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It's the year 451 AD. We're in the settlement of Troyes in rural Gaul, located 100 miles to the east of Paris. Troyes is normally a bustling little village. Thatched cottages, shops, one or two high-end stone villas, a large church, the kind of place that Romans dream of retiring to. But today, it's deserted. Bird song and the trickling of streams have replaced the clanking of the blacksmith's anvil. Then the wind picks up.
bringing with it another sound, one that you dread to hear as a 5th century Roman. The sound of thousands of hoofbeats. Attila's war machine is coming. Many of the locals have already fled, scattering into the fields. This incoming army of Huns may be half a million strong, so the story goes. One man though has refused to heed the rumors. His name is Lupus, and he is the bishop in these parts.
Bishop Lupus is not your usual rural clergyman. He made his name crushing heresy in Britain. Into the 21st century, he will still be remembered in Wales as Saint Bladion. And he's not intimidated by a pagan like Attila. The Hun horsemen get nearer and nearer. They charge into Troyes. Inside the church, Lupus puts on his finest clerical regalia, important to look one's best when hosting visitors.
Taking a deep breath, he opens the door and steps outside. Flanked by Hun warriors, Lupus is dragged and shoved through the village. They stop at the foot of a horse. It breathes heavily, steam rising from its haunches. Sat atop the steed, dirty and sweaty after days on the march, is the Hun king himself. "I am Lupus, man of God," says the bishop, by way of an icebreaker. The reply comes back quick as a flash.
"And I am Attila, the Scourge of God." There is a pause. "What mortal can stand against God's Scourge?" Ventures Lupus. What else is there to say? Perhaps it's his courage, or maybe his clean vestments. But on this occasion, Attila decides to spare Lupus. And Twa. Attila is known to place a high value on pristine clothes.
He often makes a point of wearing spotless garments, a way of asserting his purity and his power over his less-than-immaculate nobles. Perhaps he sees something in common with the finely turned-out bishop. In the coming hours, the last Han warriors disappear over the horizon. The people of Twa can emerge from their hiding places. But while the horsemen may be gone for now, Lupus hasn't seen the last of them yet. From Noisa:
This is part two of the Attila the Hun story, and this is Real Dictators. When we were last with Attila, it was the year 449 AD. Attila had become the sole king of the Huns, possibly after murdering his own brother. He is now leader of a vast empire, stretching from the Baltic to the Black Seas. He's in charge of an apparently invincible war machine. Compared to the savage, muscle-bound killer of folklore,
Attila strikes us as charismatic, clever, perceptive, though undoubtedly ruthless. He's very much attuned to the delicate power dynamics of his own position, and he's able to read and exploit the weaknesses of his enemies. Professor Peter Heather
Attila is certainly a dictator in the sense that there are no formal constitutional limits on his power, and his power is based on military success. I mean, I think it's brainpower, not sheer animal brutality or size. He is very much an extremely canny political operator.
His power is not without limits, but no dictator's power is without limits. You're always actually struggling with the contacts that you inherit. So he has to use this war machine. The war machine is what makes him powerful, but it also needs to be used. It's also what is threatening his power at the same time. Attila is the bane of the Eastern Roman Empire and its rather hapless ruler, Theodosius. The Hun king has put a torch to Roman civilization in the Balkans.
And he's busy bleeding the rest of the Eastern Empire dry with his demands for tribute payments or protection money, as we might describe it today. But Attila's fate is that he must always find yet more gold and glory to keep his military well oiled and his warriors satisfied. It's almost time to unleash his forces on the Western Roman Empire. To do this, he must first ready the ground, find a precondition to attack. This is all the more important
given that turning westward will involve Attila confronting his former employer and ally, the Roman general Aetius, military leader of the Western Empire. If you remember, Aetius spent part of his childhood as a hostage-cum-houseguest of the Huns. He and Attila have fought side by side before. Attila will have to use all his cunning to defeat this adversary. Ancient Rome is built across seven hills, making it visible from miles around.
