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 RHETORIC, POLITICS AND SOCIETY
GENERAL EDITORS: A. Finlayson; J. Martin; K. Phillips

DEBATES, RHETORIC AND

POLITICAL ACTION
Practices of Textual Interpretation
and Analysis

Claudia Wiesner,
Taru Haapala,
Kari Palonen
Rhetoric, Politics and Society

Series Editors
Alan Finlayson
University of East Anglia
Norfolk, United Kingdom

James Martin
Goldsmiths, University of London
London, United Kingdom

Kendall Phillips
University of Syracuse
Syracuse, New York, USA
Rhetoric lies at the intersection of a variety of disciplinary approaches
and methods, drawing upon the study of language, history, culture and
philosophy to understand the persuasive aspects of communication in all
its modes: spoken, written, argued, depicted and performed. This series
presents the best international research in rhetoric that develops and
exemplifies the multifaceted and cross-disciplinary exploration of practices
of persuasion and communication. It seeks to publish texts that openly
explore and expand rhetorical knowledge and enquiry, be it in the form
of historical scholarship, theoretical analysis or contemporary cultural and
political critique. The editors welcome proposals for monographs that
explore contemporary rhetorical forms, rhetorical theories and thinkers,
and rhetorical themes inside and across disciplinary boundaries. For infor-
mal enquiries, questions, as well as submitting proposals, please contact
the editors: Alan Finlayson: a.finlayson@uea.ac.uk James Martin: j.martin@
gold.ac.uk Kendall Phillips: kphillip@syr.edu

More information about this series at

http://www.springer.com/series/14497
 Claudia Wiesner • Taru Haapala • Kari Palonen

Debates, Rhetoric
and Political Action
Practices of Textual Interpretation and Analysis
Claudia Wiesner Kari Palonen
University of Jyväskylä and Technical University of Jyväskylä
University Darmstadt Jyväskylä, Finland
Darmstadt, Germany

Taru Haapala
University of Jyväskylä
Jyväskylä, Finland

Rhetoric, Politics and Society

ISBN 978-1-137-57056-7    ISBN 978-1-137-57057-4 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-57057-4

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016956403

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017

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in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
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United Kingdom
 Preface

‘Nothing is more interesting than politics’. This does not seem to be a

popular claim today, as ‘politics’ rather has a bad reputation and ‘popu-
lism’ is on the rise. In the present volume we defend this claim, and we
hope that our readers will be intrigued to learn the reasons for taking such
an interest in politics, to analyse and study it and be consciously engaged
in it, at least as ‘occasional politicians’, to quote Max Weber (1919, 41).
To say that politics is interesting already presupposes that we do not
know in advance what is meant by politics. If there were a well-known and
commonly shared definition for ‘politics’, debates on what is meant by
politics or ‘the political’ could reach a definite conclusion simply by check-
ing the lexicographical authorities. This is not the case. During the past
150–200 years when parliamentary and democratic forms of politics have
been high on the agenda of a number of debates, among scholars as well
as the more or less professional political agents themselves, the concept of
politics has been continuously contested. Politics, therefore, is something
that cannot be understood simply by looking at what is said about it in a
dictionary. On the contrary, the writing of dictionaries and giving defini-
tions to concepts are themselves a political activity, a rhetorical move in a
debate in history and in the contemporary context of using concepts.
We also cannot distinguish certain views of politics on the basis of the
positions of political actors. There is not one typical governmental or oppo-
sitional view, or a right or left view of politics, that has historically strug-
gled for supremacy. How politics or the political should be understood
is a matter for debate. Politics is a controversial concept, and politicians,
scholars, journalists as well as citizens at large may make ­contributions to

v
vi Preface

the controversy. They may contest certain uses of the concept or invent
new ones, even without necessarily intending to do something new. The
debate is ongoing in the sense that there is no final authority to decide
when the debate is over nor is there any a priori limit to the possibilities
for inventing new perspectives on the concept of politics.
The conceptual history of politics underlines its contestedness.
Expressions using ‘politics’ or ‘political’ can be traced back to the ancient
Greek polis, to the city-republic as a political form, as opposed to ‘despotic’
monarchies and imperia (on the opposition between politikós and despo-
tikós see e.g. Aristotle’s Politics [Ta politikà], on the commentaries see e.g.
Meier 1980; Finley 1983). But the history of the concept in the different
European languages has not been just a translation from the Greek: the
different languages have developed their own vocabularies with different
conceptual resources. Above all, the ancient and early modern thinkers
could not have understood politics as a contingent activity, as this concep-
tual horizon was new, introduced in the course of the nineteenth century
in particular (see esp. Palonen 2006). This horizon of seeing politics as a
contingent and controversial activity is the one within which we move in
this volume.
Seeing politics as an activity, what we do in this volume is to analyse
the practice of debating as a distinct form of politics. We understand the
concept of ‘debate’ broadly, referring to a wide range of activities that can
be explicit and implicit, living and frozen, regulated and irregular, and so
on. Debate can as well as be debate between many or few agents, or debate
as in a debate event in the sense of a single actor’s action to intervene in
an ongoing debate.
The book offers typical as well as untypical examples of debate viewed
as a political activity. The examples are related in part to our own previous
or ongoing research, the convergence of which also prompted us to write
this book together. We realised that nobody had written a book on how
to analyse debates politically, and our publisher Palgrave Macmillan also
understood that this was the case.
While we aim at indicating possible paths, approaches and practices
for studying politics and debates, this is no ordinary textbook. We share
Robin George Collingwood’s well-known view, in his posthumously
(1946) published The Idea of History, that textbooks often treat the read-
ers as children who are expected to learn what is taught to them, keeping
them, as he puts it, in a condition of statu pupillari. As opposed to such
a view, we hope to encourage the independent and critical thinking of
 Preface vii

our readers, which might lead far away from what we have presented or
anticipated in this book.
This book is based on our common engagement in such projects as: The
Finnish Centre of Excellence in Political Thought and Conceptual Change;
The Politics of Dissensus: Parliamentarism, Rhetoric and Conceptual
History (the Academy of Finland research project); the Marie Curie proj-
ect Conceptualizing representative democracy in the EU polity by re-thinking
classical key conceptual clusters for the EU multi-level polity (EUPOLCON);
the Standing Group Political Concepts of the European Consortium for
Political Research (ECPR); and most recently, the Finnish Distinguished
Professorship project Transformations of Concepts and Institutions in the
European Polity (TRACE), directed by Professor Niilo Kauppi. The book
is also extraordinary in so far as we have tried to turn our different career
lengths, academic tracks, generational experiences of politics and practices
in analysing debates to our advantage in our combined efforts to write
this volume.
We are scholars in the Continental academic tradition. Although the
opposition between Anglophone and Continental political thought and
philosophy has become very relative in recent debates, our teaching and
research are still shaped strongly by the German (CW) and German-­
indebted Finnish (TH, KP) academic cultures. We consider however that,
for the purposes of this book, it is more convenient to use examples that
are based on sources written or spoken in English. This is seen in most
of the examples presented in the book, especially the ‘exercises’ con-
ducted in Chapter 4. The Hansard documentation of the British House of
Commons debates from 1803 to 2003 has provided the main source for
two sections, the Oxford and Cambridge Unions the source for another
section (see also Haapala, forthcoming 2017), and the English version of
the European Parliament’s Rules of Procedure for another (cf. Palonen
and Wiesner 2016).
Our work is also inspired by a number of continental classics, Hannah
Arendt and Max Weber in particular, or contemporary political thinkers,
such as Reinhart Koselleck and Pierre Rosanvallon. Our principle has been
to quote from the sources in their original language, although we have
paraphrased the passages in English and referred also to the existing trans-
lations, in so far as they are available, both in the references and in the
bibliography.
This book is not a volume with three editors but a joint volume of three
scholars. We think, however, that the metaphor of ‘division of labour’ is
viii Preface

misleading to describe the art of cooperation practised in this volume.

Even if only one of us wrote the first drafts of the first three chapters, the
others have commented extensively on each of them and revised them so
thoroughly that none of them can be attributed to one of us as the main
author. To some extent the situation is different in Chapter 4, in which we
have used our different scholarly background and profiles. However, the
first example in that chapter also illustrates how each of us, when looking
at one and the same debate in the British House of Commons, has found
and focused on different aspects of it. Altogether, we hope to have grasped
some of what makes politics so interesting, and to be able to transmit this
to the interested reader.

