Attila
Attila (Danubian plains, c. 395. - Tisza Valley, 453) was the last and most powerful leader of the Huns, a tribe probably from Asia, although their exact origins are unclear. unknown. Attila also ruled the largest European empire of his time, from 434 until his death in March 453, a short-lived tribal empire made up of Huns, Ostrogoths, Alans, and Bulgars, among others, in central and eastern Europe, the center of his sphere of power the area of present-day Hungary. This empire experienced the greatest development of power under Attila, but collapsed again shortly after his death.
Known in the West as The Scourge of God, his domain stretched from central Europe to the Black Sea, and from the Danube River to the Baltic Sea. During his reign he was one of the most feared enemies of the Western (with capital in Ravenna, since Rome was no longer the political center of the empire) and Eastern (with capital in Constantinople) Roman Empires. Attila crossed the Danube and twice invaded and sacked the Balkans, but was unable to capture Constantinople. His unsuccessful campaign in Persia was followed in 441 by an invasion of the Eastern Roman Empire (or Byzantine Empire), the success of which emboldened him to invade the Western Roman Empire. He also attempted to conquer Roman Gaul (present-day France), by crossing the Rhine in 451 and marching to Cenabo (by then called Aurelianum, and present-day Orleans), until he was forced back by the Roman general Aetius at the Battle of the Catalaunic Fields in 451. He later invaded Italy, devastating the northern provinces, and succeeded in fleeing the Western Emperor Valentinian III from his capital Ravenna in 452, but was unable to take Rome. He planned further campaigns against the Romans, but died in 453. After Attila's death, his closest adviser, Ardaric of the Gepids, led a Germanic revolt against Hunnic rule, after which the Hunnic Empire rapidly collapsed. Attila endured as a character of the Germanic heroic legend, as the legendary figure of King Etzel in numerous medieval works, such as the Song of the Nibelungs or the heroic poems of Dietrich von Bern.
Attila maintained diplomatic contacts with both parts of the Roman Empire, with the main goal of imposing the highest possible tribute payments on the Romans, which Attila needed to hold together his shaky, multi-ethnic empire. The Romans, for their part, were interested in as stable conditions as possible in neighboring Barbaricum to secure their borders. The fragmentary historical work of Priscus of Panio is an important source for understanding the contacts between the Romans and the Huns at this time.
Historiography and sources
Attila's historiography faces an enormous challenge, as the only complete sources are written in Greek and Latin by enemies of the Huns. Attila's contemporaries left many testimonies of his life, but only fragments survive. Theodosius II at the Hunnic court in 449. Obviously his political position was biased, but his writings are an important source of information about Attila's life, and he is the only person known to have written a physical description of him. He wrote a history of the Late Roman Empire in eight books covering the period from 430 to 476.
Only fragments of Prisco's work remain. It was widely cited by historians of the VI century Procopius and Jordanes,especially in Origin and facts of the Goths, by Jordanes, which contains numerous references to the history of Priscus, and is also an important source of information on the Hunnic empire and its neighbors. Jordanes describes the legacy of Attila and the Hunnic people for a century after Attila's death. Count Marcellinus, Justinian's chancellor at the same time, also describes relations between the Huns and the Eastern Roman Empire.
Many ecclesiastical writings contain useful but scattered information, sometimes difficult to authenticate or distorted by years of hand-copying between the centuries VI and XVII. Hungarian writers of the 12th century wished to present the Huns in a positive light as their glorious ancestors, so they omitted certain elements historical and added their own legends.
The literature and knowledge of the Huns themselves was transmitted orally, through epics and sung poems that were passed down from generation to generation. Fragments of this oral history have indirectly come down to us through the literature of Scandinavians and Germans, neighbors of the Huns who wrote between the IX and XIII. Attila is an important character in many medieval epics, such as the Song of the Nibelungs, as well as various Eddas and sagas, often as the legendary figure King Etzel.
Archaeological research has revealed some details about the lifestyle, art, and warfare of the Huns. There are some traces of battles and sieges, but Attila's tomb and the location of his capital have not yet been found.