And perhaps that is the point, to proclaim that this is the capital of the world. By contrast, the city of Ravenna, some 200 miles to the north, is almost hidden. It lies in the middle of a flat, featureless marshland. It's perhaps not the proudest location for the imperial court to sit. But given the heightened danger to Rome posed by barbarian invasions, since the year 402 AD, Ravenna has actually been the western imperial capital.
It is here at Ravenna that Julius Caesar gathered his army before crossing the Rubicon. If only the current Roman army were as powerful as Caesar's. Like every great domain, the Western Roman Empire depends on taxation. The income from the lands it conquers pays for the army. These subjugated areas also provide manpower. If an empire loses territory, its military is depleted.
It follows then that the Western Romans' loss of control over wealthy Spain and North Africa has come at a significant cost. As one contemporary chronicler writes, "It seems like the legions have simply melted away." Proceeding through Ravenna's gates, you enter a giant building site. Scaffolding covers the grand churches and government buildings that rise out of the mud. There's even a circus under construction to model that of Rome.
These projects employ the finest artists and craftsmen in Italy. Ravenna needs a makeover if it's going to look the part of the capital. The building work is also a chance to strengthen the fortifications. Raids by the Goths into the Italian peninsula 40 years ago showed how vulnerable Rome was to attack. By contrast, Ravenna, surrounded by marshland, should be impregnable.
In Ravenna's Imperial Palace, the Laurel Grove, Emperor Valentinian III is having a blazing row with his sister. They don't realize it now, but it's an argument that will shape the fate of Western Europe. Few contemporary images of Justa Gata Honoria survive, but her confidence, ambition, and independence are impossible to miss in those that do. She is not about to let her brother steamroll on her.
Valentinian is trying to control who Honoria marries. Quite perceptively, he sees his sister as a potential threat to his throne. Safe, boring and unambitious, those are the qualities he wants to see in any prospective husband of hers. So the Emperor insists that his sister swears an oath of virginity until they can agree on a match for her. Honoria must live a restricted life here in Ravenna. She has other ideas.
She soon begins an affair with her business manager. When Valentinian finds out, he hits the roof and promptly has her lover executed. Honoria is heartbroken, furious, and desperate people do desperate things. When her mother, Galla Placidia, was young, she had run off and married a barbarian. Now, in the spring of 450 AD, daughter Honoria sends a secret message to Attila the Hun.
She asks for his help in finding her a spouse, one of suitably imperial standing. She sends her signet ring with her messenger as proof of the validity of the message. Don't shoot the messenger, so the saying goes. You can forget that. When Valentinian gets wind of the correspondence, he arrests Honorius' servant on his return from Attila's court and has him tortured.
Under duress, the unlucky envoy spills the beans, revealing just what his mistress has set in motion. Attila's reply to the offer is brazen in its opportunism. He is happy to help Honoria by marrying her himself. Her diary will be no less than half the empire, and thanks for the signet ring, he'll take it as proof of their engagement. Emperor Valentinian now knows that if he blocks the match, as Attila surely predicts he will,
then Attila will have his public excuse to attack. He'll be justified in riding to the aid of his betrothed. He needs wars to fight. And I think if you look at the evidence surrounding the Honoria story and his actual actions, that he's looking for a reason to pick a fight. I just feel like we are surrounded in this world by bullshit. So how can you know what's real and what's not? Science versus. That's how.
We answer questions like, does anti-aging skincare actually work? And what is your true personality type? And to answer these questions, we don't use opinions. We dive into the scientific studies, talk to the experts, and put it in a podcast that I know you are going to love. Listen to Science Versus on Spotify. Attila ups the ante. In the autumn, he sends a delegation of his own to Ravenna to announce his and Honoria's engagement. And he has a further demand.
Honoria must be granted the title of Joint Ruler of the Western Roman Empire. This will make Attila an Emperor by marriage. The Huns is a keep-them-guessing strategy. At the same time as the goings-on in Ravenna, Attila sends emissaries to the new ruler of the Eastern Empire, Emperor Marcian. Marcian is reneged on the payment of tribute to the Huns. Attila demands an immediate resumption.
He knows full well that his demands at both the Western and Eastern Imperial Courts will be refused, and then he will have the justification he needs to wage war on either empire. The Romans won't know which is in his crosshairs until they hear his horse's hooves approaching. In early 451 AD, with no cooperation forthcoming, Attila makes his decision. His princess-to-be may reside in Italy, but first on the hit list will be Roman Gaul.
