14 DAY TRIAL // This was the last military spark of the (Western) Roman Empire: at the Battle of the Catalaunian Fields or the Battle of Campus Mauriacus in 451, a Roman alliance led by General Flavius Aetius and the Visigothic king Theodoric I fought savagely against an allied army led by the Huns' King Attila.
By 450, the Romans had lost control of Gaul (today's France): Celtic Armorica (Bretagne) belonged to the Breton tribes, northern Gaul between the Rhine and Marne rivers was the land of the Franks (a Germanic tribe) while the Visigoths dominated Gallia Aquitania (now southwest France); the Burgundians (Germanic tribe) had settled near the Alps. The only part still under Roman leadership was the Mediterranean coastline.
Some said that Attila was attracted by the Vandals to wage war against the Visigoths, while others claim there was another reason for the Huns' attack on Gaul: Honoria, the sister of the Roman emperor Valentinian III, had been married off to the senator Herculanus, who kept her in a respectable confinement.
In 450 she asked for Attila's help to escape her marriage and the Hun saw in this a marriage proposal. He claimed Honoria along with 50 % of Valentinian's territories for dowry. Valentinian's refuse was the pretext to launch a destructive campaign throughout Gaul.
Attila crossed the Rhine in the spring of 451, sacking Divodurum (Metz) and Rheims. His army reached Aurelianum (Orleans) by June which was immediately besieged.
When learning about the invasion, Flavius Aetius moved rapidly from Italy into Gaul leading auxiliaries without one regular soldier. He managed to convince Theodoric I, the Visigothic king, to join him. The allied armies reached Aurelianum in June 14, saving it in the last moment, as the Attila's army had managed a breach in the city's walls. Theodoric and Aetius followed the Hun army and reached it at the Catalaunian Fields on June 20.
Following the Turkik customs (Huns were Turkik like today's Tartars, Turkish, Kazaks or Kyrgis), Attila's diviners checked the entrails of a ram in the morning before battle. They forecast defeat for the Huns and the death of an enemy chieftain. Attila hoped that Aetius was going to die, but delayed battle until the ninth hour so that he could save his troops in case of defeat during the night.
Descriptions of the battle say that the Catalaunian plain had on one side a sharp slope heading towards a ridge. The Huns first occupied the right side of the ridge and the Romans the left. When the Hunnic forces tried to seize the decisive central location, they were stopped by the Roman alliance.
The Hunnic soldiers fled in disorder, creating chaos for the rest of their army and Attila could not hold his position. In the assault, Theodoric died but the Visigoths did not realize that. It appears he was thrown from his horse and stepped on to death by his own advancing warriors.
The Huns were attacked by the Visigoths and the king was forced to take refuge in his wagon-fortified camp and was saved by the fall of night.
Next day the Roman-Goth troops began to besiege Attila's camp and the Hun king made a funeral pyre of horse saddles, so that in case of being attacked, he could put himself into the flames, to escape the shame of being captured.
Thorismund, Theodoric's son, wanted to revenge the death of his father and to attack the Hun camp, but Aetius made him change his mind, fearing the rise of the Visigoth power in case of a total Huns' annihilation. He convinced Thorismund to quickly go back home to secure the throne for himself and be faster than his brothers who wanted the same thing. Thorismund went back rapidly to Tolosa (Toulouse) and A?tius dismissed his Frankish warriors the same way, keeping the booty of the battlefield for himself.
When the Visigoths withdrew, Attila thought it was a trick to lure his troops into the open for annihilation and remained within his defenses till risking to abandon his camp and went back home, to Panonia (today's Hungary).
Aetius' allies in the battle (besides the Visigoths) were Franks, Sarmatians, Armoricans, Liticians, Burgundians, Saxons, Olibrones, and other Celtic or German tribes, while Attila's allies included the Gepids, Ostrogoths, Rugians, Burgundians, Sciri, Bellonotians, Thuringians and Franks living along the Neckar River, all Germanic tribes.
Even if sources estimate a death toll of 165,000, the Hunnic army had no more than 30,000 men, while the Roman-Visigoth forces about 40,000.
The clear location of the Catalaunian Fields is still a puzzle, but the majority of the historians agree on Ch?lons-en-Champagne.
What was the significance of this battle?
"The name of the Huns ceased for some centuries to inspire terror in Western Europe, and their ascendency passed away with the life of the great king by whom it had been so fearfully augmented." stated Creasy.
"It should never be forgotten that in the summer of 451 and again in 452, the whole fate of western civilization hung in the balance. Had the Hunnish army not been halted in these two successive campaigns, had its leader toppled Valentinian from his throne and set up his own capital at Ravenna or Rome, there is little doubt that both Gaul and Italy would have been reduced to spiritual and cultural deserts." said historian John Julius Norwich.
Even if the battle was "indecisive insofar as both sides sustained immense losses and neither was left master of the field, it had the effect of halting the Huns advance."
This was the first major conflict between large alliances on both sides.
"Working frenetically, the Roman leader had built a powerful alliance of Visigoths, Alans and Burgundians, uniting them with their traditional enemy, the Romans, for the defense of Gaul. Even though all parties to the protection of the Western Roman Empire had a common hatred of the Huns, it was still a remarkable achievement on A?tius' part to have drawn them into an effective military relationship," said Arthur Ferrill.
"Attila's retreat across the Rhine confessed the last victory which was achieved in the name of the Western Roman Empire. The casualties suppose a real and effective loss, sufficient to justify the historian's remark that whole generations may be swept away by the madness of kings in a single hour", wrote Gibbon.
The battle had an unparalleled reputation for its carnage.
"For, if we may believe our elders, a brook flowing between low banks through the plain was greatly increased by blood of the slain. It was not flooded by showers, as brooks usually rise, but was swollen by a strange stream and turned into a torrent by the increase of blood. Those whose wounds drove them to slake their parching thirst drank water mingled in gore. In their wretched plight they were forced to drink what they thought was the blood they had poured from their own wounds." wrote Jordanes.
This was the first major battle since the death of Constantine I where a mainly Christian force confronted a pagan enemy and the contemporaries mention prayer during this battle.
But this battle did not stop Attila: the following year he invaded northern Italy, claiming Honoria, causing a carnage and was stopped at the gates of Rome after meeting Pope Leo I the Great at a ford of the river Mincio. Sparing Rome shows us the Hun king as a spiritual leader himself.
Only after Attila's sudden death in 453 and the civil war following it, the Huns' threat in Europe disappeared.