81 MARCIAN (65; r.450-457) (E)
In July 450 Theodosius was thrown from his horse and died two days later. Aelia Pulcheria (54/5; fl.414-453), the second child of the Eastern emperor Arcadius, as a woman could not rule in her own right. Yet, such was her prestige that for a month she acted as provisional monarch, one of her first acts being to execute Chrysaphius. Aspar, whose power was generally acknowledged, as a Goth could not safely aspire to the throne himself. He therefore selected a trusted officer of his, 65Flavius Marcianus (65; fl.441-457) to marry Pulcheria.
Shortly after the marriage, Marcian was proclaimed emperor and saluted by the troops at Hebdomon, a military camp seven miles west of Constantinople. Departing from the policy of appeasement, Marcian announced that he was repudiating all the recent treaties and ending the gold subsidies: if Attila chose peace he would be sent ‘gifts’, but if he chose war then he would be met by armies as strong as his own.
A year before his death Theodosius II had convened the Second Council of Ephesus (449), which supported monophysitism (‘belief in one nature’), i.e. the assertion that Jesus Christ had a single ‘nature’ which was either divine or a synthesis of divine and human. Two years later Marcian ordered the Fourth Ecumenical Council at Chalcedon, which condemned monophysitism and maintained that Jesus held two natures, one divine and one human (diophysitism).
Attila the Hun (c.47; r.434-453) [3/3]
| Battle: Catalaunian Fields | France | Aetius=Attila | 20.06.451 |
| Siege: Divodurum | France | v. Attila (success) | 451 |
| Siege: Aurelianum | France | v. Attila (failure) | 451 |
| Battle: Nedao River | Croatia | Ardaric/Huns | 454 |
| Battle: Bassianae | Serbia | Ostrogoths/Dengizich | 468 |
Against the siege equipment of the time the walls of Constantinople were impregnable and against a siege that did include a dominant enemy fleet the city would be supplied by sea. Attila would therefore surely have realised, as might be inferred from the easing of his treaty with Theodosius in 450, that without such a fleet he could not defeat the Eastern Empire.
The only way that Attila could defeat both Western and Eastern empires was with the collaboration of the Vandals, who by this time had built up a navy. The one enemy the Vandal king Gaiseric feared was the Visigoths, which may have been one of the reasons why he chose to cross to Africa.
Thus, in 450, possibly after a consultation with Gaiseric, Attila wrote to Valentinian saying that he intended to march against the Visigoths. In spring 451 Attila marched westwards from Hungary with an army of perhaps thirty thousand men, consisting mostly of Ostrogoths, Gepids and of course the Huns. He followed the upper Danube westwards and crossed the Rhine near Coblenz (central-west Germany).
Moving southwestwards he bypassed the fortress of Treverorum (=Trier, southwest Germany) and besieged Divodurum (=Metz, northeast France), which fell in April 451. Continuing westwards three hundred kilometres (200 miles) he put Aurelianum (=Orleans, central-north France) under siege in June. During this period the Huns accepted the surrender of the city of Tricasses (=Troyes, central-northeast France) from Lupus (c.383-c.478), the Bishop of Troyes.
In early summer Aetius advanced north through Gaul with a Roman army with Burgundians and the Visigoths under their king Theodoric. On 14 June, the approach of Aetius’ forces, probably numbering some forty thousand men, compelled Attila to withdraw his army from Orleans. Later in the same month Aetius caught up with the retreating horde near Troyes.
Attila found terrain where he thought his bowmen would be effective. The exact location is unknown – in the sources it is referred to as the Catalaunian Plains (or Fields) or Campus Mauriacus – but is thought to be in the region of Chalons (west of Metz). The early stages involved a struggle for a ridge dominating the battlefield, ascended by a steep slope.
The Roman forces gained the ridge from where the Visigoths scored a victory against Attila’s troops, but Theodoric himself was slain. Aetius did not proceed with a follow up; he seems to have decided that the total destruction of the Huns would make the Visigoths too powerful. By autumn Attila was back in Hungary.
In spring 452 Attila led a force of Huns across the Julian Alps into northeastern Italy and sacked Aquileia. Aetius, who had remained in Gaul, aware of events, hurried to Italy with a small force and took up position along the Po to block the principal river crossings. Attila’s forces also reduced the cities of Padua, Vicenza, Mantua, Verona, Brescia, Bergomum (=Bergamo), Ticinum (=Pavia) and Mediolanum (=Milan).
But the Huns were having problems. Famine and pestilence in Italy was causing Attila great difficulty in securing food for his troops. After an unrecorded discussion with Pope Leo-I (c.61; r.440-461) outside Rome, Attila turned the Huns northward and left Italy.
Early in 453 Attila took another wife and following a hard night’s drinking he was found dead in the morning. Apparently he had suffered a nose bleed and the blood had drained into his throat, choking him to death in his sleep.
After Attila’s death, three of his sons – Ellac (19; r.453-454), Dengizich (r.454-469) and Ernac (r.454-469) – fought each other in a dispute over the succession. The subject tribes, becoming aware of their rulers’ disunity, began to revolt. In 454 a great battle was fought near the Nedao River, probably a tributary of the Sava River in Pannonia. Ardaric (fl.451-460), king of the Gepids, leading a coalition of Rugi, Sciri, Heruli and others, overwhelmed a Hunnic army that suffered heavy losses and Ellac was among the fallen. In winter 466/7 Hormidac led a preponderantly Hunnic army across the Danube and devastated Dacia Ripensis.
Dengizich assembled an army from the elements of the Hun Empire that were still under his control. In 468 he launched an attack across the Danube but was defeated at Bassianae (Pannonia) by the Ostrogoths. Dengizich conducted several wars against the Romans until he was defeated by the Roman-Gothic general Anagastes (fl.466-470) in 469. Dengizich was killed, along with the majority of his people, and the remnants went on to join Ernac in the western Steppe.
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