It shows exactly how serious he is about his princess, that instead of turning left into Italy, he turns right into Gaul. I know they didn't have many maps, but he knew precisely where Gaul was as opposed to Italy, especially if he'd been to Italy on those previous campaigns with Aetius. The momentum is clearly with the Huns. Nonetheless, there are huge risks in undertaking such a significant military adventure. Aetius, the Western Imperial commander, is no bog-standard Roman general. He knows the Huns inside out.
This is an invasion he has spent ten years preparing for. And in the east, Martian will be no pushover either. He fought his way up from the lower ranks to become a general. He knows how to wage war and win. Thus, by marching his army into the west, Attila is taking a big risk in leaving his own homeland vulnerable to attack. But if he wants to stay in power, he doesn't really have a choice.
He's milked the Eastern Empire of just about everything that he's got. He's not going to get anything else out of the East. They've robbed the Balkans dry. They can't get past Constantinople because it's too powerful. So they can't get at Asia Minor, Syria, Egypt, which you'd like to do, but that's not possible. And in many ways, this is an ideal time for Attila to invade Gaul. The province covers much of modern-day France and the Low Countries.
But by 451 AD, it feels much less Roman than it has done previously. In the past decades, barbarian tribes and their kings have settled across the region, sometimes with the agreement of the Roman authorities, sometimes without it. Whether there is conflict or collaboration, the presence of groups like the Franks and the Alans has proven destabilizing. The proliferation of new local monarchs has eroded central Roman authority.
Take Toulouse, for example, in the south of Gaul. The Visigoths, led by King Theodoric, have made it their capital. It remains a center of law, commerce and culture. It is still highly Romanized, but Theodoric's growing ambitions is not always easy to control. Against this backdrop, in the spring of 451 AD, Attila's huge army vacates the great Hungarian plain, beginning the long journey west.
It's an enormous mass of humanity, perhaps as many as half a million people: soldiers, booty carts, prisoners of war, swarming through the countryside, clogging every track and road. In front of them, scouting ahead, ride the infamous Hun horsemen. The soldiers have some provisions with them, but they quickly run out. They make up the shortfall by ransacking the farms and villages through which they pass.
Living off the land in this way, Attila knows he can never stay in any one location for too long, lest the local supplies be exhausted. They must keep moving, venturing further and further from home. With such a large army, progress is slow. The great horde rarely covers more than 12 miles a day. They follow the upper Danube north out of the Great Hungarian Plain. They cross the Rhine somewhere near modern-day Koblenz and finally swing north into Gaul.
The settlements we know today as Trier and Metz soon fall. Troyes is the next destination, where Attila encounters Bishop Lupus. General Aetius of the Western Imperial Army is getting desperate now. Theodoric of the Visigoths is already preparing to defend his southern kingdom against Attila, but Aetius wants him to take the fight to the Huns. "Romans, you shall have what you desire," Theodoric replies to Aetius' advances.
The Goths know how to fight off these overbearing people. Aetius' coalition of the willing is taking shape, bringing together a range of barbarians who have axes to grind with the Huns. Aetius even manages to recruit the Burgundians, remember them? Very few survive the Huns' destruction of their city, Borbatomagus, but those that are left will gladly lend a hand. Attila's army will be impossible to stop if it breaks out into open country beyond the Loire River.
This makes the city of Orléans a place of vital strategic importance. Orléans lies about 70 miles southwest of Paris. Nearly a thousand years later, it will host another showdown that will determine the fate of France when Joan of Arc battles the English. The defenders of Orléans prepare for a siege. They pile great banks of earth all around the outskirts of the city to funnel the Huns towards the gates.
The idea is that this will create a killing zone, where the fearsome Huns hemmed in are easier to pick off. From what we can tell, on this occasion it does seem to work. The defenders hold off the invaders long enough for the Roman and Goth reinforcements to make it to Orlia. Outwitted on this rare occasion, Attila is staring defeat in the face. Yord is a humiliating retreat. Then, Aetius' forces burst out of Orlia, taking the fight to the scourge of God.
