Attila (c. 406–453)

King of the Huns in an area from the Alps to the Caspian Sea from 434, known to later Christian history as the ‘Scourge of God’. He twice attacked the Eastern Roman Empire to increase the quantity of tribute paid to him, 441–443 and 447–449, and then attacked the Western Roman Empire 450–452.

Attila first ruled jointly with his brother Bleda, whom he murdered 444. In 450 Honoria, the sister of the western emperor Valentinian III, appealed to him to rescue her from an arranged marriage, and Attila used her appeal to attack the West. He was forced back from Orléans by Aetius and Theodoric, King of the Visigoths, and defeated by them on the Catalaunian Fields 451. In 452 he led the Huns into Italy, and was induced to withdraw by Pope Leo I.

He died on the night of his marriage to the German Ildico, either by poison or, as Chaucer represents it in his Pardoner's Tale, from a nasal haemorrhage induced by drunkenness.

Attila lived in relative simplicity in his camp close to the Danube, which was described by the Greek historian Priscus after a diplomatic mission. But his advisers included a Greek, Orestes, and his control over a large territory required administrative abilities. His conscious aims were to prevent the Huns from serving in the imperial armies and to use force to exact as much tribute or land from both parts of the empire as he could. His burial place was kept secret.