The middle decade of the century began not with a fiery, furious explosion nor even a deadly whisper, but the scurrying of two rats. Shortly before winter turned to spring and the snows melted to uncover the growing grass, Orestes’ treachery was found out despite all the efforts he had undertaken to deflect Attila’s dread eye onto the Ostrogoths after – of all things – a case of mistaken identity, where one of his spies handed a handwritten report concerning a planned Hunnish raid on Emona[1] to the identical twin of a Dalmatian spy in Majorian’s service. Unfortunately for the Pannonian, this twin was actually a notary in service to Attila, having joined the khagan for much the same reasons he did (survival, wealth and power) and secured a comfortable posting for himself from which he could administer the western parts of what used to be Roman Dalmatia. Unwilling to rock his own boat, this collaborator promptly reported the message to Attila, who then connected the dots between the increase in failed raids on the Western Empire and Orestes’ convenient revelation of Vandalarius’ own treachery.
When Orestes heard that Attila wished to ‘consult with him on certain important matters’ not from a messenger, but a troop of armed soldiers standing outside his villa by Lake Pelso, he figured the game was up and immediately tried to flee. As he was outnumbered 20:1 by the Hunnish soldiers sent to arrest him and they had surrounded his residence, he did not get further than five steps before being knocked down, beaten and bound in chains by them. Only the wrathful khagan’s intent to personally and excruciatingly kill him over at least a week for his betrayal prevented them from simply gutting him then and there. However, as the Huns rode back toward Attila’s mobile capital (which at this time was located east of Aquincum), they were waylaid by Orestes’ brother Paulus and the dozens of
bucellarii bodyguards he'd hired. The Pannonian pair next immediately fled to safety beneath Majorian’s wing in Noricum that spring, avoiding settled areas and not daring to show their face to any Hun – not even after Attila had his sons burn down their family villa and massacre the servants they had left behind there in an attempt to draw them out.
Paulus the Pannonian coming to his brother's rescue
Once Orestes and Paulus reached Majorian, the
Comes Illyrici sent them onward to Ravenna, where they were received into the Western imperial court by
Augustus Romanus. When messengers from the court of Attila arrived to demand the slippery Pannonian brothers be handed over for his harsh judgment, Romanus decided that – between his rebuilt forces, new barbarian federates, and alliance with the Eastern Romans – it was high time for civilization’s fateful rematch with the Hunnish savages by protecting these men, though he did not personally like the turncoats for he knew they only joined him after Attila stomped on Orestes' ambitions. The Hun envoys returned to Attila, who by then had moved his residence southwest toward the old Dalmatian border, with an answer Romanus had chosen to recall the defiant words of Leonidas the Spartan nearly a thousand years prior:
'Come and take them.'
However, as Romanus called the war machine he’d spent the last few years frantically rebuilding and his Eastern allies into action, unforeseen problems emerged to thwart his initial plans for a rapid two-pronged assault on and victory over Attila’s realm. The first was that the first son of the Visigoth king Thorismund was born early this spring: however the experience was a harrowing one for both mother and child, even by the standards of Late Antiquity, and for a week it seemed that neither the feverish Queen Leudesinda nor the sickly newborn boy would survive. As the
medicus was unable to improve either of their situations and his own Arian confessor grimly informed him that he’d at least be able to reunite with them in Heaven, after four days Thorismund turned to the Hispano-Roman cleric Severian, Baurg’s Ephesian (as adherents to Roman Christian orthodoxy were now called after the Second Council of Ephesus) priest for help, and swore on the latter’s Bible to abandon his heresy if God delivered his family from death’s grasp.
