Attila the Hun

Sole ruler

The barbarian nation of the Huns, which was in Thrace, became so great that more than a hundred cities were captured and Constantinople almost came into danger and most men fled from it. . . . And there were so many murders and blood-lettings that the dead could not be numbered. Ay, for they took captive the churches and monasteries and slew the monks and maidens in great numbers.
::— Callinicus, in his Life of Saint Hypatius
's painting The Feast of Attila, based on a fragment of Priscus (depicted at right, dressed in white and holding his history):
"When evening began to draw in, torches were lighted, and two barbarians came forward in front of Attila and sang songs which they had composed, hymning his victories and his great deeds in war. And the banqueters gazed at them, and some were rejoiced at the songs, others became excited at heart when they remembered the wars, but others broke into tears—those whose bodies were weakened by time and whose spirit was compelled to be at rest."
Attila demanded, as a condition of peace, that the Romans should continue paying tribute in gold—and evacuate a strip of land stretching three hundred miles east from Sigindunum (Belgrade) and up to a hundred miles south of the Danube. Negotiations continued between Roman and Hun for approximately three years. The historian Priscus was sent as emissary to Attila's encampment in 448, and the fragments of his reports preserved by Jordanes offer the best glimpse of Attila among his numerous wives, his Scythian fool, and his Moorishish dwarf, impassive and unadorned amid the splendor of the courtiers:
: A luxurious meal, served on silver plate, had been made ready for us and the barbarian guests, but Attila ate nothing but meat on a wooden trencher. In everything else, too, he showed himself temperate; his cup was of wood, while to the guests were given goblets of gold and silver. His dress, too, was quite simple, affecting only to be clean. The sword he carried at his side, the latchets of his Scythian shoes, the bridle of his horse were not adorned, like those of the other Scythians, with gold or gems or anything costly.

During these three years, according to a legend recounted by Jordanes, Attila discovered the "Sword of Mars":
:The historian Priscus says it was discovered under the following circumstances: "When a certain shepherd beheld one heifer of his flock limping and could find no cause for this wound, he anxiously followed the trail of blood and at length came to a sword it had unwittingly trampled while nibbling the grass. He dug it up and took it straight to Attila. He rejoiced at this gift and, being ambitious, thought he had been appointed ruler of the whole world, and that through the sword of Mars supremacy in all wars was assured to him.
::— Jordanes, The Origin and Deeds of the Goths ch. XXXV (e-text)

Later scholarship would identify this legend as part of a pattern of sword worship common among the nomads of the Central Asian steppes.

Attila in the west

As late as 450, Attila had proclaimed his intent to attack the powerful Visigoth kingdom of Toulouse in alliance with Emperor Valentinian III. He had previously been on good terms with the western Empire and its de facto ruler Flavius Aetius—Aetius had spent a brief exile among the Huns in 433, and the troops Attila provided against the Goths and Bagaudae had helped earn him the largely honorary title of magister militum in the west. The gifts and diplomatic efforts of Geiseric, who opposed and feared the Visigoths, may also have influenced Attila's plans.

However Valentinian's sister Honoria, in order to escape her forced betrothal to a senator, had sent the Hunnish king a plea for help—and her ring—in the spring of 450. Though Honoria may not have intended a proposal of marriage, Attila chose to interpret her message as such; he accepted, asking for half of the western Empire as dowry. When Valentinian discovered the plan, only the influence of his mother Galla Placidia convinced him to exile, rather than kill, Honoria; he also wrote to Attila strenuously denying the legitimacy of the supposed marriage proposal. Attila, not convinced, sent an embassy to Ravenna to proclaim that Honoria was innocent, that the proposal had been legitimate, and that he would come to claim what was rightfully his.

Meanwhile, Theodosius having died in a riding accident, his successor Marcian cut off the Huns' tribute in late 450; and multiple invasions, by the Huns and by others, had left the Balkans with little to plunder. The king of the Salian Franks had died, and the succession struggle between his two sons drove a rift between Attila and Aetius: Attila supported the elder son, while Aetius supported the younger. J.B. Bury believes that Attila's intent, by the time he marched west, was to extend his kingdom—already the strongest on the continent—across Gaul to the Atlantic shore. By the time Attila had gathered his vassals—Gepids, Ostrogoths, Rugians, Scirians, Heruls, Thuringians, Alans, Burgundians, et al.—and begun his march west, he had declared intent of alliance both with the Visigoths and with the Romans.