Darmstadt, Germany  Claudia Wiesner

Jyväskylä, Finland Taru Haapala
Jyväskylä, Finland Kari Palonen
 Contents

1 Understanding Debate as Politics1

1.1 The Conceptual Aspect of Politics3
1.2 Politics as an Activity5
1.3 Four Aspects of Politics: Politicisation—Polity;
Politicking—Policy9
1.4 Types of Politics—Types of Debate12
1.4.1 Debate, Discourse, Dispute, Discussion
and Dissensus14
1.4.2 Debate as pro et contra and as a Peaceful
Form of Struggle16
1.4.3 ‘Live’ and ‘Virtual’ Debates18
1.4.4 Documents as Contributions to Debates19
1.4.5 Political and Academic Debates: Similarities
and Differences21
1.5 The Presence of Politics in Texts and Debates23

2 Reading Debates Politically25

2.1 Political Literacy26
2.2 Parliamentary Debate as an Ideal Type29
2.2.1 On the History of Parliamentary Debates31
2.2.2 Extensions of Parliamentary Debates34
2.2.3 Limits of Debate36
2.2.4 Restrictions of Debate Inside Parliaments37
2.3 Forms, Dimensions and Characteristics of Debates41

ix
x Contents

2.3.1 Rules and Procedures of Debate41

2.3.2 Debates on the Agenda and Debates
of the Agenda44
2.3.3 The Actors in Debate47
2.3.4 Regulators of Debate49
2.3.5 Multistage and Multilayer Debates50
2.3.6 The Scarcity of Time for Debate54
2.3.7 Terminating Debates56

3 Research Practices and Operations in Studying Debates

and Documents59
3.1 The Researcher’s Perspective on the Sources60
3.1.1 Keeping Your Distance While Being Part
of the Debate61
3.1.2 On the Veto Power of the Sources64
3.2 Approaches to Linguistic Political Action:
Discourse Analysis, Rhetorical Analysis
and Conceptual History67
3.2.1 Discourse Analysis68
3.2.2 Rhetorical Analysis70
3.2.3 Concepts as Nodal Points of Debates77
3.3 Analysing Debates and Documents: The Essential Steps81
3.3.1 Finding a Research Topic and Fixing
the Research Question84
3.3.2 From Research Topic to Research Question
in the Exemplar Study85
3.3.3 Determining the Research Material87
3.3.4 Material Selection in the Exemplar Study90
3.3.5 Analysing the Material93
3.3.6 Ordering, Coding and Extracting94
3.4 Categories for Analysing Debates and Documents:
Explaining the ‘How’ and the ‘Why’97
3.4.1 Numbers and Quantities97
3.4.2 Finding Out the ‘How’ and ‘Why’
in the Exemplar Study99
3.4.3 Further Useful Dimensions for
Analysing Debates103
 Contents  xi

3.5 Building Typologies, Drawing Conclusions

and Answering Questions103
3.5.1 Key Themes, Topics and Rules of the Discourses
in the Exemplar Study104
3.5.2 The Discourses in a Comparative Perspective106
3.5.3 Computer-Supported Analysis106

4 Examples of Analysing Debates as Politics109

4.1 Three Interpretations of a Parliamentary Debate:
The Case of Constitutional Renewal
in Westminster, 9 June 2009111
4.1.1 Procedure, Concepts and Time as Topics
of the Debate—Kari Palonen111
4.1.2 Analysis of a House of Commons
Debate—Claudia Wiesner121
4.1.3 A House of Commons Debate
Analysis—Taru Haapala131
4.2 Conceptual Controversies in Parliament—‘Politics’
in the House of Commons142
4.2.1 The Four Aspects of Politics
in Parliamentary Debate142
4.2.2 ‘Political’ in British Constitutional Debates
from the Late 1940s144
4.2.3 ‘Politicking’ in the Westminster Debates152
4.2.4 ‘Politics’ in British Parliament154
4.3 Reading and Analysing Political Debate
in Debating Societies155
4.4 Parliamentary Rules of Procedure:
The Case of the European Parliament161
4.4.1 Rules of Parliamentary Procedure
as Documents in Debates161
4.4.2 Conceptions of Parliament162
4.4.3 A First Look at the EP as a Parliament163
4.4.4 EP’s Procedural History164
4.4.5 French and British Procedural Styles165
4.4.6 EP’s Francophone Committees167
4.4.7 Free Mandate versus Party Groups170
xii Contents

4.4.8 The Intervention of the Commission

and the Councils 173
4.4.9 The Parliamentary Regulation of Debate 176
4.4.10 The EP President as a Negotiator 178
4.4.11 The Politics of Time in the EP 180
4.4.12 The MEP as a Politician 181
4.4.13 Conclusions183
4.5 Doing Politics via Policy Documents and Laws:
The Case of EU Citizenship Rights184
4.5.1 The Conceptual Context: Citizenship
in Western Nation-­States and the EU 184
4.5.2 The Institutional Context 186
4.5.3 Citizenship Rights in the Treaty of Rome 187
4.5.4 Creating and Interpreting Union Citizenship 190
4.5.5 Implementing Union Citizenship: The Example
of the Right to Free Movement 192
4.5.6 Shaping the Principle of Antidiscrimination 196
4.5.7 In Conclusion199
4.6 What Is Said and What Is Not in Press Debates:
The Silencing Strategy in Germany200
4.6.1 Case 1: Marginalising EU Critics
in the Mainstream Parties 202
4.6.2 Case 2: The PDS 206
4.6.3 Case 3: Peter Gauweiler 210
4.6.4 In Conclusion212
4.7 The Politics of a Subtext: Football as a Polity215
4.7.1 Text and Subtext 215
4.7.2 The Political Subtext of Football 216
4.7.3 The Politics of Football Tactics217
Notes222

Concluding Notes: Reappraising Politics and Debate223

References229

Index243
 List of Figure

Fig. 3.1 Number of articles per day 99

xiii
 List of Tables

Table 3.1 Steps in the coding 96

Table 3.2 Eight dimensions of a discourse 101
Table 3.3 Studying the what, how and why in the discourse 102
Table 3.4 The main themes and levels of reference
in the French discourse 104
Table 3.5 The main rules, topics, themes and levels of reference
in the German discourse 105
Table 3.6 A comparison of the French and the German discourse 106
Table 4.1 Six dimensions in the constitutional reform debate 122
Table 4.2 Overview on the codings in the constitutional reform debate 125
Table 4.3 Three ideal types of parliamentary assemblies 162

xv
 CHAPTER 1

Understanding Debate as Politics

Our aim in this book is to introduce an approach to the interpretation of

‘politics’ that focuses on debates as political action. We regard politics as
an activity, and debate as both an arena and a means of politics. Political
debates can be distinguished from academic ones, for example, by con-
sidering that the latter often are conducted for the sake of argument, or
over matters of taste in which dispute does not matter much. Political
debate relates to changing policy, alternative directions, or the forms of
power and regime of a polity, which can have consequences for the lives
of millions.
Our core idea is to present and explain how different actual and virtual
debates can be understood and analysed as political actions. We want to
provide tools for grasping the complex phenomenon of politics and new
ways to conduct its analysis. It will be shown that, by concentrating on
debate, politics can be understood in a way that allows for a more nuanced
understanding. Such an approach does justice to the aims of political
actors, taking into account their actions, interests, moves and strategies,
and situating them in relation to the different contexts in which their con-
tributions make a difference.
We intentionally include debates carried out in, or expressed by, docu-
ments. In the following chapters, we will outline our methodological

© The Author(s) 2017 1

C. Wiesner et al., Debates, Rhetoric and Political Action,
DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-57057-4_1
2 C. WIESNER ET AL.

