172- Showdown

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Hello, and welcome to the history of Rome,

episode 172,

Showdown.

So last week, we left off in 450 AD with two imperial marriages.

The first, in the East, between Flavius Marcianus and Elia Pulcheria, that saw the man we call Marcian elevated to the rank of Augustus.

The second, in the west, was between Honoria and the senator Bossus Herculanus, which saw the Western Empire brought to the brink of ruin.

But just to the brink of ruin.

As we will see today, whatever criticisms and judgments you want to lob at Aetius for being a conniving backstabber or for letting North Africa slip away and hardly lifting a finger, they must be offset at a minimum by his handling of the invasion of Attila the Hun.

Aetius, of course, had many positive qualities that already offset those negatives, but even if he didn't, I think the way he managed to hold the line against Attila is enough to balance any scale.

Aetius was at his best when the chips were down, and he would be at his absolute best in 451 when it came time to face Attila in battle.

The Western Empire was falling, but not yet.

Aetius is a big reason why.

So, as I alluded at the end of the last episode, in 450 AD, the court of Valentinian III had a problem, namely, the emperor's older sister, Honoria.

Unlike the imperial ladies of the court in Constantinople, who had all taken vows of chastity, a vow, by the way, that Marcian had been forced to respect when he married Elia Pulcheria, Honoria wanted a bit more out of life.

She thus gained a reputation for herself not unlike the reputation gained once upon a time by the Julias, elder and younger.

Honoria managed to remain unmarried for quite a while, but finally her scandals mounted up, and her mother, Galloplacidia, prepared to marry her off to the aforementioned Herculanus, whose sole redeeming quality was an utter lack of ambition.

After all, whoever married the sister of the emperor stood a fairly decent chance of becoming emperor himself one day.

Just look at Marcion.

But Herculanus was dull and predictable, qualities prized by Galloplacidia and despised by Honoria.

So, the story goes, in a dramatic fit, she sent a messenger to find the great Attila the Hun and ask him for help.

Enclosed with her note begging to be rescued from the prospect of a boring life with a boring man was one of Honoria's rings, which she perhaps meant to be no more than proof that the note was indeed from the emperor's sister, but which Attila took to be a wedding proposal.

At least, that's the way the story goes.

Now, whether Attila genuinely misunderstood the message or intentionally misunderstood the message is open for debate.

Whichever it was, Attila responded by declaring himself ready to marry Honoria, and demanding, oh, let's say, half the Western Empire as a dowry, which was, of course, completely insane.

When the Imperial Court scoffed at this demand, Attila began to prepare an invasion, which which was, of course, also completely insane.

Why would he mobilize his entire army just to come to the aid of some spoiled princess he had never met?

And that's when we start to notice that the farther along we get, the less plausible the I am coming to rescue the princess story gets.

Especially since, as those of you who are reading ahead know, Attila doesn't invade Italy after receiving the note from Honoria.

No, he skirts the Alps and invades Gaul.

Honoria's plea may have made for a convenient pretext, but clearly it wasn't anything more than a pretext.

His demand for half the Empire as a dowry was only serious in that the inevitable Roman rejection of the offer gave him a further pretext.

I mean, hey, I've just been insulted, I have to go teach these swine a lesson.

You know, that sort of thing.

So, what gives?

Why was Attila suddenly of the mind to invade the West?

As we discussed last week, the West was both poorer in wealth and friendlier to the Huns in disposition.

The answer likely lies, first of all, in that general drive to expand that seems to grip any great power.

Once you think you're invincible, it follows that the world should be yours.

Rich, poor, friend, foe, all should bow before you.

So it was expansion, for expansion's sake, the manifest destiny of irresistible power.

Second was a political hole that had just opened up in Gaul at that moment.

The Frankish king Clodio, the one who had been beaten by Aetius a couple years before, keeled over dead in 450, and the question of succession to the Frankish throne was suddenly opened up.

Aetius and the Romans backed Clodio's younger son, the one Aetius had taken hostage, and the one Aetius had then subsequently adopted as his own son, following Clodio's death.

Attila, on the other hand, backed Clodio's elder son to fill the vacancy, obviously hoping to peel the Franks away from the Romans and draw them into the Hun hegemony.

For the first time, ever really, Aetius and Attila were on opposing sides of an issue.

Aetius wanted his new adopted son in power to ensure that the Franks remained staunch Roman allies, and Attila was prepared to back with arms the claim of the elder son, who was promising to look east to the Huns rather than south to the Romans.