For the next three days the king spent nearly all of his waking hours in the Ephesian church, praying on his feet or on his knees with or without Severian at his side, rarely eating or drinking and yet constantly sweating heavily due to his great anxiety. In the end, their prayers were answered; Leudesinda’s situation began improving while the royal child, though still weak, had lived longer than the
medicus dared to hope and no longer seemed to be in imminent danger of death. Whether this was a genuine divine miracle or simply a bout of luck with nature, the overjoyed Thorismund kept his word and immediately arranged for his baptism into the Ephesian orthodoxy, soon to be followed by that of his wife and little Roderic (as he’d named his new son and heir). But though this was considered a miraculous sign of the rightness of their cause by the Ephesian clergy & Hispano-Roman majority (both within and outside of the Visigoths’ new domain) and obviously an occasion of great personal importance to Thorismund himself, the conversion did not sit well with the Arian Visigoths, not many of whom immediately followed their king’s footsteps. Many of the more hard-line Arians openly flocked to the side of Thorismund’s brother Euric, and they refused to follow Thorismund when he received Romanus’ summons. Until that situation could be resolved, whether with intimidation or a clash of arms between the Balti brothers, the Visigoths’ fighting strength was essentially paralyzed.
Thorismund's Hispano-Roman subjects welcome his conversion - alas, the same could not be said of many of his Visigothic ones
Regardless of the lack of Visigoths in his army, Romanus knew he had already cast his dice when he refused to hand Orestes and Paulus over to Attila, so he committed to the offensive in hopes of throwing the Huns off-balance. At first the Western
Augustus had good reason to be optimistic: he, and his army (largely comprised of Italian legions and the remnants of the Dalmatian ones, as well as substantial Gallic and Hispanic elements) were welcomed as liberators in Tarsatica[2], then swatted aside the first Hunnish response led by Ellac and Dengizich outside Senia[3] and divided – Romanus and Majorian continued down the Dalmatian coast, once more raising the chi-rho above town after town, while Aetius took much of their cavalry (including all of his vaunted Hun-trained Gallo-Romans, and the few actual pro-Bleda Hunnish exiles themselves) and gave chase to the sons of Attila northward to secure the Western Romans’ flank. Though outnumbered both times, he still defeated all three of them twice more, first at Andautonia[4] and then again at Aquama[5].
While the Occident was making its initial advances into Hunnish territory, the East too rumbled into action. With the Sassanids recently defeated and impoverished by both their crown prince’s outrageous ransom and the need to pay the Eftals tribute, Theodosius had felt safe in moving much of his military strength to the Hunnish border. Once the spring rains began to abate Aspar, Anthemius and Zeno launched a large offensive from Thrace and Macedonia to drive the Huns back to the Danube, defeating the Hunnic army under Attila’s last living uncle Oebarsius[6] and Edeko the Scirian in the Battle of Stobi on May 1; Oebarsius laid among the fallen by the day’s end, while the Scirians and Thracian Sclaveni were forced back to the Danube in the aftermath of this defeat. Attila’s tarkhans Onegesius and Skottas[7] were also defeated at Scupi a few weeks later, allowing the Eastern Romans to recover almost all the territory they had lost to Attila in short order.
But as spring turned to summer and Attila marshaled his forces for a massive counteroffensive, a sudden crisis brought the Eastern Romans’ movements to a screeching halt. Theodosius II unexpectedly died from drunkenly stumbling down the stairs soon after watching a chariot race on May 29[8], leaving no sons or brothers to succeed him: at the time of his death, the last of the male Theodosians was 49. Anthemius, as the husband of his only living child Licinia Eudoxia, was the most obvious candidate to succeed him – but Theodosius had refused to officially designate him (or anyone else) the Eastern
Caesar, no doubt resentful at how such a gesture would be an implicit admission that he could not father another son, and Aspar had plans to put someone more pliant than the energetic and strong-willed Anthemius on the Eastern Roman throne.