­ ackground, approaches and practices, illustrated with examples. In the

b
first chapter, we present our theoretical and methodological background
by answering two crucial questions: Why study debate as politics? What
exactly do we mean by ‘politics’? In Chapter 2 we discuss the concept
of debate, taking the concept of ‘political literacy’ as our point of depar-
ture. Chapter 3 contains research practices and operations that are useful in
studying debates and documents. In Chapter 4 we shall present exemplary
analyses that illustrate conceptual and rhetorical perspectives in studying
politics.
Debates and documents have become important sources for the analy-
sis of politics, especially in rhetoric and discourse studies and in the history
of political thought, but also in comparative politics and European studies.
Despite this growing interest, debates and documents are often treated as
mere reflections of actors’ objectives and motives, as expressions of power
relations, or as simple preludes to the things that ‘finally matter’ such as
voting outcomes or policy outputs.
Political analysis of debates can now be conducted much easier than
only one decade ago. The digitalisation of parliamentary debates, news-
papers and other primary sources for politically relevant debates has facili-
tated both the access to and the possibility for analysing them. This should,
however, not serve as an excuse for not reading printed sources and using
libraries and archives for analysing texts and debates.
Parliamentary debates are probably the most explicit and best regulated
form of debates as political action, based on speaking pro et contra. In the
media as well as in research it is a frequent practice to interpret them for
the purpose of understanding related political processes, with the aim of
analysing or measuring ‘deeds’ or the outcomes of parliamentary votes.
This logic aims at directly relating and ‘explaining’ the words and deeds
of political agents. Such approaches risk losing sight of what is political in
debates: the activity of politics itself. We argue that besides the purposes
that debates and documents may also serve, it is crucial to see debate and
the documentation as a form of political action that transcends both party
divisions and the majorities expressed in votes. Thus, debates constitute a
crucial research material for anyone interested in analysing or understand-
ing politics.
Debates are especially important for the study of politics as no phe-
nomenon has a necessary political aspect, but every phenomenon can
become political. Things are not by nature political or apolitical, but they
must be marked, read and interpreted as such, which is itself, of course,
 UNDERSTANDING DEBATE AS POLITICS 3

also a matter of debate. The political aspect of an issue or an act lies in its
relationship to its surrounding circumstances. This means that politics has
to be interpreted as such before it can be analysed. Sometimes interpreters
can detect political aspects in actions not previously considered politically
significant or, conversely, suggest that a previously major controversy has
lost much of its former political significance.
Debate differs from ordinary dialogue in that it involves a presenta-
tion of the pros and cons of an issue in which both sides actively aim at
persuading to come to their side. Whenever there is debate on a topic, it
necessarily shows the controversies embedded in it. Therefore, debates
can provide fruitful material for the political analysis of those controver-
sies. Controversial interaction (i.e. debate) between two opposing sides
is what makes it possible to analyse their arguments in relation to each
other. Perhaps the most interesting debates are those in which at least
some debaters change the sides, ‘cross the floor’ in the Westminster ter-
minology. We thus take the speeches and writings of politicians as speech
acts in debates that are to be considered as political actions in themselves,
instead of treating them as symptoms of something else.

1.1   The Conceptual Aspect of Politics

In the language of politicians and other political agents, what constitutes
‘the political’ or ‘politics’ has never been something definable only by an
entry in a dictionary or academic textbook. Neither can we point to the
existence of a few clearly distinct conceptions of politics to which political
agents should commit themselves. On the contrary, studies on the actual
usage of vocabulary related to politics easily illustrate how the concept has
multiple aspects, dimensions and historical layers that cannot be strictly
separated from each other (see e.g. Crick 1962; Marchart 2007; Palonen
2006; Steinmetz et al. 2013).
Debates very seldom show the different conceptions of politics
explicitly, even though there can be situations in which, for example,
government representatives claim that something is ‘not a political
question’, whereas members of the opposition insist otherwise. The
character of a question or phenomenon can always be turned into a
matter of dispute. Therefore, it cannot be assumed that there exists
one neutral judge that could resolve the dispute. Instead, it should be
noted that the conceptual controversy itself is part of political action
(cf. Skinner 2002a, 7).
4 C. WIESNER ET AL.

The starting point of any analysis of politics-as-action should be that the

participants in a conceptual dispute do mean what they say. This implies
that political agents are performing actions in accordance with a logic of
their own, even if they seem to be lacking competence to identify some
of the nuances of the expressions. The role of the scholars is to clarify and
make explicit the conceptual horizons of debates. Scholars can identify
what is typical in them, what aspects of the concept have been thematised
and how this has been done.
To follow Austin, some speech acts are just conventional, locutionary
statements that ‘say something’, such as ‘Britain is a member of the EU’.
Others possess a specific illocutionary point: ‘Saying something is to do
something, or in saying something we do something, and even by saying
something we do something’. Then uttering the sentence ‘Britain is a
member of the EU’ is not just an affirmation of a current state of affairs.
It can be a statement of support (fortunately, this is the case), of blame
(unfortunately, it is), of excuse (therefore we cannot change many things),
of duty (therefore Britain must carry its responsibilities) and so on. After
the referendum in June 2016, the utterance got a temporal dimension (it
still is; it has not yet left the EU) (Austin 1962, 94).
Such illocutionary speech acts may, firstly, affirm the existing conventions,
but, secondly, they might also revise them and introduce conceptual innova-
tions. For example, the slogan ‘the personal is political’ was once a subver-
sive act, when it was militantly used by feminists beginning in the 1960s, and
it is still frequently disputed. In this sense both the history of the concept of
politics and the analytical distinctions used in the scholarly debates can play
a role, although for each case some specific criteria are needed, as will be
discussed in the section on political literacy below (Section 2.1).
This second perspective is based on the idea that the scholar who
focuses on the political aspects of a debate can detect concepts that the
debaters do not notice or mention at all. Carl Schmitt once formulated
the idea that an extremely intense way of doing politics is to accuse oth-
ers for politicking while denying that one is doing it oneself, affirming
that one’s own view is objective, scientific and so on (Schmitt 1932, 21).
Schmitt’s example illustrates that, although we must take into account
the language of political agents, it cannot be taken at face value. We have
to learn to read and interpret the political aspects of actions both when
the agents deny that they are acting politically as well as when they do
not even realise they are doing so, though their action is clearly politi-
cally significant. To give an example, we can analyse both the politics of
 UNDERSTANDING DEBATE AS POLITICS 5

anarchists who reject the state, parties and frequently politics per se and
bureaucrats or experts who think themselves to be above the ‘dirty’ game
of politics.
It is important to take the language of political agents seriously as a mark
of their self-understanding of politics. Such understanding is informed not
only by what they say they do politically, but also by what they can in fact
do. Traditionally only state-based politics has been understood as ‘serious’
politics. In the twentieth century, party-based politics became the only
real form of politics for many politicians (see the example in Section 4.2).
They were unable to ‘do’ politics otherwise than via parties. They could
not recognise the politics of either informal ‘movements’ or intellectuals,
whose political action is characterised by its opposition to interest-based
politics and who intervene in questions and debates that ‘do not concern
themselves’, as Jean-Paul Sartre put it (Sartre 1966).
Noteworthy for political analysis are those situations in which the
political aspect is more obvious to outsiders or in hindsight judgement
than it is for the agents. This kind of politics, which is so self-evident as
to be unrecognised by those who are actually doing it, can be found for
example in the politics of street naming. Political decisions are built-in to
considerations of whether to use commemorative names of persons (rue
Bonaparte), historical events such as military battles (place de Stalingrad)
or concepts (avenue de la République), to use French examples. The same
holds for decisions on street names of a certain profile that combine a
person with what is being commemorated; for example, Rosa Luxemburg
and Karl Liebknecht retained ‘their streets’ in the eastern part of Berlin
after 1990. But also choices of names that appear to be ‘natural’ or from
the built environment are also thoroughly political, both in the sense that
they mean an exclusion of the commemorative alternatives and that street
naming per se is a matter of debate and decision-making. Interesting cases
are streets named after people’s first names, not only of monarchs and cler-
ics but also sometimes of high officials, as in the Helsinki of the nineteenth
century. From this perspective we can distinguish between cities of higher
and of lower political profiles (see Palonen 1993).

