Battle of the Catalaunian Plains (451): Attila Checked in Gaul

The Battle of the Catalaunian Plains, fought in 451 in the Champagne region of north-eastern France, was the great clash between Attila the Hun and a coalition led by the Roman general Flavius Aetius and the Visigothic king Theodoric I. Its traditional date is 20 June 451. Neither army was annihilated, but Attila was forced to abandon his invasion of Gaul, and the battle became one of the most famous of late antiquity, also known as the Battle of Châlons.

Background: the empire of Attila

In the decades after the Huns first reached Europe around 370, as described in Arrival of the Huns in Europe, they built a powerful empire centred on the Hungarian plain. By the 440s it was ruled by Attila, who had shared power with his brother Bleda until Bleda’s death around 445. Attila commanded not only Huns but many subject peoples, including Ostrogoths, Gepids, Rugians, Sciri and others.

Through the 440s Attila concentrated on the Eastern Roman Empire. He devastated the Balkans and forced Constantinople to pay large annual sums in gold. In 450 the new eastern emperor Marcian refused to continue the payments, but instead of attacking the East, Attila turned west.

Two pretexts are recorded. Honoria, sister of the western emperor Valentinian III, had sent Attila a ring and a plea for help to escape an arranged marriage, and he claimed her as his bride with half the Western Empire as dowry. Attila also became involved in a succession dispute among the Franks. Many historians think the real goal was plunder and prestige, and perhaps to break the alliance between Rome and the Visigoths.

Attila invades Gaul

Early in 451 Attila’s army crossed the Rhine. The city of Metz was sacked, according to tradition on Easter Eve (7 April), and other towns in northern Gaul were damaged or threatened. Later saints’ lives tell of bishops and holy figures protecting their cities, most famously Saint Genevieve in Paris, though these stories were written down long afterwards.

Attila then besieged Orléans (Aurelianum) on the Loire, a strategic crossing into the heart of Gaul. According to Jordanes and the Life of Saint Anianus, the city was close to falling when Aetius arrived with a relief army in June. Attila withdrew eastwards towards the open country of Champagne, where his cavalry could manoeuvre.

The two armies

Aetius was the leading general of the Western Empire and had long experience with the Huns, having spent time among them as a hostage in his youth and having used Hun mercenaries in his own wars. His army of Roman troops was not large enough on its own, so he persuaded the Visigoths, settled in Aquitaine as described in Visigothic Kingdom of Toulouse, to join him. Their king Theodoric I came in person with his sons Thorismund and Theodoric.

The coalition also included Alans under their king Sangiban, whose loyalty Aetius distrusted, as well as Franks, Burgundians, Saxons, Armoricans and other groups listed by Jordanes. Attila’s army included his Huns, Ostrogoths under the brothers Valamir, Thiudimer and Vidimer, Gepids under their king Ardaric, and contingents from many other subject peoples. In a real sense Goths fought Goths and Franks fought Franks.

The battle

The night before the main battle, according to Jordanes, the Franks clashed with Attila’s Gepids in a bloody skirmish. Jordanes claims 15,000 men died, a number that cannot be trusted. Jordanes also says Attila consulted soothsayers, who predicted disaster for the Huns but the death of a great enemy commander, and that Attila therefore delayed the start of battle until mid-afternoon so that night would cover a defeat.

The fighting centred on a ridge that rose above the plain. Aetius placed the Romans on one wing, the Visigoths on the other and the suspect Alans in the centre, where they could not easily desert. Attila took the centre with his Huns, with his Germanic subjects on the wings. Thorismund and Aetius seized the high ground first, and Hun attacks to take it were driven back.

In the struggle that followed, Theodoric I was killed. Jordanes gives two versions: that he was thrown from his horse and trampled by his own men, or that he was struck by a spear thrown by Andag, an Ostrogoth. The Visigoths fought on and, according to Jordanes, broke the Huns’ attack. Attila retreated to his camp, ringed with wagons, which the coalition could not storm. Jordanes reports that Attila had a pyre built from horse saddles, ready to burn himself rather than be captured.

