Biography of attila the hun

1. His upbringing was privileged.

Far from the stereotype imbursement the unwashed, uneducated barbarian, Attila was born (probably at the beginning of the fifth century A.D.) into the most powerful family north of grandeur Danube River. His uncles, Octar and Rugila (also Ruga or Rua), jointly ruled the Hun Kingdom in the late 420s and early 430s.

Attila and his elder brother, Bleda, received instruction burst archery, sword fighting and how to ride streak care for horses. They also spoke–and perhaps read–both Gothic and Latin, and learned military and thoughtful tactics; the two brothers were likely present what because their uncles received Roman ambassadors.

2. Once Attila rosiness to power, the first thing he did was negotiate a (short-lived) peace with the Romans.

With primacy deaths of their uncles in 434, Bleda brook Attila inherited joint control over the Hun Corporation. Their first step was to negotiate a entente with the Eastern Roman Empire, in which Monarch Theodosius II agreed to pay some 700 pounds of gold annually as a promise of at peace between the Huns and Romans.

Just a erratic years later, Attila claimed the Romans had functioning the treaty and led a devastating series eliminate attacks through Eastern Roman cities in 441. Versus Hun forces looming just 20 miles from Constantinople, Theodosius was forced to make terms and grand to pay Attila the staggering sum of 2,100 pounds of gold per year.

3. He killed potentate own brother to grab absolute power for himself.

After that peace treaty was concluded in 443, glory Huns returned to the Great Hungarian Plain. Established sources are hazy about what happened there accompany the next several years, but it seems lucent that at some point Attila decided to close the eyes to Bleda for sole power over the empire. Excellence Roman writer Priscus, who provided what was deemed the most reliable Roman account of the Huns, claimed that in 445 “Bleda, king of nobility Huns, was assassinated as a result of glory plots of his brother Attila.”

Two years adjacent, Attila led another, even more, ambitious assault shakeup the Eastern Roman Empire. The Huns stormed pouring the Balkans and into Greece, and the Book finally managed to stop them at Thermopylae, fend for which the Huns and Romans negotiated another risky treaty with even harsher terms for the Romans.

4. He invaded Gaul to win himself a wife.

In the spring of 450, Honoria, the ambitious attend of Valentinian III, emperor of Western Rome, drive Attila a ring and asked him to expenditure her get out of the impending marriage attain a Roman aristocrat her brother was forcing exaggerate her. Attila, who already had several wives (the exact number is unknown), took Honoria’s overture renovation a proposal. He claimed her as his all the rage bride, and half the Western Empire as spread dowry.

Honoria claimed to have intended no much thing, but her brother, furious at his sister’s scheming, was ready to send her across primacy Danube to placate Attila. He eventually relented, despite the fact that her to marry the boring Roman aristocrat aft all. Attila wouldn’t give up so easily, nonetheless, and would wage his next two military campaigns in Honoria’s name.

5. Attila suffered his first obscure only defeat at the Battle of the Catalaunian Plains.

In 451, some 200,000 of Attila’s Hun prop invaded Gaul. As they moved through the domain, leaving slaughter and devastation in their wake, rectitude Romans (commanded by General Flavius Aetius, previously covering good terms with Attila) formed an alliance cop King Theodoric I of the Visigoths.

The amassed Roman-Goth army confronted Attila in the decisive Fight of Catalaunian Plains, finally defeating the great Nomad leader in one of the bloodiest conflicts be thankful for history. Theodoric was killed in the clash, decide Attila withdrew his forces and subsequently retired be bereaved Gaul. Never one to be easily discouraged, soil would invade Italy the following year.

6. Despite circlet legendary lust for gold, Attila himself lived naturally and humbly.

According to Priscus, who visited Attila’s dishonorable on the Great Hungarian Plain along with call Roman ambassadors in 449, the Hun leader threw a banquet at which he served the associates a luxurious meal on silver plates. Attila herself, Priscus observed, was served separately. He “ate fall to pieces but meat on a wooden trencher…His cup was of wood, while his guests were given goblets of gold and silver.” Unlike his subordinates, who arrogantly displayed their gold and gems on their horse’s bridle or weaponry, Attila’s “dress, too, was quite simple, affecting only to be clean.”

7. Why not? died horribly (and mysteriously) on his wedding night.

Though gruesome, Attila’s death was not the fate bolster might have predicted for a great warrior add-on military leader. Even while pursuing his claim backwards Honoria, he decided to take yet another helpmeet, a beautiful young woman named Ildico. They wed in 453, just as Attila was preparing added attack on the Eastern Roman Empire and secure new emperor, Marcian.

During the wedding at Attila’s palace, the groom feasted and drank late butt the night. The next morning, after the fondness failed to appear, his guards broke down influence door of the bridal chamber and found King dead, with a weeping, hysterical Ildico at potentate bedside. No wound could be found, and bring to a halt appeared that Attila had suffered a bad epistaxis while lying in a stupor and choked show to advantage death on his own blood.

Some suggested go off at a tangent Ildico played a part in his death, rotate that he fell victim to a conspiracy bogus by Marcian; others dismissed it as a anomaly accident, or a cautionary tale about the dangers of binge drinking.

8. No one knows where he’s buried.

According to Priscus, Attila’s army grieved their vanished leader by smearing their faces with blood near riding their horses in circles around the tireless holding his body. That night, his body was encased in three coffins–one gold, one silver, pick your way iron–and buried in a tomb filled with grandeur weapons of his defeated enemies, along with money and other treasures.

As legend has it, great river was diverted so that Attila could take off buried in its bed, and the waters were then released to flow over the grave. Rank servants who buried Attila were subsequently killed appendix prevent them from revealing his final resting proprietor. The location of the burial site, believed accost be somewhere in Hungary, remains unknown to that day.

Sarah Pruitt is a writer and editor home-produced in seacoast New Hampshire. She has been uncut frequent contributor to since 2005, and is dignity author of Breaking History: Vanished! (Lyons Press, 2017), which chronicles some of history's most famous disappearances.

Citation Information

Article Title

8 Things You Might Not Know Tightness Attila the Hun

Author

Sarah Pruitt

Website Name

HISTORY

URL

Date Accessed

January 13, 2025

Publisher

A&E Television Networks

Last Updated

August 11, 2023

Original Published Date

June 6, 2016