Attila the Hun
Attila the Hun
Feast of Attila by Mór Than, 1870
Death of Attila by Ferenc Paczka
Attila and his Hordes Overrun Italy and the Arts (fragment)
The figure of Attila in a museum in Hungary
Attila was born in Pannonia, a province of the Roman Empire (present-day Transdanubia, Hungary), circa 406, into the most powerful family north of the Danube River. His father's name was Mundzuk, who seems to have died early in the boy's life, and his uncles, Octar and Rugila (also Ruga or Rua), jointly ruled the Hun Empire in the late 420s and early 430s.
As a young man, Attila, and his older brother Bleda (also known as Buda), were taught archery, how to ride and care for horses, and how to fight. They were also taught Latin and Gothic to enable them to do business with the Romans and Goths.
Attila's uncles, Octar and Rugar, ruled the Hunnic Empire in dual kingship. With their deaths in 434, Bleda and Attila inherited joint control over the empire. They together brokered the Treaty of Margus with Rome in 439 CE. This treaty continued the precedent of Rome paying off the Huns in return for peace, which would be a more or less constant stipulation in Roman-Hun relations until Attila's death. An agreement between the Huns and the Romans had already been brokered in 435 CE by the Roman general Flavius Aetius, who had lived among the Huns as a hostage in his youth, spoke their language, and employed them to his advantage in his various power struggles in the empire. The Treaty of Margus expanded on Aetius' treaty: the Romans promised to return all Hun refugees who had fled into Roman territories, would not enter into pacts or treaties with enemies of the Huns, would establish fair trading rights and would make an annual payment of seven hundred pounds of gold directly to Attila and Bleda. For their part, the Huns promised not to attack Rome, not to enter into pacts or treaties with Rome's enemies, and to defend the Danube frontier and the provinces of the Roman Empire.
The treaty concluded, the Romans were able to withdraw their troops from the Danube region and send them against the Vandals who were threatening Rome's provinces in Sicily and North Africa. The Huns turned their attention east after the Margus Treaty and warred against the Sassanid Empire but were repelled and driven back toward the Great Hungarian Plain, which was their home base. With the Roman troops who once guarded the border now deployed to Sicily, the Huns saw an opportunity for easy plunder. As soon as Attila and Bleda received reliable intelligence that the fleet had left for Sicily, they opened their Danube offensive. They claimed the Romans had violated the Margus treaty by not sending back all the Hun refugees in Roman territory and, further, claimed that a Roman bishop had made a secret trip into Hun territory to desecrate Hun graves and steal valuable grave goods - and they wanted this bishop turned over to them.
Theodosius sent his general Flavius Aspar to try to negotiate with Attila and Bleda, but it was no use. Attila showed Aspar recently disturbed graves, but there was no way of telling whose graves they were, who had disturbed them, or what may have been taken from them. With no proof of a crime, Aspar refused to turn the bishop over to the Huns and, further, claimed he had no knowledge of Hun refugees hiding from Attila and Bleda on Roman soil. The Huns insisted, Aspar could not comply, and negotiations reached a stalemate. Aspar returned to Constantinople to report these developments to Theodosius but does not seem to have felt there was any imminent threat of a Hun invasion. The refugees in question were Huns who had fled Attila's rule, and who he wanted returned before they could stir up rebellion against him. As it turned out, there were still a number of refugees living in Roman territory (who would later be handed over), and the bishop Attila wanted most likely did rob the graves and would later betray the city of Margus to the Huns so, as it happened, it would have been better if Aspar had simply handed him and the refugees over in the first place.
He did not do so, however, and considering the treaty broken, Attila mobilized for war. As Aspar headed back toward Constantinople in the summer of 441 CE, Attila and Bleda drove their armies through the border regions and sacked the cities of the province of Illyricum, which were very profitable Roman trade centers. They then further violated the Treaty of Margus by riding on to that city and destroying it (with the help of the bishop who opened the gates for them). Theodosius II then declared the treaty broken and recalled his armies from the provinces to stop the Hun rampage. Attila and Bleda responded with a full-scale invasion, sacking and destroying Roman cities all the way to within 20 miles of the Roman capital of Constantinople. The city of Naissus, the birthplace of Roman emperor Constantine the Great, was razed and would not be rebuilt for a century afterwards. Theodosius II, realizing he was defeated but unwilling to admit total defeat, asked for terms; the sum Rome now had to pay to keep the Huns from further destruction was more than tripled.