1.2   Politics as an Activity

Sometimes we hear MPs or ministers announcing that they are ‘leav-
ing’ politics. This kind of expression stems from a rather commonly held
assumption that politics is a separate sphere in which you enter and from
6 C. WIESNER ET AL.

which you can leave. As a field of study politics is often understood in

such a way, either deliberately or unwittingly. Politics is treated as a given
and well-known subject matter. More commonly than not, it is assumed
that ‘politics’ refers to some fixed and pre-defined space or area of exper-
tise, which is filled by professional politicians and is separate from every-
day life or the economy, culture, law or other spheres of life. Instead, we
argue that politics is an aspect of human action and that the politics-as-­
a-­separate-sphere type of thinking tends to hinder rather than promote
efforts to understand the multiple aspects of the phenomenon.
To think of politics in terms of spatial metaphors, such as a sphere,
field or sector, is historically relevant to the concept of politics. It still
seems to be the most common way of understanding politics within aca-
demic, everyday and media discourse. Sometimes it has become reified
into an acting entity, for example, in such expressions as ‘politics must take
responsibility’ over the refugee crisis or some other pressing phenomena.
This refers, in fact, already to politics as doing something, but makes it an
impersonal force above the action of individual human beings.
In the history of the concept, politics-as-activity is the second main
alternative for understanding politics (discussed from a formal perspective
in Palonen 2003, from a historical perspective in Palonen 2006). Unlike
the sphere concept, understanding politics as an activity does not demar-
cate politics from other phenomena, such as culture or economics, but
enquires into the political aspect of such phenomena. For example, many
artists today understand well that they act politically, and the same can be
said of persons speculating in the stock market, even if they more seldom
admit that they are thereby also engaged in politics.
For us, politics represents an aspect of human action that is present—at
least potentially—in every aspect of human life. Politics can be related to
schools, kindergartens and universities, to trees and gardens (and where to
place them or not), to group interests or to traffic regulations. The ques-
tion, then, is how and why such issues become questions of political action
and debate. A half-century ago it used to be a matter of ridicule when
someone said that the weather is a political matter, but in our age climate
change is hardly something anyone denies.
Studying politics as an activity contrasts our approach with that which
views ‘the political’ as an ‘ontological structure’ behind ‘mere politics’. A
major recent discourse, indebted directly or indirectly to Carl Schmitt’s
famous booklet Der Begriff des Politischen from 1932, claims that the
activity of politicians is only a surface phenomenon, behind which there
 UNDERSTANDING DEBATE AS POLITICS 7

is a deeper layer or structure of ‘the political’, an ‘ontological’ level con-

sidered more important than the daily activity of politics. This has been
manifest especially in the Francophone philosophical discourse since the
early 1980s (see Marchart 2007), in which the influential work of Chantal
Mouffe (2005) can also be included. From our point of view, this stand-
point tends to devaluate the activity of politics, to ‘explain away’ its inher-
ent contingency.
We see politics as being about chances, choices and the inevitable plu-
rality of opinions that are part of human existence. In other words, as an
activity, politics is contingent and controversial, and we regard this as what
should make it intelligible and interesting to scholars. As James Martin has
eloquently expressed it:

Often the uncertainty or ambiguity of the world forces us to confront a

plurality of contrasting perceptions of our situation and opposed views of
how to act. […] If everything was certain and clear, if nothing were open
to chance, it would be a world without choices, a strangely unhuman world
devoid of the anxieties such choices generate. However attractive that sounds
to you, it would be, nonetheless, a world without politics. (Martin 2014, 1)

To characterise politics as a contingent and controversial activity means

that, in politics, acting otherwise is always possible. To put it another way,
there are always alternatives, chances to act differently, the outcome of
which is, more often than not, unexpected. The contingency of politics
involves potential and real changes of opinion and direction. However, this
should not be conflated with the view that anything can be done. The
range of realistic alternatives is restricted not only by others who inten-
tionally oppose a policy, but also by the complexities of the context and
of the historically formed situation. It should be noted, however, that
even though you can always act differently, this does not mean that you
can always change the result. In Humanisme et terreur (1947) Maurice
Merleau-Ponty discusses the situation of Nikolai Bukharin in the Moscow
show trial of 1938. Bukharin knows that he will be sentenced to death, but
still defends his past policies in the face of the accusation of conspiracy and
of having been an ‘objective traitor’, as the Stalinist jargon of the prosecu-
tor Vyshinsky would have it. The idea is that the way one chooses to face an
unavoidable fate still matters.
To understand politics as an activity also means to regard it as an activity
of operating not only in time, but also with time. This is related in part to a
8 C. WIESNER ET AL.

broader type of conceptual change, which Reinhart Koselleck (e.g. 2000)

has called the ‘temporalisation of concepts’, including a transformation of
originally spatial concepts, such as progress, to gain a primarily temporal
meaning, or to increase the gap between the space of experience and the
horizons of expectation. With this change, time is no longer experienced
merely as something consumed by action, but as an independent dimen-
sion of the action itself. Or, we could say that the present has become
something more than a line between the past and the future. In this sense
we can speak of a politics against time, of time and with time. The first
highlights the experience that the time available for political action is
always scarce, the second the struggle over the distribution of time and
the third the utilisation of time as a resource in the political struggle (see
Palonen 2006, esp. 17–19 and 294–295).
In parliament the scarcity of time is recognised by the old Westminster
principle that a member in a plenary debate can speak only once—which
leads to the question of when is it most opportune to speak (see e.g.
Hamilton 1927, 40). Since the nineteenth century additional devices
to restrict speaking time, such as the clôture (a motion to end debate)
and the guillotine (a time limit or scheduling of the entire debate), have
been accepted in most parliaments (see the discussion in Palonen 2014c,
212–220). The debates over how to fairly distribute the available time
between government and opposition and between frontbenchers and back-
benchers as well as between parties are another matter (ibid., 221–244).
Parliamentarians who master the procedure have a great advantage, and
part of this mastery consists of the competence to use different aspects of
parliamentary time to one’s own purposes. This can include moving for
‘order’, for example making the Speaker of the House of Commons decide
whether the debate is still dealing with the ‘matter’ on the agenda. This
motion compels the Speaker to interpret whether the current speech is or is
not in fact ‘in order’. Also motions for adjournment not only contain a post-
ponement of the debate to get more time, but also interrupt the ongoing
debate and open a new one on the justifications for the adjournment itself.
The scarcity of time in politics can be used to one’s advantage as well,
which relates to the struggle with time. Politicians become skilful at using
time to their benefit. This can be a fascinating part of political life, for it
is impossible to predict the twists and turns of situations and events, and
how unexpected circumstances may result in benefit or detriment to the
various sides. And that is, undoubtedly, one thing an MP learns and lives
with once she gets elected. Even though she may stand down in elections
 UNDERSTANDING DEBATE AS POLITICS 9

and ‘leave’ the public stage, the mode of acting politically is not some-
thing she will part with quite as easily. The ability to identify and make
use of the chances possible when acting in the moment is a skill that can
develop over time. It can be argued that this skill to use time as a political
resource is an integral part of being a politician.
It is the position of a student of politics to analyse the use of those skills.
Moreover, it is not enough to study this phenomenon among established
politicians. The skill, or craftsmanship, can be obtained in a variety of
circumstances and simultaneously reveal new ways of conducting politics.
While identifying these may be difficult at first, there are ways to improve
one’s own skill at it (see Section 4.3 on the Oxford and Cambridge Unions
as political training grounds).
Politics is a phenomenon that can be read out of or into a myriad of
situations and events. As a contingent action, politics can at any time
become controversial between the participants. Any proposal or rule can
be contested. This is why debating between alternatives lies at the crux of
politics.
The disagreement and controversies integral to politics are best cap-
tured by the concept of debate. In his The Elements of Rhetoric, James De
Mille, a nineteenth-century Canadian professor of rhetoric, made a clear
distinction between ‘debate’ and ‘oratory’: ‘Oratory is the discussion of
a subject by one; debate is the discussion of a subject by more than one.
Oratory considers the subject from one point of view; debate considers
the subject from two or more opposed points of view’ (De Mille 1878,
471). He noted that debate involves two or more sides to a question,
which makes it a problematising, adversarial activity.
The adversarial character of debates, however, is not always self-evident.
Just because an opposing side exists does not necessarily make a debate
‘political’. Controversial conceptualisations and underpinnings may give
clues to finding out the kind of politics that is being exercised. A reading
of politics has to be conducted with the context and audience(s) of the
debate taken into account.

