Attila

History

Attila is born towards 405. He is wire of the king of a tribe Huns, Moundzouk, which dies in the war in 408. Orphan, it is adopted and raised with his older brother Bleda by his uncle, the king Huns Ruga.

In 434, Ruga division the hunnic Empire between its two nephews, Attila and Bleda, before dying. Of 435 to 440, the reign of Bleda is marked by the triumph of the Huns vis-a-vis the Roman Empire of the East. This triumph is before very diplomatic and the policy of Bleda with regard to the Romans is peaceful. A doubling of the tribute poured by the Roman empire of the East of Constantinople and the imperial promise to be combined to the enemy barbarians of Huns more (with the Germanic People remained independent) leave the freehands to Bleda. Also Huns extend worsens to them until the the Alps, with the the Rhine and the the Vistula.

The takeover of Attila

However, as of 440, benefitting from the occasion which the invasion of the Roman Arménie by the Perses sassanides offers, invasion which temporarily diverts the attention of Constantinople of the Huns, Bleda again tackles the Roman empire of the East. At this time, Attila helps his brother only as a last resort, having started on his side of the talks with the Empire. He undoubtedly makes it only to avoid being injured on the division of the spoils.

The separate policy of Attila at the time of the war of 441 - 442 is explained mainly by its will to negotiate with the Romans the handing-over of the crown princes Huns who had taken refuge in the empire with died of Ruga, as of 435. Those would have inherited the kingdom in the event of death of his/her brother.

End 444 or beginning 445, helped by its vassal Germanic, Attila makes assassinate his older brother Bleda and becomes the only king of the Huns. Two German subjected to the Huns, the king of the Skire Edika and the king of the Gépides Ardaric, indeed provided the forces necessary for the assassination of Bleda which took place in the ordu of this last.

Its reign lasts eight years and is marked, with its death, by a collapse of the power of the Huns, up to that point patiently built on military alliances between the hunnic Empire and the Roman Empire of the East and on the financial manna of the tributes and ransoms poured by Constantinople.

Actually, it seems that as of the shortly after the assassination, the Germanic allies of Attila influenced this one by supporting the propensity which he had to believe intended to reign on the entire universe. Thus, with the collaboration of a cow and of its guard, they find for Attila the sword of the god of the war, Mars, pointing out of ground. However, in the gears which will carry out Huns to acquire more power, Attila is quickly constrained with new faithful wars to reward and especially keep his Germains.

Also Attila is made it indicate Europæ Orbator (emperor of Europe) and seizes it as of 445 - 446 the Roman province Pannonia-Savie (the remainder of Pannonia being already held by Huns). To maintain the fiction of the Roman administration, it is nevertheless named Maître of the militia by the Roman Emperor Valentinien III.

Attila and Roman empire

Since the Danubian basin where it is durably installed, Attila threatens the Roman Empire then.

But, the January 27th 447, an earthquake destroys most of the wall théodosienne of Constantinople and causes an important famine. This weakness of the Roman Empire of the East allows the Roman Empire Occident to be temporarily saved by the aimings of Attila.

The loss of the Roman empire of the East

Attila, benefitting from the event, throws his army on the Roman Empire of the East. It there embourbe: actually, the empire does not pay its tribute and the payments of the sums previously due are stopped. The peace negotiations last several years, without any benefit for Huns.

However, at the time when they will succeed, the tributes poured by the East are dried up definitively. The emperor Théodose II dies in an accident of horse and the “party of blue” (party of the senators and aristocrats) the triumph: it is savagely opposed to the idea to pay the barbarians to buy peace.

Not having been able to invade nor to subject the East, Attila finds himself taken in the diplomatic play of Occident in 450.

The Roman Co-empress Honoria

The episode relates to Honoria, Co-empress of Occident which wants to marry Attila to be combined with him and which his/her younger brother Valentinien III force to take the veil to preserve the imperial unit. In 449, a scandal bursts and Honoria is sent to Constantinople in a Christian Couvent so that its “virginity” is kept better.

This one then sends its ring to Attila to require of him of the assistance. Attila takes the business with serious and accepts the jewel like “dowry”, before asking for the Gaulle as an imperial heritage due to its “been engaged”.

Its requirements encounter a refusal naturally.

Blocked in the East, vis-a-vis the refusal of Valentinien and with the disappearance of Honoria, Attila is constrained with the autumn 450 to declare the war with the Roman Empire of Occident, which also puts a term at the tribute poured by the Occident.

The invasion of Gaulle

To the head of a hunno-Germanic united army, Attila launches out in spring 451 in a campaign against the Gaulle. This army brings together the people Gépides (most), Visigoths (directed by three kings brothers of which the father of the future Théodoric Ier (Théodoric the Large one)), Skires, Suèves, Alamans, Hérules, Thuringes, Francs, Burgondes, Alains, Sarmates, it is mainly Germanic and the Huns compose only one negligible part of it. The tactics which previously made their success against “civilized” are not thus any more with the day order. April 7th, Attila burns Metz. (cruel invasions)

The Gaulle resists to him, initially with Paris under the impulse of Sainte Genevieve, then with Orleans, the instigation of holy Aignan of Orleans with the support of the Roman legions of Flavius Aetius.