After their Danube Offensive, Attila and Bleda led their troops back home to the Great Hungarian Plain, where Bleda then vanishes from the historical record. Scholars have suggested that Bleda may have been assassinated as a result of the plots of his brother Attila or have been killed on campaign but, however he died, in 445 CE, Attila became the sole leader of the Huns and the most powerful military commander in Europe.
Attila saw Rome as a feeble adversary and so, starting in 446 or 447 CE, he again invaded the region of Moesia (the Balkan area), destroying over 70 cities, taking survivors as slaves, and sending the loot back to his stronghold at the city of Buda (possibly Budapest in present-day Hungary, though this claim has been contested by some historians). In 450 CE, Valentinian's sister, Honoria, was seeking to escape an arranged marriage with a Roman senator and sent a message to Attila, along with her engagement ring, asking for his help. Although she may never have intended anything like marriage, Attila chose to interpret her message and ring as a betrothal and sent back his terms as one half of the Western Empire for her dowry. Valentinian, when he discovered what his sister had done, sent messengers to Attila telling him it was all a mistake, and there was no proposal, no marriage, and no dowry to be negotiated. Attila asserted that the marriage proposal was legitimate, that he had accepted and would claim his bride, and mobilized his army to march on Rome.
In 451 CE he began his conquests with an army of probably about 200,000 men, although sources, such as Jordanes, set the number higher at half a million. They took Gallia Belgica province (modern-day Belgium) easily and moved on to ravage the land. The only time Attila had been turned back from a conquest was by the Sassanids, and his reputation for slaughter and invincibility preceded him as he moved through Gaul. Attila took Trier and Metz without opposition, massacred the citizens, and then rode on, destroying everything in his path. He was finally met in battle by the combined forces of the Romans under Flavius Aetius, who understood Hun strategy and tactics, and the Visigoths under Theodoric I on the Cataluanian Plains. The Romans, occupying the high ground, quickly succeeded in pushing the Huns back.
Although Attila had been stopped in his invasion, he had hardly been defeated. The Romans claimed the victory, however, and returned to their homes in the hope that Attila would now harass someone else. In 452 CE, though, he returned to invade Italy and claim the bride who had promised him her hand in marriage. Here, as in Gaul, he spread a wide swath of destruction and so completely sacked the city of Aquileia that not only would it never rise again, but no one even knew where it had stood. The people of Italy, as the Gauls before them, were terrified of the Hun invasion but now, unlike the year before, Aetius did not have an army of sufficient force to stop Attila. In flight from Attila's army, people took refuge on what solid ground they could find in the watery regions they felt Attila would bypass.
For reasons no one knows, the Huns stopped at the Po River. A famine had been plaguing Italy for the better part of two years, and quite possibly Attila had simply run out of supplies. It has also been suggested that plague had broken out in Attila's army, which forced him to abandon his plans. Further, there is the suggestion that his men cautioned him against continuing on to sack Rome. The Gothic commander Alaric I had sacked Rome in 410 CE and died shortly afterwards; superstition suggested Alaric's death was a direct result of his assault on such a prestigious city. It is also possible that some kind of peace was agreed to between Attila and Rome. Valentinian sent Pope Leo I with a delegation to seek terms from Attila, but the details of that meeting are unknown. All that is clear is that, following the meeting with Leo I and his delegates, Attila turned back and retreated to his stronghold in Hungary.
In 453 Attila was intending to attack the Eastern Empire, where the new emperor Marcian had refused to pay the subsidies agreed upon by his predecessor, Theodosius II. But during the night following his marriage, Attila died in his sleep. Those who buried him and his treasures were subsequently put to death by the Huns so that his grave might never be discovered. He was succeeded by his sons, who divided his empire among them.
Attila the Hun was one of the most successful barbarian rulers of the Hunnic Empire. He expanded the rule of the Huns to include many Germanic tribes and attacked the Eastern Roman Empire in wars of extraction, devastating lands from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean, and inspiring fear throughout the late Roman Empire. He not only made the Huns the most effective fighting force of the time, but he also built a vast empire from virtually nothing in less than ten years. At its height, this empire stretched from central Asia across to modern-day France and down through the Danube Valley.
Little is known about Attila’s religious beliefs - he seems to have had little interest either in Christianity or other religions; however, he did have a belief in prophecy. He was also said to have taken the discovery of a well-crafted sword by a shepherd to be a sign that he had a right to wage war.
Quotations:
"For what fortress, what city, in the wide extent of the Roman empire, can hope to exist, secure and impregnable, if it is our pleasure that it should be erased from the earth?"
"Superficial goals lead to superficial results."
"It takes less courage to criticize the decisions of others than to stand by your own."
"Never arbitrate. Arbitration allows a third party to determine your destiny. It is a resort of the weak."