1.3   Four Aspects of Politics: Politicisation—

Polity; Politicking—Policy
In political science it is common to distinguish between three dimensions
of ‘political’. While polity refers here to the form of the political entity and
its formal framework, policy names the political output with the legislation
10 C. WIESNER ET AL.

and actions taken in different fields. In the triad, politics stands for the
political process not for the activity (see e.g. Rohe 1978).
Our view takes a broader look: we focus not only on the political
process, but also on the actions and activities that drive and constitute
politics. In relation to our approach of regarding politics as an activity con-
cept, we differentiate four dimensions or aspects of politics (cf. Palonen
2003). While these include the two commonly used expressions of ‘pol-
ity’ and ‘policy’, we interpret them somewhat differently. Our approach
also ­contains two new expressions: ‘politicisation’ and ‘politicking’. These
four dimensions are very helpful for distinguishing the different aspects of
political action. Their heuristic value for us is their use in demonstrating
how politics can be understood as an activity in a multifaceted way.
Polity in current usage refers to an established political system and its
institutional framework. However, we consider the construction of a ‘pol-
ity’ to be the result of (contingent) political action, not something that
is uncontested and essentialistically developed. Polities involve the setting
up of rules and regulations that guide their practices and conventions, yet
they are not unchangeable or permanent. Parliaments are obvious exam-
ples of ‘polity’. They are ‘metaphorical spaces’ (Palonen 2003, 179) that
are designed to contain politics within a certain range of action. To give
an example, parliamentary politics is conducted within a certain building
or among elected members of the parliament.
Policy in standard political science refers to the contents or outputs of
the political process which are mostly interpreted in terms of laws, regula-
tions and measures taken by the executive. We regard policy as a normative
and teleological dimension of politics; it is an acquired or intended line of
conduct or a project (Palonen 2003, 175). It points to future action by
giving direction. While representing a ‘programme’ or norms to be fol-
lowed, it guides political action. Policies can be altered or revised by con-
frontations and unexpected inconsistencies. They can also be abandoned
when a considerable number of the elements that constituted them in the
first place are no longer considered valid.
Politicking refers to the performance dimension of politics, that is, to the
act of doing politics, and hence to politics as an activity. It highlights that
politics cannot be reduced to results and outputs alone, but must also be
understood as practical performance (Palonen 2003, 177). Performance
of this kind can take many forms. For example, politicking can take place
in the European Parliament, at university board meetings or in student
groups. Styles of politicking vary according to duration and rhythm as do
 UNDERSTANDING DEBATE AS POLITICS 11

styles of performance in the performing arts (ibid., 178). The moments

of politicking can also be very different in a variety of settings. In the case
of the European Parliament, politicking takes place on a public and global
stage, making its work dependent upon a schedule completely different
to that of university board meetings, which can, for the most part, decide
their own pace and calendar.
Politicisation, in our view, is to be understood as an act or a process
that turns a matter into a political issue (Palonen 2003, 182). Again, this
view is broader than current interpretations of politicisation that refer to
a growing interest of political parties in certain matters, such as European
integration, or to new political ruptures, or increased citizen participation
or interest. From our point of view, these may be consequences or signs of
politicisation, but they do not in themselves describe or define politicisa-
tion. The politicisation of an issue is mostly done by naming and through
interpretation. Politicisation occurs, for example, when governments try
to legitimise surveillance of the Internet in the name of ‘security’. Further,
this shows that politicisation opens up new horizons for politicking. In
the case of surveillance, securitisation gives the possibility to re-arrange
the political agenda and to accommodate for speeches on threats and fears
related to hacking and terrorism. Another form of politicisation relates
to the interpretation of ‘necessities’ and questioning an established pri-
oritisation of meanings. By identifying the political potential of ongoing
changes, shifts or processes, previous interpretations of what is ‘necessary’
or ‘impossible’ can be rendered obsolete (ibid.).
All four dimensions of politics can be found linked together in certain
cases. Politicisation can put into question the legitimacy or even lead to
the demise of a polity. To take an example, the dire national debt situation
in Greece together with the immigration crisis within the European Union
(EU) made some of the member states’ governments and citizens ques-
tion the integration process and the validity of common European values.
These developments have brought about what is often called the ‘crisis’
of European integration, and hence the EU polity is being questioned.
While the European polity has thus seemingly weakened, new horizons for
politicking have appeared. For example, the immigration crisis has caused
national governments to raise the need to protect their borders despite
the Schengen Agreement. At the same time there are signs of new forms
of integration during the crises, for example, the strengthening and accel-
eration of such policy areas as the planning for a pan-European border.
The unexpected state of emergency has made it possible to introduce acts
12 C. WIESNER ET AL.

and ideas that would not have been approved of or even been likely at all
under ‘normal’ circumstances. As member states have started acting more
or less independently, new impetus has at the same time been given for a
common EU policy.
In this volume the fourfold scheme of politics serves as a heuristic
instrument for the examination and interpretation of the different aspects
of acting politically and their interrelationships (the use of the scheme in
political analysis will be further illustrated with case examples in Chapter 4).
The analytic scheme is especially applicable to the interpretation of politi-
cal moves in debate, in relation to the language of the actors in their
self-understanding as well as interpretations that attempt to go beyond
them. It allows us to direct our ‘searchlight’ in certain areas and situations
to target certain types of politics, actions and linguistic expressions, and
thereby allows more specific interpretations to be made by analysing the
political constellations in the actual contexts as well as the more detailed
formulations and speech acts of the agents.

1.4   Types of Politics—Types of Debate

Our core thesis in this book is that debate should be understood as an
intensive form of political action. A debate only makes sense if there is
something to debate, if things are contingent and, therefore, able to be
altered with alternative directions for change. In a debate everything can
be questioned, and every debate can also be terminated in multiple ways.
Nevertheless, there may be differences of degree in the de facto ‘question-
ability’ or openness of the debate.
In twenty-first-century Europe, the everyday language of ‘debate’ refers
above all to two types of situations, which can be described as reflecting
differing ideal types. In the first place, debate can mean a confrontation
between representatives of two (or more) parties when presenting and
making public their views to a wider audience, without reconsidering their
own standpoints in the course of the debate. The pre-election debates of
party leaders are the most obvious example of this, while TV talk shows
could also be included. Secondly, debate can mean a speech competition
between two (or more) participants on any matter with the aim of being
a better debater than the adversary. Standpoints may be changed in so
far as a participant regards it as advantageous for winning the debate.
The debate competitions between school and university teams were first
established in the USA in the nineteenth century and have been adopted
 UNDERSTANDING DEBATE AS POLITICS 13

elsewhere since as an important part of rhetorical training for a variety of

purposes.
Both ideal types are marked by certain core characteristics. In the first
case, ‘debate’ appears as a show between already known and unchanging
positions. In the second, debate is an occasion to display one’s debating
skills, for the purposes of which the content is irrelevant. In the former
situation, sides have already been taken beforehand, that is, inside the
parties rather than between them. Politics precedes the formal debate in
the sense that the choices and standpoints of the parties have already been
decided in advance. The debaters are merely expected to formulate their
standpoints in a manner that attracts votes, not to judge the strengths and
weaknesses of the proposals as such unless to make the adversaries change
their stands. In the speech competitions, the participants do not have any
commitment to their standpoints beyond the actual debate itself. Politics
is inherent in the practice of presenting ideas and arguments pro et contra,
but this is unconnected to the personal views of the partisans.
In practice, debate often takes place between these ideal types, although
it might also indicate aspects beyond them. A debate in parliament, for
instance, refers to a public exchange of standpoints where the emphasis is
on the notions of ‘public’ and ‘exchange’, and yet it is an integral part of
the process to take into account the standpoint of the other party. In par-
liamentary debates, it is perfectly possible that a standpoint may be altered
in the course of the debate, for example, when government supporters
consent to accept an amendment by an opposition member. Especially in
committee debates, the questions frequently concern the formulations,
though these are often politically significant and the majority might yield
to formulations that are more acceptable to the minority. Parliamentary
debate also includes a competitive aspect in the sense of who can come up
with the most persuasive argument, and thereby appear to be ‘winning’ in
the eyes of the audience. The person with the most persuasive arguments
will probably rise in status, even if her group or opinion loses the vote
afterwards.
Debate in the presence of adversaries forms the ideal type to which
other debates must be compared. As political action, a debate between
opposed points of view need not necessarily take place between agents
who address to each other in the same audience. This kind of debate can
also be conducted at a distance, between agents separated in space, time,
language and other contextual criteria. Therefore, we suggest a distinction
between actual (‘live’) and virtual (‘frozen’) debates. The latter generally
14 C. WIESNER ET AL.

includes academic debates, for example. Such debates are frequently car-
ried out under the direction of, or frozen in, documents, which seldom
refer to the target of their polemics. In a wider sense, not only speeches
but also writings and documents are thus contributions to this kind of
debate. This obviously holds for scholarly works, pamphlets, newspaper
articles, novels and so on that have been written in order to take a stand in
an ongoing debate or eventually to launch a new one.

