Few peoples in the history of Europe or Asia have attained such a reputation as the Huns; not even their Mongoloid brethren, the Mongols. Like the Vandals, who have given us the word ‘vandalism’, the Huns have come to represent a generic term for cruelty and destruction, with their most famous leader, Attila, becoming legendary as the “embodiment of a cruel, merciless leader of barbarians” and “the Scourge of God” . While these nomads undoubtedly left a lasting impression, if not by way of many buildings, settlements or graves, but imbedded in the psyche and the political landscape of Europe, who these people were and where they came from is still mostly even now a collection of “unproven theory” . Another aspect of the Huns that is still clouded in some mystery is how these continental drifters, who “dwelt beyond the Maeotic marshes , beside the frozen Ocean ” at the ends of the earth, could take on and defeat not only the semi-settled peoples of the “transdanubian barbaricum” but also the organised and battle-hardened armies of the Eastern and Western Roman empires. In this essay I hope to highlight some of these theories on who the Huns actually were, where they came from, who the Europeans saw them as and what were the circumstances that influenced their impact in Europe.

During the middle years of the fourth century the major threats to the Roman empires came from the multitude of German and Gothic tribes but in the twenty-five years before the Battle of Adrianople in AD378 “the barbarians had been kept at bay and Roman arms were dominant” . Even areas like the lower Danube “are not known to have suffered any barbarian raids in the period. The future looked secure.” This was before the Huns arrived. Having defeated the Alanic tribes on the Asiatic steppes of southern Russia, these new fearsome marauders, “riding on their fat-headed, peculiar-shaped plains horses” , smashed into the Ostrogoths, causing so much despair that their king Ermanaric committed suicide and his successor, Vithimeris, fell in battle soon after. While many of the surviving Ostrogoths came under Hunnic domination, two “experienced commanders of proved courage”, Alatheus and Saphrax , led a force of Ostrogoths across the river Dniester to form a united front against the Huns with their Visigothic brethren. However, they were comprehensively out-manoeuvred and out-flanked, causing them to appeal to the Eastern emperor to allow them across the Danube into Roman territory. This “billiard-ball” effect was to cause the disastrous Battle of Adrianople, the biggest Roman defeat since Cannae against Hannibal some six hundred years earlier. This effect set “into motion the great upheaval of peoples” , known as the Völkerwanderung, and is one of the four reasons that Denis Sinor gives for why the Huns caught the Western imagination. He suggests that the Huns presented a different challenge due to their looks, their lack of a political stance and new method of waging war, and that, as a whole, the Romans’ military preparedness, both East and West, was severely weakened by internal disorder. His final reason for the enduring nature of the Huns’ reputation is attributed to the “excellent descriptions given by contemporary writers” .

Of these contemporary writers, the most important is Ammianus Marcellinus, “the greatest literary genius which the world has seen between Tacitus and Dante” . This is high praise for someone who was not a professional writer of letters, rather someone who spent his early life as an officer in the army, however, possibly through his Greek upbringing in Antioch, he was able to produce a “stylistic masterpiece” that “cannot be praised too highly” . He set himself the task of following on from Tacitus, and describes the “events from the reign of the emperor Nerva to the death of Valens” . The first thirteen of his thirty-one books are lost, however, on the subject of the Huns, we have surviving what Otto Maenchen-Helfen calls “an invaluable document” . Ammianus’ ‘Excursus on the Huns and Alans’ shows his superiority to all other contemporary writers, who give us scant information on the Huns; happy just to relate to us the story of how Hunnic hunters followed a deer “on foot and crossed the Maeotic swamps” into the “unknown Scythian land” . Despite his reputation as a great historian, Ammianus is not without his faults. His work is full of the bias of his informants, which were used because after AD378 it is possible that he only left Rome on one occasion and, therefore, had no first hand knowledge of the Huns. It is not just the bias of others that fills the pages of Ammianus, for he “hated all barbarians, even those who distinguished themselves in service to Rome” ; it just seems that while some of the Germans and Goths had obtained “a modicum of civilisation… the Huns were still primeval savages” , and in Ammianus’ eyes worse than any other people from across the Danube.

