But the unusual despondency, which seemed to prevail among the Huns,
engaged Attila to use the expedient, so familiar to the generals of
antiquity, of animating his troops by a military oration; and his
language was that of a king who had often fought and conquered at their
head. He pressed them to consider their past glory, their actual danger,
and their future hopes. The same fortune which opened the deserts and
morasses of Scythia to their unarmed valor, which had laid so many
warlike nations prostrate at their feet, had reserved the _joys_ of this
memorable field for the consummation of their victories. The cautious
steps of their enemies, their strict alliance, and their advantageous
posts he artfully represented as the effects, not of prudence, but of
fear. The Visigoths alone were the strength and nerves of the opposite
army; and the Huns might securely trample on the degenerate Romans,
whose close and compact order betrayed their apprehensions, and who were
equally incapable of supporting the dangers or the fatigues of a day of
battle. The doctrine of predestination, so favorable to martial virtue,
was carefully inculcated by the king of the Huns, who assured his
subjects that the warriors, protected by heaven, were safe and
invulnerable amid the darts of the enemy, but that the unerring Fates
would strike their victims in the bosom of inglorious peace.
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