Attila (405-453) was the king of the Hun tribes, a tribe originating from the steppes of Central Asia established in the Danubian plain. According to Roman historiography, he reigned from 434 to 453 over the Hunnic Empire (a large part of central Europe and central Asia) from which he was designated Europæ Orbator (emperor of Europe).
Attila was born in 395. He is the son of the king of a Huns tribe, Moundzouk, who died in the war in 408. Orphaned, he was adopted and brought up with his older brother Bleda by his uncle, the Huns king Ruga.
In 434, Ruga divided the Hunnic Empire between his two nephews, Attila and Bleda, before dying. From 435 to 440, the reign of Bleda was marked by the triumph of the Huns over the Eastern Roman Empire. This triumph is above all diplomatic and Bleda's policy towards the Romans is peaceful. A doubling of the tribute paid by the Eastern Roman Empire of Constantinople and the imperial promise to no longer ally itself with the barbarian enemies of the Huns (with the Germanic peoples who remained independent) left a free hand in Bleda. Also the Huns extend their empire to the Alps, the Rhine and the Vistula.
Attila's takeover
However, from 440, taking advantage of the opportunity offered by the invasion of Roman Armenia by the Sassanid Persians, an invasion which temporarily diverted the attention of Constantinople from the Huns, Bleda again attacked the Eastern Roman Empire. At this time, Attila helps his brother only as a last resort, having started talks with the Empire on his side. He probably only does this to avoid being aggrieved over the sharing of the loot.
Attila's separate policy during the war of 441-442 is mainly explained by his desire to negotiate with the Romans for the surrender of the Hun heir princes who had taken refuge in the empire at the death of Ruga, from 435. They would have inherited the kingdom in the event of his brother's death.
At the end of 444 or beginning of 445, helped by his Germanic vassals, Attila had his older brother Bleda assassinated and became the only king of the Huns. Two Germans subjected to the Huns, the king of the Skire Edika and the king of the Gepids Ardaric, indeed provided the necessary forces for the assassination of Bleda which took place in the ordu of the latter.
His reign lasted eight years and was marked, at his death, by a collapse of the power of the Huns, hitherto patiently built on the military alliances between the Hunnic Empire and the Eastern Roman Empire and on the financial manna of the tributes and ransoms paid by Constantinople.
In reality, it seems that from the end of the assassination, the Germanic allies of Attila influenced him by favoring the propensity he had to believe himself destined to reign over the entire universe. So, with the help of a cow and her keeper, they find for Attila the sword of the god of war, Mars, pointing out of the ground. However, in the spiral that will lead the Huns to acquire more power, Attila quickly finds himself forced into new wars to reward and above all to keep his faithful Germans.
So Attila had himself designated Europæ Orbator (Emperor of Europe) and from 445-446 he seized the Roman province of Pannonia-Savie (the rest of Pannonia was already held by the Huns). To maintain the fiction of the Roman administration, he was nevertheless appointed Master of the Militia by the Roman Emperor Valentinian III.
Image:Attila the Hun.jpg
Attila King of the Huns
Attila and the Roman Empire
From the Danubian basin where he was permanently installed, Attila then threatened the Roman Empire.
But, on January 27, 447, an earthquake destroyed a large part of the Theodosian wall of Constantinople and caused a major famine. This weakness of the Eastern Roman Empire allows the Western Roman Empire to be temporarily spared from the aims of Attila.
The loss of the Eastern Roman Empire
Attila, taking advantage of the event, throws his army on the Eastern Roman Empire. He gets bogged down there:in reality, the empire does not pay its tribute and the payments of the sums previously due are interrupted. The peace negotiations last for several years, without any benefit for the Huns.
However, at the very moment when they are about to end, the tributes paid by the East dry up definitively. Emperor Theodosius II dies in a riding accident and the "party of the blues" (party of senators and aristocrats) triumphs:it is fiercely opposed to the idea of paying the barbarians to buy peace.
Having been unable to invade or subjugate the East, Attila found himself caught up in the diplomatic game of the West in 450.
Roman Co-Empress Honoria
The episode concerns Honoria, co-empress of the West who wants to marry Atilla to ally herself with him and whom her younger brother Valentinian III forces to take the veil to preserve imperial unity. In 449, a scandal broke out and Honoria was sent to Constantinople to a Christian convent so that her "virginity" would be better guarded.
She then sends her ring to Attila to ask for help. Attila takes the matter seriously and accepts the jewel as a "dowry", before asking for Gaul as an imperial inheritance due to his "fiancée".
His demands are naturally met with a refusal.
Blocked in the East, faced with the refusal of Valentinian and the disappearance of Honoria, Attila found himself forced in the autumn of 450 to declare war on the Western Roman Empire, which also put an end to the tribute paid by the West.