The other major source we have for this early interaction with the Huns in Scythia is the Gothic History of Cassiodorus, which despite being lost to us, is preserved by Jordanes in his work The Origin and Deeds of the Getae, commonly referred to as the Getica. Much of Ammianus’ “Hunnophobia” is equalled by these two writers, as is much of what he wrote about them, but in Cassiodorus we have a man who showed a begrudging respect to the Huns probably because he had to explain how these savages could make themselves “lords of his heroes” - the Ostrogoths - for three generations. Unfortunately for Cassiodorus, he tarnishes his reputation further by deliberately leaving out aspects of Ostrogothic life, such as the remaining pagan elements of their traditions, which would make them less appealing to the populace of their new kingdom in Italy. When it comes to the other historians of the time, they merely tell us that “the Goths were driven from their sites by the Huns” without going into any detail of how they lived and fought. If they had, they might have been able to link what happened at Adrianople in AD378, like Ammianus did , to the events that had taken place on the Russian steppes in the preceding decade . Apart from this seeming lack of interest in the Huns before they become directly involved with the Romans, another problem with many of the historians of this period is that they survive only in meagre amounts in the pages of other writers. R.C. Blockley collected together the fragments of four such historians – Eunapius of Sardis, Olympiodorus of Thebes, Priscus of Panium and Malchus of Philadelphia. These historians are of little help to us as almost all of what they say about the Huns is either semi-mythical or is already mentioned by Ammianus, who is consistently more reliable and complete .

So what did these historians report about the Huns and how did they and their informants represent them? As I have already said, the name of the Huns has become synonymous with cruelty and destruction and they are accused by a Syriac cleric of “war crimes” – “the Huns roast pregnant women, cut out the foetus, put it in a dish, pour water over it, and dip their weapons into the brew; they eat the flesh of children and drink the blood of women.” As Maenchen-Helfen states, these “war crimes” have little or no credence and that this Syriac cleric clearly let his imagination run riot. Even if the Huns did partake in these inhumane acts, they would not be the only ones as the Germanic invaders of Gaul in the early years of the fifth century are thought to have “killed the hermits, burned the priests alive, raped the nuns, devastated the vineyards, and cut down the olive trees.”

However, the swarming of the Hunnic horsemen from the Russian steppes may have appeared to many of the Christian peoples as the ‘Horsemen of the Apocalypse’ and the fulfilling of the prediction made in AD364 by Hiliary of Poitiers , that the Antichrist would arrive within one generation . The religious element intensified after the Roman defeat at Adrianople, with Ambrose, bishop of Milan, stating that “the end of the world is coming upon us” . The ‘barbarian’ tribes sweeping down from the north of the empire were equated with the two legendary giants, Gog and Magog . The Goths were seen as Gog, with the Massagetae as Magog. This idea is not only seen in Christianity, but is mirrored in Judaism. The Talmud also sees the Goths as Gog and identifies “the country of the kanths” -recognised as the kingdom of the White Huns - as the home of Magog. This shows that the Huns left an indelible mark on not only Christian and ‘barbarian’ Europe but also on the Jewish communities throughout the known world.

So who were these apocalyptic horsemen who were to usher in a new era of ruin? Since the eminent French orientalist, Deguignes first made the identification that the Huns were the descendants of the Hsiung-nu tribe , this has become a widely excepted theory, but again this cannot be proven. The Hsiung-nu, also known as the Xiongnu , were a tribe that threatened the Han dynasty of China. However, after the collapse of the political power of both the north and south tribes “there is no evidence of any westward migration” and it this lack of evidence that led to J.B. Bury determining that “…the immediate events which precipitated the Huns into Europe had nothing to do with the collapse of the Hsiung-nu power which had occurred in the distant past” . It is due to the fact that there is “little known from ancient records” that we cannot know for certain the origins of the Huns and cannot look far past the statement made by Ammianus that they “dwelt beyond the Maeotic marshes”.

