[ra.msstate.edu:pub\/history\/articles\/article.attila.txt]<\/p>\n
This is a draft of an article that was published in a slightly different
\nform in MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History. All citations should
\nbe to the published version and not to this draft.<\/p>\n
ATTILA THE HUN AND THE BATTLE OF CHALONS<\/p>\n
by Arther Ferrill<\/p>\n
No one represents the unbridled fury and savagery of bar-
\nbarism as much as Attila the Hun. Even in the twentieth cen-
\ntury one of the worst names that could be found for the Germans
\nwas to call them Huns. Attila, as the greatest Hun leader,
\nis the stereotypical sacker of cities and killer of babies.
\nIn his own day he and his Huns were known as the “Scourge of
\nGod,” and the devastation they caused in Gaul before the great
\nBattle of Chalons in 451 AD became a part of medieval folklore
\nand tradition.
\nThe clash at Chalons was one of those rare monumental
\nconflicts, pitting against one another two of the towering
\nfigures of Late Antiquity, the fierce and passionate Attila
\nand the noble Ae?tius, sometimes called “the last of the Ro-
\nmans.” By 451 Aetius had been the foremost general in the
\nRoman Empire for many years, and he was also the chief polit-
\nical adviser to the Emperor of the West, Valentinian III. In
\nthe previous forty years the once great Empire had suffered
\nstaggering setbacks, especially in the West. Ae?tius had done
\nmore than anyone else to keep what remained of the Roman world
\nstrong and prosperous.
\nDespite Ae?tius’ efforts, when Attila crossed the Rhine
\nwith the Huns in 451, he threatened a tottering relic of pow-
\ner. The Western Roman Empire had already been ravaged by
\nVisigoths, Vandals, Suebi, Alamanni, Burgundians and other
\nbarbarian tribes. Visigoths had an independent kingdom in
\nAquitaine, and Vandals occupied North Africa with a capital
\nat Carthage. Roman rule in many parts of Gaul and Spain was
\nmerely nominal. Although Aetius had waged his own personal
\nfight against the tide of the times, he had not been able to
\nhold back the wave of invasions that had rolled over the West
\never since Alaric and the Visigoths had sacked the city of
\nRome in 410.
\nOne of the most fascinating features of the story of At-
\ntila and the Huns is that the background to their potent pen-
\netration of Roman Gaul and the decisive Battle of ChE?lons is
\nevery bit as spellbinding as the actual combat itself. Al-
\nthough parts of the story are nearly incredible, the evidence
\nfor it is reasonably good–as good, at least, as evidence ever
\nis for the fifth century AD. It is a tale of lust for sex and
\npower, for money and land, and the principal actors are as
\ncolorful as any who ever lived.
\nThe Huns themselves were a people of mystery and terror.
\nArriving on the fringes of the Roman Empire in the late fourth
\ncentury, riding their war horses out of the great steppes of
\nAsia, they struck fear into Germanic barbarians and Romans
\nalike. Some scholars believe that they had earlier moved
\nagainst the Chinese Empire but were turned away and swept to-
\nwards Rome instead. As they approached the Black Sea and con-
\nquered the Ostrogoths, they also drove the Visigoths across
\nthe Danube into the Roman Empire and caused the crisis that
\nled to the astounding defeat of the Roman army under the Em-
\nperor Valens at Adrianople in 378 AD.
\nThose early Huns, using the traditional tactics of mount-
\ned archers, seemed like monsters from the darkness to their
\nmore civilized contemporaries. The Roman historian Ammianus
\nMarcellinus, writing at the end of the fourth century, de-
\nscribed their savage customs and elaborated on their military
\ntactics:<\/p>\n
The nation of the Huns…surpasses all other barbarians
\nin wildness of life….And though [the Huns] do just bear
\nthe likeness of men (of a very ugly pattern), they are
\nso little advanced in civilization that they make no use
\nof fire, nor any kind of relish, in the preparation of
\ntheir food, but feed upon the roots which they find in
\nthe fields, and the half-raw flesh of any sort of animal.
\nI say half-raw, because they give it a kind of cooking
\nby placing it between their own thighs and the backs of
\ntheir horses….
