Attila c.406-453AD
King of the Huns

Called the Scourge of God, he was the legendary king who appears as Etzel in the German Nibelungenlied and Atli in the Old Icelandic V�lsunga Saga and the heroic poems of the Edda. In AD434 he became king (jointly at first with a brother) of the Huns from Asia, who ranged from the north of the Caspian to the Danube. He soon had dominion over Vandals, Ostrogoths, Gepidae and Franks, so that his rule extended over Germany and Scythia from the Rhine to the frontiers of China. Having murdered his brother he devastated all the countries between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean (447). The Emperor Theodosius was defeated, and Constantinople (Istanbul) survived only because the Huns knew nothing of siege warfare. Thrace, Macedonia and Greece were overrun, but when Attila invaded Gaul (451), A�tius, the Roman commander, and Theodoric I, the King of the Visigoths, finally defeated him. He retreated to Hungary, but invaded Italy (452), Rome itself being saved only by huge bribes from Pope Leo I. Attila died the night after his marriage to a Burgundian princess, Ildeco, and the Hunnish Empire decayed. His death, in a pool of blood in bed, led to stories of vengeance and murder by his bride, graphically described by Edward Gibbon.

Bibliography: E A Thompson, A History of Attila and the Huns (1948)