However, just because the Europeans could not see anything beyond the Sea of Azov, did not mean that the Huns could not. The swift defeat of the Alanic tribes along the river Don only reinforced the Hunnic armies as many of the defeated Alans joined their conquerors and advanced on the Ostrogoths in the AD370’s. As I have already said the Ostrogoths proved little or no match for the lightning attacks of the Huns’ mounted archers and their new allies. This is highlighted by the contemporary writer Claudian in one of his poems, Against Rufinus - “Brisk, lithe, in loose array they first come on: Fly, turn, attack the foe who deems them gone”. This exert suggests that during the early years of their surge into Europe, the Huns were advocates of hit and run tactics but later after “settling on the Great Hungarian Plain, they developed a more sedentary existence and turned to infantry rather than cavalry” , although they were still associated with horses by the Romans , so much so that Ammianus wrote that they “were almost glued to their steeds” . This view that the Huns changed their overall strategy with infantry becoming more prominent after settling in Europe is somewhat different to what Otto Maenchen-Helfen thought, stating that in the seventy years between the first appearance of the Huns on the Roman frontiers and the battle at the locus Mauricus, “the warfare of the Huns remained essentially the same.” However, it is possible that both these ideas are correct for while the Huns themselves still specialised in mounted archery they may have used their subject allies as the main body of infantry.

After embarrassing each army the Ostrogoths sent against them, the Huns “rolled forward to the Danube, crushing the Visigoths and enslaving the Gepids, who had the misfortune to occupy the Hungarian steppe.” This speedy advancement brought the Huns vast amounts of territory, stretching from the Caucasus to the lands of the lower Danube, and large numbers of subjects, but could it really be called an empire as such? The term ‘empire’ suggests that there was a structure to the mass of Hunnic tribes that settled in the Hungarian plains. However, “there is no indication of a strong, conquering personality leading the moves” that brought the Huns cumulative victories in Europe and Asia. The only Hunnic name we have mentioned before AD395 is Balamber and that unfortunately is all we have as nothing, bar his name, is known about this supposed Hunnic ruler . This lack of Hunnic names may be due to the ignorance of many of the contemporary sources but it is possible that “Balamber never existed” and that “the Goths invented him in order to explain who it was that conquered them.”

Ammianus is somewhat helpful when it comes to the structure of the Huns, who he says “are subject to no royal restraint, but they are content with the disorderly government of their important men, and led by them they force their way through every obstacle.” This infers that there was an obvious aristocracy who made the important decisions and this is backed up through Priscus, who uses the word “well-born” in reference to a Hun on three separate occasions . However, Ammianus’ statement is misleading about the individuality and solidarity of the Huns. In the campaigns against the Goths and the pillaging of the Balkans, the Huns and Alans are completely indistinguishable and it is possible that the Huns themselves did not take part in these plundering raids. As for solidarity, the idea of a united Hunnic empire comes off even worse. As early as the initial conflict between the Huns and the Ostrogoths, Vithimeris is thought to have deployed Hunnic mercenaries against the Hunnic aggressors while Alatheus and Saphrax may have led some Huns, who were willing to accept foederati status, to settle in Pannonia .

There are also many examples of Hunnic mercenary troops serving in Roman armies. Theodosius the Great is thought to have used a large unit of Hunnic cavalry in his campaign against the usurper Maximus . The famous magister militum, Stilicho is thought to have employed a personal bodyguard of three hundred Huns , who were instrumental in the defeat of the Gothic king, Radagaisus, in AD406. Following the execution of Stilicho, possibly the same group of Huns were stationed at Ravenna, the imperial capital, and were deployed to good effect supposedly defeating 1,100 Goths for the loss of just seventeen men . Even the Persian king, Chosroes, was able to send a column of Huns against the Romans during the reign of Justinian . While this suggests that many of the Hunnic tribes were autonomous from each other, it does not mean that all Huns were happy with the ‘defections’, shown when upon coming to the throne, Theodosius II agreed to not only double the annual tribute to the Huns, but he also agreed to send back all those who had fled Hunnic lands for the Roman empire – was this aimed at Huns who had sought foederati status, settled in and fought for the Roman empires?

