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 ATTILA THE HUN     No one represents the  fury and savagery of barbarism as much as Attila the Hun. Even in the twentieth century one of the worst names that could be found for the Germans was to call them Huns. Attila, as the greatest Hun leader, has become a symbol of the destroyer of cities and killer of babies. In his own day he and his Huns were known as the "Scourge of God," (meaning  " God's curse" )
    The Huns were a people of mystery and terror. Arriving on the edges of the Roman Empire in the late 300's AD, riding their war horses out of the great plains of Asia, they struck fear into Germanic barbarians and Romans too. Some historians believe that they had tried to attack the Chinese Empire first, but were turned away and then headed for Rome instead. Near the Black Sea they conquered the Ostrogoths, then they drove the Visigoths south and west across the Danube into the Roman Empire.
(That led to the Visigoth's astounding defeat of the Roman army and its Emperor Valens at Adrianople in 378 AD)
    Those Huns, using the traditional tactics of archers mounted on horseback, seemed like monsters from the darkness . A Roman historian, writing at the time, described their savage customs and explained their military tactics: The nation of the Huns...surpasses all other barbarians in wildness of life....And though [the Huns] do just bear the likeness of men (of a very ugly pattern), they are so little advanced in civilization that they make no use of fire, nor any kind of relish, in the preparation of their food, but feed upon the roots which they find in the fields, and the half-raw flesh of any sort of animal. I say half-raw, because they give it a kind of cooking by placing it between their own thighs and the backs of their horses.... When attacked, they will sometimes engage in regular battle. Then, going into the fight in order of columns, they fill the air with varied and discordant cries (wild singing or chanting). More often, however, they fight in no regular order of battle, but by being extremely swift and sudden in their movements, they run away, and then rapidly come together again , spreading confusion over vast plains, and flying over the rampart ( getting over the walls of a city), they pillage(steal and destroy) the camp of their enemy almost before he has become aware of their approach.  They are the most terrible of warriors because they fight at a distance with missile weapons having sharpened bones well  fastened to the shaft. When in close combat with swords, they fight without regard to their own safety, and while their enemy is  blocking the thrust of the swords, they throw a net over him and so entangle his limbs that he loses all power of walking or riding.
    Obviously, when the Huns first appeared on the edges of the Roman Empire, they made a strong impression, but after a while they settled down along the Danube, particularly in the Great Hungarian Plain. They were no longer the horse nomads of the earlier days. The Great Hungarian Plain did not offer as much room as the plains of Asia for grazing horses, and the Huns were forced to develop an infantry( marching soldiers) to add to their now much smaller cavalry (soldiers on horseback). The army of the Huns began to look alot like the armies of Rome. By the time of Attila the army of the Huns had become like that of most barbarian nations in Europe. It was, however, very large, and capable of conducting siege operations( attacking a fortress city for a long time if necessary), which most other barbarian armies could not do effectively. Because of this, for almost fifty years the Romans used them as allies. In return, the Eastern Emperor, beginning in the 420's, paid them money every year to keep them happy .  This worked well, although there were times when the Huns threatened to attack the Eastern Roman Empire anyway.
    When Attila became King of the Huns, he became more aggressive and ambitious than earlier Hun leaders had been, and his pride sometimes made him unpredictable. An ancient writer said Attila had a large head,  dark skin, small, deep-seated eyes, a flat nose, a few hairs in the place of a beard, broad shoulders, and a short square nervous body. His attitude as the king of the Huns was one of  superiority above the rest of mankind; and he had a custom of fiercely rolling his eyes, as if he wished to enjoy the terror which he inspired.He delighted in war; but, after he got the throne, and had become older,  he became known for his wisdom and success as a general. Sometime after 435, Attila demanded more money from the Eastern Emperor, Theodosius II, who willingly doubled the treasure given each year for peace with the Huns. Then Attila began in the late 440's to look to the West for more opportunities.
    For the next 15 years Attila was the most powerful ruler to confront  the Western Roman Empire; powerful and cruel  . In the 440's one of Attila's attacks against a city in the Balkans so devastated the place that when Roman ambassadors passed through to meet with Attila several years later, they had to camp outside the city on the river. The river banks were still filled with human bones, and the stench of death was so great that no one could enter the city.
