p. 628 | The Ten Kingdoms by J.

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Oct 21, 1886

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 12, No. 40.

The Ten Kingdoms.

By J.

(Continued.)

Bishop Chandler's list, professedly made up from Machiavelli's “History of Florence,” is as follows:—

“(1) The Ostrogoths in Moesia; (2) the Visigoths in Pannonia; (3) the Sueves and Alans in Gascoigne and Spain; (4) the Vandals in Africa; (5) the Franks in France; (6) the Burgundians in Burgundy; (7) the Heruli and Turingi in Italy; (8) the Saxons and Angles in Britain; (9) the Huns in Hungary; (10) the Lombards at first upon the Danube, afterwards in Italy.”

So far as the names are concerned this list is correct with the exception of the Huns. As this list is the one which has been most generally accepted, it will be necessary to give quite fully the reasons which have compelled us to reject the Huns as one of the ten. In justification we submit the following facts: 1. It is a fact that the only part of what is now Hungary that was ever within the Western empire, is that portion that lies west of the Danube, and which formed part of the province of Pannonia. 2. It is a fact that the people who formed what is now the kingdom of Hungary, and from whom that country took its name of Hungary, never appeared in Europe till A. D. 884, and in 889 A. D. overran the country which bears their name. 3. It is a fact that they were not Huns, but Magyars (Ουγγροι, Ugri, Wengri, Ungri, Ungari, Hungari). See Encyc. Brit., art. “Hungary,” History; Gibbon, chap. 55, par. 4–8; Hallam, Middle Ages, chap. 1, part 1, sec. 12. Therefore to name the “Huns in Hungary” as though Hungary received its name from the Huns, and as though it were a continuation of the kingdom of the Huns, is decidedly wrong.

This is confirmed by additional facts. 1. It is a fact that the real Huns—the Huns of Attila—first entered the province of Pannonia about A. D. 380; that Pannonia was abandoned to them by the patrician Aëtius about A. D. 424, and was confirmed to them by a treaty with Theodosius II. about A. D. 430; that Attila, with his brother Bleda, succeeded his uncle Rugilas in the rule of the Huns in A. D. 433 and died in A. D. 453. 2. It is a fact that shortly after the death of Attila the power of the Huns was broken to pieces. 3. It is a fact that from the battle of the Netad onward, the Huns never possessed any portion of territory within the Western Empire. 4. And it is a fact that the empire, the kingdom, and the nation of the Huns of Attila was “extinguished.” Gibbon states in a single paragraph, these last three facts; he says:—

“The revolution which subverted the empire of the Huns, established the fame of Attila, whose genius alone had sustained the huge and disjointed fabric. . . . Ellac, the eldest son of Attila, lost his life and crown in the memorable battle of Netad; his early valor had raised him to the throne of the Acatzires, a Scythian people, whom he subdued; and his father, who loved the superior merit, would have envied the death of Ellac. His brother Dengisich, with an army of Huns, still formidable in their flight and ruin, maintained his ground above fifteen years on the banks of the Danube. The palace of Attila, with the old country of Dacia, from the Carpathian hills to the Euxine, became the seat of a new power which was erected by Ardaric, king of the Gepidæ. The Pannonian conquests, from Vienna to Sirmium, were occupied by the Ostrogoths; and the settlements of the tribes, who had so bravely asserted their native freedom, were irregularly distributed according to the measure of their respective strength. Surrounded and oppressed by the multitude of his father's slaves, the kingdom of Dengisich was confined to the circle of his wagons; his desperate courage urged him to invade the Eastern Empire; he fell in battle; and his head, ignominiously exposed in the Hippodrome, exhibited a grateful spectacle to the people of Constantinople. Attila had fondly or superstitiously believed that Irnæ, the youngest of his sons, was destined to perpetuate the glories of his race. The character of that prince, who attempted to moderate the rashness of his brother Dengisich, was more suitable to the declining condition of the Huns; and Irnæ with his subject hordes retired into the heart of the Lesser Scythia. [The Lesser Scythia—now the Dobrudschæ—was that little piece of country lying between the Black Sea and the Danube, along the course of that river where it flows northward, near its mouth. It contains about 2,900 square miles.] They were soon overwhelmed by a torrent of new barbarians, who followed the same road which their own ancestors had formerly discovered. The Geougen, or Avars, whose residence is assigned by the Greek writers to the shores of the ocean, impelled the adjacent tribes; till at length the Igoans of the North, issuing from the cold Siberian regions which produce the most valuable furs, spread themselves over the desert as far as the Borysthenes [Dnieper] and the Caspian gates; and finally extinguished the empire of the Huns.”—Decline and Fall, chap. 35, par. 16.