While Theodosius’ corpse was still cooling, Anthemius hurried back to Constantinople from the Danubian front as Patriarch Flavian, Paulinus & the women of the Theodosian dynasty openly backed his claim to the vacant Eastern throne, and Aspar & Chrysaphius plotted to put the former’s subordinate Marcian[9] in purple instead (Aspar was tempted to seize it for himself, but was aware that he – an Arian Christian – would never be accepted by the urban mob of Constantinople). To achieve this outcome, they sought to seize control of the capital with three legions whose legates they’d bribed, waylay and murder Anthemius before he reached Constantinople, and force Pulcheria to marry Marcian at swordpoint so as to give him a dynastic claim on the Theodosians’ throne. Nothing went quite according to plan: the legionaries mutinied against their officers at the passionate exhortation of Flavian & Paulinus (the latter was promptly stabbed by one of the treacherous legates in the ensuing fracas, and did not live to see his killer lynched by the loyalists minutes later), Anthemius tore through the Alan mercenaries Aspar had hired to ambush him in the Thracian countryside, and Aelia Eudocia and Licinia Eudoxia had Chrysaphius arrested after a rival eunuch denounced him as the engineer of this failed coup.
Aspar survived partly due to his strength and the respect he commanded among the Eastern army (making his removal impossible without risking a civil war or his defection to the Huns, both of which Anthemius understood to be certainly fatal developments at this time), and partly by blaming Chrysaphius for everything, ensuring the eunuch’s immediate execution – much to the especial delight of the Dowager Empress, who had had no choice but to put up with her late husband’s increasingly blatant affection and favoritism toward the fallen
cubicularius until now. Marcian – who had not even been aware of the plot being orchestrated to crown him emperor at all – successfully begged Anthemius for mercy, sufficiently persuading the new emperor to spare his life and instead banish him to distant Cherson for the rest of his days[10]. But the confusion over Theodosius’ succession still paralyzed the Eastern Empire for several chaotic weeks, at a point in time where both they and the Western Romans absolutely could not afford it.
Dowager Empress Aelia Eudocia and her daughter, now Empress Licinia Eudoxia, eagerly observing the execution of Chrysaphius
In the east, the Hunnish counteroffensive was led by Ellac, reassigned by his father from the front with the Western Romans. Leading a swift all-cavalry force of 8,000 Huns over the Danube, the prince added the mostly-infantry armies of the Scirians and Sclaveni to his host before setting out to confront the Eastern Romans. Aspar consciously withdrew in the face of this offensive, claiming the Huns’ power was too overwhelming for him to deal with – but the truth was that he feared a crackdown from the new Emperor Anthemius more, and sought to preserve his forces precisely to secure himself from Anthemius’ wrath or to outright fight a civil war if need be. The Alan’s decision left his fellow front-line generals Arnegisclus and Anatolius outnumbered and with huge gaps in their positions, predictably allowing Ellac to crush them throughout the summer and early autumn; and obviously, when Aspar did decide to fight, he did not have the strength to oppose the Huns on his own without first securing other advantages, like favorable terrain.
Arnegisclus was slain in the Battle of Arsa[11] by the Scirian prince Odoacer[12], Edeko’s eldest son, while Anatolius beat a hasty retreat into the Rhodope Mountains. By the time of Anthemius’ proper coronation in the fall, the Eastern Romans had not only lost all of their reconquered territories, but lost even more ground in Macedonia and Greece to the Huns: Ellac had failed to capture Thessalonica, true, but his army had ravaged the land as far as Thebes in the south and Adrianople in the east, practically splitting the Eastern Romans’ Balkan dominion in three parts – Constantinople and southern Thrace where Anthemius himself held the line, Greece which was being defended by Aspar, and a small island of safety around Thessalonica protected by Aspar’s Gothic brother-in-law and fellow general Triarius[13]. Ellac had established his own headquarters at Lychnidus[14], after first sacking it of course, but equally importantly the Scirians (once they were done utterly laying waste to the countryside) had returned to their homesteads in Dardania and settled new ones in Thessaly; the Slavs did the same in the provinces of Moesia Secunda and Scythia Minor, though for now Marcianopolis and Odessus[15] still stood to block their settlement further south.
