however, Felix was murdered on the steps of one of the churches at Ravenna, in a military tumult which was apparently the work of Aetius. Felix had been plotting against his dangerous rival, and Aetius, forewarned of his plots, and forearmed by the support of his own Hunnish followers, saved himself from impending ruin by the ruin of his enemy. He now became magister utriusque militiae, at once generalissimo and prime minister of the Empire of the West; and in 432, after a new campaign in Noricum, and a second defeat of the Franks, he was created consul for the year.

It was at this juncture that Placidia (who, according to one authority, had instigated the plots of Felix in 430) summoned Boniface to the rescue, and sought to recover her independence, by creating him master of the troops in Aetius' place. The dismissed general took to arms; and a great struggle ensued. Once more, as in the days of Caesar and Pompey, two generals fought for control of the Roman Empire; and as the earlier struggle had shewn the utter decay of the Republic, so this later struggle attests, as Mommsen remarks, the complete dissolution of the political and military system of the Empire.

The fight was engaged near Rimini; and though one authority speaks of Aetius as victor, the bulk of evidence and the probabilities of the case both point to the victory of Boniface. Boniface died soon after the victory, but his son-in-law, Sebastian, succeeded to his position; and the defeated Aetius, after seeking in vain to find security in retirement on his own estates, fled to his old friends the Huns. Here he was received by King Rua, and found welcome support. Returning in 433 with an army of Huns, he was completely victorious. It was in vain that Placidia attempted to get the support of the Visigoths; she had to dismiss and then to banish Sebastian, and to admit Aetius not only to his old office of master of the troops, but also to the new dignity of patricius. Once more, as in 425 and in 430, Aetius had forced Placidia to use his services; and henceforward till his death in 454 he is the ruler of the West, receiving in royal state the embassies of the provinces, and enjoying the honour, unparalleled hitherto under the Empire for an ordinary citizen, of a triple consulate.

The policy of Aetius seems steadily directed towards Gaul, and to the retention of a basis for the Empire along the valleys of the Rhine, the Loire, and the Seine. Loyal Gaul seemed to him well worth defence; nationalist Africa he apparently neglected. One of the first acts of the government, after his accession to power, was the conclusion of a treaty with the Vandals and their king, whereby the provinces of Mauretania and much of Numidia were ceded to Gaiseric, in return for an annual tribute and hostages. In this treaty Aetius imitated the policy of Constantius towards the Visigoths, and gave the Vandals a similar settlement in Africa, as tributary foederati. Peace once made in Africa, he turned his attention to Gaul Here there were several problems to engage his attention. The Burgundians were attacking Bclgica Prima, the district round Metz and Treves; a Jacquerie of revolted peasantry and slaves (the Bagaudae, who steadily waged a social war during the fourth and fifth centuries) was raging everywhere; and, perhaps most dangerous of all, the Visigoths, taking advantage of these opportunities to pursue their policy of extension from Bordeaux towards the Mediterranean, were seeking to capture Narbonne. Aetius, with the aid of his Hunnish mercenaries, proved equal to the danger.

He defeated the Burgundians, who were shortly afterwards almost annihiliated by an attack of the Huns (the remnant of the nation gaining a new settlement in Savoy); his lieutenant Litorius raised the siege of Narbonne, and he himself, according to his panegyrist Merobaudes, defeated a Gothic army, during the absence of Theodoric, ad montem Colubrarium (436); while the Jacquerie came to an end with the capture of its leader in 437. Encouraged by their successes, the Romans seem to have carried their arms into the territory of the Visigoths, and in 439 Litorius led his Hunnish troops to an attack upon Toulouse itself.

Eager to gain success on his own hand, and rashly trusting the advice of his pagan soothsayers, he rushed into battle, and suffered a considerable defeat. Aetius now consented to peace with the Goths, on the same terms as before in 426; and he sought to ensure the continuance of the peace by planting a body of Alans near Orleans, to guard the valley of the Loire. Then, leaving Gaul at peace — a peace which continued undisturbed till the coming of Attila in 451 — he returned once more to Italy.

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