\n When attacked, they will sometimes engage in regular
\nbattle. Then, going into the fight in order of columns,
\nthey fill the air with varied and discordant cries. More
\noften, however, they fight in no regular order of battle,
\nbut by being extremely swift and sudden in their move-
\nments, they disperse, and then rapidly come together
\nagain in loose array, spread havoc over vast plains, and
\nflying over the rampart, they pillage the camp of their
\nenemy almost before he has become aware of their ap-
\nproach. It must be owned that they are the most terrible
\nof warriors because they fight at a distance with missile
\nweapons having sharpened bones admirably fastened to the
\nshaft. When in close combat with swords, they fight
\nwithout regard to their own safety, and while their enemy
\nis intent upon parrying the thrust of the swords, they
\nthrow a net over him and so entangle his limbs that he
\nloses all power of walking or riding.<\/p>\n
Obviously, when the Huns first appeared on the edges of
\nthe Roman Empire, they made a strong impression, but after
\ntheir initial threats they settled down along the Danube, par-
\nticularly in the Great Hungarian Plain, and for almost fifty
\nyears they served the Romans as allies more often than they
\nattacked them as enemies. In return, the Eastern Emperor,
\nbeginning in the 420’s, paid them an annual subsidy. On the
\nwhole, this uneasy relationship worked well although there
\nwere times when the Huns threatened to intervene directly in
\nimperial affairs.
\nThe decisive turn of events came with the accession of
\nAttila as King of the Huns. The new ruler was much more ag-
\ngressive and ambitious than his predecessors had been, and ar-
\nrogance sometimes made him unpredictable. There is a story
\nthat he claimed to own the actual sword of Mars, and that other
\nbarbarian chiefs could not look the King of the Huns directly
\nin the eyes without flinching. Attila was a striking figure,
\nand Edward Gibbon in The History of the Decline and Fall of
\nthe Roman Empire offered a famous description of the person-
\nality and appearance of the Hun, based on an ancient account:<\/p>\n
His features, according to the observation of a Gothic
\nhistorian, bore the stamp of his national origin…a
\nlarge head, a swarthy complexion, small, deep-seated
\neyes, a flat nose, a few hairs in the place of a beard,
\nbroad shoulders, and a short square body, of a nervous
\nstrength, though of a disproportioned form. The haughty
\nstep and demeanour of the king of the Huns expressed the
\nconsciousness of his superiority above the rest of man-
\nkind; and he had a custom of fiercely rolling his eyes,
\nas if he wished to enjoy the terror which he in-
\nspired….He delighted in war; but, after he had ascended
\nthe throne in a mature age, his head, rather than his
\nhand, achieved the conquest of the North; and the fame
\nof an adventurous soldier was usefully exchanged for that
\nof a prudent and successful general.<\/p>\n
At the outset of his reign (sometime after 435) Attila
\ndemanded more money, and the Eastern Emperor, Theodosius II,
\nobligingly doubled the annual subsidy. For various reasons,
\nhowever, the new king began in the late 440’s to look to the
\nWest as the main area of opportunity for the Huns. For the
\nnext decade and a half after his accession Attila was the most
\npowerful foreign potentate in the affairs of the Western Roman
\nEmpire. His Huns had become a sedentary nation and were no
\nlonger the horse nomads of the earlier days. The Great Hun-
\ngarian Plain did not offer as much room as the steppes of Asia
\nfor grazing horses, and the Huns were forced to develop an
\ninfantry to supplement their now much smaller cavalry. As one
\nleading authority has recently said, “When the Huns first ap-
\npeared on the steppe north of the Black Sea, they were nomads
\nand most of them may have been mounted warriors. In Europe,
\nhowever, they could graze only a fraction of their former
\nhorse-power, and their chiefs soon fielded armies which re-
\nsembled the sedentary forces of Rome.” By the time of Attila
\nthe army of the Huns had become like that of most barbarian
\nnations in Europe. It was, however, very large, as we shall
\nsee, and capable of conducting siege operations, which most
\nother barbarian armies could not do effectively.