In 451, his arrival in Belgica with an army said by Jordanes to be half a million strong soon made his intent clear. On April 7 he captured Metz, and Aetius moved to oppose him, gathering troops from among the Franks, the Burgundians, and the Celts. A mission by Avitus, and Attila's continued westward advance, convinced the Visigoth king Theodoric I (Theodorid) to ally with the Romans. The combined armies reached Orleans ahead of Attila, thus checking and turning back the Hunnish advance. Aetius gave chase and caught the Huns at a place usually assumed to be near Châlons-en-Champagne. The two armies clashed in the Battle of Chalons, which ended with a victory for the Gothic-Roman alliance, though Theodoric was killed in the fighting. Attila withdrew beyond the border, and the alliance quickly disbanded.

Invasion of Italy and death

Whatever his reasons, Attila left Italy and returned to his palace across the Danube. From there he planned to strike at Constantinople again and reclaim the tribute which Marcian had cut off. However, he died in the early months of 453; the conventional account, from Priscus, says that on the night after a feast celebrating his latest marriage (to a Goth named Ildico), he suffered a severe nosebleed and choked to death. His warriors, upon discovering his death, mourned him by cutting off their hair and gashing themselves with their swords so that, says Jordanes, "the greatest of all warriors should be mourned with no feminine lamentations and with no tears, but with the blood of men." He was buried in a triple coffin—of gold, silver, and iron—with the spoils of his conquest, and his funeral party was killed to keep his burial place secret. After his death, he lived on as a legendary figure: the characters of Etzel in the Nibelungenlied and Atli in both the Volsunga saga and the Poetic Edda were both loosely based on his life.

(An alternate story of his death, first recorded eighty years after the fact by the Roman chronicler Count Marcellinus, reports: "Attila rex Hunnorum Europae orbator provinciae noctu mulieris manu cultroque confoditur." ("Attila, King of the Huns and ravager of the provinces of Europe, was pierced by the hand and blade of his wife.") The Volsunga saga and the Poetic Edda claim that King Atli died at the hands of his wife Gudrun. Most scholars reject these accounts as no more than romantic fables, preferring instead the version given by Attila's contemporary Priscus.)

His sons Ellak (his appointed successor), Dengizik, and Ernak fought over his legacy and, divided, were defeated and scattered the following year in the Battle of Nedao. Attila's empire did not outlast him.

Appearance, character, and name

"short of stature, with a broad chest and a large head; his eyes were small, his beard thin and sprinkled with gray; and he had a flat nose and a swarthy complexion, showing the evidences of his origin."

Attila is known in Western history and tradition as the grim "Scourge of God", and his name has become a byword for cruelty and barbarism. Some of this may arise from a conflation of his traits, in the popular imagination, with those perceived in later steppe warlords such as the Mongol Genghis Khan and Tamerlane: all run together as cruel, clever, and sanguinary lovers of battle and pillage. The reality of his character may be more complex. The Huns of Attila's era had been mingling with Roman civilization for some time, largely through the Germanic foederati of the border—so that by the time of Theodosius's embassy in 448, Priscus could identify Hunnic, Gothic, and Latin as the three common languages of the horde. Priscus also recounts his meeting with an eastern Roman captive who had so fully assimilated into the Huns' way of life that he had no desire to return to his former country, and the Byzantine historian's description of Attila's humility and simplicity is unambiguous in its admiration.

The historical context of Attila's life played a large part in determining his later public image: in the waning years of the western Empire, his conflicts with Aetius (often called the "last of the Romans") and the strangeness of his culture both helped dress him in the mask of the ferocious barbarian and enemy of civilization, as he has been portrayed in any number of films and other works of art. The Germanic epics in which he appears offer more nuanced depictions: he is both a noble and generous ally, as Etzel in the Nibelungenlied, and a cruel miser, as Atli in the Volsunga Saga and the Poetic Edda'\'. Some national histories, though, always portray him favorably; in Hungary and Turkey the names of Attila (sometimes as Atilla in Turkish) and his last wife Ildikó remain popular to this day. In a similar vein, the Hungarian author Géza Gárdonyi's novel A láthatatlan ember (published in English as Slave of the Huns'', and largely based on Priscus) offered a sympathetic portrait of Attila as a wise and beloved leader.

The name Attila may mean "Little Father" in Gothic (atta "father" plus diminutive suffix -la) as many Goths were known to serve under Attila. It could also be of pre-Turkish (Altaic) origin (compare it with Atatürk and Alma-Ata, now called Almaty). It most probably originates from atta ("father") and il ("land"), meaning "Land-Father". Atil was also the Altaic name of the present-day Volga river which may have given its name to Attila.

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See also

References

Recommended modern works are:

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