As I stated above, the only Hunnic name we have mentioned before AD395 is that of the mysterious Balamber, who may not have been the leader of the Huns or may not have existed at all. In fact, “at the turn of the fifth century no one man could claim authority over all Hun factions.” This alone suggests the relative insignificance of the Huns to the Europeans, who cared little for the results of barbarian conflict so far away from their territory. The first evidence we have that the Huns were more than a minor inconvenience to the Romans coincides with the naming of two Hunnic leaders, Basich and Kursich . Neither of these two was the leader of the Huns but “the sources refer to them as arkontes, high ranking commanders.” These were the men who led the Hunnic campaign into Asia in AD395. This campaign says a lot about the abilities of the Huns in warfare, which had not yet been seen. “The size of the forces mobilized, the purposefulness of its execution, indicate that the raid was conceived and executed on a scale much larger than the military actions undertaken by the Huns further west.”

The shock of the great Hunnic raid of AD395 encouraged more men to write about the Huns, who had been scantily mentioned up to this point. Unfortunately, this shock also made many of the writers exaggerate the actions of the Huns and begin writing some of the “apocalyptic prose” that I mentioned above. The invasion across the Caucasus also gives us a better understanding of where Hunnic power was most concentrated. The huge numbers that ravaged both Persian and Roman territory suggest that the bulk of the Huns still resided on the Russian steppes and possibly that those who moved further west were those who were not “content with the disorderly government of their important men.” The reasons behind the Huns mobilizing such a huge force are mostly speculative. The idea of looking for new pastures must be completely discredited as there is no evidence that the Huns ever looked to settle on the land that they had just run roughshod over and the fact that once they had been bested by the Persians, most of them simply left via the Caucasus again. Joshua the Stylite attributes blame for the invasion squarely on the shoulders of the praetorian prefect, Rufinus, but he does not give us any reasons why he is to blame . It is also suggested that a Georgian pretender, Pharamanios, enlisted the Huns to further his own personal ambition. Again all these charges are difficult to validate and it is most likely that the real reason that the Huns invaded was to satisfy their own thirst for booty, as it was for so many other Hunnic campaigns.

Having looked at the structure, or lack of, and some of the activities of the Huns, I think it is very necessary to investigate why they were so successful in warfare and why they were effective mercenaries. The most obvious place to start with is their “deformes” horses, with their fat heads. Vegetius Renatus, who himself probably kept some Hunnic horses , gives us a good description of these plains horses plus a comparison between them and their Roman counterparts. He states that while the Hunnic horses are not as intelligent or docile as the Roman ones , he concedes that the Hunnic horse is the most able when it comes to warfare due to its “patience, perseverance, and its capacity to endure cold and hunger” and that it lives a long time . Coupled with these attributes that made the horses superb for war, was the superiority of the Hunnic horsemen. Sidonius Apollinaris compared them with the centaurs and suggested that “scarce had the infant learnt to stand without his mother’s aid when a horse takes him on his back” , helping them to become unsurpassed in horsemanship. Not only were the Huns expert horsemen, they were skilled archers. This is not surprising as it would be more difficult to fire an arrow from a moving horse than from the ground. The big difference between Roman and mounted Hunnic archers, which has been suggested by László , is the stability that even a primitive stirrup gave to a mounted archer. The combination of quality horses, supreme riders and archers and the feigned flight tactic employed by the Huns made them extremely difficult to pin down and defeat decisively even for the professional armies of Rome and Constantinople.

Despite this superiority in cavalry and archery, following their spectacular arrival in Eastern Europe, in the next fifty years the Huns made only infrequent raids into Roman territory, with the invasion of Asia being by far the biggest. In fact, with the exception of Aëitus’ abortive attempt to use 60,000 Hunnic auxiliaries in the service of the usurper, John the Tyrant before his defeat by Boniface in AD425, they spent more time serving the Romans as allies than attacking them as enemies . This use of Huns by Aëitus was also the only time that the Huns were involved directly in the affairs of the West, but sometime in AD435, having murdered his elder brother Bleda , Attila became king of the Huns and he was soon looking westwards. As I have already suggested, Attila was to become “a figure of superhuman greatness” and this reputation came in no small part from his devastating campaigns. However, it is difficult to determine how much authority Attila himself had. He is called king of the Huns but did he really hold premiership over all Hunnic tribes? The fact that only the works of Priscus and those derived from him mention Attila, while most other Greek and Latin sources do not , suggests that while he was in command of the Hunnic forces in direct contact with Ammianus’ Gothic sources and with Romans in general, he may not have been in control of the entire Hunnic population and whether he had any influence on the tribes who still occupied the Asiatic steppes is difficult to prove. Indeed, Maenchen-Helfen states that Attila was “lord over a fairly well defined territory” and that it was not much larger than that of the Dacian kings of the first century BC . I find it interesting that Maenchen-Helfen spends part of his chapter on the history of the Huns playing down the importance of Attila and trying to dispel the “long-cherished myths” , calling him “a nuisance to the Romans, though at no time a real danger.”