Origins
The European Huns may have been a western branch of the Xiongnu, a Proto-Mongol or Proto-Turkic group of nomadic tribes from Northeast China and Central Asia. These peoples managed to outmaneuver their rivals (many of them of refined culture and civilization) militarily due to their predisposition for war, their amazing mobility, thanks to their small and fast horses, and their extraordinary skill with the bow.
Attila was born around the year 400. Regarding his childhood, the assumption that at an early age he was already a capable chief and a seasoned warrior is reasonable, but there is no way to verify it. Upon the death of his father, Attila meets his uncle and decides to accompany him to learn the art of war.
The Shared Throne
By 432, the Huns were unified under King Rugila. In 434 Rugila died, leaving his nephews Attila and Bleda, sons of his brother Mundzuk, in command of all the Hun tribes. At that time the Huns were in full negotiation with the ambassadors of Theodosius II about the delivery of several renegade tribes that had taken refuge in the heart of the Eastern empire. The following year, Attila and Bleda had a meeting with the imperial legation in Margus (now Pozarevac) and, all sitting on the backs of the horses in the Hunnic manner, they negotiated a treaty. The Romans agreed not only to return the fugitive tribes (who had been a most welcome help against the Vandals), but also to double the tribute previously paid by the empire, of 350 Roman pounds of gold (almost 115 kg), to open the markets to the Hun merchants and pay a ransom of eight solids for each Roman prisoner of the Huns. These, satisfied with the treaty, set up their camps and left for the interior of the continent, perhaps with the purpose of consolidating and strengthening their empire. Theodosius took this opportunity to reinforce the walls of Constantinople, building the city's first sea walls, and to erect defensive lines on the border along the Danube.
The Huns remained out of sight of the Romans for the next five years. During this time they carried out an invasion of Persia. However, a Persian counteroffensive in Armenia ended with the defeat of Attila and Bleda, who gave up their plans of conquest. In 440 they reappeared on the borders of the eastern empire, attacking the merchants of the north bank of the Danube, who were protected by the current treaty. Attila and Bleda threatened open war, arguing that the Romans had reneged on their commitments and that the Bishop of Margus (near present-day Belgrade) had crossed the Danube to loot and desecrate the Hunnic royal tombs on the north bank of the Danube. They then crossed this river and razed the Illyrian cities and forts along the riverbank, among them – according to Priscus – Viminacium, which was a city of the Moesians in Illyria. Their advance began at Margus, for when the Romans debated handing over the bishop accused of desecration, he secretly fled to the barbarians and handed over the city.
Theodosius had dismantled the river defenses in the aftermath of the Vandal Gaiseric's conquest of Carthage in 440 and the Sasanian Yazdegerd II's invasion of Armenia in 441. This left Attila and Bleda the way open through Illyria and the Balkans, who rushed to invade the same 441. The Hunnic army, having plundered Margus and Viminacium, took Singidunum (modern Belgrade) and Sirmium before stopping operations. A truce then followed throughout 442, when Theodosius took advantage of this moment to bring his troops from North Africa and arrange for a large issue of currency to finance the war against the Huns. These preparations made, he considered that he could afford to refuse the demands of the barbarian kings.
Atila and Bleda's response was to resume the campaign (443). Striking along the Danube, they seized the military centers of Ratiara and successfully besieged Naissus (present-day Nis) through the employment of battering rams and rolling assault towers (military sophistications novel among the Huns). Later, pressing along the Nisava, they occupied Serdica (Sofia), Philipolis (Plovdiv), and Arcadiopolis. They engaged and destroyed Roman troops on the outskirts of Constantinople and were only halted by a lack of adequate siege equipment capable of breaching the city's cyclopean walls. Theodosius admitted defeat and sent the courtier Anatolius to negotiate the terms of peace, which were more rigorous than in the previous treaty: the emperor agreed to deliver more than 6,000 Roman pounds (about 1,963 kg) of gold as compensation for failing to the terms of the agreement; the annual tribute tripled, reaching the amount of 2,100 Roman pounds (about 687 kg) of gold; and the ransom for each Roman prisoner became 12 solids.