1.4.1  Debate, Discourse, Dispute, Discussion and Dissensus

‘Debate’, as we understand it, is the practice of speaking pro et contra on
an item on the agenda between a plurality of agents. This understanding
differs from other related concepts, such as ‘discourse’. It implies a slightly,
but crucially different direction of analysis than ‘debate’, as it mainly
focuses on how meaning is constructed and reproduced. ‘Discourse’ thus
refers to a set of practices which constitute meaning (see also Section
3.2)—whether or not these are related to debate. The focus on ‘debate’,
as we see it, puts more emphasis on the adversarial aspects of the activity
of politics.
Debate includes putting questions on the agenda, taking a stand on
those already there and persuading the participants to alter their stands
or to rethink their justifications. In a parliamentary context, for exam-
ple, ‘debate’ does not refer to a single event but to the entire journey
of a motion on the agenda through the plenum and committee sittings.
Debate focuses on controversies over subject matter, the normative colour
or style of the argumentation, whereas discourse is concerned with the
tacit assumptions behind the controversies. Debate depends on the prob-
lematic, which is more interesting.
In his Rhetoric, Aristotle divided the art of speech into three genres:
deliberative speech for and against a policy in public assemblies; forensic
speech for accusing or defending a person in the popular courts (dikaste-
rion) for the person’s past deeds; and the epideictic genre for praising and
blaming in performative or ceremonial situations, which can also be found
in judging works of art (Rhetoric, 1358b–1360b). Later other genres
have also arisen, such as the rhetoric of negotiation in diplomacy between
nation-states or in labour bargaining between employers and employees.
Deliberation is the only genre decided among the participants them-
selves without relying on an external authority, such as a judge in a court-
room, an expert in the arts, or an arbitrator in negotiations. ‘Debate’ can
Another random document with
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The Project Gutenberg eBook of Attila and the
Huns
 This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United
States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away
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Title: Attila and the Huns

Author: Edward Hutton

Release date: November 4, 2023 [eBook #72031]

Language: English

Original publication: London: Constable & Co, 1915

Credits: Turgut Dincer and the Online Distributed Proofreading

Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced
from images generously made available by The
Internet Archive)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ATTILA AND

THE HUNS ***
ATTILA AND THE HUNS
BY
EDWARD HUTTON
AUTHOR OF “RAVENNA”

LONDON
CONSTABLE & COMPANY LTD.
1915
 TO
BELOVED ITALY
WITH WHOM
IN THIS HOUR
OF RENEWED PERIL
ONCE MORE
WE FIGHT
THE BARBARIANS
A.D. 401-1915
 INTRODUCTION

“There is a race on Scythia’s verge extreme

Eastward beyond the Tauris’ chilly stream.
The Northern Bear looks on no uglier crew;
Bare is their garb, their bodies foul to view,
Their souls are ne’er subdued to sturdy toil
Or Ceres’ webs. Their sustenance is spoil.
With horrid wounds they gash their brutal brows
And o’er their murdered parents bind their vows....”

In these words, Claudian the poet of the Decline and Fall of the
Roman Empire, describes the Huns of the fifth century, the brood of
Attila to whom the German Kaiser appealed before the whole world
when he sent his brother to China to meet the Boxers:—
“When you meet the foe you will defeat him. No quarter will
be given, no prisoners will be taken. Let all who fall into your
hands be at your mercy. Just as the Huns a thousand years
ago under the leadership of Attila gained a reputation in virtue
of which they still live in historic tradition, so may the name of
Germany become known in such a manner in China that no
Chinaman will ever again dare even to look askance at a
German.”
These words will never be forgotten, for they have since been
translated into action not only upon the Chinese but upon the body of
Europe, upon the Belgians and the people of Northern France as
upon the long martyred people of Poland.
That appeal to the Hun startled Europe, and yet had we
remembered the history of Prussia, had we recalled the ethnology of
that race we ought not to have been surprised, for the Hun and the
Prussian have certainly much in common even racially, and Attila, or
Etzel, as the Germans call him, has ever played his part in the
Nibelungenlied and the legends of the Prussian people.
We know so little of the Huns of the fifth century: who they were,
whence indeed they came and whither they went, that it is
impossible definitely to assert or to deny that the Prussians of to-day
are their actual descendants. We must, it seems, give up the old
theory which Gibbon took from De Guignes that this savage people
were identical with the Hioung-nou whose ravages are recorded in
the history of China; but of this at least it seems we may be sure,
that they were a Turanian race, a race to which the Finns, Bulgarians
and Magyars also belong as well as the Croatians and the Turks.
Can we with any certainty claim that the Prussians also are of this
family?
Quatrefages has demonstrated that the population of the Prussias
is by its ethnological origin essentially Finno-Slavian. In every
respect, he asserts, and history bears him out, Prussia is
ethnologically distinct from the peoples she now rules over under the
pretence of a unity of race with them. Identity of language may mask
this truth, but it cannot alter it, for the difference is real and
fundamental.
Teutonic Germany has accepted Prussia as its sovereign, and no
one can question her right to do so; but being what she is, she has
been led astray by an anthropological error. Not content with
subordinating herself to these Finno-Slavs the real Germany has
adopted their hatred and worked out the brutal instincts of these
strangers whose iron yoke she has placed upon her nobler spirit. Her
union with Prussia has been founded by the sword and by blood,
cemented by war and crowned by spoliation. It is a crime not less
than the crime of that Attila to whom Prussia appeals as her true and
original hero, and now, as then, we have the right to believe in a
divine Nemesis. What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world
and lose his own soul?
It would seem, then, that as well physically as spiritually the
Prussians in so far as they are Finnic[1] are of the same Turanian
stock to which the Huns belonged and if only thus related to them.
That the relationship is closer still a thousand things of which we are
witnesses to-day, as for many hundred years past, would lead us to
surmise. And if they are not the same Barbarians, their barbarism is
the same.
It was at any rate Attila’s name that Kaiser Wilhelm II flung across
an astonished world a decade ago as the French might cry out upon
Charlemagne or Blessed Joan of Arc or Napoleon. And since he has
appealed to the Huns, to the Huns let him go.
For us there remain these facts to be considered, if, as is so
difficult, we are to benefit from the lessons of History.
Rome always defeated the Barbarians, but never succeeded in
destroying their power to renew the attack. Stilicho defeated Alaric
whenever he met him, yet Alaric at last entered Rome. Aetius broke
Attila repeatedly, yet Attila at last was able to threaten Italy.
Belisarius and Narses broke Vitiges and Totila, yet these Barbarians
ruined the peninsula. In spite of defeat the attack was always
renewed, because Rome had never really broken the Barbarian
power. And if we to-day spare the Germanies the uttermost price and
the last, if we fail to push this war to the bitter and the necessary
end, in twenty years or in fifty they will fall upon us again and
perhaps in an hour for us less fortunate. Delenda est Carthago.
It was perhaps not within the power of Rome to break once and for
all the advance of the Barbarians. Time has been upon our side. To-
day if our courage and our endurance are strong enough, if we set
our face like a flint, we may once for all rid Europe of this Barbarian
peril, which, now as always intent on the destruction and the loot of
civilisation, pleads necessity, invokes its gods, and knows neither
justice nor mercy.
Rome could not mobilise: we can. In the old days the Barbarians
could break off first the point, as it were, of civilisation, then a little
more, and so on till the butt choked them. They can no longer do
that. The railway and the automobile, the telegraph and the
telephone have endowed us with such a power of mobilisation that
we can compel the Barbarians to meet the butt of civilisation first
instead of last. If we have the will we may destroy once and for all
the power of the Barbarians, who have attempted to destroy
civilisation, not only under Alaric, Attila, and Totila, but under
Frederick of Hohenstaufen and Luther, and having finally overcome
them we may erect once more in Europe the Pax Romana and
perhaps—who knows?—even the old unity of Christendom.
May, 1915.