\nIn any event the Hunnic invasion of Gaul was a huge un-
\ndertaking. The Huns had a reputation for cruelty that was not
\nundeserved. In the 440’s one of Attila’s attacks against the
\nEast in the Balkans aimed at a city in the Danubian provinces,
\nNaissus (441-42). It was located about a hundred miles south
\nof the Danube on the Nischava River. The Huns so devastated
\nthe place that when Roman ambassadors passed through to meet
\nwith Attila several years later, they had to camp outside the
\ncity on the river. The river banks were still filled with
\nhuman bones, and the stench of death was so great that no one
\ncould enter the city. Many cities of Gaul would soon suffer
\nthe same fate.
\nAfter securing a strong position on the Roman side of the
\nDanube the Huns were checked by the famous Eastern Roman
\ngeneral, Aspar, as they raided Thrace (442). Then, in 447,
\nAttila descended into the Balkans in another great war against
\nthe East. The Huns marched as far as Thermopylae and stopped
\nonly when the Eastern Emperor, Thodosius II, begged for terms.
\nAttila accepted payment of all tribute in arrears and a new
\nannual tribute of 2,100 pounds of gold. The Huns were also
\ngiven considerable territory south of the Danube. One source
\nsays of this campaign, “There was so much killing and blood-
\nletting that no one could number the dead. The Huns pillaged
\nthe churches and monasteries, and slew the monks and
\nvirgins….They so devastated Thrace that it will never rise
\nagain and be as it was before.” This strong victory in the
\nEast left Attila free to plan the attack on the West that
\nculminated in the invasion of Gaul.
\nAnother of the great barbaric chieftains of the age,
\nGaiseric, King of the Vandals, played a role in the prelude
\nto Chalons. He urged Attila to attack the Visigoths in the
\nWest because of the hostility between Vandals and Visigoths.
\nA generation earlier Gaiseric’s son had married the daughter
\nof Theodoric I, King of the Visigoths, but in 442 the Roman
\nEmperor Valentinian III agreed to the betrothal of his daugh-
\nter to Gaiseric’s son, and the Visigothic princess was re-
\nturned to her people with her nose and ears inhumanly
\nmutilated. From that time on the enmity of Vandals and Visig-
\noths was great, and when Attila did cross the Rhine, the
\nVisigoths joined Aetius against the Huns, but the Vandals
\nstayed out of the war.
\nTwo other considerations proved especially important.
\nOne was the death of the Eastern Emperor Theodosius II, who
\nfell from his horse and died in 450. His successor, Marcian
\n(450-7), took a hard line on barbarian encroachment in the
\nBalkans and refused to pay Attila the usual subsidy. The fury
\nof the Hun was monstrous, but he decided to take out his wrath
\non the West, because it was weaker than the East,and because
\none of history’s most peculiar scandals gave Attila a justi-
\nfication for war with the Western Emperor. Honoria, Emperor
\nValentinian’s sister, had been discovered in 449 in an affair
\nwith her steward. The unfortunate lover was executed, and
\nHonoria, who was probably pregnant, was kept in seclusion. In
\na rage she smuggled a ring and a message to the King of the
\nHuns and asked Attila to become her champion. He treated this
\nas a marriage proposal and asked for half of the Western Em-
\npire as her dowry. So when he crossed the Rhine, he could
\nclaim that he merely sought by force what was his by right of
\nbetrothal to Honoria.
\nAfter massive preparations Attila invaded the Rhine with
\na large army of Huns and allied barbarian tribes. In his force
\nwas a sizable body of Ostrogoths and other Germanic warriors,
\nincluding Burgundians and Alans who lived on the barbarian
\nside of the frontier. The Franks were split between pro- and
\nanti-Roman factions. As early as April Attila took Metz, and
\nfear swept through Gaul. Ancient accounts give figures that
\nrange between 300,000 and 700,000 for the army of the Huns.
\nWhatever the size, it was clearly enormous for the fifth cen-
\ntury AD. Some of the greatest cities of Europe were sacked
\nand put to the torch: Rheims, Mainz, Strasbourg, Cologne,
\nWorms and Trier. Paris fortunately had the advantage of hav-
\ning a saint in the city and was spared because of the minis-
\ntrations of St. Genvieve.