Whatever the Huns were doing to the East still threatened to pale in comparison to the fate being visited upon the West, where Attila’s true hammer-blows were falling. The enraged khagan did not, in fact, pummel Romanus and his legions in Dalmatia to a pulp first; but whatever relief the Western Emperor may have felt soon dissipated when he received distressing news from Aegidius in Gaul. A massive horde of Huns and their subject nations had crossed the Rhine on the eve of summer, estimated to number 40,000 strong: though of these only about 10,000 were actual Huns, the rest being a mixture of various Germanic allies (Gepids, Heruls, Thuringians & Alamanni), nevertheless they were led by the Scourge of God himself. Aegidius himself and Count Arbogast had tried and failed to hold the tide back at Mogontiacum, barely escaping with their lives and 2,000 of the 12,000 men (a mixture of Gallo-Roman legionaries and local Thuringian federates) they had assembled for the battle.
In turn the Huns did not simply sack the now-defenseless Mogontiacum. The horde positively
annihilated the Germanic frontier city – they massacred the entire male population as well as the elderly and sickly who would have been of little value as slaves, carried the women and girls off in chains, and razed the city itself to its foundations, leaving no stone unturned to the extreme that it was difficult for survivors to tell where the city limits even were afterward. A fate almost as harsh was meted out to Augusta Treverorum, Arbogast’s own seat where the local bishop was burned alive in his church, then Borbetomagus and Divodorum, and then more & more cities as they marched southwest-ward.
The Huns depart from Mogontiacum
Meanwhile Aegidius and Arbogast had separated in the Western Roman retreat: the former constantly fell back toward Lutetia in the face of this onslaught, well aware that he had no chance of victory in the field and instead spending most of his time out of the saddle frantically calling for help from Italy & Hispania, while the latter had fled to the court of his less-civilized fellow Franks, where King Chlodio had just died and his son Merovech’s claim to the succession was being challenged by his brothers and cousins. Arbogast took the side of Merovech, who the Romans considered to be the legitimate heir, and after saving his life from an assassination attempt during a hunt that summer, aided him in turning the tables a week later: the new Frankish king had compelled several of his cousins’ retainers into confessing their masters had been the ones to spring the assassination plot under torture, then publicly accused, arrested and executed these treacherous kinsmen of his at the banquet where they served up the kills from that hunt. The rest of his rebellious kin cowed for the time being, Merovech agreed to assist the Western Romans, not that he had much choice – a large detachment of pro-Hun Germanic warriors, mostly Gepids and Thuringians led by the former’s king Ardaric[16], had splintered off from Attila’s main horde to devastate the Frankish federate lands and was driving on Tornacum where he’d set up his court.
To counter Attila’s onslaught, Romanus had given Aetius leave to ride back to Gaul with most of their cavalry, including all the Gallo-Romans whose homes were now threatened (or already destroyed) and the Hun exiles: this was clearly no feint to get them out of Dalmatia, as they had originally thought, but the actual main thrust of the Hunnish horde. Aetius had some more good news as he hurried back west: Thorismund had challenged Euric to a duel to settle their differences and defeated him, and though he’d stopped short of killing his zealously Arian little brother, he had broken the latter’s left hand & leg in the fight and asserted his supremacy over all the Visigoths regardless of creed. The Visigoths were still largely reluctant to follow their king either in faith or to battle, and in any case they did not have much manpower to give after the tribulations of the past decades – Thorismund marched to join Aetius at Arelate with only 2,500 warriors and another 2,500 Spanish legionaries – but the
magister militum was happy for all the help he could get.
The stage was quickly set for a confrontation around Lutetia, which Attila’s horde besieged starting on July 20 but whose walls and gates had still held thanks to the courage of the outnumbered defenders and the morale-boosting prayers of the nun Genovefa[17] (whose own hometown, Nemetacum[18], had already been leveled by the onrushing Huns). Aetius arrived south of the River Sequana on the morning of July 30 with about 20,000 men, only half that of the Huns: he had with him the 7,000 horsemen he’d initially taken to Dalmatia, the 5,000 Iberian troops under Thorismund, Aegidius and 4,000 Romano-Gallic legionaries who had joined him at Augustomentum, and another 3,000 Burgundian & Alamanni federates. But help was on the way: Ardaric had rejoined the main Hun army the day before his arrival, and all knew it was because the Franks under Merovech and Arbogast had previously thwarted him in battle at Atuataca Tungrorum[19]. Now those Franks were hurrying southward to Aetius’ aid, and as Arbogast had persuaded Merovech to bring the full might of his people to bear for this occasion, they formed by far the largest single surviving army on Rome’s side in Gaul – numbering almost 20,000 strong themselves, even after fighting the Gepids.