With Orleans, where it intends to cross the the Loire, Attila fights the Visigoths Théodoric Ier and the Roman legions of Flavius Aetius, actually made up of all the people established in Gaulle at that time: Alains, Frankly S, Burgonde S, Sarmate S, Saxon, Lètes (cruel colonists), Armorican and even of the Breton come from On the other side of the channel…

The Huns leave victorious and it is out of Champagne that the final Bataille of the fields catalaunic takes place, undoubtedly less than one fifteen or so days later. Certain authors locate this battle with 5 Roman miles (7,5 km) of Troyes in fields close to the village of Maurica or Mauriacus (Latin campus mauriacus ). Others, older, locate it close to Châlons-in-Champagne, the Catalaunum antique from where drift the substantive allotted to the “catalaunic Champs”, with the site of the Gallic oppidum of Cheppe, improperly called " the camp of Attila".

Following carnage, Attila remains one moment in Gaulle then withdraws himself towards the the Rhine.

Attila with the doors of Rome

In spring 452, it attacks again in Italy. Its army takes Aquilée, Padoue, Vérone, Milan, Pavia and moves towards Rome. The emperor Valentinien III decides to negotiate.

Led by the pope Leon Ier, by the Trigetius prefect who already treated with the Vandales of Genséric, and by the Consul Aviennus, a Roman delegation goes to the front of the king of the Huns and obtains a truce.

End of its reign

Meanwhile, the troops of the new Eastern emperor, Marcien, crossed the the Danube and threaten the heart of the hunnic Empire. Also Attila withdraws himself it in Pannonia.

Of return in his ordu , the large-king dies suddenly, in spring 453, perhaps poisoned, undoubtedly of one hemorrhage following a feast given at his court at the time of his weddings with a new wife for his Harem.

Attila receives royal funeral and is buried in triple coffin, probably under the bed of the river the Tisza in current Hungary, temporarily diverted for the occasion.

Its succession degenerates into conflict between the many sons (Ellac, Dengizich and Ernakh for the principal ones) and grandsons of its many wives (Bataille of Nedao in 454). Its empire is dislocated and the tribes Huns divide and take again chiefs among their dominant aristocracy.

The legendary and mythological image of Attila

Attila is especially known in historiography and the Western tradition Christian to have been the plague of God , which conferred an image of darkest to him.

Actually, this wire of the king Moundzouk, sovereign of one of the most powerful people of his time, became with the eyes of Western Europeans the emblematic image of the wandering sovereign-warrior, merging in the imaginary popular one with the features which one will lend later to Gengis Khan: bloodthirsty man, liking the war and plunderings over all, cruel and crafty one.

However, this vision is mainly inaccurate: not only the Huns of Attila were Turkish people which accommodated many Germains in its center, so much so that the latter were largely majority in the coalition which assisted it at the time of the battle of the fields catalaunic, but also the court of Attila undoubtedly one of was refined of its time, having begun again many Roman uses.

However, the time to which lived Attila - towards the end of the Western Empire, its opposition to the general Flavius Aetius, in addition named the last of the Romans , and the origin of its people struck the imaginary collective and contributed to make of Attila the typical figure of the barbarian being opposed to civilization, which arises from many films or works in which this last appears.

In the song of the Nibelungen (founded on the crushing of the Burgondes by the Huns and popularized at the 19th century by Richard Wagner), known in a version of the 12th century, Attila appears under the name of Etzel, noble and generous ally. It is also depicts in the Germanic Mythologie under the features of Atli, cruel and assoiffé of Or.

These two aspects show which can be the various facets of the truth. Lastly, because of national historiography, it should not be forgotten that Attila , Germanic name of origin and more precisely of origin Gotique, disappeared everywhere safe in Hungary and Turkey, where this first name is always very popular.

Attila is the title of one of the last Tragédie S of Pierre Corneille then on the decline. The weakness of this part compared to its larger masterpieces caused the following comment of Nicolas Boileau (the preceding tragedy of Crow had as a title Agésilas ):

“I saw Agésilas, alas!

But after the Attila, holà! ”

Inspired by recent work of the historians, Chamane of Attila , novel of the Hungarian writer Tibor Fonyodi (appeared in French with the Pygmalion editions in 2005), depicts the civilization of the Huns in a new way. It underlines the fundamental role of spirituality in their culture, a civilization with the true direction of the term, to which the Hungarian were the heirs and who is still undoubtedly that of the alive people in the Steppe S Eurasian today. The author declared in an interview that its goal had been, with Chamane of Attila , to write a novel fantasy, a kind of Seigneur of the Rings drawing from the Mythologie Huns.

Catalog of films

1954 : the Sign of pagan the of Douglas Sirk
1954: Attila, plague of God of Pietro Francisci
2001: Attila Hun of Dick Lowry

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