\nAfter he secured the Rhine, Attila moved into central
\nGaul and put OrlCAans under siege. Had he gained his objec-
\ntive, he would have been in a strong position to subdue the
\nVisigoths in Aquitiane, but Ae?tius had put together a formi-
\ndable coalition against the Hun. Working frenetically, the
\nRoman leader had built a powerful alliance of Visigoths, Alans
\nand Burgundians, uniting them with their traditional enemy,
\nthe Romans, for the defense of Gaul. Even though all parties
\nto the protection of the Western Roman Empire had a common
\nhatred of the Huns, it was still a remarkable achievement on
\nAe?tius’ part to have drawn them into an effective military
\nrelationship.
\nAttila had not expected such vigorous action on the part
\nof the Romans, and he was too wise to let his army be trapped
\naround the walls of Orleans, so he abandoned the siege, ac-
\ncording to one source, on June 14. This gave the Romans and
\ntheir allies the advantage in morale as the Huns withdrew into
\nthe open country of the modern Champagne district of France.
\nThere on the Catalaunian Plains (some believe closer to Troyes
\nthan to Chalons) a great battle was fought, probably about
\nJune 20. Attila seems to have been shaken by his sudden re-
\nversal of fortune. Uncertain of victory and in the confusion
\nof retreat, on the day of the battle he stayed behind his lines
\nin the wagon laager until afternoon. It is likely that he
\nplanned to begin fighting late enough in the day to fall back
\nunder darkness of night should that prove necessary. He did
\nfinally move up his army in battle order.
\nOn the right wing of the Hunnic army Attila stationed the
\nbulk of his Germanic allies. The Ostrogoths fought on the
\nleft, and in the center Attila took position with his best
\ntroops, the Huns. On the other side Aetius decide to put his
\nleast reliable troops, the Alans, in the center to take what-
\never assault Attila directed towards them. The Visigoths were
\nplaced on the Roman right, and the Romans themselves took the
\nleft. Aetius clearly hoped to execute a double envelopment,
\nhitting hard against the two weak flanks of Attila’s army
\nwhile fighting a defensive, holding action in the center.
\nWhen the Romans on the left were able to seize some high ground
\non the flank of the Hunnic right wing during an initial skir-
\nmish, they gained a considerable advantage.
\nThus began one of the Western world’s greatest and most
\ndecisive battles. All the sources agree that it was a costly
\none in human lives: cadavera vero innumera (“truly countless
\nbodies”), is the way one ancient author puts it. Attila
\nstruck hard against the Alans in the Roman center. As he drove
\nthem back the Romans on his right moved down in a sharp attack.
\nThe forward momentum of the Huns in the center exposed their
\nflank to an attack by Theodoric, King of the Visigoths, and
\nas night fell, the Huns had taken a beating though losses on
\nboth sides were extraordinary. Attila retreated to the safety
\nof his laager, and the archers of the Huns kept the Romans at
\nbay. Theodoric had lost his life in the battle.
\nIn fact at this point the battle was over. Some on the
\nRoman side wanted Ae?tius to resume the fighting the next day,
\nbut he chose not to. Perhaps he wanted to leave Attila with
\nhis forces, though battered, still intact in order to keep the
\nbarbarians of Gaul united behind Rome. In any event, he en-
\ncouraged the new King of the Visigoths to hurry back to
\nAquitaine to secure his accession to the throne. Attila began
\nhis withdrawal back across the Rhine and was able to effect
\nit easily. Many have criticized Aa?tius for making things too
\neasy for the Huns, for not destroying their army, but it is
\nnot necessary to introduce political considerations to ex-
\nplain the Roman commander’s motives. Militarily he did the
\nright thing. The sources make it clear that the Roman alli-
\nance also took heavy losses at Chalons, and Attila was merely
\na wounded tiger. He continued to have considerable military
\npower. Although the Hun had been beaten in a bloody battle,
\nit was probably wise for Aetius to allow his savage foe a line
\nof retreat. To have driven Attila the Hun out of the Empire
\nwas satisfaction enough. It is true that in the following
\nyear Attila invaded Italy and caused much suffering before he
\nwithdrew, but if he had launched a successful counterattack
\nin Gaul the whole course of Western history might have been
\nchanged. Unlike most other barbarians of the age, the Huns
\nwere not Christians, and their respect for the Graeco-Roman
\nChristian civilization of the Late Empire was much more lim-
\nited even than that of Visigoth and Vandal.