With Aetius already in sight, the Huns resolved to vanquish him before the Franks could arrive, then turn around to deal with Merovech and Arbogast – splitting their forces to try to deal with each enemy army separately did not seem worth the risk. Aetius for his part knew he had to hold out until the Franks arrived, and so invested all of his considerable military expertise into halting Attila’s furious attacks. For nine hours the Western Romans fought for the crossings of the Sequana while the defenders of Lutetia pelted the Huns with arrows, javelins and eventually pieces of rubble, and the Huns for their part kept attacking in an effort to break through. The Hunnish army was large enough that they could afford to detach two great columns of cavalry to cross at points the Western Romans did not have the numbers to cover, one upriver and one downriver, which they did three hours into the fight. Two hours later they converged on the Western Roman army’s flanks, and despite Aetius’ efforts to counter them with his own horsemen, the latter were too heavily outnumbered to force the Huns back.
Ardaric leads the Gepids in a frontal attack on Aetius' defensive formation as the sun sets
Bit by bit the Western Romans were forced to give ground, their discipline and experience allowing them to maintain formation as they gradually fell back under Hunnish arrows and lances. In the most tragic highlight of the day for their side, Aegidius was fatally wounded by a Thuringian spear as he tried to manage the withdrawal of his contingent and rapidly expired in the arms of his son Syagrius, who then took up his father’s standard and completed the retreat in a remarkable display of his own steely nerves & those of their men. Aetius’ own Hunnish bodyguards, Optila and Thraustila[20], gave their lives to protect his as he rallied the despairing legions around the
labarum. By sunset the Western Romans had lost all the river crossings and took up a circular formation as the Huns and their allies completely surrounded them on a hill to the south[21], grimly determined to mount a last stand just barely within sight of Lutetia’s highest towers.
But it was then that Arbogast, Merovech and their 20,000 warriors finally arrived to restore hope to Aetius and Sister Genovefa both. Proudly proclaiming
“Day has come again!” against the setting sun, Arbogast led their cavalry contingent – comically insignificant compared to that of the Huns at only 1,200 strong, a mix of Merovech’s mounted champions and nobles on one hand & the Romano-Frankish survivors of Augusta Treverorum on the other – in a charge into the Huns’ rear which, while quickly repelled by the sheer numbers of Alamanni and Heruls in the Hunnish reserve, distracted Attila from finishing off Aetius’ army and gave Merovech time to form up his tired (though far less bloodied) infantry for battle.
Encouraged by the Franks’ arrival and Arbogast’s sudden attack, Aetius rallied his men for an attack in all directions against the distracted Huns and Teutons around them. Still the Huns were determined to put up a fight, and it may have been an even one were it not for two developments: first the Alamanni, being the newest and most reluctant of Attila’s subjects, took their chance to quit the field and in so doing kicked off a rout – and second, a stray arrow struck the Scourge of God in the throat in the early hours of twilight, and the terrible discipline which had held his horde together fell from the saddle with him.
Arbogast of Trier smites a Herulian champion who dared get in the way of his dramatic charge
When the sun rose the next day, Lutetia was safe and the Hunnish horde had dispersed, many of its Teutonic auxiliaries having fled in all directions while the Huns themselves were killed almost to the last man between the Western Romans and Franks. Aetius was hopeful as he surveyed the carnage and his men looted the bodies: could it be that they’d broken the power of the Huns and killed Rome’s deadliest enemy since Hannibal in one day? But his hope turned to horror when three legionaries brought him the corpse of ‘Attila’. Though bedecked in finery fit for a king and the armor of the khagan himself, he recognized the intact face of the corpse was not, in fact, Attila’s! It bore a certain passing familiarity to his former ward, certainly, but that was because it was the face of Laudaricus, the warlord’s cousin. And if Attila were not here, that could mean only one thing…Aetius immediately sent a warning to the
Augustus in Dalmatia, but there were 670 miles between Lutetia and Andautonia; it would take the messenger over a week to get there even while riding on Roman roads with no obstructions, and given the circumstances, that week may as well have been an eternity.