Neither Aetius nor Attila would back down.

But the question of Frankish succession was not the only political front Attila was working in the West.

He was apparently running some kind of multi-pronged offensive to split everyone from everyone everyone else, probably hoping to create enough chaos that he could just waltz into Gaul unopposed.

He sent envoys to Aetius asking for an alliance, because, he announced, he was planning to attack the Goths in Aquitaine, who, after all, have been nothing but a thorn in your side for years.

Who would you rather team up with, some untrustworthy Goths squatting on your land, or the mighty Huns, who have always been there when you needed us?

But at the same time, Attila was sending envoys to the Goths, essentially making the same argument in reverse.

Hey, let's team up and drive the Romans out of Gaul once and for all.

You don't like them any more than we do, and together we can be rid of them.

Meanwhile, he was sending a mix of threats and overtures to the Franks, trying to leverage them into the Hun camp.

Though this all seems very confusing, and it makes it very difficult to discern Attila's true motives, I think the strategy could not be clearer.

So, discontent amongst the armed forces of the West, so that they are unable to form a coalition against the advancing Huns.

And in early 451, the Huns began to advance.

Aetius, currently down in Italy, recognized the need for a coalition as clearly as Attila recognized the need to prevent one from forming.

The bottom line was that if the armed peoples of Gaul did not band together to face this mutual enemy, they were all going to be destroyed.

So with Attila sending out his contradictory envoys to everyone, Aetius sent out envoys of his own.

It simply said, Don't be stupid, the Romans are not your enemy.

The Huns are all our enemy.

But with a mix of mixed messages floating around, it was hard to know who was really your friend, who was really your foe, and who was strong enough to make it all irrelevant, and so shouldn't we just join that side and hope for the best deal when the fighting stops?

Unfortunately for everyone in Gaul, the seeds of discord sown by Attila were in full bloom by the spring of 451 when the Huns crossed the Rhine River.

A source material for the subsequent campaign is sketchy at best, so it's difficult to discern exactly what Attila did to who and when he did it.

Everyone has him entering Roman territory along the Middle Rhine, but then then it gets a little muddled.

Did the Huns really besiege and sack every major city on their way to Orleans?

Mainz, Trier, Cologne, all sacked?

Maybe, and I wouldn't put it past them after the work they had done in Moesia and Thrace just a few years before.

But like I say, it's not at all clear.

We can tentatively place Attila in Metz, in northwest Gaul on April the 7th, and just so you know, I've thrown some maps up on the website to help you work through all of this.

And then supposition and guesswork gets him to Orleans in the middle of June.

Sources mention the old imperial capital of Trier being sacked along the way, and an old legend has a detachment of Huns arriving at the gates of Paris, only to be turned back by a devout Christian woman named Genevieve, or more properly, Jean Vieve,

who led the inhabitants of the city in a sort of of prayer marathon.

When the Huns then retreated unexpectedly without so much as firing a shot, every one called it a miracle.

And so Genevieve became Saint Genevieve, the patron saint of Paris or, if you prefer, Gene Vieves, the patron saint of Palis.

Whatever the route and whatever the damage done by the Huns, by mid June they had arrived at Orleans.

Orleans was the home of a considerable garrison of Alans, technically allies of Rome, but who knows at this point?

Because word on the street is that the king of the Alans has made a side deal with Attila to open the gates to the invaders.

When Attila arrived and the inhabitants of the city learned of the deal, they cried massive foul and shut the gates themselves.

I can't find any explanation for how the citizens of Orleans managed to fend off the Alan garrison and keep the gates shut for as long as they did, but apparently they managed to hold out just long enough to prevent the city from being taken.

There was a light at the end of the tunnel for the people of Orleans because after two months of preparation and negotiation, Aetius was finally ready to make his move.

The forces he had been able to muster from amongst the regular Roman army were not nearly enough for him to take on the Huns all by himself.

So as I just said, the general had been working furiously to convince every barbarian nation in Gaul, large and small, to join him in an anti-Hun confederation.

Initially, the reception to Aetius' plea was muted at best, but it soon became apparent that as the Goths went, so too would go the rest of the inhabitants of Gaul.

Basically, if Aetius could get the Goths to come fight, then everyone else, Franks, Burgundians, Alans, whoever, would join the fun.

But convincing the Goths was proving to be no easy task.

The Gothic king, as you'll recall, still Theodoric after all these years, was unimpressed with Aetius' army when the general came knocking in the late spring of 451.