\nFor various reasons twentieth century “scientific” his-
\ntorians have minimized and even ridiculed the concept of “de-
\ncisive battles”. There is a widespread belief that human
\nevents are rarely determined on the battlefield. In the nine-
\nteenth century Edward Creasy’s book, The Fifteen Decisive Bat-
\ntles of the World (originally published in 1851) became a best
\nseller and exercised considerable influence. (Incidentally
\nCreasy included the Battle of Chalons on his list.) But the
\nearly twentieth century saw a change. Hans Delbru?ck totally
\nignored Chalons in his monumental History of the Art of War
\nWithin the Framework of Political History (1920-21), and one
\nof the foremost authorities on the Late Roman Empire, J.B.
\nBury, refused, as some others have done, even to call it by
\nits traditional name:<\/p>\n
The Battle of Maurica [Chalons] was a battle of nations,
\nbut its significance has been enormously exaggerated in con-
\nventional history. It cannot in any reasonable sense be des-
\nignated as one of the critical battles of the world….The
\ndanger did not mean so much as has been commonly assumed. If
\nAttila had been victorious…there is no reason to suppose
\nthat the course of history would have been seriously altered.<\/p>\n
To be sure, the exact location of the battle has been
\ndisputed and is in doubt. In that general area of modern
\nFrance it has been a favorite occupation of retired colonels
\nto spend their weekends looking for evidence of the battle-
\nfield. But there are many extremely important ancient battles
\nwhose exact locations are uncertain: Plataea, Issus, Cannae,
\nZama, and Pharsalus, to name but a few. Considering the pau-
\ncity of ancient evidence uncertainty of that sort is to be
\nexpected, and it can hardly be used as evidence that the bat-
\ntles were not important. As to exaggerating the danger of
\nAttila and the Huns, why were they less dangerous than Hanni-
\nbal and the Carthaginians or Alaric and the Visigoths?
\nIt is true that the threat of the Huns to Rome had not
\nbeen entirely removed by Aa?tius’ victory at Chalons. Though
\nbeaten and forced to retreat across the Rhine, Attila still
\nhad a powerful force, and he had not learned his lesson. The
\nnext year (452) he crossed over the Alps and moved down into
\nItaly, launching another great invasion that terrorized the
\ninhabitants of the Western Roman Empire. In some ways this
\nsecond invasion of the West was even more savage than the
\nfirst. The city of Aquileia at the tip of the Adriatic was
\nwiped off the face of the earth. The fugitives from that piti-
\nful city are supposed to have fled into the lagoons of the
\nAdriatic and to have founded the new city of Venice. Much of
\nthe Po Valley–Milan, Verona, and Padua–was devastated and
\ndepopulated. The Hun had pillaged and destroyed Northern It-
\naly! Aa?tius found it much more difficult to persuade Visig-
\noths and Alans to help in the defense of Italy than he had a
\nyear earlier in organizing them to protect Gaul.
\nFor awhile it appeared that Italy would be lost to the
\ninvaders, but actually Attila’s position was weaker than the
\nRomans realized, undoubtedly because of the serious losses he
\nhad suffered the previous year at ChE?lons. There is a famous
\ntradition that Pope Leo I met Attila in Northern Italy at the
\nconfluence of the Minicio and the Po and persuaded him to
\nleave Italy with a display of eloquence and a show of elabo-
\nrate sacerdotal robes. There occurred, according to legend,
\none of the most famous miracles in the history of Christian-
\nity–St. Peter and St. Paul appeared to Attila threatening him
\nwith instant death if he ignored the urgings of Leo.
