Attila, became the King of the Huns alongside his brother Bleda, following the death of his uncle Rugila in AD 434.He was to unite a disputatious people riven by feuds and internal strife, and turn them into one of the most dreaded and formidable armies known to history. He was feared and loathed, made those who met him tremble, and laid waste to much of Europe. He was known as the Scourge of God, and stood before Rome quite literally the Barbarian at the Gates. Then he turned away. Why?

The Huns were a nomadic people who arrived in Europe from the Steppes of Central Asia around AD 370 and settled on the Hungarian Plain. The Historian Priscus described them thus, ” And though they do just bear the likeness of men (though of an ugly pattern) they are so little advanced in civilisation they make no use of fire, nor any kind of relish in the preparation of their food, but feed upon the roots they find in the fields, and the half raw flesh of any animals.” But they were superb horsemen and ferocious warriors. They attacked their enemies with speed and en-masse firing arrows as they did so. They would then disperse just as quickly and attack from elsewhere. They would also use nets strung between horsemen to entangle their opponents before hacking them to death.

The Huns threatened and intimidated the Eastern Roman Empire. Unable to defend themselves militarily as they once had the Roman’s had taken to buying their enemies off. In AD 434, the Eastern Roman Emperor Theodosius II, offered Attila and Bleda 660Ibs of gold and the return of Hun nobles who had opposed their succession and sought asylum in Constantinople, in return for them agreeing to leave the Empire alone. They agreed, they took the gold and executed the nobles, tied between horses their bodies torn apart. For a time all seemed well as the the Huns turned their attention to Armenia. But they would soon be back. In the meantime, Theodosius made the most of the time afforded him and reinforced the defences of Constantinople making it virtually impregnable.  In AD 440, the Huns attacked IIIyria and the Danubian provincies destroying much of the Balkans in the process. ” The barbarian  Hun nation became so great that more than a hundred cities were captured and destroyed and Constantinople itself came into danger, most men fleeing from it. And there were so many deaths and blood-lettings the dead could not be numbered,” so wrote Callinicus. Attila, it seemed, took particular delight in killing women and children, whom he considered a burden.

By AD 443, the Huns were rampaging unopposed across the Byzantine Empire. Pushed to extremes and reinforced with troops from Sicily, Theodosius decided to fight back. But his campaign was a disaster. Attila, who was the unchallenged military commander of the Huns, destroyed a Roman army outside the walls of Constantinople, an annihilation witnessed by its citizens, and was only prevented from taking the city by its inner-defensive walls. He later destroyed a second Roman army at Callinopolis. Theodosius, with no army with which left to fight, was forced into a humiliating peace. He paid Attila 700Ibs of gold, more money for each Roman prisoner, and an annual tribute. But, at least, he remained safe behind the walls of Constantinople.

In AD 445, Bleda died in a mysterious hunting accident, and Attila became sole ruler of the Hun Empire. He now turned his eyes West. He marched his armies through Austria and Germany virtually unopposed destroying everything in his path. In AD 450, he declared his aim to attack and destroy the Visigoth Kingdom of Toulouse.He was to do this in alliance with the Western Roman Emperor Valentinian III, with whom he had remained on good terms. This was until Valentinian’s sister, Honoria, angry at her brothers insistence that she marry an elderly Senator she did not like, sent an engagement ring and a proposal of marriage to Attila. He accepted the proposal and demanded half of the Western Empire as his dowry. Valentinian was furious and sent a letter to Attila denying the validity of the proposal. He then ordered that his sister be executed and she was only saved from certain death by the tear-stained intervention of their mother, and she was sent into exile. In the meantime, however, Attila had declared Honoria to be his wife and said that he was coming to get what was rightfully his.

Attila, at the time, was described by Priscus as being, “short of stature, with a broad chest and large head; his eyes were small and his beard thin and sprinkled with grey, and he had a flat nose and tanned skin.” He was an essentially humourless man who was never heard to laugh or seen to smile. He dressed plainly and wore no adornments or jewellery. He drank little and ate only sparingly, and he was cold and calculating in everything he did. His children, it was said, looked upon him with terror.

Valentinian was forced to break his alliance with Attila and join forces with the Visigothic King Theodoric. He, however, stayed at home as his right-hand man and the real power behind the throne, Flavius Aetius, led the Roman armies west. Attila, who had already put to the sword the cities of Rheims, Metz and Nicasius, met the combined forces of Rome and the Visigoth Kingdom on the Plains of Chalons. It was to be his first serious setback as he was defeated, but not decisively.Even so, the Battle of Chalons is considered to be one of the great turning points of history as it prevented western Europe from falling to the Asiatic hordes.

Attila, however, remained undeterred and took his army into Italy still determined to take the woman he believed to be rightfully his. He proceeded to trample across northern Italy destroying everything in his wake as if in a fury. He laid waste to Lombardy and totally destroyed the city of Aquileia. Valentinian fled the Roman capital at Ravenna to seek sanctuary with Pope Leo I in Rome. But he could do nothing to prevent Attila from seizing the city or indeed the whole Western Empire if he wished, or so it seemed. Rome lay at his mercy, but he hesitated to attack it. Why, has ever since been a subject of conjecture.

Attila, it is known, had a meeting with Pope Leo who promised him a holy crown and a place in Heaven beside the saints, thereby dissuading him from attacking the city. But why would Attila, who was not a Christian after all, be persuaded by such things. He was though, a deeply superstitious man who would have been aware of the fate that befell Alaric, the leader of the Goths, who had died just days after sacking Rome in AD 410. But then perhaps his decision was made for more prosaic reasons. The Huns had never been good at besieging well-defended cities, his army had lost a great many men at Chalons, and he would have been concerned at not being able to cross over the Alps in Winter and becoming trapped in Italy. Whatever the reason, Attila now turned away from Rome.

Attila the Hun, the Scourge of God, died in AD 53, on his wedding night. It is said that he had drunk heavily, which was unusual for him, and had retired to his bedchamber alone. At some time or other he had collapsed smashing his nose on the ground causing it to bleed, he choked to death on his own blood. It has also been suggested by some, that the new Byzantine Emperor Marcian, had hired assassins to poison him, but there is little evidence for this.

He was buried in a lead and gold coffin beneath the River Tisza in Hungary. Those who had carried out the burial were executed to keep its exact location a secret. But then as the historian Jordanes wrote, ” the greatest of all warriors should not be mourned with no feminine lamentations and with no tears, but with the blood of men.”