Whether he was in supreme control or not, the accession of Attila continued and intensified the Hunnic policy, begun by Ruga, of focussing on the two Roman empires as sources of great wealth . He continued to extort huge sums of gold from the Eastern Empire by threatening invasions of the Eastern provinces if payment was not made. When the Romans refused to pay any more, Attila went on the offensive, breaking into the Danube provinces, defeating and killing the magister militum Mysiae, Arnegisclus, taking the city of Marcianople and then pressing on into Greece before being held at Thermopylae in AD447. This series of great victories cemented Attila’s place as not only leader of the Huns but also as a major player in Europe. Following the death of Theodosius II, the new Eastern emperor, Marcian, refused to pay the annual tribute to Attila, who decided to take out his anger on the West. The reasons for this looking to the West are, like most other things about the Huns, not known for certain, but there are several conceivable ideas. Attila may have realised that by AD450 the Eastern empire was too strong for him to make any decisive advances against whereas the West was obviously weaker , with having to deal with the Visigoths and Vandals. Another suggestion for Attila’s looking to the West is his inclusion in a scandal that had engulfed the imperial family. Valentinian III’s sister, Honoria, was found to be having an affair with her steward and may well have been pregnant by him. While the steward was executed, Honoria was kept in seclusion. In an attempt to free herself, she sent a message to Attila promising herself to him if he rescued her. Attila immediately took up her cause and considering her his bride to be he demanded the Western empire as the dowry. This therefore gave him a legitimate reason to invade Gaul; that he was merely securing what was rightfully his through betrothal.

Whether he was justified or not, in early AD451, Attila invaded the Rhine with a huge army, even if we discard, as Ferrill suggests , the exaggerations of over 500,000 men. He quickly captured major settlements such as Mainz, Strasbourg and Trier and put them to the torch . Realising that this outside force provided a bigger threat than each other, the Visigoths and Romans, commanded by Theodoric and Aëtius respectively, put their differences aside and marched to meet Attila. The two armies met on the Catalaunian Fields. To say that the battle was a multi-national affair would be an understatement. This was not to be a straight fight between Huns and Romans for the future of the West but a battle between an army of Visigoths, Romans, Alans and Franks against an army of Huns, Ostrogoths and several German tribes - what Bury called “a battle of nations” . The outcome of the battle itself is not as clear-cut as history likes to remember. While Attila had made inroads into the centre of his opponent’s lines and the Visigothic king lay dead, he was in danger of being flanked on both sides and prudently withdrew under cover of archery fire. Gibbon suggests that Attila’s withdrawal “confessed the last victory which was achieved in the name of the Western empire” , however, the fact that Attila was on the rampage first with brief plundering raids into the Balkans and then an invasion of Italy less than a year later proves that it was not a completely decisive defeat for the Huns.

However, the next year was to shatter the “huge and disjointed fabric” of Attila’s kingdom. Having regrouped after his withdrawal from Gaul, where, despite not suffering a decisive defeat, his losses must have been heavy especially at Châlons, which was a “bloody near-run thing” , Attila ordered some punitive raids into the Balkan provinces, before launching his second massive invasion; this time his target was Italy. Almost immediately Aëtius and the Romans were in trouble. The Visigoths and the other federate peoples “were less disposed to meet Attila in Italy” than they had in Gaul and while the Eastern emperor, Marcian, was willing to send soldiers to defend the Roman homeland, they might not arrive in time to save Aëtius’ forces. The first city to feel the full force of Attila’s fury was Aquileia. The inhabitants had seen the Hunnic onslaught coming and the garrison had been strengthened , but Attila had brought along some siege engines built most likely by Roman deserters and prisoners and after three months the Huns entered the city. There are differing accounts of the fate of Aquileia but it was undoubtedly cruel. It was thoroughly plundered and those who had not fled in time were either massacred or enslaved but the idea expressed by Jordanes and carried on by Ferrill that “Aquileia was besieged, burnt and obliterated” to the extent that “scarcely a trace of its existence could be found in the generation after Attila” is most likely another example of Hunnic outrages being exaggerated out of all proportions .

