406 THE DECLINE AND FALL siege of Hippo. A.D. 430, May Death of Augustin. A.D. 430, Aogost 28 of those of his followers ; and the calamities of war were a^gra vated by the licentiousness of the Moors and the fanaticism of the Donatists. Yet I shall not easily be persuaded that it was the common practice of the V^mdals to extirpate the olives, and other fruit trees, of a country where they intended to settle ; nor can I believe that it was a usual stratagem to slaughter great numbers of their prisoners before the walls of a besieged city, for the sole purpose of infecting the air and producing a pestilence of which they themselves must have been the first victims.-" The generous mind of Count Boniface was tortured by the exquisite distress of beholding the ruin which he had occasioned, and whose rapid progress he was unable to check. After the loss of a battle he retired into Hippo Kegius ; where he was immediately besieged by an enemy who considered him as the real bulwark of Africa. The maritime colony of Hippo j-^ about two hundred miles westward of Carthage, had formerly acquired the distinguishing epithet of Regim, fi-om the residence of Numidian kings ; and some remains of trade and populousness still adhere to the modern city, which is known in Europe by the corrupted name of Bona. The military labours and anxious reflections of Count Boniface were alleviated by the edifying conversation of his friend St. Augustin ; -■' till that bishop, the light and pillar of the Catholic church, was gently released, in the third month of the siege, and in the seventy-sixth year of his age, from the actual and the impending calamities of his country. The youth of Augustin had been stained by the vices and errors which he so ingenuously confesses ; but from the 2^ The original complaints of the desolation of Africa are contained : i. In a letter from Capreolus, bishop of Carthage, to excuse his absence from the council of Ephesus (ap. Ruinart, p. 429). 2. In the life of St. Augustin, by his friend and colleague Possidius (ap. Ruinart, p. 427). 3. In the History of the Vandalic Per- secution, by Victor Vitensis (1. i. c. i, 2, 3, edit. Ruinart). The last picture, which was drawn sixty years after the eent, is more expressive of the author's passions than of the truth of facts. '•* See Cellarius, Geograph. Antiq. torn. ii. part ii. p. ri2 ; Leo African, in Ramusio, torn. i. fol. 70 ; L'Afrique de Marmol. torn. ii. p. 434, 437 ; Shaw's Travels, p. 46, 47. The old Hippo Regius was finally destroyed by the Arabs in the seventh century ; but a new town, at the distance of two miles, was built with the materials, and it contained, in the sixteenth century, about three hundred fami- lies of industrious, but turbulent, manufacturers. ihe adjacent territory is re- nowned for a pure air, a fertile soil, and plenty of exquisite fruits. 29 The life of St. Augustin, by Tillemont, tills a quarto -•olume (M<5m. Eccles. torn, xiii.) of more than one thousand pages ; and the diligence of that learned Jansenist was excited on this occasion by factious and devout zeal for the founder of his sect.
