Attila, king of the Huns, whoin the fifth century was the protagonist of the first barbarian invasion of the Roman Empire. His figure is the conversion into legend thanks to the innumerable stories and chronicles that present him as a symbol of terror and devastation. Certainly, he destroyed the immense territory of the Roman Empire, destroying cities killing its inhabitants, and creating a vast empire whose limits stretched from the Alps and the Baltic Sea to the west, to the vicinity of the Caspian Sea, within its oriental limits.
First invasions:
When Attila and his brother Bleda came to power, the Hun empire stretched over a vast territory that stretched from the Baltic to the Aral, and had an impressive army of 700,000 men, thirsting for blood and riches. Once Bleda had been eliminated by Attila himself, according to some historians, Attila decided to send his terrible horsemen against the Roman empires of East and West, whose civilization he hated deeply. Thus began the great barbarian invasions that would destroy the ancient world. The Roman reaction failed to contain the hordes of Attila, and Theodosius II the Younger named the Hun king general of the Eastern Empire, with an annual pension of 700 pounds of gold. However, being invincible, Attila imposed its dominion to all the barbarian world and decided to invade the Roman Empire of East, arriving until the Thermopiles. The only resource of Emperor Theodosius to contain the advance of the Huns was the signing of a shameful peace through the Treaty of Margus. Attila's tribute amounted to 1,000 gold pounds annually, free trade was allowed on the Danube, and all the barbarians who had taken refuge in the empire were given to him, which Attila ordered to be crucified immediately, honoring his bloodthirsty reputation. Behind were the smoldering remains of the cities of Sárdica, Marcianópolis, Naiso, Batiaria, Sirmio and Nargo, located in a line that occupied the border of the Danube. Attila was credited to the just fame that had given him the popular adage of "the scourge of God."
Later, it went towards Constantinople and defeated to the main Eastern Roman forces in a succession of battles that allowed to him to surround the old Byzantium by the north and the south. But Hun darks were useless against the thick walls of the capital. Attila therefore proposed to annihilate the Roman forces stationed on the Gallipoli peninsula. He obtained a new victory, and, after it, the signing of a peace treaty by which they increased to 2,100 the pounds of gold that would receive each year of the coffers of the Empire.
The movements of Attila and his fearsome riders after peace have not been accurately known. It is a time in which, once his brother Bleda disappears, he launches his second attack against the Roman Empire. Defeat the enemy forces on the Vit River, but suffers significant losses among its ranks. The Huns were attacked by an army commanded by Arnegisclo, who had already been defeated several times by the Huns. In the last and decisive charge, Arnegisclo's horse was killed and he continued the fight on foot, finally dying like a hero. This campaign proved disastrous for the empire, since Attila destroyed about seven hundred towns and reached the Balkans.
The conduct of the Huns in the course of these campaigns reveals the difference that existed between them and other barbarian peoples with respect to the relations with the Roman world. The Huns, a people of fundamentally nomadic culture, were not farmers, but based their economy on grazing. The conquest was not directed, as the case may be, to the acquisition of territories that would allow them to cultivate land directly,
But intended it for others to cultivate and provide them with the product of exploitation. In exchange for this clearly parasitic attitude, the Huns offered protection of their enormous military power. For the Romans they presented themselves as a people in no way assimilable and only susceptible to be used as a military and police force.
Attila's next campaign was the invasion of Gaul in 451. The reasons for this invasion are obscure, as it is believed that at that time Attila maintained good relations with the Roman general Aetius. Its great objective was the conquest of the Visigothic kingdom, a Germanic town that had taken possession of diverse parts of both Roman empires, and apparently had no intention of starting a war against the Roman emperor, Valentinian III. In the spring of 450 Honoria, the emperor's sister, sent her imperial ring to Attila, asking her to come and rescue her from a marriage that had been arranged against her will. The messenger sent by Honoria was a eunuch named Hyacinth, who also carried a large sum of money as a personal gift from his mistress to the Hun chief. Attila interpreted the message as a marriage promise and thought that she should consider Honoria as his betrothed. But the episode was discovered by the Romans when Jacinto, detained on the border upon his return, was tortured and, before being beheaded, revealed everything. Valentinian III decided then to put Honoria in the custody of his mother, Gala Placidia. It is unknown what happened to the unhappy princess from that moment on. And although Attila only knew Honoria by the gold coins engraved with its stylized effigy, it decided to advance toward the West in the beginning of the year 451.
