User:Sborsody/Huns

Notes for the Huns article.

Links

 * http://tudos.virtus.hu/index.php?id=detailed_article&aid=46468
 * http://www.magtudin.org/Friedrich%20-%20Rovasiras%20es%20balkezesseg.htm

Pre-Attila
In 376 Roman officers commanding the Danube garrisons heard reports of great barbarian wars going on between the Theiss and the Black Sea. Later refugees appeared on the northern banks asking to be taken into the safety of the Empire. The Gothic kingdom of Ermanaric had fallen before the Huns. Earlier, the Alans beyond the Don were subjugated. Soon after 370 Huns and Alan subjects began assaulting rich villages of the great Ostrogothic kingdom (which stretched from the Don to the Dniester, from the Black Sea to the Pripet Marshes. Ermanaric committed suicide and was succeeded by his great-nephew Vithimiris.  Vithimiris fought against the van of Alans with some Hun mercenaries.  In a final battle said to be fought on a river Erac somewhere between the Dnieper and the Dniester, Vithimiris was killed.  The Ostrogoths then submitted to the Huns.

Then Huns then came to the frontiers of Athanaric, chieftain (iudex) of the Visigoths. Athanaric sent an expeditionary force lead by Munderich but the Huns avoided this detachment and attacked Athanaric directly. The Goths scattered to the Carpathian foothills. Refugees began to stream towards the Danube as support for the Gothic chieftains diminished.

In 376 the Goths were permitted to cross the border and two years later they engaged Emperor Valens outside Adrianople. In 377 the Goths were penned in in Thrace by the Romans. Some of them then entered into alliance with the Huns and Alans while others began to devastate the Thracian countryside. It is believed that a group of Huns were with the Goths the whole time during Adrianople. After Adrianople, Huns, Alans, and Goths further plundered the Balkans.

In 395 the Huns launched their first great invasion of the Roman Empire. They attacked again Thrace and threatened Dalmatia. But it is in the east they visited most. The Huns poured over the passes of the Caucasus and overran Armenia. They rode into Cappadocia and were said to have approached the Halys. Areas of Syria were devastated and Antioch was threatened. In Armenia the Huns reached the city of Melitene and overran the province of Euphratesia. Theodosius, at his death, left the armies of the empire in the West. This left the Huns mostly unopposed until the eunuch Eutropius assembled a few Goths and Roman soldiers and succeeded in taking the field. Peace was restored to the East at the end of 398.

Thereafter the Huns appear to have not bothered the Eastern provinces again. They instead drove through central Europe towards the West. At the end of 405 Radagaisus broke into Italy. In 406 the Vandals, Sueves, and Alans broke the Rhine frontier and crowded into Gaul. In Gibbon's Decline and Fall, he concludes that these movements were caused by a westward expansion of the Huns.

Attacks on the lower Danube provinces resumed in 408. A certain Uldin, the first Hun known by name, crossed the Danube and captured Castra Martis, a fortress lying well back from the river in the province of Moesia. He took the fort by treachery (someone from within). Uldin then overran Thrace. Uldin demanded an impossible sum when the Romans tried to buy him off so the Romans instead bought off Uldin's subordinates. This resulted in many desertions from Uldin's force. Uldin earlier appears as the leader of a force of Huns and Alans fighting in defense of Italy against Radagaisus. He also defeated a force of German rebels roaming around north of the Danube led by Gainas around 400-401. He gave Gainas' head to the East Romans for display in Constantinople and it appears he received "gifts" in return. Uldin's force rendered considerable service to both Eastern and Western Roman Empires before invading Thrace in 408.

After the untimely end of Stilicho in 408, the Western Roman government entered into a hostage treaty system with the Huns in order to further secure the Empire against roving Germans. Aetius was one such hostage.

Huns were also to be found among Athaulf's, Alaric's brother-in-law, host south of the Julian Alps in 409. It was countered by Honorius' minister Olympius who also lead a little band of 300 Huns. Later that same year, the West Roman government brought in a force of 10,000 Huns to Italy and Dalmatia to help stand against Alaric. Alaric thusly abandoned his plan of marching on Rome.

In 412 the East Roman government had further diplomatic relations with some Huns. From a fragment of Olympiodorus, the author served on an embassy to the Huns. They reached a Hun king named Donatus, whose sphere of activity was far from that of Uldin. This East Roman mission succeeded in assassinating Donatus.

An event told to Priscus from a West Roman, Romulus, in Attila's encampment occurred around 415-420 or a little later. Because of a famine in their own country. Two leaders named Basich and Cursich lead a large Hun army to attack Persia. They were beaten back and appear to have returned through Baku.

In 420 the Eastern Roman Empire went to war with Persia. With the Romans distracted, the Huns again launched raids into Thrace in 422. No details exist as to why the plundering stopped, but there were no further hostilities on the northern frontier of the Eastern Roman Empire until the appearance of Rua.