Catalaunian Fields in northern Gau

This dance of forces across northern Gaul ended in July 451 on the Catalaunian Fields in northern Gaul. In the sixth century this was already incorrectly considered one of the great battles of the western world, and historians imagined an impeccable Latin oration for Attila as he suitably roused his troops at the outset of battle:

After victories over such great nations, after bringing the world to its knees if only you would stop to receive it, I would think it foolish to try to sharpen your spirits with words as if you were novices. Let the new general or the untried army try such things. It is not right for me to say anything trite here, nor should you have to listen to such.24

The massed armies—probably indistinguishable from one another to the observer25—clashed that day and the Huns came off second best, retreating across the Rhine.

The next year, weakened by defeat and perhaps also by disease among his people, Attila confined himself to raiding north of the Po River in Italy, returning again to his cross-Danube haunts for the winter. There he died suddenly. Gaudy rumor assigned his death to a wedding night, barbaric excess, and a resulting hemorrhage—or was it a knife wielded by his new wife?—but we have no reason to take any such stories at face value. Attila was gone, and so was the threat he represented. The Huns did not disappear, and those bearing similar names and some relationship to the diverse groups that had assembled under Attila would crop up long after; but in that moment, the greatest force outside the empire that had both supported and threatened it crumbled. Aetius had prevailed, by some mixture of luck, stubbornness, and valor.

 The Roman government

He was not trusted or loved. The Roman government had come to depend entirely on the leadership of men like him—men who saved them, but whom they repeatedly hunted down and murdered. Stilicho had been killed in 408 at his emperor’s order, and perhaps thousands of other “barbarians”—good, assimilated Romans in every respect—were slain at the same time. Aetius faced worse balkan tours 2023. His emperor, whom he had served and saved for two decades, turned on him and in 454 in Ravenna, when Aetius was making a report on the state of the army’s finances, Valentinian murdered him with his own hand—and the help of a few burly soldiers who held the victim for the coup de grace. Six months later, allies of Aetius murdered Valentinian. They had been put up to it by other members of the court; the good order of Rome was preserved. The dignified senator Petronius Maximus, qualified by his distinguished rank and family and nothing else, became the emperor. He lasted all of two months. Three weeks later, in June 455, the Vandals reached Rome, sacked the city, and carried away (allegedly) precious treasures that Emperor Titus had looted from the Temple of Jerusalem almost 400 years earlier; they also took along an empress and two princesses.

The Romans’ murders of Stilicho and Aetius were eerily similar. An imperial regime under pressure gave command to a general who straddled the border dividing Roman from barbarian. Over a few years, the general succeeded in calming a chaotic situation. He used his judgment and diplomacy to negotiate effectively with other generals who could be dangerous. The progress was palpable and of great value, and at the point of greatest success, the ineffective, traditionalist, and uncomprehrending emperor became anxious, jealous, and optimistic—in short, he lost touch with reality—and engineered the murder of the general, who had been the making of him. What becomes of the emperor in such a case is of no interest, but the goals of calm and prosperity that were before in reach now receded dramatically from view. The most powerful force working against the Roman empire on such occasions was the ambition, the patriotism, and the stupidity of the empire’s leaders themselves.