The “Encyclopedia Britannica” tells of the death of Attila in A. D. 453, and then says:—

“Almost immediately afterwards, the empire he had amassed rather than consolidated, fell to pieces. His too numerous sons began to quarrel about their inheritance, while Ardaric, the king of the Gepidæ, was placing himself at the head of a general revolt of the dependent nations. The inevitable struggle came to a crisis near the river Netad in Pannonia, in a battle in which 30,000 of the Huns and their confederates, including Ellak, Attila's eldest son, were slain. The nation thus broken, rapidly dispersed; one horde settled under Roman protection in Little Scythia (the Dobrudschæ), others in Dacia Ripensis (on the confines of Servia and Bulgaria) or on the southern borders of Pannonia. The main body, however, appear to have resumed the position on the steppes of the river Ural which they had left less than a century before.”—Article “Huns.”

“Chambers's Cyclopedia” says:—

“With the death of Attila the power of the Huns was broken in pieces. A few feeble sovereigns succeeded to him but there was strife everywhere among the several nations that had owned the firm sway of Attila, and the Huns especially never regained their power.”

Adams's “Historical Chart” says:—

“The fall of the empire of the Huns begins with the death of Attila, A. D. 453. Their power was broken and the nation was soon extinguished.”

The very latest authority on the subject says:—

“Whilst the Magyars continued to dwell quietly along the Don, the Huns proceeded with an immense army, each tribe contributing ten thousand men, against Western Europe, conquering and rendering tributary, in the course of their wanderings, numerous nations, and finally settled on the banks of the Theiss and Danube. Later on, however, in the middle of the 5th century, when the world-renowned Attila, ‘the scourge of God,’ came into power, the Huns carried their victorious arms over a great part of the western world. The immense empire, however, which had been founded by King Attila, was destined to be but of short duration after the death of its founder. His sons Aladar and Csaba, in their contention for the inheritance, resorted to arms. The war ended with the utter destruction of the nation.”

“Whilst the sons of Attila were contending with each other for the possession of the empire, the Germanic populations fell upon the divided Huns and drove them back to the Black Sea,”

“All of the followers of Aladar perished; Csaba, however, succeeded in escaping from the destroying arms of the neighboring nations, who had fallen on the quarreling brothers, with about fifteen thousand men, to the territories of the Greek Empire. . . . He returned afterwards with the remainder of his people to the home of his ancestors, on the banks of the Don, where up to the time of his death, he never tired of inciting the Magyars to emigrate to Pannonia and to revenge themselves on their enemies by reconquering the empire of Attila.”

“The Gepidæ remained now the masters of the country east of the Danube, whilst the Ostrogoths occupied the ancient Roman province. The latter however, under the lead of their king, Theodoric, migrated in a body to Italy, crossing the Alps, and founded there on the ruins of the Roman Empire, a Gothic kingdom. The Gepidæ remained in consequence the sole ruling people in Hungary.”—The Story of Hungary, chap. 3, par. 5, 6; chap. 2, par. 5, 6.

[This book was written by Arminius Vámbéry, Professor at the University of Buda-Pesth, the capital of Hungary, and was printed August, 1886, by Putnam's Sons, New York].

The Gepidæ continued to be the sole ruling people in Hungary, for about one hundred years, until A. D. 566, when that nation was obliterated by the united powers of the Lombards and the Avars. The Avars, who are sometimes called Huns, first heard of the Roman Empire in A. D. 558, and were first seen by Europeans when an embassy came from them to Constantinople, in the reign of Justinian, that same year. After the destruction of the Gepidæ, the Lombards gave up all their Pannonian possessions to the Avars, A. D. 567, and went to Italy. The Avars inhabited and ruled the country until the invasion of the Magyars, A. D. 889, who still inhabit the country which from them bears the name of Hungary. See Decline and Fall, chap. 42, par. 6; chap. 45, par. 2–4.

By these evidences it is certain that after the battle of the Netad—A. D. 453.—there was never within the Western Empire a vestige of the power known to history as that of the Huns. Therefore they certainly cannot rightly be counted among the ten kingdoms. And as the Magyars who formed the kingdom of Hungary never appeared in history till they entered Europe in A. D. 884, nor did they ever enter the country that bears their name till A. D. 889, it is literally impossible that they could be counted one of the ten kingdoms which the prophecy demands should be in existence at least 396 years before: that is, in A. D. 493.

(Concluded next week.)