Attila aims the full force of the Hunnic confederation against the western Roman empire, and the resulting confrontation leads to tectonic changes for the Romans as well as for the peoples beyond the frontiers.

Transcript

Hello and welcome to A history of Romania.

Season 1, Episode 23: Dominoes

Before we begin today, I want to give you an update on the remainder of the season. I finished all the research needed for it, and there’s actually a bibliography page on the website if you’re curious about the primary and secondary sources that go into writing this story. As I’ve said in the introduction, the first season will take us through the sixth century, so based on where we are right now, we’ll get there in about three or four more narrative episodes. After we finish the story of season one, we’ll take a couple of episodes to look at the themes and trends that have emerged so far; we’re still at the beginning of our overall story, and we need to understand and absorb the first season before heading into the second one. With that said, let’s get back to the narrative.

Last time, we saw Attila become the uncontested leader of the Huns and devastate the eastern half of the Roman empire to extort tribute from it. The emperor in Constantinople had tried to defeat him on the battlefield and failed, then tried to assassinate him and failed. Thankfully for him, by 450, Attila figured that he had extracted as much wealth as he could from the East; he now wanted to subject the western half of the empire to the same treatment, and he had the perfect pretext to attack.

You see, the western emperor, Valentinian, was in a fragile position. By now, barbarian peoples had been living inside the borders of his realm for four decades. The Vandals had migrated to the prosperous regions of North Africa, founded a kingdom, and built a formidable navy to defend their independence. The Suebi had settled in northwestern Hispania and established relations with the Romans living there, while the Franks and Alemanni did the same in eastern Gaul. Meanwhile, the Goths in southern Gaul had become foederati, putting their swords at the service of the empire in exchange for land, and the Burgundians who lived next to them had done the same.

The territory that wasn’t occupied by barbarians – namely parts of Gaul, Hispania, and Illyria – were administered by local governors or bishops, who operated with a great deal of autonomy from the faraway court in Ravenna. The western emperor exerted direct control only over the Italian peninsula, and so only had the resources to recruit and pay for one field army. Not wanting to risk his life, Valentinian stayed within the safety of Ravenna’s walls and tasked a commander to lead his forces; but this army could only be in one place, so it could only focus on one threat at a time.

The only other recourse was diplomacy, which is why the emperor’s alliances with the foederati Goths and Burgundians were so important; diplomacy filled in for a lack of soldiers. One of the most potent diplomatic tools which the emperor had was marrying the women of the imperial family to other heads of state. You see, the Romans thought it was the responsibility of the father to find a suitable husband for his daughters – and do so ideally before the end of their teenage years. Roman society was in fact deeply misogynistic, as women were considered inferior to men, and were legally and socially subordinate to them. Though women contributed enormously to their communities, Roman writers viewed their proper place as being in the home as obedient wives and mothers; and while men could have many sexual partners throughout their life, women were expected to be chaste, and so Valentinian kept a close watch on his female relatives.

The emperor had already promised one of his daughters to the son of the Vandal king to ensure peaceful relations between their states. He was now looking for a match for his sister Honoria, and kept her confined to the palace to ensure she would remain a virgin. But Honoria detested being treated as a chip in her brother’s schemes and hated living as a prisoner. At 17 years-old, the princess had an affair with one of her staff, and though she hid the matter as long as she could, eventually, she could no longer hide her pregnancy. When Valentinian found out, he executed Honoria’s lover and shipped her off to Constantinople, where she gave birth, and her child was taken away. Once she had recovered, Honoria was escorted back to Ravenna under heavy guard. Now the mother of an illegitimate child, she had lost much of her value as an imperial bride, and Valentinian arranged for her to marry a respectable but unambitious local aristocrat who would keep her out of public view on his country estate.

Honoria really didn’t want to spend her life with an old and boring landowner, and really wanted to take revenge on her brother for what he’d done to her, to her child, and to the child’s father. So, she sent a trusted servant to Attila with a message: “Come to my aid, and I’ll give you all the gold you want.” And as a token of good faith, she sent him a ring. Honoria probably wanted to use Attila as a tool; he was the only man who could challenge her brother’s power, and she thought she could control him by appealing to his greed for gold; if her brother resisted her will, Honoria would tell the barbarian to attack, but if her brother did what she wanted, she’d tell the barbarian to back off.

But Attila was no tool. As we’ve seen last episode, he was actually a shrewd diplomat, and he saw Honoria’s request as the perfect opportunity that it was. The Hunnic ruler dispatched an embassy to Ravenna informing the court that the princess had sent him a ring and asked for help. Clearly, this was a marriage proposal, and he wanted half the western Roman empire as her dowry. When Valentinian inevitably refused, Attila received his pretext for war.