    After crossing to the Roman side of the Danube the Huns were stopped by an Eastern Roman general, Aspar, when they raided Thrace (modern Macedonia) in 442 AD. Then, in 447, Attila  marched as far as Thermopylae (Greece) and stopped only when the Eastern Emperor, Theodosius II, begged for peace. Attila agreed and demanded a new  payment of 2,100 pounds of gold yearly. The Huns were also given a large amount of land south of the Danube. One writer from this time wrote: "There was so much killing and blood that no one could number the dead. The Huns looted the churches and monasteries, and killed the monks and virgins....They so devastated Thrace that it will never rise again and be as it was before." This strong victory in the East left Attila free to plan the attack on the West that ended in the invasion of Gaul.
    But the Eastern Emperor Theodosius II fell from his horse and died in 450. The next emperor, Marcian (450-7),  refused to pay Attila the usual gold payment. Attila decided to take out his wrath on the West, because it was weaker than the East.
     Attila crossed the Rhine River into the Roman territory with the Huns in 451 with at least two things on his mind. First, the Western Roman Empire was weak because of attacks over the years by Visigoths, Vandals, Suebi, Alamanni, Burgundians and other barbarian tribes. Visigoths had set up an independent kingdom in Aquitaine(modern day southern France), and Vandals occupied North Africa with a capital at Carthage. Romans hardly ruled at all in many parts of Gaul and Spain. So, The Romans in the West should be easy to defeat. Second,  Attila felt he could rightfully claim the western part of the Roman Empire because of a very strange request by Honoria, the sister of the Eastern Roman Emperor Valentinian . In 449, she had an affair with her servant. Her lover was executed, and Honoria, who was probably pregnant, was locked away from all contact with everyone. She was furious and smuggled a ring and a message to Attila asking him to become her champion (to set her free). He treated this as a marriage proposal and asked for half of the Western Empire as her dowry (her bridal gift to him). So when he crossed the Rhine, he could claim that he was just taking by force what was his by right of engagement to Honoria.
    Attila's attack into Gaul - considered Roman territory- is a tale of lust for sex and power, for money and land, and the principal actors are as colorful as any who ever lived.
    After massive preparations Attila invaded,crossing the Rhine River with a large army of Huns and other barbarian tribes- Ostrogoths , Burgundians, Alans . Some Franks sided with Attila, some aginst him.  Fear swept through Gaul. Ancient writers say that Attila had between 300,000 and 700,000 soldiers. This was considered an enormous army. Some of the greatest cities of Europe were attacked, looted, and burned: Rheims, Mainz, Strasbourg, Cologne, Worms and Trier. Paris  had the advantage of hav ing a saint in the city and was spared because of the efforts of St. Genevieve. Attila then moved into central Gaul and attacked Orleans . His next plan was to attack the Visigoth homeland in Aquitiane, but the Roman general Aetius had put together a strong force to stop Attila .
    The battle at Chalons was one of those rare important conflicts, in which legendary leaders fight against one another - the fierce and passionate Attila leading the Huns and the noble Aetius, sometimes called "the last of the Romans." leading a mixed group of Romans and former barbarian enemies of Rome.  All of them had a common hatred of the Huns. In 451 Aetius was the best general in the Roman Empire . Aetius had done more than anyone else to keep what remained of the Roman world strong and prosperous. But Aetius  had not been able to hold back the wave of invasions that had rolled over the West .
    Attila had not expected  the Romans to put up so great a resistance to him, but he was too wise to let his army be trapped around the walls of Orleans, so he abandoned the siege and went into the open country of the modern Champagne district of France. There on the Catalaunian Plains  a great battle was fought, probably about June 20, 451 AD. Attila seems to have been taken by surprise. Uncertain of victory and in the confusion of retreat, on the day of the battle he stayed behind his lines with the supply wagons until afternoon.  On the right side of his army, Attila stationed  his German allies. The Ostrogoths fought on the left, and in the center Attila took position with his best troops, the Huns. On the other side Aetius decided to put his least reliable troops, the Alans, in the center to take whatever assault Attila directed towards them. The Visigoths were placed on the Roman right, and the Romans themselves took the left. Aetius was planning an attack like Hannibal used in Cannae to circle  Attila's army and destroy it.  All the sources agree that it was a costly one in human lives: cadavera vero innumera ("truly countless bodies"), is the way one ancient author puts it.