With his enemies biting at his heels, the Hun king is forced to lead his army back north, but these are lands his men have already stripped of supplies. Soon, hunger and exhaustion set in. The great Hun advance is on the rocks. This attack on Gaul is not to conquer Gaul, it's a huge booty raid.
They've picked up as much easy stuff as they can do. Aetius confronts him with this very complicated confederation that he's put together. So there are some bits of the West Roman army that are still viable, but he's also had to bring in Goths and other allies. The kind of people that he'd previously used the Huns to control in the 430s, he's now having to mobilize them to try and control the Huns. Fast forward 1,400 years.
To 1842, we're just outside the village of Poins-le-Vallée, some 20 miles north of Troyes. A workman digs into the sandy earth. Suddenly his shovel hits something solid. He scrapes away the dirt to reveal an extraordinary hoard. Jewels, a gold collar, belt buckles, bracelets, a Roman ring, and two swords. The hilts of both blades are covered with gold.
Alongside this treasure, a skeleton is also unearthed. It's a shallow grave. This indicates a hasty burial, most likely after death in combat. More finds throughout the neighborhood soon follow, enough to suggest this was once the site of a great battle, a clash of thousands of men. The Battle of the Catalonian Plains. Few descriptions survive, but it is clearly an epochal showdown.
The Huns' will to fight has been undermined by hunger, tiredness, and their relentless pursuit by Aetius. But here, in the rolling countryside of Champagne, Attila has drawn his enemies into the open plains. It seems the perfect location to unleash the full might of his army. June 19th, 451 AD, the night before the battle. Attila, uncharacteristically, is nervous. He consults a soothsayer,
The verdict on this occasion is a disastrous one. Attila can expect defeat, but there's a caveat. A soothsayer also predicts that one of the enemy commanders will pay for the victory with their life. Attila takes this to mean that his old friend Aetius will meet his end. As the Gothic chronicler Jordanus records, Attila deemed the death of Aetius a thing to be desired, even at the cost of his own life. The sun rises on the morning of the battle.
As he directs his forces to take up their positions, Attila is following the traditional Hun battle plan. He places himself and his Hun warriors at the center of his army. His mercenary and press-gang forces are assembled all around, fodder for the Roman legionaries. The Hun horse archers, meanwhile, will loose off volley after volley of arrows. Their constant rapid-fire barrage should pin down the Roman infantry.
Then, the Hun heavy cavalry will be able to advance and encircle them. On the other side, Aetius makes a novel tactical decision of his own. He decides not to use the traditional Roman formation. The Romans have tended to position their own heavy infantry in a central position. In previous battles, that has made them sitting ducks for the Hun horse archers. This time, Aetius assembles the Roman infantry and cavalry together on one wing.
Theodoric and the Visigoths will cut inside from the other. In the middle, Aetius' other barbarian allies, the Alans, will take on the Hun horsemen and draw the fire of the archers. The two sides hurtle forwards. Everything hinges, as with so many battles, on who can take and hold the high ground. It is Aetius who is fastest to climb to the wish. The Romans and Visigoths are already there when the Huns make it to the top.
Beaten back from the hill, Attila surely realizes that he is losing this fight. He prepares to deliver a half-time speech. "After you have conquered so many peoples, I would deem it foolish, nay ignorant of me as your king to goad you with words," he is recorded as saying. "What else are you used to but fighting? And what is sweeter for brave men than to seek vengeance personally?"
"On then to the fray! Let courage and fury explode! Now show your cunning, Huns, your deeds of arms!" Duly inspired, the Huns march right back up the hill. In the melee, Aetius is separated from his men. King Theodoric is taken out by a spear or an arrow. It seems certain the Visigoths will scatter, but in this final reckoning, it is Attila's men who break. Theodoric's son rallies his horsemen.
Suddenly, he leads them charging downhill, straight into the faltering Huns, who turn and flee. By dawn, the battlefield is covered with Hun dead. But while he's now surrounded, Attila is alive. Attila is defeated, and according to one account, his first response to the setback is to think about constructing this funeral pyre of wooden nomad horse saddles and killing himself on it.
