Authors: Christopher I. Beckwith
Tags: #History, #General, #Asia, #Europe, #Eastern, #Central Asia
Empires of the Silk Road: A History of Central Eurasia From the Bronze Age to the Present (25 page)
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The Age of Attila the Hun
The hall towered up,
high and wide-gabled: war-flame awaited,
evil fire. Nor was it long after
that the fatal struggle
of the oath-sworn
should awaken, after bloody slaughter.
Then the mighty demon with difficulty
the time endured, he that in darkness dwelt,
as every day he heard the music
loud in the hall: the sound of the harp,
the bard’s clear song.
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—From
Beowulf
The Great Wandering of Peoples
After the second century
AD
, when the great empires of Classical Antiquity started breaking up, the peoples of northern Eurasia began migrating toward the south. This far-reaching historical event, known as the Great Wandering of Peoples, or
Völkerwanderung,
saw the movement of largely Germanic groups into the western half of the former Roman Empire; the little-known Chionites, Hephthalites, and others into the Central Asian territories of the Persian Empire; and mainly Mongolic peoples into the northern half of the former Chinese Empire. While the causes of the movement remain unknown and difficult to discover, its results were revolutionary for Western Europe, and ultimately for Eurasian and world civilization as a whole.
One of the most remarkable migrations was that of a previously unknown people, the Huns, who seized control of the Western Steppe from the Alans and Goths in traditional steppe fashion. Pursuing those who did not submit led the Huns deep into Europe. The sudden influx of Alans, Goths, and Huns, among others, brought European observers into closer contact with steppe culture than ever before. Although the Huns’ domination of the Western Steppe and parts of Western Europe did not last long, their rule left permanent impressions, both good and bad, on the European consciousness.
The Great Wandering of Peoples reestablished nearly all of Western Europe as part of the Central Eurasian Culture Complex, which spread at that time to Japan as well, thus covering the northern temperate zone of Eurasia from Britain to Japan. Politically and linguistically, the migrations established peoples speaking Germanic and Mongolic languages in the dominant position in much of the western and eastern extremes of Eurasia respectively. Demographically, the significance of the Germanic and Mongolic migration into the Roman and Chinese empires was the restoration of the normal state of affairs from the point of view of Central Eurasians: no borders between Central Eurasia and the periphery and the free movement of peoples from rural to urban areas and back, regardless of ethnolinguistic and political divisions. But the results were different in East and West, perhaps because of the much higher population of Chinese in North China compared to the relatively low population of Romans in the Western Roman Empire.
The Huns and the Fall of the Western Roman Empire
The Huns had taken up residence northeast of the Sea of Azov—in the eastern part of the Western Steppe—by about
AD
200. They are otherwise unknown before that point and have no known historical, political, linguistic, or other connections.
2
In or around 370 the Huns entered the Pontic Steppe proper under their leader Balamber (or Balimber, fl. ca. 370–376).
3
It is highly probable that their movement was in response to an attack on them by Ermanaric during his attempted formation of an Ostrogothic empire there.
4
The Huns pushed westward, crushing the Alans and Ostrogoths by 375, in which year Ermanaric committed suicide. In 376, fleeing from the Huns, the Visigoths (Tervingi) under their military leader Fritigern (fl. 376–378)
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asked the Romans for refuge. They were then allowed to cross the Danube into the Eastern Roman Empire. They were supposed to settle in central Thrace, but even before they had arrived there, they were mistreated badly by their hosts, partly deliberately, partly as a result of the problems involved with bringing a large part of a foreign nation into the empire.
The management of these problems and the opportunities to grow rich at the expense of the Gothic refugees and their amazing treasures overtaxed the moral and administrative abilities of the Romans in charge of the operation. Moreover, despite continuous use, the available transportation was not sufficient to ferry this mass of people across the Danube. Roman ideas about the order of embarkation destroyed or threatened the family and clan structure of the Goths. An inadequate supply of foodstuffs—a shortage that was not necessarily intentional—also did not help to calm the hungry tribe. Roman observers described the misery of the Tervingi and complained of their exploitation by dishonest officials and generals. Despair led to self-enslavement, to the separation of families, and the handing over even of noble children.