While Aetius had been fighting the Battle of Lutetia against a man he thought to be the Scourge of God, the
real Attila had sprung his main offensive against the Western Romans in Dalmatia and Italy. With him came his younger sons, Dengizich and Ernak, and also the single biggest army the Huns had ever put on the field: over 50,000 strong, this horde included 20,000 Huns – a concentration of virtually all of their remaining warriors – and another 30,000 subject auxiliaries, several thousand of whom were Ostrogoths under Valamir but mostly Sarmatian peoples such as the Alans or more exotic (for Europe) tribes from the furthest reaches of Attila’s empire, such as the Akatziri[22]. Romanus initially thought he could stop Attila in Dalmatia, but he thought better of it following Majorian’s urging caution and reports from his scouts of just how huge the Hun army was. The Western Roman army retreated to Aquileia, where Romanus believed they could safely await reinforcements from the Rugians, Burgundians and Aetius.
Attila proved him wrong in a matter of weeks. Not long after the emperor had received word from Aetius of the Western Roman victory at Lutetia and Attila’s survival (as if he needed to be told the latter!) the Huns’ vanguard reached his doorstep, led by the Akatziri chieftain Karadach[23]. These he and Majorian turned back in the First Battle of Aquileia on August 5; but this was barely an inconvenience to the main body of Attila’s horde, which arrived ten days later. No matter, Romanus thought, for the Rugians were due to arrive on that same day; but the Romans had not been the only ones to employ spies in their foes’ ranks. Hunnish agents in Rugiland had persuaded Flaccitheus, already fearful of the power of Attila, to switch sides with the promise of being allowed to settle as far as Ravenna, for it seemed to him that victory against the army Attila was bringing down on Italy was impossible. So when the Rugians did show up, just as the Western Roman lines threatened to buckle before the furious charges of Attila’s lancers in the Second Battle of Aquileia, it was not to reinforce them but rather to attack them from behind.
Emperor Romanus furiously exhorts his flagging legionaries to hold their ground, though the Huns are surging against them from the front and treacherous Rugians have fallen upon their rear
The calamity that was the Second Battle of Aquileia resulted in the destruction of Romanus’ army and the fall of Aquileia, which was subjected to even more thorough destruction than what Laudaricus had visited upon Mogontiacum months before. Attila’s wrath and determination to crush Rome once and for all this time was so great that he took no slaves, but rather ordered his men to kill every living being within the city: not even farm animals or the vermin were to spared, but rather heaped up in great piles alongside the human denizens. Only a handful of citizens survived by fleeing to nearby lagoons to the southeast, where the Huns could not easily follow[24]; there they also found the few hundred ragged survivors of the Western Roman imperial army and Majorian, who had tried to rescue his friend the emperor from the carnage outside Aquileia, only for the latter to die of his wounds during the retreat. For the second time in 10 years a Roman emperor had died in battle, and at the hands of the same barbarian warlord no less.
While Majorian requested sea transport from Ravenna and the treasurer Avitus arranged a coronation ceremony for fifteen-year-old Honorius II in the aforementioned capital, Attila proceeded from the smoking ruin that was once Aquileia onto Italy proper. The marshes and stout walls around Ravenna deterred him from attacking the seat of Western imperial power, true – but the rest of northern Italy was not so lucky. Mutina[25], Placentia[26], Arretium[27], Perusia[28] and Ariminum[29] were among the cities devastated by the Scourge of God as he advanced toward Rome itself, while no army remained in Italy that could possibly have even slowed him down. The countryside was not spared his ravages either, as idyllic villas were sacked and hamlets razed by the oncoming Huns; rich or poor, strong or weak, Senator or equestrian or serf, it did not matter – all who had the misfortune to be living in Attila’s path were made equal in the grave or in Hunnish chains.