FOOTNOTES:
[1] Godron says with truth: “The Prussians are neither Germans
nor Slavs; the Prussians are the Prussians. But one must
remember that they were of Finno-Slavonic race, not Teutonic,
and were subject to the King of Poland till comparatively recent
times. They remained heathen long after the rest of Germany was
Christianised.”
 CONTENTS
PAGE
CHAPTER I
The Empire and the 3
Barbarians
CHAPTER II
The Huns and Attila 21
CHAPTER III
Attila and the Eastern 37
Empire
CHAPTER IV
The Imperial Embassy at 61
the Court of Attila
CHAPTER V
The Attack upon the 77
West
CHAPTER VI
Attila’s Advance from 93
the Rhine to Orleans
CHAPTER VII
The Retreat of Attila 111
and the Battle of the
Catalaunian Plains
CHAPTER VIII
Attila’s Attack upon 127
and Retreat from Italy
 CHAPTER IX
Attila’s Home-coming 145
MAIN SOURCES
I. Ammiani Marcellini 153
Rerum Gestarum, Liber
XXXI
II. Ex Historia Byzantina 159
Prisci Rhetoris et
Sophistae
Ex Historia Gothica 170
Prisci Rhetoris et
Sophistae
III. Jornandes: De Rebus 207
Geticis
IV. Ex Vita MS. Sancti 225
Aniani Episcopi
Aurelianensis
 I
THE EMPIRE AND THE BARBARIANS