6
Not surprisingly, Fritigern rebelled in 378. The Visigoths defeated the army of Emperor Valens (r. 364–378), who attacked them near Adrianople, and killed the Roman ruler in battle. Two years later the Romans offered the Goths, Alans, and evidently some Huns the territory of Pannonia (modern Hungary) to hold as
foederates,
or ‘federates’. On October 3, 382, a new treaty between Romans and Goths was ratified. The new federates served in the Roman army as early as 388 and proved their worth by helping Emperor Theodosius I (379–395) defeat the rebel Maximus.
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From that point on, the Huns worked for imperial pay more often than they fought against the Romans. They also evidently launched an invasion of the Persian Empire in 395–396 from the Pontic Steppe area, passing by the Caucasus Mountains into Armenia, Syria, Palestine, and northern Mesopotamia. While it is commonly believed that the Huns undertook this risky expedition into Persian territory for booty, a Syrian chronicler who records it gives as the cause of the invasion the tyrannical behavior of a Roman official.
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On this expedition the Huns even assaulted, unsuccessfully, the Sasanid Persian capital at Ctesiphon, but the Persians defeated them and the Huns withdrew to focus their attention on Europe. The reason given by the chronicler for the invasion may well be incorrect—certainly the fact that the Huns invaded the Persians rather than the Romans is cause for doubt—in which case the reason for the invasion would actually be unknown. Nevertheless, it is irrelevant whether a tyrannical Roman official or someone or something else entirely was really the cause of the invasion. The significance of the chronicler’s comment is that even the peripheral peoples who suffered from the invasion believed that there was a cause, and that it was a just cause. The Huns did not attack because they were ferocious barbarians and could not help themselves.
9
The first Hun rulers known by name after the shadowy Balamber did not control the entire Hun realm. Hun treaties made with the Romans were thus essentially made with local leaders. When an attack of Huns occurred, the Romans blamed it on the Huns breaking the treaty, but this invariably seems to have been the action of one or another people or group that had not been signatory to the treaty and presumably had their own unknown reasons for the attack. It was only with the centralization of power attained under Ruga or Rua (d. 434) that a unified Hun nation began developing.
Upon Ruga’s death, his nephews Bleda and Attila succeeded him. Bleda, the elder, ruled the eastern territories and Attila the western. Emperor Theodosius II of the Eastern Roman Empire then negotiated new peace terms with the Huns, promising that “there should be safe markets with equal rights for Romans and Huns”
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and agreeing to pay the Hun rulers 700 Roman pounds of gold a year. The treaty was good for both sides. “When they had made peace with the Romans, Attila, Bleda and their forces marched through Scythia [the Western Steppe] subduing the tribes there.”
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When Theodosius II stopped regular payment of tribute to the Huns, Attila and Bleda launched a campaign against the Romans in 440 and 441. Crossing the Danube, they crushed the imperial forces, captured cities, and defeated a Roman army below the walls of Constantinople, which Theodosius had made the capital.
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The emperor finally sued for peace again and agreed to Attila’s demands, including cession of more territory, payment of the tribute in arrears, and the tripling of the former annual tribute amount to 2,100 Roman pounds of gold—which was actually still a pittance by Roman standards.
13
Five years later, the Romans had given Attila cause to attack them again. In 447 he rode south, defeating the Roman army sent against him, and reached Thermopylae. The Romans began peace negotiations, accompanied by political intrigue and attempted assassination, as described in some detail by Priscus, a member of a Roman embassy sent to Attila’s court in 448. In 450, while negotiations were still ongoing, Theodosius II died. He was succeeded by Marcian (r. 450–457), who stopped payment of tribute.
But Attila, who was sole ruler of the Hun Empire after his brother had died in or around 445, did not follow expectations and invade the Eastern Roman Empire in retaliation. He had gotten a justification, or excuse, to invade the Western Roman Empire when he received a letter from Honoria, sister of Valentinian III (r. 425–455), accompanied by her personal ring. She had been sent into captivity by her brother, who had executed her lover, and she asked Attila to help her. Attila took her request as an offer of marriage and marched west with a huge army, consisting mainly of Huns, Goths, and Alans, to free her and claim what he announced would be his dowry—half of the Western Roman Empire. Estimates in the sources have his forces at between 300,000 and 700,000 men, though the army was probably much smaller.
In 451 the Huns took and sacked the northern cities of the Western Roman Empire along the Rhine in Gaul and Germania. Turning to central Gaul, they then attacked Orleans, a strategic city in northwestern Gaul. But in the midst of the Huns’ assault, the Roman general Flavius Aetius approached, commanding a large army consisting mainly of Romans, Franks, and Visigoths. Attila withdrew and prepared for battle.