The defenders of Arretium attempt a valiant but doomed sally against the Hunnish horde
In Rome itself panic had set in, for the hundreds of thousands of citizens there had become well aware they were the target of Attila’s fury as soon as word came that Ravenna was safe. Pope Leo encouraged resistance, telling the people to trust in God if they did not trust in the strength of the Aurelian Walls, and insisting that help was on the way; but even when he was proven correct when messengers from Carthage arrived to inform him and the Senate that the Vandals and Moors were preparing to cross into Italy to save the heart of the empire, too many remained lost in despair, convinced that this help could not come quickly enough to thwart Attila’s inevitable attack. The Roman Senate instead heeded the words of Petronius Maximus[30], who declared that Rome ‘obviously’ could not defeat Attila and that he could deliver them from the fate which had befallen Aquileia and so many other cities: on October 1 they refused to recognize Honorius II as his father’s successor and instead acclaimed Petronius
Augustus, as they had Priscus Attalus 32 years before. Pope Leo denounced them for this act, but had neither the strength nor time to topple Petronius himself.
Petronius immediately opened negotiations with Attila, who deigned to treat with him as if he were truly the Western Roman Emperor and not young Honorius II, and seemed to start his reign off to a great start by getting Attila to temporarily stop his advance at Ferentium[31] north of Rome. The usurper returned a week later with exciting news: Attila had promised he would not do unto Rome what he had done unto Aquileia and to instead redirect his wrath against the line of Stilicho in Ravenna, if only the Romans would let him into their city as a mark of their new friendship. This ended about as well as anyone not named Petronius Maximus could figure a few weeks later, as the gates were indeed ordered open by Petronius: the Pope countermanded that order, and most of the garrison had the sense to obey him, but not the men at the Salarian Gate[32]. Attila’s horde promptly rushed in to subject the Eternal City to its first sack in nearly 900 years.
Attila upheld his agreement with Petronius in the loosest sense: he did not allow his warriors to completely destroy Rome and kill all its people as he’d done to Aquileia, but instead directed a more ‘conventional’ sack in which the horde stripped Rome of every valuable they could find, committed significant but not all-destroying property damage, and took far more citizens away as slaves than those they left as corpses. Of course, that’s not to suggest the sack was bloodless: the Huns killed anyone who tried to resist whether they be ordinary citizens, Christian clergy or the braver soldiers of the city garrison. In their zeal for plunder the Akatziri contingent also (apparently accidentally) set a large slum on fire, killing thousands more.
Petronius himself and his immediate family were spared – Attila personally reprimanded his son Dengizich when the latter thought to lay hands on the usurper’s wife Lucina – but were left under no illusion that the Huns considered them hostages with which to barter with Ravenna. Attila also took Pope Leo hostage, for the Hun king thought the old patriarch of the West could most effectively persuade the Romans to let him leave Italy unchallenged, and in exchange for the Pontiff's collaboration he spared the four great basilicas around the city & those Romans sheltering within them; the same privilege was not extended to Rome's other churches, temples or the old Pantheon. Finally Attila assembled the Roman Senate in the Flavian Amphitheater and demanded they bow to him as suzerain over the emperor they chose: a few souls who chose this time to find their courage and refuse were promptly trampled to death on the arena floor by Hun horsemen.