There were simply not enough Roman soldiers to make a direct assault on the Huns, even with Goth reinforcements, anything but an incredibly risky bet.

Theodoric was not blind to the threat posed by the Huns.

He just took a hard look at the situation and determined that it would be better for his people to hole up in their own territory, bunch their forces together, and make a stand at a time and place of their own choosing.

But Aetius was not going to take no for an answer, so he dispatched the hugely influential Gallo-Roman senator Avetus to talk to Theodoric and bring the king around.

Avitas, you'll remember, was the one who had brokered the peace between the Romans and Goths back in 439, and who would, in just a few years, find himself elevated to the rank of Western Emperor after the death of Valentinian III broke the imperial court wide open.

Avitas had a close relationship with Theodoric, and after much cajoling, he was able to drag the Goths out of Aquitaine and into the field under Aetius' banner.

With the Goths on board, other barbarian groups broke the Roman way, and by the time Attila arrived at Orleans, Aetius was leading a confederated army to relieve the city and hopefully drive Attila out of the west.

Aetius arrived at the besieged city around June 15, just in time to save the beleaguered inhabitants.

Attila had breached a portion of the wall and had already established a beachhead within the city when the news came that a massive Roman army was approaching.

Unfortunately, we don't really have any idea just how big this army was, nor do we have any real idea how big Attila's army was.

And it really doesn't help that all we have to go on are insanely inflated reports like Attila was leading an army five hundred thousand strong.

Most of what I've read puts the opposing side somewhere between fifty and seventy five thousand men apiece, which sounds much closer to the truth, and which still makes the coming showdown one of the largest battles in late antiquity.

The forces arrayed at the Battle of Adrianople, for example, were at most 25 to 30,000 a side, with the minimum thought to be maybe just 15,000 apiece.

So, while we are not about to see a million men squaring off against each other in battle, we are talking about maybe 100 to 150,000, which is pretty enormous, especially given the age.

Caught in the middle of a siege operation, Attila decided to withdraw and regroup rather than immediately turn to fight Aetius.

The Roman Confederation trailed the Huns east for an indeterminate number of days until Attila landed on a spot he thought would be favorable ground for a battle, the Catalonian Fields.

Though the site of the battle has never been firmly identified, it was somewhere in the Champagne-Ardennes region.

The two armies lined up in late June and proceeded to launch a full-scale assault on one another, with no quarter asked or given.

The details of the battle are just as confusing about every other detail of the Hun invasion of 451.

A principal source for all this is a 6th-century Byzantine historian named Jordanus, who was, by his own admission, summarizing the work of an earlier sixth century Italian historian named Cassiodorus, so no one anywhere near the actual battle itself.

Jordanus says that, quote, the battlefield was a plain rising by a sharp slope which both armies sought to gain.

The Huns with their forces seized the right side, the Romans, Visigoths, and their allies on the left.

The battle line of the Huns was so arranged that Attila and his bravest followers were in the center.

He then goes on to describe how this ridge line became the center of the fighting.

Except, I'm kind of having a hard time picturing it.

Was the ridge line in between the two armies running parallel to their front lines, or was it off to one side running perpendicular so that only a wing of each side was involved in the fighting to take the high ground?

And frankly, left and right of what?

Can a brother get some cardinal points?

If anyone can help straighten this out for me, it would be very much appreciated.

I've got another map up that looks like the elusive ridge line was off to one side, but I don't really know, and frankly, I'm not sure Jordanis does either.

Anyway, the story then goes that the Roman Goth forces reached the high ground first and managed to repel all Hun attempts to take it.

The Goths, who were working on the right, then managed to break through and send the Hun left into an unexpected retreat.

As great as this punch-through was, though, it came at a heavy price to the Goths, as Theodoric was killed in the midst of the final push.

But the loss of the king was a small price to pay.

The Huns had tasted defeat and were now on the run.

The Roman, Goth, et al.

Confederation had beaten the invincible Huns.

But while this victory was sweet, it was not decisive.

The Huns had pulled back, but they were not broken.

Sure, Attila was pretty despondent that night in the fortified Hun camp, going so far as to begin construction of his own funeral pyre out of shame, until his captains pointed out that the Hun army was still mostly intact, their losses manageable, and the Romans only marginally better off.

The Battle of the Catalonian Fields was a setback, but it wasn't the end of anything.

So buck up, Attila.

There you go.

