Attila the Hun (14 page)

I
t was Kassai, then, who was able to answer that crucial question: if the Huns were mounted archers, living the same sort of lifestyle as dozens of the other nomadic tribes, why were they so much more successful than their neighbours? It was not all down to Attila. The Huns’ conquests started two generations before his, when Alans and Goths fled before them.

The technical key to Hun success – literally, their secret weapon – was the Hun bow. Now, the bow certainly looks different, because it is asymmetrical, like its Xiongnu prototype; that is, when strung its upper
limb is longer than its lower limb. Whether or not the Huns inherited the design from the Xiongnu, the design had been in existence for several centuries; it also spread eastwards, to Japan. Oddly, asymmetry does nothing at all to the power, range or accuracy of the bow; so its purpose remains controversial. Perhaps the length of the bottom limb was reduced to ease handling, as it would when you whip it over the horse’s neck to fire to the right (or, if you are a real master, to fire left-handed). Perhaps it was easier to fire when kneeling; but when would you need to kneel? Kassai, playing the mystic, wonders if, when drawn, the bow became a symbol of the Hun tent, or the overarching deity, Heaven above, but it doesn’t really add up. I prefer to think of it as a matter of identity, for the details of common objects often contain elements that emerge randomly or for trivial reasons, and endure simply because they become traditional and there is no good reason to change them. Perhaps Hun bows were asymmetrical because they always had been, from the time when a stave newly cut from the tree was more likely to be asymmetrical than symmetrical. Perhaps if you’d dared to ask Attila why Hun bows were bigger at the top, he would have said through his interpreter: That’s the way we Huns make bows.

But Hun bows were also different in two other respects, adding up to a third that really did matter: they were bigger; they had a more pronounced recurve; and finally, crucially, their size plus their shape gave them more power. The design evolved in response to the changing environment of steppe warfare. The little
Scythian bow served well enough for 2,000 years until, in the third century BC, the Scythians’ eastern neighbours, the Sarmatians, developed a defence against Scythian arrows. They covered their warriors and horses with armour and taught them to fight in close formation. There were various possible ways to counter this – with swords, lances, javelins, heavy cavalry. But the most effective was a bow that could punch arrows through armour. This was the bow the Huns brought with them from the east – as we know from those found in Xiongnu graves: a bow with a little ‘wing’ of horn, some 3 centimetres long, which curved away from the archer. It was this, not the wooden frame of the bow itself, that held the bowstring. The ‘wings’ provided the weak ends with a rigidity that wood on its own cannot match, as fingernails do things that bare fingers could not. They also extended the length of the bow by a crucial few percentage points; and the extra length increased leverage. This allows the archer to bend a heavier bow with less effort, because the curving ear acts as if it were part of a large-diameter wheel. As the archer draws the bow the ear unrolls, in effect lengthening the bowstring. On release, the ear rolls up again, in effect shortening the bowstring, increasing the acceleration of the arrow without the need for a longer arrow and a longer draw. It was an invention that foreshadowed the system of pulleys used in modern compound bows. In effect, it gave the Hun archer longer arms, allowing him to shoot with slightly more penetration, or a slightly greater range: a few metres only, but a few crucial metres, enabling Hun
arrows to be fatal while those of their enemies died.

This beautiful and complex instrument had another advantage. Making one demanded a level of expertise amounting to artistry. This was no Kalashnikov, which could be churned out by some Central Asian bow-factory. Recurved bows of any sort take a year or more to make, but in addition the Hun bowyer had to be a master in carving and applying the horn ears. Each bow was a minor masterpiece, and no other group had the expertise to produce its match.

A superior bow, however, was only one element in the Huns’ dominance. It would be vital for the lone warrior or the small raiding party; but, to an advancing horde, small-scale victories were no more use than no victories at all. The Huns needed to become a machine for massive and overwhelming destruction. One factor in their favour was their nomadic lifestyle, which gave them the ability to fight year-round, unlike western armies, which camped in the winter and fought in the summer. Frozen ground and frozen rivers made good going for strong men on strong horses. Their other major advantage was that they learned to fight as one, and on a large scale. In their sojourn in the wilderness or their drift westwards, they evolved tactics to suit their new weapon. If Scythians could strike like the wind, the Huns learned how to strike like the whirlwind.

It worked like this.

Imagine an army of mounted Huns facing an army of well-armoured cavalrymen – Sarmatians, Goths, Romans; it doesn’t matter who for the moment,
because all now shared common elements: all had bows, all carried some sort of armour, mostly made of leather, bone or bronze scales. Their horses are similarly protected. The Huns are more lightly clad, perhaps with no armour at all. They will rely on their speed and fire-power. They each carry a bow, a quiver full of 60 arrows and a sword hanging at the waist. Though they can ride bareback, they have saddles and, I think, stirrups made of leather or rope. The front-line Huns are in two regiments, each of, say, 1,000 men (and women as well if need be), while behind them stand dozens of horse-drawn ammunition wagons, loaded with several hundred spare bows and over 100,000 arrows.

A trumpet brays. The horses know the form, and the two regiments – well out of range of the enemy, some 500 metres away – form into two huge masses, circling slowly in opposite directions like gathering storms, raising ominous clouds of dust, soundless but for the dull thump of hooves on grass. Another call, and each of the 2,000 men, using his free hand, picks six, seven, maybe nine arrows from his quiver, depending on skill and experience, and places them in his bow-hand, holding them against the outer edge of the bow.