With their wishes satisfied for a time, the Hunnic kings withdrew into their empire. According to Jordanes (who follows Priscus), sometime in the period of calm that followed the retreat of the Huns from Byzantium (probably around 445), Bleda died, leaving Attila sole king. There is abundant historical speculation as to whether Attila murdered his brother or whether Bleda died of other causes. In any case, Attila was now the undisputed lord of the Huns and he again turned to the eastern empire.
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After the departure of the Huns, Constantinople suffered severe disasters, both natural and man-made: bloody riots between fans of the Hippodrome's chariot races; epidemics in 445 and 446, the second following a famine; and a whole series of earthquakes that lasted four months, destroyed a good part of the walls and killed thousands of people, causing a new epidemic. This last blow took place in 447, just as Attila, having consolidated his power, set out again south, entering the empire through Moesia. The Roman army, under the command of the Gothic magister militum Arnegisclo, faced them at the Vid River and was defeated, although not before causing serious losses to the enemy. The Huns were left unopposed and pillaged throughout the Balkans, even as far as Thermopylae. Constantinople itself was saved thanks to the intervention of the prefect Flavius Constantine, who organized citizen brigades to rebuild the quake-damaged walls (and, in some places, to build a new line of fortifications in front of the old one).
An account of the invasion has come down to us:
The barbarian nation of the Huns, which lived in Thrace, became so great that more than one hundred cities were conquered and Constantinople came almost to be in danger and most men fled from it (...) And there were so many murders and bloodshed that the dead could not be counted. Woe, who even occupied churches and monasteries and slaughtered monks and maidens in large numbers!Quiet, Life of San Hipatio
Attila claimed as a condition of peace that the Romans continue to pay tribute in gold and evacuate a strip of land from three hundred miles east from Sigindunum to one hundred miles south of the Danube. Negotiations continued between the Romans and the Huns for approximately three years. The historian Priscus was sent as ambassador to Attila's camp in 448. Fragments of his reports, preserved by Jordanes, give us a graphic description of Attila among his many wives, his Scythian jester and his impassive, jewelless Moorish dwarf in amidst the splendor of his courtiers:
A luxurious meal had been prepared, served in silverware, for us and our host barbarians, but Atila ate nothing but meat on a wooden plate. In everything else it was also tempered; its cup was made of wood, while the rest of our guests were offered chalices of gold and silver. His dress, equally, was very simple, boasting only of cleansing. The sword that he carried to the side, the ties of his scite shoes and the breeze of his horse lacked ornaments, unlike the other scites, that bore gold or gems or anything else precious.
During these three years, according to a legend recorded by Jordanes, Attila discovered the "Sword of Mars":
According to the historian Prisco who was discovered in the following circumstances: A certain pastor discovered that a calf of his flock was limping and was not able to find the cause of the wound. He eagerly followed the trace of the blood and found out a sword with which the animal had been wounded while grazing in the grass. He picked her up and took her directly to Atila. He delighted with the gift and, being ambitious, thought that he had been destined to be lord of the world and that through the Sword of Mars he had guaranteed supremacy in all wars.Jordanes, Origin and gestations of the godos (XXXV)
Attila in the West
Already in 450 Attila had proclaimed his intention to attack the powerful Visigothic kingdom of Toulouse in alliance with Emperor Valentinian III. Attila had previously had good relations with the Western Empire and its de facto ruler, Flavius Aetius. Aetius had spent a brief exile among the Huns in 433, and the troops Attila had provided him against the Goths and Burgundians had helped earn him the title – mostly honorary – of magister militum in West. The gifts and diplomatic efforts of Gaiseric, who opposed and feared the Visigoths, could also influence Attila's plans.
In any case, in the spring of 450, Valentinian's sister Honoria, who had been betrothed against her will to a senator, sent the Hunnic king a request for help along with her ring. Although it is likely that Honoria had no intention of proposing to him, Attila chose to interpret her message as such. She accepted, asking for half the western empire as her dowry. When Valentinian discovered what had happened, only the influence of her mother, Galla Placidia, managed to send Honoria into exile instead of killing her. He wrote to Attila categorically denying the legitimacy of the alleged offer of marriage. Attila, unconvinced, sent an embassy to Ravenna to proclaim Honoria's innocence and the legitimacy of her betrothal proposal, as well as that he himself would come and claim what was rightfully his.