The advance of the Huns:
The advance of the Huns and their allies immediately provoked an indescribable terror. The impressive army of half a million men included Hérulos, Rugios and Turingios, who later joined Gépidos and Eastern Burgundies while Attila progressed towards Tolosa. In fact, the attack on the Visigoths was no more than an excuse, since Attila attempted to wrest Gallia from the Roman Empire, moving with the image of Honoria in its north, as a sort of feminine ideal unattainable for him. The Visigoths were resigned to resisting the attack of the Huns alone, and their king, Theodoric, had prepared his army for an inevitable confrontation. It is at that moment that Atila reveals her true intentions, claiming Honoria as his wife and demanding the surrender of half of the Roman Empire of the West as a dowry. This circumstance provokes a paradoxical situation, since Aetius, the Roman general allied of Attila against Teodorico, joins forces to the visigodos to defend the empire.
Numerous legends surround the campaign that followed this strange alliance, but the truth is that the Huns continued their advance as if nothing could stop them, razing cities of Belgium and Gaul to the impotence of their defenders. Attila was about to occupy the city of Orleans before the allies arrived, a heterogeneous and difficult army to control, to the control of Aecio, but after having entered the same, Romans and visigodos forced to him to retire. In Orleans, the Huns found a way of fighting that was unheard of: the inhabitants fought house by house, and in the narrow streets they tended ambushes that caused numerous casualties to the invaders. In the face of adversity, Attila retired in the traditional way of the nomadic warriors and prepared for a decisive confrontation in the Catalanic Fields, in the region of the Champagne. The battle ended with the first and only defeat of Attila, and the death of Theodoric, who, overthrown from his mount, was trampled by his own soldiers. Atila's defeat was so complete that he himself was isolated from the rest of his warriors and waited for the final assault, accompanied by his women, on a saddle-pile pyre: he was ready to die in the flames of a fire lit with his own hands. Aetius, however, allowed him to flee, thinking no doubt of future and convenient alliances with the Huns.
In 452, Attila invaded Italy and plundered numerous cities, including Padua, Verona, Brescia, Bergamo and Milan, without Aetius being able to do anything to prevent it. But that year Italy suffered a terrible epidemic of hunger and plague and the Huns retired without having crossed the Apennines. The campaign was unsuccessful for its coffers, since there is no chronicle that refers to taxes paid by the empire, but it cost thousands of dead and dozens of devastated cities. Nevertheless. Attila was preparing to attack definitively the Roman Empire of the East with the intention to reduce to its subjects to the slavery. And one of the reasons may have been the news that Honoria had been sent to the territories of the Eastern empire.
Attila's love for Honoria did not prevent the Hun King from adding a new wife to his collection of women. The young woman was called Ildegunda or Ildico and she was very beautiful. The weddings were celebrated with a great feast in which everyone drank and ate wildly. Then Attila and Ildegunda retreated to their quarters. The next day, in the wake of Attila, his servants decided to enter his quarters and found him dead. Ildegunda, covered with the bridal veil, wept silently at her side. During the night, "the scourge of God," the terrible Hun had died asphyxiated by the blood of a nosebleed. In spite of this frightening image, Attila was a complete judge for his people. He lived a very simple life and knew how to surround himself with Greek, Latin, and German scribes, although he was a shamanic, superstitious and credulous religion. Upon his death, his empire quickly decomposed.