In the autumn of 450, Attila ordered his chieftains and subject kings to assemble their warriors for an expedition to the West. Though we’ve mainly focused on the Goths, there were dozens of other subject peoples in the Hunnic confederation, with the Gepids being amongst the most important.

The Gepids were in fact related to the Goths. Both peoples had lived alongside each other south of the Baltic Sea, and when the Goths began their southward migration in the late 2^nd century, the Gepids stayed behind for a few more generations. Eventually, they began their own migration, settled on the northern slopes of the Carpathian Mountains, and took part in the devastating raids against the Romans in the 3^rd century. After the empire retreated from Dacia, they moved inside the arc of the Carpathian Mountains and lived alongside the Romans who had stayed behind and the Dacians who had moved in next to them. When the Goths conquered all these communities, the Gepids became their subjects for a few generations until the Huns arrived. As part of the Hunnic confederation, they participated in raids against the empire, and returned with more plunder and prestige every year. By Attila’s time, the Gepids were considered the second most important subjects of the Huns, just behind the Goths.

Now, all of Attila’s forces were mobilizing: Hunnic riders readied their spare horses, Gothic chieftains amassed supplies, Gepid warriors honed their swords, and Roman prisoners of war gathered the tools needed to build siege engines. This massive army set out on its western expedition in March of 451 and soon punctured the Roman frontier in Gaul. For three months, it plunged deeper into the empire, pillaging every village, town, and city it encountered; panic spread throughout the realm as settlements smouldered and survivors limped away traumatized.

By June of 451, the Hunnic army had advanced 400 kilometres west of the Rhine, and the empire was finally ready to risk a battle to stop it. The commander of the western Roman army, Aetius, had gathered all the soldiers he could muster and brought along his foederati allies as well. Amongst them were the Goths who had settled in the empire 75 years ago, and they were now face-to-face with the Goths who had remained north of the Danube and who fought for the Huns.

Aetius knew what devastation awaited if he didn’t stop the invaders, and Attila knew that his rule depended on bringing in continuous victories and plunder. The two leaders faced off on the plains of northeastern Gaul. Horses galloped, arrows rained, swords clashed, and tens of thousands of men were killed in the fighting, with so many dead that a stream in the middle of the battlefield turned red from gore. Amidst the chaos, the king of the foederati Goths was killed, and the fighting only ended with the arrival of nightfall.

The next morning, both sides retreated to their camps as piles of corpses lay strewn on the plains between them. Attila formed a wall of wagons to protect his forces as they reorganized, and prepared to fight to the death. In the imperial camp, Aetius was debating his options. If he attacked, victory was by no means assured; and even if he did win, killing Attila would lead to a power struggle within his confederation, which could push the losing tribes to flee into the empire in another mass migration. No, Aetius was content to have stopped Attila’s advance, and now the best course of action was to let him return home and negotiate a peace treaty.

And so, on the second day after the battle, the Roman army and its foederati allies withdrew from the field. Attila was happy to see them go, as he had no intention to restart the fight. Though he hadn’t technically lost the battle, this stalemate had severely dented his reputation as a war leader; fear of his reprisals kept his subjects in line, and the draw of plunder made them follow him, but if he was no longer able to lead them to victory, then there was no reason to be loyal to this weak ruler. Attila needed to quickly consolidate his position before these rumblings turned to open revolt, so he ordered his forces to march East with all haste, and they made it back to the Hunnic homeland before the end of summer.

In another blow to Attila, the eastern emperor had stopped sending him tribute once the Hunnic army had begun to march towards Gaul. Now back on the Pannonian Plain, Attila demanded the payments restart, but the eastern emperor refused, safe in the knowledge that the Hunnic forces had been rebuked. He was gambling that Attila wouldn’t undertake a punitive expedition against the East – and he was right.

The Hunnic ruler was focused on the West. He was determined not to appear weak, and knew that the only way to truly secure his position was with a successful campaign. So, in the summer of 452, Attila again marched his army against the western empire, yet this time, he didn’t go for Gaul, but plunged straight into Italy. He had chosen his target shrewdly, as the Romans were unlikely to call on their barbarian foederati allies in their Italian heartland.

The Huns were brutal in their advance, gutting cities, massacring their inhabitants, and setting everything ablaze. Aetius moved his forces to the safety of Gaul, while Valentinian took refuge in the city of Rome – both men knowing they couldn’t directly engage the invaders. Though the Hunnic advance seemed unstoppable, Attila was penned in on the plains of northern Italy. He didn’t want to cross the Alps and fight Aetius’ forces in mountainous terrain, and he knew that moving south would entail protracted sieges for which his army was ill-equipped, since bad harvests and an outbreak of malaria were already making it difficult to live off the land. At the same time, news arrived that the eastern emperor had invaded Hunnic territory north of the Danube. This daring move was not meant to capture territory, but instead to weaken Hunnic positions opposite the imperial frontier. Though only a raid, it further dented Attila’s prestige, as the Romans had, for the first time, brought the fight to the Huns on their own territory.