\nIn an act that added immeasurably to the influence of the
\nfledgling papacy, an obliging Attila led his army out of It-
\naly. It was probably not so much the influence of Leo as the
\nfact that his troops were short of supplies that motivated the
\ngreat barbarian leader. There had been a famine in Italy in
\n450-51, and logistical support had never been a strong point
\nfor barbarian armies. Also a plague swept through the army
\nof the Huns, and the Eastern Emperor Marcian sent an army
\nacross the Danube to strike into the heartland of the Huns’
\nterritory. When these factors are added to the disastrous
\nloses the year earlier at Chalons, it is obvious why Attila
\nwas able to see merit in the humanitarian arguments of Pope
\nLeo.
\nIn any event, the great Hun spared Rome and withdrew from
\nItaly. Twice in successive years, at Chalons and in Northern
\nItaly, the menace of the Huns had proved incapable of bringing
\nthe Western Empire to its knees. Perhaps Rome’s last great
\nservice to the West was to serve as a buffer between the Asi-
\natic Huns and the Germanic barbarians whose destiny was to lay
\nthe medieval foundations of the modern, western nations. Ae-
\ntius had been blamed by many Italians for not having destroyed
\nAttila and the Huns in Gaul, but “the last of the Romans” had
\ncontributed substantially to the ruin of the once proud bar-
\nbarian nation. Its place in the pages of history was over.
\nIn the next year after the retreat from Italy Attila died
\nan appropriately barbarian death. He took a new, young, beau-
\ntiful bride, a damsel named Ildico, though he already had a
\ncoterie of wives. The wedding day was spent in heavy drinking
\nand partying, and the King of the Huns took his new bride to
\nbed that night in drunken lust. The next morning it was dis-
\ncovered that he had died–drowned in his drunkenness in his
\nown nosebleed. The new bride was found quivering in fear in
\nthe great man’s bedquarters. The empire of the Huns dissi-
\npated nearly as quickly as its most famous leader. In 454 the
\nOstrogoths and other Germanic tribes revolted against the
\nHuns, and the sons of Attila, who had quarreled among them-
\nselves, could not deal with the crisis. In the words of Bury,
\nthe Huns were “scattered to the winds.”
\nEven in the last days of the Roman Empire in the West it
\nwas still possible for the imperial general Aetius to mobilize
\na major military force in defense of Gaul. During his ascen-
\ndancy in the 430’s, 40s and early 50s Rome had lost much, par-
\nticularly to the Vandals in North Africa, yet had remained
\npowerful enough to thwart the ambitions of Attila the Hun.
\nNaturally, there was jealousy and rivalry between Aa?tius and
\nhis superior, the Emperor Valentinian III. The General’s suc-
\ncess against the Huns and his effective treatment of the
\nVisigoths in Gaul actually helped to make him unnecessary any
\nlonger, and in 454 Valentinian killed him personally with the
\nimperial sword. One of the Emperor’s advisers said, “You have
\ncut off your right hand with your left.” The next year two
\nof Ae?tius’ followers killed the Emperor, and within a gener-
\nation, by 476, there would no longer be a Roman Emperor in the
\nWest. Ae?tius was truly “the last of the Romans.”<\/p>\n
Recommended Readings<\/p>\n
There are many excellent books on the Late Roman Empire
\nand on the Huns. I list several of the most important ones
\nhere, but their bibliographies contain many more specialized
\nworks.<\/p>\n
J.B. Bury, History of the Later Roman Empire, 2 vols.,
\nLondon and New York (reprint of 1923 ed.).<\/p>\n
Arther Ferrill, The Fall of the Roman Empire: The Mil-
\nitary Explanation, London and New York 1986<\/p>\n
Edward Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the
\nRoman Empire, with Introduction, Notes and Appendices by J.B.
\nBury, 7 vols., London 1909-14.<\/p>\n
Thomas Hodgkin, Italy and Her Invaders, 2 vols., 2nd ed.,
\nOxford 1892.<\/p>\n
A.H.M. Jones, The Later Roman Empire 284-602, 4 vols.,
\nOxford 1964.<\/p>\n
Otto J. Maenchen-Helfen, The World of the Huns, Berkeley
\n1973.<\/p>\n
E.A. Thompson, A History of Attila and the Huns, Oxford
\n1948.<\/p>\n