    Attila struck hard against the Alans in the Roman center. As he drove them back the Romans on his right and the Visigoths on his left, led by Theodoric, King of the Visigoths, attacked . As night fell, the Huns had taken a beating though losses on both sides were extraordinary. Attila retreated to the safety of his wagons, and the archers of the Huns kept the Romans from further attacking. Theodoric had lost his life in the battle. In fact at this point the battle was over. Some on the Roman side wanted Aetius to keep fighting the next day, but he chose not to.   Attila began an easy withdrawal back across the Rhine.  Many have criticized Aetius for making things too easy for the Huns, for not destroying their army, but he did the right thing. The Romans and their friends also took heavy losses at Chalons, and Attila was merely a wounded tiger. Although Attila had been beaten in a bloody battle, he continued to have considerable military power.  It was probably wise for Aetius to allow Attila a line of retreat. He had driven Attila the Hun out of Gaul ; that was satisfaction enough. If he had not been stopped in Gaul,  Western history might have been changed.  The Huns were not Christians, and they had no respect for the Christian Roman-Greek civilization of the Empire. Therefor, the history of modern France and Germany and perhaps Spain and England could have been altered completely.
    The next year (452) he crossed over the Alps and moved down into Italy, launching another great invasion that terrorized the inhabitants of the Western Roman Empire. In some ways this second invasion of the West was even more savage than the first. The city of Aquileia at the tip of the Adriatic Sea was wiped off the face of the earth. The survivors  from that pitiful city are supposed to have fled into the lagoons of the Adriatic and to have founded the new city of Venice. Attila and his Huns then destroyed Northern Italy! The cities of Milan, Verona, and Padua were devastated and the populations killed.  Aetius found it more difficult to persuade Visigoths and Alans to help in the defense of Italy than  in organizing them to protect Gaul. For awhile it appeared that Italy would be lost to the invaders, but actually Attila's position was weaker than the Romans realized. Attila had suffered serious losses  the previous year at Chalons. There is a famous tradition that Pope Leo I met Attila in Northern Italy  and persuaded him to leave  with a great speech and a display of his rich robes and a large gift of treasure. According to legend, one of the most famous miracles in the history of Christianity then occurred : St. Peter and St. Paul appeared to Attila threatening him with instant death if he ignored  Leo. Attila led his army out of Italy.
    Historians believe it was probably because of the following reasons : his troops were short of supplies ,  a plague swept through the army of the Huns, and they were probably too weak to continue their attack, and the Eastern Emperor Marcian sent an army across the Danube to strike into the Huns' home territory.  In any event, Attila spared Rome and withdrew from Italy. Twice the Huns had proved incapable of bringing the Western Empire to its knees.  Aetius had been blamed by many Italians for not having destroyed Attila and the Huns in Gaul, but "the last of the Romans" had helped  ruin the once proud barbarian nation. Its place in the pages of history was over. In the next year after the retreat from Italy, Attila died a barbarian death. He took a new, young, beau- tiful bride,  named Ildico, though he already had several wives. The wedding day was spent in heavy drinking and partying, and the King of the Huns took his new bride to bed that night. The next morning it was discovered that he had died-- in his drunkenness he had drowned in his own nosebleed. The new bride was found quivering in fear in the tent. The empire of the Huns ended nearly as quickly as its most famous leader. In 454 the Ostrogoths and other Germanic tribes revolted against the Huns, and the sons of Attila, who had quarreled among themselves, could not deal with the crisis.  The Huns were "scattered to the winds."
     There was jealousy and rivalry between Aetius and his superior, the Emperor Valentinian III. The General's success against the Huns and his making allies of the Visigoths in Gaul actually made him unnecessary any longer, and in 454 Valentinian killed him personally with the imperial sword. One of the Emperor's advisers said, "You have cut off your right hand with your left." The next year two of Aetius' followers killed the Emperor, and within a generation, by 476, there would no longer be a Roman Emperor in the West. Aetius was truly "the last of the Romans."