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Attila was fully recovered by the next day, and as his captains promised, the defeat was merely a setback.

But that said, the aura of Hun invincibility had definitely been shattered, both among the Romans and the Huns themselves.

For the next few days, the two armies stared each other down and waited for the other to make a move.

Finally, Attila decided that it just wasn't worth it.

His supply lines were drawn out like crazy.

Feeding his people was a major concern, and with Aetius riding high and breathing down his neck, the Huns weren't going to be able to scatter and forage the way they needed to to keep up the campaign.

So Attila began a slow retreat out of Gaul.

As soon as the Huns began to move east, the ties that had bound Aetius' Confederation began to fray.

The Goths were now minus one king, and Theodoric's son Thorismund asked Aetius if his people could return to their homes and settle the question of succession.

Aetius was of course nervous about such a huge chunk of his army breaking off, but I've also seen it hinted that he actively encouraged Thorismund to head home, because that way Aetius wouldn't have to share the extensive spoils captured from the Huns.

Though the Roman army was now far weaker, the Huns made no move to retake the offensive.

And for his part, Aetius was not crazy enough to make any move that might rile up the Huns as long as they kept moving east.

The retreat was not a pretty one for the people inhabiting the lands Attila passed through, but there there was little Aetius could do about that.

And even if he could have, he might still have been fine with the Huns blowing off some steam.

After all, he had to keep his eye on the ball.

The Huns were leaving.

Don't screw that up.

Because if you had presented this scenario to Aetius just a month before, that is, the Huns retreating and the Roman army still in one piece, he likely would have scoffed at your pie in the sky fantasizing.

So, though it was a slow and destructive retreat, the Huns were engaged in, it was a retreat, and Aetius wasn't going to risk the big picture victory by trying to hurry Attila along.

I don't know how long the withdrawal ultimately took, but I imagine the Huns were back across the Rhine by early fall and back on the Hungarian plain by winter.

I also imagine Attila spent that winter brooding and brooding and brooding.

By the spring of 452, Attila had pretty well worked himself up into a vengeful fury and was more than ready to go show the West just how not defeated the Huns really were.

But this time, rather than swinging into Gaul, Attila drove straight for the heart of the Western Empire.

The Huns crossed the Alps and poured unchecked into the Po Valley, ready for some serious ravaging.

The first city they hit, of course, was Aquilea, which had so often repulsed the would-be ravagers of Italy.

But as we've discussed, the Huns are different.

The fortifications of Aquilea were crushed, and the Huns broke into the city in short order.

Not content with simply sacking Aquilea, the Huns proceeded to smash and smash and burn and smash until the city was reduced to its foundations.

Really, to the point where the great fortified city was a practically unrecognizable pile of rubble.

Though another city named Aquileia would eventually grow up on the site of the old city, for all intents and purposes the Aquileia we've been talking about for the last few hundred years, as the focal point of so many invasions and defenses of Italy, is gone.

An interesting upshot of this destruction, though, was that the inhabitants of the city fled into the marshes of the coastline, leading some scholars to reckon that a good chunk of them wound up forming a community on some islands in a lagoon, establishing the core of the modern city of Venice.

The destruction of Aquilea sent shockwaves through the empire, and put the fear of God into Valentinian III.

Suddenly, the swamps surrounding Ravenna no longer seemed so impenetrable.

So the emperor and his court packed their bags as quickly as they could and fled south to Rome.

The Aurelian walls were still a thing to behold.

Maybe they would prove to be as effective as the Theodosian walls had been at protecting Constantinople.

Valentinian could only hope and pray, because it didn't look like there was much else that was going to stop the Huns.

With Attila on the loose in Italy, Aetius was unable to raise the same sort of sense of camaraderie with the barbarian nations of Gaul as he had been able to the year before when their homes were directly threatened.

And so all he had at his disposal this time were the ultimately inadequate regular Roman forces.

Next week, Aetius will do his best to harass the Huns, as Attila marched from one conquest to the next in northern Italy.

But though he was reduced to essentially waging a guerrilla campaign against Attila's supply lines, Aetius proved himself no less capable than when he was leading mighty armies in set-piece battles.

And though it was almost certainly a combination of supply issues, disease, and bribery that finally led to Attila's withdrawal from Italy, I would hate to draw the ire of the Catholic high command by not pointing most especially to the embassy of Pope Leo the Great, who single-handedly convinced the Huns to spare Rome and withdraw from the peninsula.

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