And so, the Hunnic ruler decided to retreat from Italy without having accomplished his goal. He had taken plenty of loot from sacked cities, but he hadn’t won a decisive battlefield victory to prove to his chieftains and subject kings that he was still a fearsome leader worth following. And when he returned to the Pannonian Plain, the eastern emperor had already retreated south of the Danube, depriving Attila of the opportunity to punish his incursion.

As winter set in, the courts in both West and East sighed in relief at having halted Attila yet again, but everyone knew that having been rebuffed twice, the Hunnic ruler would come back twice as furious. The next campaign season was set to bring another confrontation, but at the beginning of 453, extraordinary news arrived: Attila was dead.

After a night of revelry in his palace, the Hunnic ruler had gone to bed drunk, and the veins in his esophagus ruptured after decades of alcoholism. Attila died of internal bleeding in his sleep. One of the most fearsome enemies in the history of the empire was gone. It had not been Roman strength of arms or even a wily assassination plot that had brought him down, but years of heavy drinking that finally broke down his body.

Attila’s funeral occurred somewhere on the Pannonian Plain. His body was encased first in a coffin of gold, then one of silver, and finally one of iron – symbolizing, in turn, his royal status, the plunder he’d taken, and his victories in war. The servants who buried him were killed so that they wouldn’t reveal his last resting place, and the plains soon covered it with grass.

Attila had not designated an heir, and his numerous sons immediately fell to infighting as each sought the throne for himself. As the Huns descended into civil war, their various subject peoples saw an opportunity to gain their freedom; they refused to support any of the contenders, and revolted. Attila’s three leading sons realized that their disunity would bring about their collective downfall, so they put aside their differences for the moment and combined their forces to maintain Hunnic supremacy. In response, the king of the Gepids sent ambassadors to the other peoples formerly under Hunnic rule – the Goths, Sciri, Rugii, Heruli, and others – and formed a united front. The rulers of these peoples had fought together for decades under Attila; they knew each other personally and were familiar with Hunnic tactics. The crucial battle of this war of independence came in 454, less than a year after Attila’s death. On the banks of an unidentified river named Nedao, the alliance led by the Gepids decisively defeated the Huns and killed Attila’s eldest son.

The next decade only brought more chaos. Attila’s two remaining sons tried to carve a position for themselves on the Pannonian Plain by subjugating the Goths, but were defeated. One brother then turned against the other, murdered him, and, in a bid to assert himself as a war leader, he launched a raid into the Roman empire. But his forces were defeated, he was killed in the rout, and his severed head was taken to Constantinople to be paraded through the streets. The death of Attila’s last son finally freed the Romans from the Hunnic threat. The Huns didn’t disappear as a people, but their political power did. Some minor chieftains offered their services to the peoples who had gained their independence, while the rest fled eastwards to the steppes north of the Black Sea to ride for themselves.

Meanwhile, the Goths who had been under Hunnic rule, splintered. Although small groups remained in their settlements in and around the Carpathian Mountains, a large portion left to join their brethren in Gaul, while another asked permission from the eastern emperor to settle in Thrace. The eastern emperor agreed, and throughout the 450s and 460s, about 50,000 Gothic men, women, and children were given lands to cultivate south of the Danube, on condition that they send recruits to the imperial army.  The Romans didn’t repeat the mistakes of 376 when the Goths had first sought refuge among them. There were no refugee camps, lack of supplies, or betrayals; the Goths were quickly given good farmland and, to ensure they’d remain loyal and work with the Romans, the court gave their leaders high-ranking positions in the administration and army. The eastern empire had, at last, learned how to accommodate its neighbours from beyond the frontiers.

As for the Gepids, they decided to stay north of the Danube. Their king had led the coalition that had overthrown Hunnic rule, and his people were now the dominant power on the Pannonian Plain; so instead of migrating, they decided to establish their own, independent kingdom and rule the region. We’ll focus on the Gepids in the next episode, but I want to use the remainder of this episode to understand their surroundings and the world which they will navigate. And so, let’s return to the West and see what Attila’s death meant for the western Roman empire.

With the collapse of the Hunnic confederation, emperor Valentinian calculated that the biggest threat to his regime was gone and that it was now safe to remove his top general, Aetius, whose influence had begun to threaten his own. Aetius understood that, with Attila gone, he was no longer as crucial, so he wanted to marry his son to the emperor’s daughter to link their families. In the autumn of 454, Aetius met Valentinian in the imperial palace to discuss the matter. During the conversation, the emperor and his chamberlain drew swords and hacked Aetius to death.