Obviously he didn't do it, but that does suggest it's a major setback. Then something incredible happens. Or rather doesn't happen. There is no final assault. With the passage of time it's become impossible to discern why exactly Aetius doesn't finish off the Huns. Some cry foul play, suggesting the two old comrades made a secret deal. In the years since, many theories have been put forward.
It seems likely that Aetius' hand is forced by the Visigoths. They have no interest in losing more men, and they are in a hurry to get home. Without the Visigoths, Aetius' army is substantially diminished. It's worth pointing out that while Attila's defeat is vital for Aetius, his death would not necessarily play into the Roman general's hands. Diminished yet alive, Attila the Hun remains a bogeyman to the Visigoths as much as to the Empire.
The tribes of Gaul can be kept in their place, looking over their shoulders. What the Romans have to do is fend off this Hunnic confederation sufficiently to let it fall apart under its own internal divisions. And to that extent, I think that explains why Aetius doesn't follow up. He's got problems within his own force as a confederation as well.
Aetius' force is too fragile for him to want or to need to follow up, having checked Attila, and the checking is sufficient, I think. In any case, Attila and the bedraggled remains of his army are let off the hook, and they flee through the Gallic countryside. As they pass through Troyes, Attila stops for directions.
With no help forthcoming, he takes his old acquaintance, Bishop Lupus, prisoner, only letting him go when the cleric has helped them to cross the Rhine. Spare a thought for poor old Lupus. The Roman authorities, when they roll into town, are rather less forgiving. Lupus is labelled a traitor for helping Attila escape. Stripped of his diocese, he is forced to spend seven years in solitary confinement, living as a hermit. Total defeat may have been avoided,
But Attila has still lost thousands of warriors and much of the treasure they pillaged. Worse than that, his very legitimacy as a ruler has been dented. His right to rule depends on winning great battles and distributing copious amounts of Roman gold. He is unlikely to face an immediate challenge to his leadership, but someone may fancy their chances if he loses again. With his ego suitably bruised, Attila knows one thing.
He must make the Romans pay as soon as possible. Attila must feel some sense of relief as he finally sees the wooden walls of his capital rising out of the Great Hungarian Plain. His long journey back from Gaul finally at an end. As he and his retinue approach the Great Hall, an ancient ritual, a traditional welcome ceremony begins. A group of young girls processes out through the doors.
They walk under narrow strips of clean white linen, held aloft by women on either side. Ancient songs of the Huns are sung. Later that night, at dinner, Attila works the rum. At such gatherings, his nobles sit around him, reclining on couches arranged in the shape of a horseshoe, with their leader at the center. Attila offers each of the nobles in turn a goblet of wine to drink from.
This is a symbolic way of reinforcing the bonds between the men and reminding them who's in charge. Attila has had plenty of time on the long ride home to plot his comeback. And now, to his nobles, he reveals his plan for revenge. Forget Gaul. This time they will go for Roman Italy. It's a soft target, relatively speaking. Forty years ago, the Visigoth king Alaric sacked Rome.
If he can do it, surely Attila can. Whether the Hun nobles are brave enough to whisper it, there are grounds for concern. Like Gaul, the Italian peninsula is a long way from the Great Hungarian Plain, but Attila won't be dissuaded. In the spring of 452 AD, less than a year after his defeat at the Catalonian Plains, Attila makes a lightning strike. He crosses the Alps.
The Hun horde pours through the passes towards the Adriatic and the Po Valley. Aetius is under pressure at the Western Imperial Court. He offered no resistance at the mountain passes, but he does have a plan to counter this latest Hun advance. He will allow Attila to exhaust himself with siege after siege. Let the weather grow colder. It will be harder for the Huns to forage off the land.
Much of the region is seeing drought already. That doesn't bode well for the enemy. So, let's batten down the hatches and wait for reinforcements from Constantinople. The fortress city of Aquileia guards the entrance to Italy. Its formidable walls have succumbed just once in their history. Two hundred years ago, the women of the city cut off their hair to use as rope for the fortress's catapults. A temple to Venus the Bald was built in their honor.