Another trumpet call. Now the clouds of warriors pick up the pace, trotting in circles 200–300 metres across, waiting for the moment. The horses know what is coming. They sweat as the tension mounts. The attack call sounds. From the outside edge of each swirling mass a line of warriors peels off at the gallop, heading straight at the static line of defenders. The rest
follow. The gap narrows: 400 metres, 300 metres. It has been less than half a minute since the last call. Now the two regiments are at full gallop, something like 30–40 kilometres per hour. At 200 metres, a cloud of arrows arises from the enemy, but the range is great, the arrows fired at random. Almost all are wasted. At 150 metres, the first few hundred Huns fire straight ahead, concentrating on a narrow 100-metre section of the enemy lines. At that range, the arrows are aimed low over the heads of those in front. With the added momentum of the gallop, the arrows travel at over 200 kilometres per hour – and these are arrows with small, three-flanged iron tips filed to needle sharpness, with the penetrating power of bullets. At 100 metres, the leaders have already reloaded. Their horses wheel to gallop parallel with the enemy line, the archers turn in their saddles and fire sideways – the arrows flying almost flat – reload, fire again, and again, all within a few seconds, for this is the equivalent of Kassai’s 90-metre course in which he can fire six arrows, while behind them the body of the regiment are also raining fire on the same unhappy clump of enemy soldiers. In five seconds 1,000 arrows could hit 200 of the enemy, another 1,000 in the next five. That’s a rate of 12,000 shots per minute, equivalent to ten machine-guns. Now, after 100 metres, the leaders wheel again, and gallop directly away from the enemy – but they are still firing, a shot or two each, aiming low over the heads of those behind them.

Around they come again, snatching another handful of arrows from their quivers, slotting them into their
bow-hands, feeling for the nocks, twisting each into the correct alignment, swinging around behind the last of the regiment. The whirlwind is in full swing, 100 riders in a rough outer circle, with another ten lines inside, all eager for the best position on the leading edge, all whirling round a 400-metre core of stillness. A whirlwind is exactly what it would seem like on the ground to country folk who would have seen dust-devils sucking dust from sun-scorched steppes. A modern image comes to mind. That first go-around has sliced down men as grass falls to a garden strimmer. In the space of 45 seconds, which is a slow time for a galloping horse to cover 400 metres, the same 200 enemy have taken hits from 5,000 aimed arrows, 25 per man. Most, of course, will be deflected, but some must find a gap between shields, or above a breastplate, or through an eye-hole, or even straight through a shield, straight through iron armour. From behind, others crowd forward to take the place of the fallen, only to fall themselves.

Let’s put this in a wider context. No soldiers had ever delivered such a rate of fire. There would be nothing like them until the French faced English longbowmen in the Hundred Years War; and longbowmen were stationary, lacking the supreme flexibility of the Hun mounted archers. No soldiers would be able to come close to this speed or density of fire until the invention of repeating guns in the latter part of the nineteenth century. Even then, the first bolt-action riflemen were nothing compared to bowmen: a bowman must learn his craft and his skill from childhood and is a priceless asset; a rifleman is trained in days, and is easily replaced.

This, moreover, is the first lap of ten, with the circling warriors grabbing reloads from the ammunition holders at the rear. In ten minutes, 50,000 arrows have hit a 100-metre front. Now, recall that this is one of two contra-rotating whirls, with one regiment firing right-handed on the left side, the other the opposite. Between them, they are covering 200 metres of battlefront. It only needs one man to fall and a gap opens, into which arrows pour, and the dam breaks apart.

Of course, some enemies were better protected than others. Persians, Sarmatians, Goths and Romans all had cavalry with armour, and armoured infantrymen carrying shields, spears and javelins, backed sometimes by catapults. It might be necessary to break wellarmoured ranks by other means; so the Huns had other tactics, in particular the feigned retreat, which would, with luck, draw the opposition forward far enough to break the rigid line of their defence, so that gaps would open, allowing the Huns on yet another go around to ride in with drawn swords to slash open the body of the enemy army. At close quarters they also used lassos, a natural weapon for herders. In Mongolia today, country-dwellers use lassos on the end of long poles to catch sheep and goats. ‘While the enemy are guarding against wounds from the sword-thrusts,’ wrote Ammianus, ‘the Huns throw strips of cloth plaited into nooses over their opponents and so entangle them that they fetter their limbs and take from them the power of riding and walking.’

All this gave the Huns an advantage in open country. The technique was stupendously effective on the
steppes as they came up against more static groups of Sarmatians, Alans and Goths. But by the time of Attila’s birth, when the Huns were in possession of the grasslands of eastern Hungary, there were no more steppes to be conquered. Traditions based on pastoralism, horsemanship, fast movement and a simple lifestyle had reached their limits. Now the Huns were up against forests, mountains and cities, and would soon face strategic and tactical problems of which they had no inkling.

¹
Establishing a tradition since taken to an extreme by one of Kassai’s friends, an Italian, Celestino Poletti, who, using one of Kassai’s bows, holds the world record for firing as many arrows as possible in 24 hours. This must be one of the craziest of human achievements. He stood there firing one arrow every 5 seconds, 11 arrows a minute, 700 an hour, round the clock until he had shot 17,000 arrows.

IT IS EARLY IN THE 380S ON HUNGARY’S GREAT PLAIN. THE
Huns are settling into their new homeland, and finding it less than ideal. For at least a generation they have been on the move, living well off the proceeds of warfare. They are hooked on pillage, not just for luxuries, but for sheer survival. It is all they know. Now, suddenly, they are hemmed in. To the east lie highlands – Transylvania and the Carpathians, through which they came a few years before. There’s nothing back that way for them. To the south and west lies the Danube, the Roman frontier, with its armies and fortress-towns; to the north and west, German tribes who may one day be vassals, but are not exactly rich. It will take a little time to assess which way to turn. For newly arrived nomads, the future is full of complexities and unknowns.