After the experience of the three-month siege at Aquileia , Attila realised that he had no real chance of taking Ravenna, and while he could have turned south and taken Rome, the example of Alaric, who died soon after taking the Eternal City, the pleadings of Pope Leo and the lure of booty in the Po valley persuaded him to turn west . Whatever the reasons were, the major cities in the Po valley, such as Milan, Verona and Pavia, were to suffer bankruptcy and in some cases depopulation . However, this is as good as it got for the Huns, and with the army now crippled by plague, the forces of Aëtius and Marcian closing in, they were struck with a devastating and virtually fatal blow. After yet another marriage and a bout of over-indulgence, Attila retired to the marital bed with his new bride, where he suffered a burst artery while he lay on his back in a drunken stupor. “He was suffocated by a torrent of blood which, instead of finding a passage through the nostrils, regurgitated into the lungs and stomach.” The death of Attila completed the failure of the invasion of Italy. He had failed to “force the Romans to conclude another treaty with him, to pay tribute again, or to reappoint him magister militum.” Having not received tribute from either half of the empire nor having established a strong dynastic succession, the “disjointed fabric” of Attila’s kingdom began to unravel as “the boldest chieftains aspired to the rank of kings… and the numerous sons whom so many various mothers bore to the deceased monarch divided and disputed” .

This division of the Hunnic kingdom encouraged many of the majority Germanic population to liberate themselves from the remaining Hunnic populace, now very much in the minority. This led to battle of the Nedao river at which a Gepid-led coalition defeated the Huns to regain their freedom, inflicting huge losses on the already depopulated Hunnic armies . While neither of the Roman empires intended to pursue the retreating Huns nor to prevent them from settling permanently in the Carpathian Basin or the Russian steppes, the Hunnic kingdom simply imploded and disappeared from history’s gaze until they re-emerged as the core of what became the Bulgar people two centuries later .

So with the period of Hunnic dominance ended by the death of Attila and the later battle on the Nedao, what was the lasting impact of the Huns in Europe? With the lack of coverage by the early sources, the impact of the arrival of Huns on the Russian steppes went virtually unnoticed by most Western sources. Only Ammianus Marcellinus’ Gothic sources give us an insight into the events that led indirectly to the battle of Adrianople and even they are full of inaccuracies – the existence, or non-existence, of Balamber is an example of the Goths possibly introducing or promoting a character who had little or no bearing on the events in “Scythia” . Also these Gothic sources and Ammianus’ willingness to report everything they told him started the trend of exaggerating the excesses of the Huns. This was to carry over to the sources that saw the Huns as the prophesised giants Gog and Magog. One of the lasting impacts that the Huns had in Europe was political as they were an indirect cause the downfall of the Roman Empire in the West, as they engaged the Roman armies in constant warfare on both a large and small scale . I am not discounting the physical impact of the Huns on the landscape, including the sacking of many important cities, but the example of Aquileia, which “after only a few years after the devastation by the Huns, Aquileia was again the seat of a bishop” and “the Christian community was strengthened as more and more fugitives returned” , shows that the Romans were easily capable of repairing any damage caused by the rampaging Huns.

In conclusion, I think that the most important legacy that the Huns left on Europe was not their warfare tactics, fast as lightning cavalry or feigned flight tactics, but the impact on the psyche of the populace. The romantic tales and stories told in Germanic countries about Attila’s invasion of Gaul have made the event bigger than it really was. The name Hun has been used as late as the Second World War by Winston Churchill to describe the Germans, who were anything but Huns. Attila himself became a legend and was linked, rightly or not, with great Mongol captains like Gengiz-Khan and Tamerlane , and even now in the twenty-first century there are still many men in Hungary named Attila . Even though there are few people who still believe in the “great Attila of the medieval chroniclers, his image has not lost its hold over the imagination.”