Meanwhile, Theodosius died from a fall from his horse, and his successor, Martian, stopped paying tribute in late 450. Successive invasions by Huns and other tribes had left the Balkans with little to plunder. The king of the Salians had died and the succession struggle between his two sons led to a confrontation between Attila and Aetius. Attila supported the older son, while Aetius did the younger. Bury thinks that Attila's intention in marching west was to extend his kingdom – by then the most powerful on the continent – as far as Gaul and the Atlantic coast. By the time he gathered all his vassals (Gepids, Ostrogoths, Rugians, Scyrians, Heruli, Thuringians, Alans, Burgundians, etc.) and began his march west, he had already sent offers of alliance to both the Visigoths and to the romans.
In 451, his arrival in Belgium with an army that Jordanes estimated at 500,000 men made it clear what his true intentions were. On April 7 he took Metz, forcing Aetius to move to meet him with troops recruited from the Franks, Burgundians, and Celts. An embassy from Avitus and Attila's steady advance westward convinced the Visigothic king, Theodoric I, to ally with the Romans. Their combined army reached Orleans ahead of Attila, thus cutting off his advance. Aetius pursued the Huns and gave chase near Châlons-en-Champagne, tying the battle of the Catalaunic Fields, which ended in a technical draw, with heavy losses on both sides. Teodorico lost his life in combat. Attila withdrew beyond his borders and his allies disbanded.
Invasion of Italy and death of Attila
Attila appeared again in 452 to demand his marriage to Honoria, invading and pillaging Italy in his wake. His army plundered numerous cities and razed Aquileia to its foundations. Valentinian fled from Ravenna to Rome. Aecio remained in the campaign, but without sufficient military power to present battle.
Finally, Attila stopped at the Po, where an embassy made up of, among others, the prefect Trigecio, the consul Avienus and Pope Leo I went. After the meeting, he began the withdrawal without even claiming his marriage to Honoria nor the territories he wanted.
Many explanations have been offered for this fact. It may be that the epidemics and famines that coincided with his invasion weakened his army, or that the troops that Martian sent to the Danube forced him to return, or perhaps both. Priscus tells that a superstitious fear of the fate of Alaric, who died shortly after the sack of Rome in 410, stopped the Huns. Prospero of Aquitaine affirms that Pope Leo, helped by Saint Peter and Saint Paul, convinced him to withdraw from the city.
Whatever his reasons, Attila left Italy and returned to his palace beyond the Danube. From there he planned to attack Constantinople again and demand the tribute that Martian had failed to pay. But his death surprised him at the beginning of 453. Priscus's account says that one night, after the festivities for his last wedding (with a Goth named Ildico), he suffered a severe nosebleed that caused his death. death. His soldiers, upon discovering his death, mourned for him, cutting their hair and wounding themselves with their swords, because –as Jordanes points out– “the greatest of all warriors should not be mourned with the wailing of a woman or with tears, but with the blood of men”. He was buried in a triple sarcophagus – gold, silver and iron – along with the spoils of his conquests, and those who participated in the funeral were executed to keep the burial place secret. After his death, he lived on as a legendary figure: the characters of Etzel in the Song of the Nibelungs and Atli in the Saga of the Volsungs and the Poetic Edda are loosely inspired by her figure.
Another version of his death is the one offered to us, eighty years after the event, by the Roman chronicler Count Marcellinus: “Attila, king of the Huns and plunderer of the provinces of Europe, was pierced by the hand and his wife's dagger.” Also the Volsung Saga and the Poetic Edda maintain that King Atli (Attila) died at the hands of his wife Ildico, but most scholars reject these accounts as pure romantic fantasies and prefer the version given by Priscus, a contemporary of Attila.
This was the end of the eight-year invasions of the Huns, the barbarians who drove Rome back and became extinct. The Western Roman Empire, of which virtually nothing remained but Rome itself, was ended and destroyed by the Vandals, another barbarian people.