Aftermath: why Aetius let Attila go

The next day the coalition did not press home its advantage. Aetius advised Thorismund to hurry back to Toulouse and secure his throne before his brothers could seize it, and the Visigoths left the field. Jordanes thought Aetius was being cunning: if the Huns were destroyed, the Visigoths would be too strong, so he preferred to keep Attila as a counterweight. Whether this was policy or simply necessity, Attila was allowed to withdraw across the Rhine.

Attila was not broken. In 452 he invaded Italy, destroyed Aquileia and took Milan and other cities. Near the river Mincio he met an embassy that included Pope Leo I, and he withdrew, probably because of famine, disease in his army and an Eastern Roman attack on his homeland. He died in 453, reportedly of a haemorrhage on his wedding night. In 454 his former subjects, led by Ardaric and the Gepids, defeated his sons at the river Nedao, and the Hun empire collapsed.

Aetius did not long outlive his rival. He was murdered by Valentinian III himself in September 454, and the emperor was killed in revenge by Aetius’s former followers in March 455. The Western Empire’s last capable general was gone, and in June 455, less than three months after Valentinian’s death, Rome was sacked by the Vandals, as told in Vandal Sack of Rome (455).

Key people

• Attila (ruled c. 434–453, alone from c. 445): king of the Huns and the most feared enemy of both Roman empires.
• Flavius Aetius (c. 391–454): Western Roman general and patrician, organiser of the coalition.
• Theodoric I (king 418–451): Visigothic king, killed in the battle.
• Thorismund (king 451–453): Theodoric’s son, who led the Visigoths after his father’s death.
• Ardaric: king of the Gepids and Attila’s most trusted subject ruler, who later led the revolt against Attila’s sons.

Myths, facts and sources

Myth: 165,000 men were killed. This figure from Jordanes is impossible for armies of the period. Neither side’s strength is known, and estimates of each army in the tens of thousands are guesses.

Myth: the battle saved Christian Europe. Edward Creasy included it in his Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World (1851), and it was long presented as a victory of civilisation over barbarism. In reality many soldiers on both sides were Germanic, the result was indecisive, and Attila raided Italy the following year.

Fact: the date is traditional, not certain. The date of 20 June comes from medieval tradition and calculations around the siege of Orléans; some historians prefer a date later in the summer or even September. The year 451 is secure.

Fact: the “battle of the ghosts” is a separate legend. The Greek philosopher Damascius told of a battle between Huns and Romans so fierce that the spirits of the dead continued fighting in the air. Wilhelm von Kaulbach’s nineteenth-century painting The Battle of the Huns shows this legend, which became attached to the battle in popular memory.

The sources and their limits

Almost everything known about the battle comes from Jordanes, a Gothic-Roman writer who completed his Getica around 551, a full century after the event. Jordanes based his account partly on the lost history of Cassiodorus and partly on the lost work of Priscus, a Roman diplomat who had visited Attila’s court in 449 and whose eyewitness descriptions of the Huns are among the most valuable of the period.

Jordanes wrote as a celebrant of the Goths, and his narrative gives the Visigoths and their king the leading role. His dramatic speeches, including the address Attila supposedly gave his troops before the battle, are literary inventions in the classical tradition rather than records of words actually spoken.

Shorter notices in the chronicles of Hydatius in Spain and Prosper of Aquitaine confirm the main facts: Attila invaded Gaul, a battle was fought with Aetius and the Goths, Theodoric fell, and Attila withdrew. Beyond that, the size of the armies, the exact date and location, and the course of the fighting all remain uncertain, and historians reconstruct them in different ways.

Timeline

• 450: Marcian stops tribute to Attila; Honoria’s appeal reaches the Hun king.
• 451, early spring: Attila crosses the Rhine into Gaul.
• 451, 7 April: Traditional date for the sack of Metz.
• 451, June: Aetius and the Visigoths relieve Orléans.
• 451, 20 June: Traditional date of the Battle of the Catalaunian Plains; Theodoric I killed.
• 452: Attila invades Italy and destroys Aquileia.
• 453: Death of Attila.
• 454: Battle of Nedao ends Hun dominance; Aetius murdered in September.

Why it matters

The Catalaunian Plains is often described as the last great victory of a Western Roman general, won only with the help of the Gothic kingdom that Rome had settled inside its own borders. It showed both the continuing reach of Roman diplomacy and its dependence on barbarian allies. Within a generation of the battle, the Western Empire had ceased to exist and its former allies ruled its provinces.