At the opening of the fifth century of our era the Roman Empire
had long been not only the civilised world but Christendom. The four
centuries which had passed since the birth of Our Lord had seen in
fact the foundation of Europe, not as we know it to-day a mosaic of
hostile nationalities, but as one perfect whole in which all that is
worth having in the world lay like a treasure. There were born and
founded that they might always endure, the culture, the civilisation
and the Faith which we enjoy and by which we live. There were
established for ever the great lines upon which our art was to
develop, to change and yet not to die. There was erected the
supremacy of the idea that it might always renew our lives, our
culture, and our polity, that we might always judge everything by it
and fear neither revolution, nor defeat nor decay. There we
Europeans were established in the secure possession of our own
souls; so that we alone in the world develop from within to change
but never to die, and to be, alone in the world, Christians.
The outward and visible sign of the Empire, which above
everything else distinguished it from the world which surrounded it,
as an island is surrounded by an unmapped sea, was the Pax
Romana. This was domestic as well as political. It ensured a
complete and absolute order, the condition of civilisation, and,
established through many generations, it seemed immutable and
unbreakable. Along with it went a conception of law and of property
more fundamental than anything we are now able to appreciate,
while free exchange was assured by a complete system of
communication and admirable roads. There is indeed scarcely
anything that is really fundamental in our lives and in our politics that
was not there created. It was there our religion, the soul of Europe,
was born and little by little became the energy and the cause of all
that undying but changeful principle of life and freedom which rightly
understood is Europe. Our ideas of justice, our ideas of law, our
conception of human dignity and the structure of our society were
there conceived, and with such force that while we endure they can
never die. In truth, the Empire which it had taken more than a
millennium to build was the most successful and perhaps the most
beneficent experiment in universal government that has ever been
made.
The Empire fell. Why?
We cannot answer that question. The causes of such a
catastrophe, spiritual and material, are for the most part hidden from
us in the darkness that followed the catastrophe, in which civilisation
in the West all but perished. All we can do is to note that the
administration of this great State became so expensive that when
Alaric came over the Alps in 401 it was probably already bankrupt
and in consequence the population was declining; and that the
military problem before the Empire, the defence of its frontiers
against the outer welter of barbarism, was so expensive and so
naturally insecure that it was difficult to ensure and impossible with
due economy. Finally we ought to be sure that though the Empire
decayed and fell, it was not overthrown by the Barbarians. As in this
book we are concerned not indeed with the Barbarian invasions as a
whole but nevertheless with the most frightful and perhaps the most
destructive among them, we shall do well to consider more
particularly here for a moment one of the causes of that fall, though
not the chief one as we have said; the insecurity of the frontiers,
namely, and the problem this proposed which the Empire was, alas,
unable to solve.
The Empire was confined on the west by the ocean, on the south
by the desert of Africa, on the east by the Caspian Sea and the
Persian Gulf, on the north by the Rhine and the Danube, the Black
Sea and the Caucasus.
It was that northern frontier which was a fundamental weakness
and which at least from the middle of the third century continually
occupied the mind of the Roman administration. How to hold it?
 Beyond that frontier lay a world largely unknown, a mere
wilderness of barbarians, tribes
always restless, always at war, always pressing upon the confines of
civilisation. Within lay all that is worth having in our lives, the hope of
the world. It was this which, then as now, had to be defended and
against the same enemy—barbarism. For barbarism does not
become less barbarous when it becomes learned, a savage is a
savage even in professorial dress. For this cause it is written:
change your hearts and not your garments.
The defence, then, of the frontier had been the chief problem of
the Empire perhaps from its foundation by Augustus and certainly for
two hundred years before Alaric crossed the Alps. Its solution was
attempted in various ways, before, in the year 292, Diocletian
attempted to deal with it by the revolutionary scheme of dividing the
Empire. But the division he made was, and perhaps unavoidably,
rather racial than strategic, the two parts of the Empire met at a
critical point on the Danube and by force of geography the eastern
part was inclined to an Asiatic outlook and to the neglect of the
Danube, while the western was by no means strong enough to hold
the tremendous line of the two rivers. Nevertheless the West made
an heroic attempt to fulfil its too onerous duty. The capital of the
vicariate of Italy was removed from Rome to Milan. This tremendous
act was purely strategical. It was thought, and rightly, that the frontier
would be more readily secured from Milan, which held, as it were, all
the passes of the Alps in its hands, than from Rome in the midst of
the long peninsula of Italy. It was a change more amazing than the
removal of the capital of the British Empire from London to
Edinburgh would be; but it was not enough. In 330, seventeen years
after Christianity had become the official religion of the Empire,
Constantine the Great for the same reasons of defence removed the
seat of the Empire to Byzantium, the new Rome on the Bosphorus,
which he renamed Constantinople.
That move, which has been so strongly condemned, would seem
in any right apprehension of what followed to have saved what could
be saved out of the foreseen and perhaps inevitable débâcle.
Constantinople remained till 1453 the secure capital of the Eastern
Government and of a Roman civilisation; it endured, and in more
than one critical period held up the citadel of the West—Italy—in its
hands.
It may be that nothing could have secured the West; that the
foundation of Constantinople saved the East is certain. Because the
West was the weaker and the richer, because the name of Rome
was so tremendous, the West, as we know, bore the full brunt of the
Barbarian assault. That assault was a much looser and more
haphazard affair than we have been wont to believe. The West was
rather engulfed than defeated. For a time it was lost in a sea of
barbarism; that it emerged, that it rearose, and that we are what we
are, we owe to the foundation of Constantinople and to the Catholic
Church.
I say that the Empire was rather engulfed than defeated. Let us
consider this.
In the year 375 the frontiers were secure; nevertheless before then
the defence had failed. Long before then it had become obvious that
the vast hordes of Barbarians beyond the Rhine and the Danube
could not be held back if anything should occur to drive them on. If
they came on they would have to be met, not beyond, or even upon
the rivers, but within the Empire itself.
If anything should occur to drive them on.... In the year 375 this
befell. Ammianus Marcellinus, the contemporary Roman historian,
writing of the incursions of the Barbarians, asserts that all the evils
which befell the Empire at that time were due to one people—the
Huns. In the year 375 the Huns were finally victorious over the Goths
who in 376 in utter despair appealed to the Eastern Emperor Valens
for protection. “Suppliant multitudes of that warlike nation,” we read
of the Goths, “whose pride was now humbled in the dust, covered a
space of many miles along the banks of the Danube. With
outstretched arms and pathetic lamentations they loudly deplored
their past misfortunes and their present danger; acknowledged that
their only hope of safety was in the clemency of the Roman
Government; and most solemnly protested that if the gracious
liberality of the Emperor would permit them to cultivate the waste
lands of Thrace they would ever hold themselves bound by the
strongest obligations of duty and gratitude to obey the laws and
guard the tenets of the republic.” Their prayers were granted and
their service was accepted by the Imperial Government. They were
transported over the Danube into the Roman Empire. In some ways
this act and its date 376 are among the most momentous in the
history of Europe.
Undisciplined and restless this nation of near a million Barbarians
suddenly introduced into civilisation was a constant anxiety and
danger. Ignorant of the laws they had sworn to keep, as well as of
the obligations and privileges of civilisation, the Goths were at the
mercy of their masters, who exploited them without scruple, till driven
to madness they revolted and began the fatal march through Moesia,
entering Thrace at last not as the guests of the Empire but as its
victorious enemy. They encamped under the walls of Hadrianople
which presently they besieged, laying waste the provinces; and it
was not till Theodosius had ascended the Imperial throne that they
were successfully dealt with, forced to submit, and settled in Thrace
and Asia Minor.
But such a result could not endure. The Barbarians but awaited a
leader, and when he appeared, as he did in the person of Alaric,
after the death of Theodosius, they turned on Constantinople itself,
which they were able to approach but not to blockade. In 396 Alaric
marched southward into Greece; from Thermopylae to Sparta he
pursued his victorious way, avoiding Athens rather from superstition
than from fear of any mortal foe. Early in 396, however, Stilicho, who
was later to win such fame in the Italian campaign, set sail from Italy,
met Alaric in Arcadia, turned him back and seemed about to compel
his surrender in the prison of the Peloponnesus. In this, however, he
was not successful. Alaric was able to cut his way out and by rapid
marches to reach the Gulf of Corinth and to transport his troops, his
captives and his spoil to the opposite shore. There he succeeded in
negotiating a treaty with Constantinople whereby he entered its pay
and was declared Master General of Eastern Illyricum. This befell in
399.
 The intervention of Stilicho, successful though it had been, had
proved one thing before all others; the political separation of the East
and the West. The sailing of Stilicho and his army was the
intervention of the West to save the East, for it was the East that was
then in danger. The West was betrayed. The East made terms with
the Barbarian and employed him. It behoved the West to look to
itself, for it was obvious that the East would save itself at last by
sacrificing the West.
The West was ready. A scheme of defence had been prepared
which, as we shall see, was the best that could in the circumstances
have been devised. With a directness and a clarity worthy of Rome
the advisers of Honorius, then in Milan, determined to sacrifice
everything if need be to the defence of the European citadel, of Italy
that is; and, after all, considering the position of Alaric in Illyricum, it
was that which was chiefly threatened. If it fell it was certain that the
whole of the West must collapse.
The problem before the advisers of Honorius was not an easy one.
To solve it with certainty enormous sacrifices were necessary, but to
solve it meant the salvation of the world. It was therefore determined
to abandon the Rhine and the Danube, for already Alaric was within
those lines. It was determined—and this was the decisive thing—to
abandon the Alps, to make, that is to say, Cisalpine Gaul, or as we
say the Lombard Plain, the battlefield, and to hold Italy proper along
the line of the Apennines. I have examined and explained this
strategy at length elsewhere;[2] here it is only necessary to say that
its amazing success justified a policy so realistic.
The theory of the commanders of Honorius was that the
Apennines were by nature impregnable save at one place, the
narrow pass between them and the Adriatic, which they had long
designed Ravenna to hold. Their intention to hold this line was
determined not only by this theory, but by this, too, that they were
something more than uncertain of the attitude of the Eastern Empire.
Their strategy meant the abandonment of the richest province south
of the Alps, the richest and the most ancient; but if the military theory
which regarded the Apennines as impassable were right it meant the
certain and immediate salvation of the soul of the West and the
eventual salvation of the whole.
Honorius and his ministers had not long to wait. Having looted the
provinces of Europe within the dominion of the Eastern Emperor,
Alaric “tempted by the power, the beauty and the wealth of Italy ...
secretly aspired to plant the Gothic standard on the walls of Rome,
and to enrich his army with the accumulated spoils of an hundred
triumphs.”
In November, 401, Alaric entered Venetia by the Julian Alps and
passed by Aquileia without taking it, intent on the spoil of the South.
As he came on Honorius retired from Milan to Ravenna; the gates of
Italy were barred. Then came Stilicho over the Cisalpine Plain, met
Alaric, who had crossed the Po, at Pollentia, and defeated him and,
following his retreat, broke him at Asta so that he compelled him to
recross the Alps. In 403 Alaric again entered Venetia. Stilicho met
him at Verona and once more hurled him back. The barred gates of
Italy had scarce been questioned.
It was not Alaric, after all, but another Barbarian, Radagaisus, who
was first to demand an entrance. In 405 he traversed the same
Alpine passes as Alaric had used, passed Aquileia, crossed the Po
and shunning the Via Emilia, which led through the pass Ravenna
barred, adventured over the Apennines which the Roman generals
had conceived as impassable by a Barbarian army. They were right.
When Radagaisus saw the South he was starving. Stilicho found him
at Fiesole and cut him to pieces. But the remnant of his army
escaped as Alaric had done, it was not annihilated; it returned
through Cisalpine Gaul and fell upon Gaul proper. Then in 408
Stilicho was murdered in Ravenna by order of the Emperor.
This last disaster was the cause of what immediately followed.
When in 408 Alaric invaded Venetia he looted and destroyed as he
wished, for there was no one to meet him. He took the great road
southward and found the gate open; passed Ravenna without
opposition, marched to Rome and after three sieges entered and
pillaged it and was on his way southward to enjoy and to loot the
South and Sicily, Placidia, the Emperor’s sister, a captive in his train,
when he died at Cosenza in 410. His brother-in-law Adolphus,
erected as king upon the shields of the Goths—there by the
monstrous grave of his predecessor—concluded a peace with
Honorius similar to that which years before Alaric had made with
Constantinople. He was received into the Imperial service,
consented to cross the Alps, and, what was to become a precedent
for a yet more outrageous demand, received the hand of Placidia,
the Emperor’s sister, in marriage. Thus the retreat of the Barbarian
was secured, the peace of Italy restored and a repose obtained
which endured for some forty-two years.
It is interesting to observe the extraordinary likeness between
Alaric’s attack upon the East and his invasion of the West. Indeed,
the only difference between them is the fact that Constantinople was
never really in danger, whereas Rome was entered and looted. The
intention of both invasions was the same—loot; the result of both
was the same—tribute and service in return for the evacuation of the
immediate provinces by the Barbarian.
The Imperial failure East and West was a failure in morale and in
politics; it was not rightly understood a military failure: Alaric had
always been defeated when he was attacked. It was the failure of the
West to attack him that gave him Rome at last. The Imperial advisers
perhaps thought they had solved the question he had propounded to
them, when, after Alaric’s death, they had obtained the retreat of the
Barbarian across the Alps—a retreat he was as glad to carry out as
they to order, for he was in a sort of trap—and had secured at least
his neutrality by admitting him into the service of the Empire. But the
peace of more than a generation which followed their act was as
illusory as it was contemptible.
The whole Empire had received from Alaric a moral blow from
which it was never really to recover. It is true that much which
happened in the years that immediately followed the retreat of
Adolphus was fortunate. Placidia the spoil and the bride and later the
fugitive widow of Alaric’s successor returned in triumph to Ravenna
to be the unwilling bride of her deliverer Constantius. Largely through
her influence, after the death of Honorius, when she ruled in
Ravenna with the title of Augusta as the guardian of her son, the