The defenders have sufficient warning of Attila's approach to evacuate the children, the elderly and the infirm into the Grado lagoon. Then the siege begins. Each time the Huns advance, they are met by clouds of arrows, torrents of tar and jets of burning oil. At night the Romans conduct covert sorties. They assassinate those trying to undermine the walls. They raid the Huns' camp and burn down their siege engines.
and they poison their water supplies. We know that Attila is a man who puts some store in portents. So when he notices a bird preparing to leave its nest in the city walls, he is inclined to take it as a sign. A bird would not abandon its nest unless it foresaw the destruction of the city, he tells his men. His words have the desired effect. On July 18th, the city walls begin to buckle, and then the Huns break in.
As Jodanus records, the city and its people are "despoiled, smashed asunder, and devastated so savagely that hardly a trace is left to be seen." There is at least a silver lining. Legend has it, the survivors hiding out in the lagoon will go on to found a new city, Venice. After Aquileia, Attila moves fast across the fertile Po Plain to make up for lost time.
Many further cities fall. Soon after another bloody siege, he's battering down the doors of the Imperial Palace in Milan. Inside, his eye alights on a painting. It depicts a selection of Roman emperors seated on golden thrones, with dead Hun warriors lying at their feet. So Attila commissions an artwork of his own. This one puts the Hun king on the throne, with the Roman emperors heaving sacks upon their shoulders and pouring out gold at his feet.
After all that, it seems that Attila never sets his sights on Ravenna, where his supposed fiancée, Honoria, still resides. Attila's next target is Rome itself, but he will never make it there. By the autumn of 452, Attila has made it to around 300 miles north of Rome. Here he receives a delegation led by Pope Leo. The great Renaissance painter Raphael will recreate the scene in a fresco for the Vatican.
As legend, and as Raphael would have it, Pope Leo is joined by saints Peter and Paul. Together they gently remind Attila of the love of God and convince him to return home. The real reasons for Attila's sudden reversal are likely to be much less heavenly. He gets caught in a series of sieges. We know disease breaks out.
Basically, the greater the distance that you're marching your army, the more difficult the actual campaigning, because the Huns don't run a kind of complicated logistic support operation. People are carrying their food or living off the land, combination of the two. There's a limited duration to how long you can keep an army in the field. Dysentery and typhus and those kinds of diseases clearly break out amongst the Huns as they conduct these sieges.
And there's also relations between the Eastern and the Western Empire are not bad in this era. And the new Eastern Emperor, Marcian, launches attacks on the Hunnic homeland in the rear, as it were. So there is a sort of combined Roman response to this. I think Attila's power is being used up and eventually decides the cost-benefit equation is such that he needs to retreat back to his homeland. It's early 453 AD.
By now Attila is back home on the Hungarian plain. The rumour at court is that the Hun war machine will shortly be restarted for another crack at the west. But then fate intervenes. Perhaps to cheer himself up after being chased out of Italy, Attila has decided to take another wife, a beautiful young woman called Ildiko. The wedding ceremony is followed by a night of partying,
Attila stumbles into the bridal chamber to consummate the marriage. But, heavy with wine, he falls asleep on his back. Morning comes, but Attila doesn't emerge. Neither does his bride. Something's up. Eventually, his bodyguards batter down the door. Inside, they find Ildiko sprawled over Attila's body, distraught. The king has suffered a haemorrhage, which has caused him to choke to death on his own blood.
Perhaps the most fearsome warlord in European history has died of a nosebleed. As Jordanus writes, "Thus did drunkenness put a disgraceful end to a king renowned in war." Attila's body is placed in a silken tent. He is then buried in a gold coffin within a silver coffin within an iron one. Entombed with him are gemstones, valuable ornaments, and weapons captured from his foes.
And just as it happens with the death of Chinggis Khan, legend has it that the prisoners who dig the grave are killed to keep its location secret. It's a somewhat ignominious end for a man who dominated such a vast swathe of land. He ruled by gold and the sword, but he never built the institutions to ensure continuity after his death.
The death of a great leader is a moment of acute political tension because it's personalized leadership still, not regularized government. And no new leader can immediately inherit the sort of charismatic prestige of his predecessor. It's perhaps not surprising then that after Attila's demise, his empire is quick to break up. The non-Hannik tribes rebel against central rule.
