Attila the Hun

Attila the Hun the ruler of the Huns (died 453 AD), who united a large part of the nomadic peoples of central and eastern Europe under his authority and led them in a series of devastating campaigns against the Eastern and Western Roman Empires. His power and his sudden death made him a byword for the terror and upheaval of the late antique world.

The Huns and the Rise of Attila

The Huns were a nomadic people who appeared on the eastern frontiers of Europe around 370 AD, driving before them the Goths and other peoples and pressing upon the Roman world. They built a loose empire based on the allegiance of subject tribes, on tribute and on the mobility of their cavalry, and by the early fifth century they were a major power in the Carpathian basin and the plains to the east.

Attila was born into the ruling family of the Huns, the son of Mundzuk and the nephew of the kings Octar and Ruga. On the death of Ruga around 434 AD, Attila and his brother Bleda became joint rulers, and the two led campaigns against the Eastern Roman Empire and exacted substantial tribute. For a decade the brothers ruled together before Attila had Bleda killed and took sole power.

As sole king from about 445 AD, Attila commanded a formidable coalition of Huns, Goths, Gepids and other peoples. His authority rested on military success, on the distribution of booty and subsidy, and on the fear he inspired, and the Roman sources describe him as a ruler of great personal force and austere habits, more feared than loved by his own followers.

Campaigns Against the Eastern Empire

Attila's pressure on the Eastern Roman Empire was relentless. In the 440s he crossed the Danube repeatedly, ravaged the Balkan provinces and defeated the imperial armies sent against him, extracting a doubled tribute and a large payment for arrears. The terms were humiliating, and the empire's inability to resist him exposed the weakness of its frontier defences.

In 447 AD he launched a campaign of exceptional severity, defeating an imperial army at the Utus river and driving deep into Thrace and toward Constantinople itself, which was saved in part by its massive walls and by the diversion of his forces. The peace that followed imposed still harsher terms, and the chroniclers of the time described widespread destruction and the flight of populations.

He demanded from the Eastern court not only gold but also the return of refugees and a wide buffer zone free of Roman influence. His envoys negotiated with the emperor Theodosius II, and a famous embassy of 449 AD, described in detail by the historian Priscus, gives a rare eyewitness account of Attila's court, his wooden palace and the ceremonial of his rule.

The Invasion of the West

In the 450s Attila turned to the west. A dispute over the succession of the Salian Franks, and a marriage proposal from Honoria, the sister of the Western emperor Valentinian III, gave him pretexts for intervention, and in 451 he led a great army across the Rhine into Gaul. The invasion threatened the whole western order and brought the Visigoths and other peoples into alliance with Rome.

At the battle of the Catalaunian Plains, also called the battle of Chalons, a coalition under the Roman general Aetius and the Visigothic king Theodoric defeated Attila and checked his advance. The battle is often described as one of the last great engagements of antiquity, and its outcome preserved the Visigothic kingdom in Gaul and saved the west from conquest.

The following year Attila changed his target and invaded Italy, where he sacked and destroyed the city of Aquileia and ravaged the plains of the Po, causing profound shock. According to tradition, an embassy that included Pope Leo I met him near the river Mincio and persuaded him to withdraw, and the retreat was followed shortly afterwards by his death and the swift collapse of his empire.

Government, Court and Character

Attila ruled through a mixed system that combined the institutions of the Huns with the administrative habits they had learned from Rome. He employed Roman secretaries and clerks, dealt with the imperial courts through embassies and treaties, and used the tribute he extracted to reward his followers and to bind the subject peoples to his cause, a system as much political as military.

The account of the embassy of 449 AD by the historian Priscus, who accompanied it, remains the best description of Attila. Priscus portrays him as plain in dress and frugal at table, eating simply while his guests feasted, and as a figure of calm and intimidating authority, addressed with elaborate ceremonial and surrounded by a court of nobles and officials.

His power depended heavily on his own person. He held together a coalition of peoples with different languages and interests, and he exploited the rivalry between the two halves of the Roman Empire, playing the Eastern and Western courts against each other to maximise the tribute and the concessions he could gain.

Death, Aftermath and Reputation

Attila died in 453 AD, reportedly on the night of his marriage to a woman named Ildico, in circumstances that ancient sources describe variously as a haemorrhage or a seizure. His death removed the only figure capable of holding the Hun empire together, and within a generation his sons had lost the allegiance of the subject peoples and the empire disintegrated.

The collapse of the Hunnic power ended one of the great crises of the late Roman world and allowed peoples such as the Gepids and Ostrogoths to assert their independence. The Romans saw in Attila's death and the defeat of his sons a vindication after years of humiliation, and the withdrawal from Italy was remembered as a providential deliverance.

His reputation in Western memory is that of the scourge of God, a destroyer whose name came to stand for ruthless power and for the violence of the age of migrations. The term flagellum Dei, applied to him by later Christian writers, framed him as an instrument of divine punishment, and the legend of the Hun king has echoed through literature and art as a symbol of the fragility of civilised order.

See also

• Huns
• Catalaunian Plains
• Priscus
• Aetius