Having thus, with this second army, secured the flank, Attila marched his first army from Singidunum up the Morava to Naissus (Nisch), precisely as the Austrians tried to do but yesterday. They failed, but he succeeded and Naissus fell. Thence he passed on to Sardica where he was met by his second army which had taken Ratiaria. Sardica was pillaged and burnt. Attila thus possessed himself in the year 441 of the gateways of the Balkans, almost without a protest from Theodosius. Five years later, in 446, he was ready to advance again. In that year and the next he destroyed two Roman armies, took and pillaged some seventy towns, and pushed south as far as Thermopylae, and eastward even to Gallipoli; only the walls of Constantinople saved the capital. Theodosius was forced to buy a disgraceful peace at the price of an immediate payment of 6000 pounds’ weight of gold, an annual tribute, no longer even disguised, of 2000 pounds, and an undertaking that the Empire would never employ or give refuge to any of those whom Attila claimed as his subjects. It was easier to agree to such terms than to fulfil them. The provinces were ruined, the whole fiscal system of the East in confusion, and even what wealth remained was, as Priscus tells us, “spent not in national purposes, but on absurd shows and gaudy pageants, and all the pleasures and excesses of a licentious society such as would not have been permitted in any properly governed State, even in the midst of the greatest prosperity.” Attila, who marked the decay and the embarrassment of the Imperial Government, forewent nothing of his advantage. He became more and more rapacious. When he did not obtain all he desired he sent an embassy to Constantinople to intimidate the government, and this became a regular means of blackmail with him, a means more humiliating than war and not less successful. The first of these embassies arrived in Constantinople immediately after the terms of peace had been agreed upon. It made further demands, and was treated with the most extravagant hospitality. Three times within a single year other embassies arrived; they were a means of blackmail and were assured of an ever-increasing success.