The terrible Attila ere long appears as the king of these Huns, about the middle of the fifth century.  This wonderful barbarian extended his sway from the Volga to the Rhine, and from the Bosphorus to the shores of the Baltic.  Where-ever he appeared, blood flowed in torrents.  He swept the valley of the Danube with flame and sword, destroying cities, fortresses and villages, and converting the whole region into a desert.  At the head of an army of seven hundred thousand men, he plunged all Europe into dismay.  Both the Eastern and Western empire were compelled to pay him tribute.  He even invaded Gaul, and upon the plains of Chalons was defeated in one of the most bloody battles ever fought in Europe.  Contemporary historians record that one hundred and six thousand dead were left upon the field.  With the death of Attila, the supremacy of the Huns vanished.  The irruption of the Huns was a devastating scourge, which terrified the world.  Whole nations were exterminated in their march, until at last the horrible apparition disappeared, almost as suddenly as it arose.

With the disappearance of the Huns, central Russia presents to us the aspect of a vast waste, thinly peopled, with the wrecks of nations and tribes, debased and feeble, living upon the cattle they herded, and occasionally cultivating the soil.  And now there comes forward upon this theater of violence and of blood another people, called the Sclavonians, more energetic and more intelligent than any who had preceded them.  The origin of the Sclavonians is quite lost in the haze of distance, and in the savage wilds where they first appeared.  The few traditions which have been gleaned respecting them are of very little authority.

From about the close of the fifth century the inhabitants of the whole region now embraced by European Russia, were called Sclavonians; and yet it appears that these Sclavonians consisted of many nations, rude and warlike, with various distinctive names.  They soon began to crowd upon the Roman empire, and became more formidable than the Goths or the Huns had been.  Wading through blood they seized province after province of the empire, destroying and massacring often in mere wantonness.  The emperor Justinian was frequently compelled to purchase peace with them and to bribe them to alliance.

And now came another wave of invasion, bloody and overwhelming.  The Avars, from the north of China, swept over Asia, seized all the provinces on the Black Sea, overran Greece, and took possession of most of the country between the Volga and the Elbe.  The Sclavonians of the Danube, however, successfully resisted them, and maintained their independence.  Generations came and went as these hordes, wild, degraded and wretched, swept these northern wilds, in debasement and cruelty rivaling the wolves which howled in their forests.  They have left no traces behind them, and the few records of their joyless lives which history has preserved, are merely the gleanings of uncertain