The invasion of Gaul
At the head of a Hunno-Germanic coalition army, Attila launched a campaign against Gaul in the spring of 451. This army brings together the Gepid peoples (the most numerous), Visigoths (led by 3 brother kings including the father of the future Theodoric I (Theodoric the Great)), Skires, Suevi, Alemanni, Heruli, Thuringia, Franks, Burgundians, Alans, Sarmatians , it is predominantly Germanic and the Huns make up only a tiny part of it. The tactics that previously made them successful against the "civilized" are therefore no longer on the agenda. On April 7, Attila burns Metz. (barbarian invasions)
Gaul resisted him, first in Paris under the impulse of Saint Geneviève, then in Orleans, at the instigation of Saint Aignan of Orleans with the support of the Roman legions of Flavius Aetius.
In Orleans, where he intends to cross the Loire, Attila fights the Visigoths of Theodoric I and the Roman legions of Flavius Aetius, in reality composed of all the peoples established in Gaul at that time:Alains, Franks, Burgundians, Sarmatians, Saxons, Lètes (barbarian settlers), Armoricans and even Bretons from across the Channel...
The Huns emerge victorious and it is in Champagne that the final battle of the Catalan fields takes place, probably less than a fortnight later. Some authors locate this battle 5 Roman miles (7.5 km) from Troyes in fields near the village of Maurica or Mauriacus (Latin campus mauriacus). Others, older, locate it near Châlons-en-Champagne, the ancient Catalaunum from which derives the noun attributed to the "catalaunian fields", at the site of the Gallic oppidum of La Cheppe, improperly called " Attila's camp".
Following the carnage, Attila stayed in Gaul for a while and then withdrew to the Rhine.
Attila at the gates of Rome
In the spring of 452, he attacked again in Italy. His army takes Aquileia, Padua, Verona, Milan, Pavia and moves towards Rome. Emperor Valentinian III decides to negotiate.
Led by Pope Leo I, by the prefect Trigetius who had already dealt with the Vandals of Genseric, and by the consul Aviennus, a Roman delegation went to meet the king of the Huns and obtained a truce.
The end of his reign
Meanwhile, the troops of the new eastern emperor, Marcian, have crossed the Danube and threaten the heart of the Hunnic Empire. So Attila retreats to Pannonia.
Back in his ordu, the great king died suddenly, in the spring of 453, perhaps poisoned, probably from a haemorrhage following a feast given to his court during his wedding with a new wife for his harem. .
Attila receives a royal funeral and is buried in a triple coffin, probably under the bed of the Tisza river in present-day Hungary, temporarily diverted for the occasion. His sons Ellac then Attila II succeeded him.
His succession degenerated into conflict between the many sons and grandsons of his many wives (battle of the Nedao in 454). His empire is falling apart and the Huns tribes are disuniting and taking over chiefs from among their dominant aristocracy.
The legendary and mythological image of Attila
Attila is best known in historiography and Western Christian tradition for being the scourge of God, which gave him a darker image.
In reality, this son of King Moundzouk, sovereign of one of the most powerful peoples of his time, has become in the eyes of Western Europeans the emblematic image of the nomadic sovereign-warrior, merging in the popular imagination with the traits that Genghis Khan will later be credited:bloodthirsty, loving war and looting above all, cruel and cunning.
However, this vision is largely inaccurate:not only were the Huns of Attila a Turkish people who welcomed many Germans into their midst, to such an extent that the latter were largely in the majority in the coalition which assisted them during the battle of the Catalan fields, but also the court of Attila was undoubtedly one of the most refined of its time, having taken up many Roman customs.
However, the time in which Attila lived - towards the end of the Western Empire, his opposition to General Flavius Aetius, otherwise named the last of the Romans, and the origin of his people have struck the collective imagination and contributed to making Attila the typical figure of the barbarian opposing civilization, which emerges from the many films or works in which the latter appears.
In the Chant des Nibelungen (based on the crushing of the Burgundians by the Huns and popularized in the 19th century by Richard Wagner), known in a 12th century version, Attila appears as Etzel, a noble and generous ally. He is also depicted in Germanic mythology as Atli, cruel and thirsty for gold.
These two aspects show what the different facets of truth can be. Finally, because of national historiography, we must not forget that Attila, a name of Germanic origin and more precisely of Gothic origin, has disappeared everywhere except in Hungary and Turkey, where this first name is still very popular.
Inspired by the recent work of historians, The Shaman of Attila, a novel by the Hungarian writer Tibor Fonyodi (published in French by Pygmalion in 2005), depicts the civilization of the Huns in a new way. He underlines the fundamental role of spirituality in their culture, a civilization in the true sense of the term, of which the Hungarians were the heirs and which is still undoubtedly that of the peoples living in the Eurasian steppes today. The author declared in an interview that his goal had been, with The Shaman of Attila, to write a fantasy novel, a kind of Lord of the Rings drawing on the mythology of the Huns.