This brutal betrayal didn’t secure Valentinian’s hold on power, but instead destroyed his legitimacy. People wondered why they should serve an emperor who would kill them if they did their job too well. And so, less than a year later, an ambitious senator named Petronius Maximus took advantage of the emperor’s infamy and had him assassinated. Petronius then took the throne for himself and, to shore up his legitimacy, forced Valentinian’s daughter to marry his son. But if you remember, Valentinian’s daughter was promised to the son of the Vandal king, so when the barbarian ruler heard that the deal had been broken, he immediately mobilized his fleet to attack Italy.

The western empire was unable to muster a defense force, since its top general was dead and its emperor was on shaky ground. Panic spread through the city of Rome as the Vandal fleet drew closer. Knowing that he couldn’t hold the walls, Petronius decided to flee, but was intercepted by an angry mob, who stoned him to death and threw his body in the Tiber. Three days later, the Vandals entered Rome and proceeded to plunder it for two weeks. This was the second time the Eternal City had been sacked in 45 years, but unlike the Gothic sack of 410, this event was much more destructive – not because the Vandals took more loot or prisoners, but because they captured Valentinian’s wife and daughters, and took them to North Africa. The western empire was thus gutted of its imperial family, a lineage that went back 90 years. The emperor in Constantinople was left without a colleague, and he became the sole leader of the Roman world.

In the aftermath of the sack, a series of commanders installed themselves on the western throne using the force afforded by their soldiers and their foederati allies. These new emperors tried to reconquer lost lands to expand the power of the state; but they were working with fewer resources, because the parts of Gaul, Hispania, and Illyria that weren’t under barbarian control governed themselves autonomously and kept their soldiers and tax revenue for themselves. At the same time, the western empire was facing emboldened enemies, as various barbarian kingdoms took more land in the chaos following the sack. Some of the new emperors did in fact achieve limited success against the barbarians, but when they inevitably suffered a setback – as happens in all wars – their rivals quickly overthrew them; the western court wasn’t united against external threats; its members were constantly looking to exploit each other’s weaknesses to advance their own position.

And so, for the next two decades following the Vandal sack of Rome in 455, none of the western emperors lasted more than a few years in power; there were even periods of up to 18 months when the western empire had no emperor. This infighting and instability meant that no ruler had time to entrench his position and reestablish an imperial lineage. All of them relied on Constantinople’s approval to legitimize their position, and while the eastern emperor did at times confirm their right to rule, at other times, he sent his own nominee to take over the administration.

In 474, Constantinople appointed a man named Julius Nepos as emperor of the western half of the empire, and sent him to Italy with an army to assert his authority. After being acclaimed by the senate, Julius tried to extend his power in Gaul, but his efforts stalled within a year. The commander of his armies used this moment of weakness to rebel, and Julius was forced to flee into exile in Illyria. The throne now sat empty, and the commander installed his own son, Romulus Augustulus, as emperor,

Meanwhile, the foederati troops serving in Italy wanted to be given land; they’d fought for the Romans in countless battles, and they thought it fair that they be rewarded for their service. This request had been repeatedly refused, and the foederati finally reached their limit: after another refusal, they rose in revolt and proclaimed their general, Odoacer, as their king. Odoacer defeated all opposition, marched into Ravenna, and forced the newly-elevated emperor, Romulus Augustulus, to abdicate the throne in 476.

Being a barbarian, Odoacer couldn’t proclaim himself emperor, but in a break with precedent, he also didn’t place a Roman supporter on the throne. Instead, he sent Constantinople the imperial regalia of the western emperors, and left the throne vacant. The message was clear: no one would succeed Romulus Augustulus, whether it was Julius Nepos or any other man. The emperor in Constantinople could rule the whole Roman world himself – or whatever was left of it – and Odoacer was happy to act as his representative in Italy. But the West no longer needed an emperor.

The emperor in Constantinople tried to convince Odoacer to let Julius return from exile, but Odoacer said, “Nah, I’m good.” The emperor couldn’t enforce his will since he couldn’t spare the soldiers to invade Italy, so, instead, he made Odoacer a patrician and appointed him dux of Italy, creating the fiction that the barbarian governed the peninsula in his name.

Four years later, in 480, Julius Nepos was murdered by two of his retainers while in exile in Illyria, and Odoacer chased them down and killed them; in the process, he conveniently added Illyria to his holdings. Constantinople didn’t appoint another western emperor, and Odoacer was left to rule as King of Italy.

The lands that once comprised the western half of the Roman empire – Britannia, Gaul, Hispania, Africa, Illyria, and Italy – were now no longer governed by Romans; they were divided between various barbarian kingdoms, and if the empire wanted to reassert its claim to these territories, it would have to fight for them. The Roman world had just dramatically shrunk and shifted decisively East.

Next time, we’ll return to our stage around the Carpathian Mountains to see how the Gepids navigate this new world, and see the Romans dream of reconquering their lost lands.