THE WORLD ATLAS

Empire · 370–469 · Europe

Hunnic Empire

The Huns were nomadic horse-archers from the Eurasian steppe whose arrival north of the Black Sea around 370 drove the Goths and other peoples into the Roman Empire, setting off the great migrations. By the early 5th century they had settled on the Hungarian plain and built a loose empire over many subject peoples, including Germanic tribes, held together by plunder and Roman tribute payments.

Under the brothers Bleda and Attila, and then Attila alone, the Huns ravaged the Balkans, extracted huge sums of gold from Constantinople, and invaded Gaul in 451 and Italy in 452. After Attila's sudden death in 453 his sons quarrelled, subject peoples rebelled and won at the Battle of Nedao in 454, and the empire disintegrated; its last leader, Dengizich, was killed in 469.

Follow its story on the map

Years
370–469
Capital
Royal camp on the Hungarian plain
Greatest extent
450, about 4.00 million km²
Region
Europe

Under Attila, from the Rhine to the steppes north of the Black Sea; c. 4.0M km² in 441 (Taagepera 1979); c. 4.0M km² c. 441 (Taagepera 1979; Turchin, Adams & Hall 2006)

Legacy

The Huns hastened the collapse of the Western Roman Empire, and Attila became a lasting European byword for a fearsome conqueror.

Timeline of Hunnic Empire

  1. c. 370: Huns reach the Volga and conquer the Alans and Goths

    The Huns were nomadic horse archers who first appear in Roman sources living east of the Volga river, on the steppe north of the Caspian Sea. Around 370 they crossed the Volga and fell on the Alans, a fellow steppe people, and then on the Gothic kingdoms of what is now Ukraine: first the Greuthungi (eastern Goths), then most of the Thervingi (western Goths). Many of the defeated were absorbed into the Huns' following. The rest fled west. This sudden move set off a chain of migrations that pushed peoples toward the Roman frontier, and it explains why the Huns first appear on the map north of the Black Sea.

  2. Gothic refugees fleeing the Huns seek shelter on the Lower Danube

    In the summer of 376 a huge crowd of Goths, driven from their lands by the Huns, gathered on the north bank of the Danube, the Roman border. They were two groups, the Thervingi under Fritigern and Alavivus and the Greuthungi under Alatheus and Saphrax, and they asked the eastern emperor Valens for permission to settle inside the empire, and he let the Thervingi cross. Corrupt Roman officials mistreated the starving refugees, who rebelled. In 378 the Goths destroyed the Roman army and killed Valens at Adrianople. Without crossing the river themselves, the Huns had broken Rome's Danube frontier.

  3. First large-scale Hun attack on the Eastern Roman Empire

    By the 390s most Huns were probably living around the Volga and Don rivers. In 395, the year the Roman Empire was finally split between the sons of Theodosius I, they launched their first large-scale attack on the eastern half. Riding through the Caucasus passes, they overran Armenia, pillaged Cappadocia, entered parts of Syria and threatened Antioch, while others raided Thrace. The campaign showed how far and fast Hun horsemen could strike. It was a raid for loot and captives, not a conquest, so it added no lasting territory, but it made the Huns a feared name in the eastern provinces.

  4. Uldin crosses the Danube and pillages Thrace

    Uldin is the first Hun leader named in contemporary sources. By about 400 his followers were living north of the lower Danube. At first he was useful to Rome, killing the rebel Gothic general Gainas and helping defend Italy against the Goth Radagaisus, but in 408, knowing that eastern troops had been moved to the Persian frontier, he crossed the Danube, took the fort of Castra Martis and pillaged Thrace. The eastern Romans could not meet his price for peace, so they bribed his subordinates instead, and many of his men deserted. Uldin fled back across the Danube and disappears from history.

  5. Aetius cedes Pannonia to the Huns

    By the 420s the Huns had moved their centre to the Great Hungarian Plain, where the open grassland suited their herds. Under King Rugila they worked closely with the western Roman general Flavius Aetius, who had lived among them as a hostage and later used Hun troops against his rivals and against the Goths in Gaul. In return, parts of the Roman province of Pannonia, west and south of the Danube, were ceded to the Huns, probably in 433, though the exact date and extent are disputed. The cession gave the Huns a secure home base astride the Danube, the heart of their empire on the map.

  6. Attila and Bleda impose the Treaty of Margus on Eastern Rome

    Rugila died around 434, and his nephews Attila and Bleda took joint power. The next year (435, according to the Attila article) they met envoys of the eastern emperor Theodosius II at Margus, near modern Požarevac in Serbia, all seated on horseback in the Hun manner. The treaty doubled Rome's yearly tribute from 350 to 700 pounds of gold. It also opened markets to the Huns, forbade Rome to ally with the Huns' enemies and required it to return Hun fugitives. Margus showed the new rulers' method: they would use threats of war to drain gold from Constantinople rather than conquer land.