Attila's sons, Elak (whom he had designated as heir), Dengizik and Ernak fought for the succession and, divided, were defeated and scattered the following year at the battle of Nedao by a coalition of diverse peoples (including Ostrogoths, Heruli and Gepids). His empire did not survive Attila.
Appearance, character and name
The main source of information about Attila is Priscus, a historian who traveled with Maximinus on an embassy from Theodosius II in 448. He describes the village built and settled by the nomadic Huns as being the size of a big city, with solid wooden walls. Attila himself is portrayed like this:
- “Height cut, wide chest and big head; his eyes were small, his fine beard and dotted with grey hairs; and he had the shady nose and the brunette complexion, showing the evidence of his origin.”
Attila is known throughout Western history and tradition as the uncompromising “Scourge of God,” and his name has become synonymous with cruelty and barbarity. Some of this may have arisen from the fusion of their features, in the popular imagination, with those of later steppe warlords such as Genghis Khan and Tamerlane: they all share the same reputation as cruel, intelligent, bloodthirsty, and love-loving. battle and looting. The reality about their respective characters may be more complex. The Huns of Attila's time had been associated for some time with Roman civilization, particularly through their Germanic (foederati) allies on the frontier, so that when Theodosius sent his embassy in 448, Priscus was able to identify as common languages on the horde the Hun, the Gothic and the Latin. Priscus also recounts his encounter with a captive Western Roman, who had so completely assimilated the Hunnic way of life that he had no desire to return to his home country. And the Byzantine historian's description of Attila's humility and simplicity leaves no doubt about his admiration. Likewise, from the accounts of Priscus himself it is clear that Attila not only spoke Latin perfectly, but that he knew how to write it; he also spoke Greek and other languages, so it was most likely a man of great culture for the canons of the time.
The historical context of Attila's life had great significance when it came to shaping his later public image: In the years of the decline of the Western Empire, both his conflicts with Aetius (often known as "the last Roman") how alien to his culture helped to cover him with the mask of a ferocious barbarian and enemy of civilization with which he has been reflected in countless films and other artistic manifestations. The German epic poems in which he appears offer us a more nuanced portrait: he is both a noble and generous ally –the Etzel of the Song of the Nibelungs– and cruel and rapacious –Atli, in the Volsung Saga and in the Poetic Edda–.
Some national histories, however, always portray him in a favorable light. During the Middle Ages, in the 13th and 14th centuries, the legend of the two brothers Hunor and Magor was established, where the relationship between the Huns and Hungarians was explained, as well as the arrival of Attila in the Pannonian territories. In Hungary and Turkey the names of Attila and his last wife, Ildico, are still popular today ( XXI century century). Similarly, the Hungarian writer Géza Gárdonyi, in his novel A láthatatlan ember (published in Spanish under the title The slave of Attila), offers a positive image of the king Hun, describing him as a wise and beloved chief.
Attila has been described as a "barbarian" without realizing that the Romans called any people that was not Roman or Romanized that way, regardless of their degree of culture or their state of civilization. It must be taken into account, when it comes to forming a correct idea of the character, that the stories that have come down to us are all from the pen of his enemies, so it is essential to properly purge them.[citation required]
Apart from this, it is not unlikely that the head of a warlike nation would weigh the propaganda advantage of being considered the "Scourge of God," by his enemies, and thus fostered that image among them. [citation required]
Attila's name could mean "Little Father", from the Gothic "atta" (father) with the diminutive suffix "-la", since we know that many Goths served in his armies. It could also be a pre-Turkish form, of Turkic origin (compare Atatürk and Alma-Ata, present-day Almaty). It is very possible that it comes from "atta" (father) and "il" (land, country), with the meaning of "fatherland" or "motherland". Attil was also the name of the current Volga, a river that perhaps gave Attila his name.
Fonts
- Prisco: Byzantine history (Greek text in Ludwig Dindorf: Historici Graeci Minores, Leipzig, B.G. Teubner, 1870). A J.B. English translation is available. Bury en Priscus at the court of Attila
- Jordanes: Origin and gestations of the godos. There is a Spanish edition of José María Sánchez Martín, Madrid, Cátedra, 2001.