One reason why it all goes so terribly wrong after his death is that I think tensions were building up. He'd had two less than stellar campaigns, the one in Gaul and the one in Italy. I'm sure they came back with a fair bit of booty from both of them. These weren't total out-and-out disasters, but there had nothing to match the victories that they'd achieved in the East Roman Empire in 447. So I think there would certainly have been stresses and strains brewing
At least three or four sons of Attila throw their hats into the ring on Attila's death.
Two sons of Attila try to do a deal with the Romans and get resettled in the Balkans. One manages successfully, the other is killed. The son who survived may have been more reasonable in his demands than the one who didn't, but the sources aren't great. So the Huns disappear as an independent political entity as the empire fractures. Some are refugees on the Roman soil, some get caught up in the new successor entities that form out of, and it collapse.
But even with Attila out of the way, or perhaps because of this, Roman will soon turn on Roman. Without such a potent adversary to unite against, Emperor Valentinian and General Aetius are soon at each other's throats. Valentinian, it is said, murders Aetius with his bare hands, before being killed by Aetius' bodyguards. Just three years later, in 456 AD,
The Vandals from North Africa will sack Rome and take the imperial family hostage. In 475 Ravenna, the supposedly impregnable capital in the marshlands, will succumb to an army of barbarian mercenaries. 1200 years of Roman rule in Italy will come to an end.
I think in a sense the rise and fall of the Hunnic Empire is indirectly catalytic to the unraveling of the western half of the Roman world. As the Hunnic Empire rises, you see two effects. One is pulling in lots of Goths, etc., into this Hunnic confederation. But you also see a lot of Goths and Vandals and others running away from the Huns and moving into Roman soil.
And putting these large groups on Roman soil starts to undermine the Roman imperial system from within, starts to eat away at its foundation.
And then the collapse of the Hunnic Empire is an even greater source of instability because the Huns are not there anymore to act as a counterweight to the groups that are settled on West Roman soil. And what you see from the 450s onwards is that budding Western imperial regimes have to do deals with groups like Visigoths and Vandals to try and create political stability. And those deals involve handing over more bits
of Roman provincial territory until those groups, Vandals, Visigoths, etc., are able just to seize what's left for themselves. And that's what brings the empire to an end. So I see Attila and the Huns as indirectly very important in this whole story. Beyond his impact on ancient Rome, what then is Attila's legacy? He may not have put much store, as far as we can tell, in state building.
but his life and achievements will inspire generations of Hungarian nationalists. Many centuries after his death, Attila will remain a popular boy's name in Hungary. And then there are the political hard men, the emperors and the autocrats, Napoleon, Kaiser Wilhelm, Adolf Hitler, men who are beguiled by this fearsome leader from the East. In time, the Hun King morphs into a role model for those who want to set the world on fire.
There's a huge brutality about Attila, but it was forced on him. The world in which he operated was a very brutal one. He had to keep order amongst the Huns. He had to keep this war machine moving or it would destroy him. That's completely different from what we see in the middle part of the 20th century, I think. As ever, there is history and then there is mythology.
I think his legacy is, well, it's largely a fantasy in a sense. I do think that the real Attila, as it were, insofar as you can get to him, that emerges from the praise of Priscus is not one that people want to know about. You know, Michael Corleone, as opposed to the biggest, baddest, most barbarian figure you can possibly imagine. It is that kind of fantasy legacy that is the one that's alive today.
the civilized world's imagination of the other. I mean, it's in the Roman era, it's there. You then see in the sort of medieval literature, the figure of Attila is alive and well because people read these late antique texts. And then in Renaissance and later, they read them again. And each time Attila is reinvented as the kind of mirror image of everything we think that we ought to be.
Actually, I think the reality suggested by Priscus is a bit closer to us than we might care to imagine. Next time on Real Dictators, we'll return to 1940s Germany to begin the final installment of the Adolf Hitler story. World War II is raging and the Fuhrer remains in the box seat, but he is not as untouchable as he used to be. So how does it all come to an end for perhaps the most evil dictator of them all?
Hitler's downfall. That's coming soon.