  7. Attila and Bleda invade the Balkans, sacking Margus and Viminacium

    In 440 the Huns accused the Romans of breaking the Treaty of Margus and attacked a market town on the Danube. The next year, with the eastern army away fighting in Sicily and Armenia, Attila and Bleda crossed the river in force. At Margus the local bishop, whom they had demanded be handed over, secretly opened the city to them. They sacked Margus and Viminacium, then took Singidunum (Belgrade) and Sirmium; using battering rams and siege towers for the first time, they also stormed Ratiara and Naissus (Niš). The northern Balkans now lay open to Hun armies.

  8. Peace of Anatolius: Theodosius II pays heavier tribute

    After a further campaign in 443 the Huns defeated a Roman army outside Constantinople, but they could not break the city's double land walls. Theodosius II, with no army left to resist, sent the general Anatolius to make peace. The terms were far harsher than at Margus. Rome paid a lump sum of 6,000 Roman pounds of gold, and the yearly tribute was tripled to 2,100 pounds. The treaty took no land, but it made the Eastern Roman Empire a tributary of the Huns and paid for the warriors and gifts that held Attila's empire together.

  9. Bleda dies; Attila becomes sole ruler

    After the Huns pulled back from the Balkans, Attila's older brother Bleda died, probably around 445. How he died is unknown. The chronicler Jordanes suggests that Attila had him murdered, perhaps on a hunting trip, and a later Hungarian legend claims Attila killed him and threw his body into the Danube. Whatever the truth, Attila was now sole ruler of a vast and loose empire of Huns, Ostrogoths, Gepids, Alans and other subject peoples, stretching from the steppe toward the Rhine. All decisions on war and tribute now rested with one man.

  10. Attila invades the Balkans and Thrace again

    In 447 Attila rode south again into the Eastern Roman Empire through Moesia. A Roman army under the Gothic general Arnegisclus met him at the Utus river and was defeated, though it inflicted heavy losses. With no field army left, the Huns rampaged through the Balkans as far south as Thermopylae in Greece. Constantinople survived because the prefect Constantinus quickly rebuilt walls damaged by a recent earthquake. The Romans had to pay again, and a strip of land south of the Danube was reportedly emptied as a buffer, bringing the Hun frontier deep into the Balkans.

  11. Attila invades Gaul; checked at the Catalaunian Plains

    In 450 Honoria, sister of the western emperor Valentinian III, sent Attila a plea for help and her ring to escape a forced marriage. Attila treated this as a marriage proposal and demanded half the western empire as her dowry. In 451 he crossed the Rhine, took Metz and besieged Orléans, but Aetius allied with the Visigothic king Theodoric I and relieved the city. On 20 June 451 (traditional date) the armies clashed on the Catalaunian Plains, and Theodoric was killed. Attila withdrew, and Gaul stayed outside the Hun empire.

  12. Invasion of Italy; Aquileia razed

    Attila returned in 452 to press his claim to Honoria, this time invading Italy over the Julian Alps. His army sacked many cities in the north and razed Aquileia so completely that its site was afterwards hard to recognise. Valentinian III sent envoys, including Pope Leo I, who met Attila near Mantua. Attila agreed to withdraw; his army was probably also weakened by famine and disease, and an eastern Roman force was attacking the Hun homeland. The invasion caused great destruction, but Italy stayed Roman and the Huns gained no territory there.

  13. Attila dies; his sons divide the empire

    Early in 453 Attila died on the night of his wedding to a young bride, Ildico. According to the historian Priscus he suffered a severe nosebleed and choked in a drunken stupor. His empire had depended on his personal authority over many subject peoples. Now his sons Ellac, Dengizich and Ernak quarrelled over the inheritance, and the subject kings were treated like property to be shared out. Jordanes wrote that in their eagerness to rule the sons destroyed the empire, which began to break apart almost at once.

  14. c. 454: Subject peoples defeat the Huns at the Nedao

    The subject peoples refused to be divided up like slaves. Led by Ardaric, king of the Gepids, who had been one of Attila's most loyal allies, a coalition of Gepids, Ostrogoths, Rugii, Heruli, Suebi and others rose in revolt. In about 454 they defeated the Huns in Pannonia at the river Nedao, whose location is unknown. According to Jordanes some 30,000 men fell, and Attila's eldest son Ellac was killed. The Huns lost control of the Hungarian Plain, and by the early 460s the former subjects had become independent kingdoms, many of them allied to Rome.

  15. Dengizich defeated and killed in Thrace; the Hunnic empire is gone

    After Nedao the remaining Huns split into small groups near the lower Danube and the Black Sea steppe. Attila's son Dengizich tried to win back land and subsidies. Beaten by the Ostrogoths at Bassianae in 468, he then threatened Thrace and refused to negotiate with the Roman commander Anagast, so war dragged on until 469, when Dengizich was defeated and killed. According to the chronicler Marcellinus Comes his head was displayed in Constantinople. With his death, Hun rule in Europe was finished, and the empire disappears from the map.

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