"If an incompetent chieftain is removed, seldom do we appoint his highest-ranking subordinate to his place."
"Do not underestimate the power of an enemy, no matter how great or small, to rise against you another day."
"It's not that I succeed, it's that everyone else has to fail, horribly, preferably in front of their parents."
"If I would of visited this site when I was conquering, I would have been known as 'Atilla the Fun.'"
"There, where I have passed, the grass will never grow gain."
Attila's ability to command a vast army of warriors (often comprised of different tribes such as the Alans, Alemanni, and Ostrogoths) was also in contrast to Roman generals of his time, who had difficulty keeping their non-Roman contingents under control. Attila was a brilliant horseman and military leader, possessed a commanding presence, and held his empire together through the strength of his individual personality. Attila was said to be a just ruler to his own people. But Attila was also an aggressive and ruthless leader.
Historian Will Durant wrote of Attila that "he differed from the other barbarian conquerors in trusting to cunning more than to force. He ruled by using the heathen superstitions of his people to sanctify his majesty; his victories were prepared by the exaggerated stories of his cruelty which perhaps he had himself originated; at last even his Christian enemies called him the "scourge of God" and were so terrified by his cunning that only the Goths could save them. He could neither read nor write, but this did not detract from his intelligence. He was not a savage; he had a sense of honor and justice, and often proved himself more magnanimous than the Romans. He lived and dressed simply, ate and drank moderately, and left luxury to his inferiors, who loved to display their gold and silver utensils, harness, and swords, and the delicate embroidery that attested the skillful fingers of their wives. Attila had many wives, but scorned that mixture of monogamy and debauchery which was popular in some circles of Ravenna and Rome. His palace was a huge loghouse floored and walled with planed planks, but adorned with elegantly carved or polished wood, and reinforced with carpets and skins to keep out the cold." Among the "heathen superstitions" Durant notes is the war sword Attila carried, which he claimed was left for him by the Roman god of war, Mars.
Physical Characteristics: Priscus, Eastern Roman diplomat and Greek historian, who saw Attila when he visited his camp in 448, described him as a short, squat man with a large head, deep-set eyes, flat nose, and a thin beard. Attila was notorious for his fierce gaze; according to historian Edward Gibbon, he frequently rolled his eyes "as if to enjoy the terror he inspired."
Quotes from others about the person
Edward Albee: "If Attila the Hun were alive today, he'd be a drama critic."
Darius Arya: "Attila is a brilliant tactician; he comes to the walls of Constantinople, he threatens, he gets his bribe, he goes away, he can come back, so he's like that mafia boss that keeps on coming, keeps on extorting. In the end, he's a part of your life, he's a part of your culture, and you can't get rid of him."
Mike Dash: "He called himself flagellum Dei, the scourge of God, and even today, 1,500 years after his blood-drenched death, his name remains a byword for brutality. Ancient artists placed great stress on his inhumanity, depicting him with goatish beard and devil’s horns. Then as now, he seemed the epitome of an Asian steppe nomad: ugly, squat and fearsome, lethal with a bow, interested chiefly in looting and in rape."
Adrian Goldsworthy: "His is one of the few names from antiquity that still prompt instant recognition, putting him alongside the likes of Alexander, Caesar, Cleopatra and Nero. Attila has become the barbarian of the ancient world."
David Mallott: "The slaughter of the Burgundians by Attila reinforces in my mind this view that he's working for money. There's no greater goal. It's destruction for destruction's sake, out of pure spite and hatred."
Wess Roberts: "Seen in perspectives different from those who wrote his history - much of which must be to some degree apocryphal, if not biased by political preferences - Attila might today be characterized as an entrepreneur, diplomat, social reformer, statesman, civilizer, brilliant field marshal and host of some terrific parties."
Attila practiced polygamy and had multiple wives.
Mundzuk was a Hunnic chieftain.
Ildikó was the last wife of the Hunnic ruler Attila. Her name is East Germanic and suggests a Gothic origin. According to Priscus, Attila died after the feast celebrating their marriage in 453 AD, in which he suffered a severe nosebleed and choked to death in a stupor.
Bleda was a Hunnic ruler. Bleda's reign lasted for eleven years until his death. While it has been speculated by Jordanes that Attila murdered him on a hunting trip, it is unknown exactly how he died.
Rugila (also Ruga or Rua) was a ruler who was a major factor in the Huns' early victories over the Roman Empire. He served as an important forerunner with his brother Octar, with whom he initially ruled in dual kingship, possibly a geographical division where Rugila ruled over Eastern Huns while Octar over Western Huns, during the 5th century AD.