Attila's pillaging warriors galloping and celebrating their spoils before Vespasian's Temple of Peace
While the Huns spent the winter months helping themselves to & resting amidst Rome's wealth, Aetius had returned to Ravenna with what strength he still had after the Battle of Lutetia, plus an additional 6,000-man contribution from the Burgundians who were hoping to avenge their old king Gundahar. The African army initially planned to sail to Ostia, but after they were made aware that this would mean sailing to their deaths, kings Caecilius and Fredegar instead changed directions and set a course for Ravenna. Finally, as the year’s end approached and Attila began marching back north, unexpected support came from the East: despite his own troubles, Anthemius decided that he had to take this chance to trap and crush Attila in Italy, and leaving Anatolius and the patrician Studius[33] to hold Constantinople, he sailed for Ravenna with all the Anatolian, Armenian and Syrian legions (and even a small contingent from the client kingdom of Lazica) he’d originally been amassing at the Hellespont to fight Ellac. It was with these forces that the court of Honorius II hoped to confront Attila early in the next year and make him pay for his innumerable outrages, the sack of Rome last and greatest of them all.
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[1] Ljubljana.
[2] Rijeka.
[3] Senj.
[4] Zagreb.
[5] Čakovec.
[6] Youngest brother of Octar, Rugila and Mundzuk, who was reported to still be alive as late as 448.
[7] Two brothers who were prominent lieutenants of Attila’s. The Eastern Romans tried to bribe Onegesius to join them around 449, but he refused despite still counseling a Roman-friendly course to his overlord.
[8] Historically, Theodosius instead died in July from a riding accident.
[9] The historical Eastern Emperor from 450 to 457, best known for convening the Council of Chalcedon and actually managing to defeat Attila’s Huns in 452.
[10] Sevastopol.
[11] Stari Ras.
[12] Historically the infamous conqueror of the Western Roman Empire, who slew Orestes and toppled his underage son Romulus Augutulus in 476. He ruled as ‘King of Italy’ until 493 under the suzerainty of the Eastern Emperor Zeno, in the process making an alliance with the Senate and subjugating the Rugians of Noricum, but was eventually defeated and killed by the Ostrogoth king Theodoric (also at Zeno’s incitement), who also massacred his family and close followers.
[13] A distant cousin of Valamir and the Amali dynasty who fathered the Thracian Goth warlord Theodoric Strabo, but was otherwise wholly overshadowed by his more famous relatives and in-laws.
[14] Ohrid.
[15] Varna.
[16] The first Gepid king known by name to history, Ardaric was present at the Battle of the Catalaunian Plains and also led the coalition of anti-Hun rebels to victory at the Battle of Nedao in 454, killing Ellac and shattering Attila’s empire once and for all.
[17] Saint Genevieve, patron of Paris whose prayers were said to have rallied the people of Lutetia/Paris when they were inclined to flee instead and to have forced Attila to move on to Orleans in our timeline.
[18] Nanterre.
[19] Tongeren.
[20] These were the only two of Aetius’ bodyguards known to us by name IRL, as they are ITL. Historically they avenged his murder at the hands of Valentinian III by hacking the emperor to death at the instigation of Senator Petronius Maximus, who then usurped his throne.
[21] Approximately modern Montparnasse.
[22] A tribe of pastoralist nomads known to be under Hun suzerainty around this time. Their ethnicity is uncertain, but they were quite possibly a Turkic people who may or may not have been related to the later Bolghars and/or Khazars – the latter is what I’m going with for this TL. Historically the Eastern Romans tried to gain their allegiance and incite them to revolt against Attila, but failed.
[23] Historically, Karadach foiled the Eastern Romans’ plot to flip the allegiance of the Akatziri and was greatly rewarded by Attila for it.
[24] Venice, which historically (as is the case here) first became prominent after Aquileia’s decline thanks to Attila.
[25] Modena.
[26] Piacenza.
[27] Arezzo.
[28] Perugia.
[29] Rimini.
[30] Historically emperor for a few months in 455, Petronius Maximus was a Senator who had Valentinian III murdered after the latter raped his wife Lucina (getting two bodyguards of Aetius, who Valentinian had personally killed a few months before) and usurped the purple. He married Valentinian’s widow Licinia Eudoxia and broke his new stepdaughter Eudocia’s betrothal to the Vandal prince Huneric to legitimize his position, but this aggravated the Vandals into sacking Rome and he was killed by a mob while trying to flee ahead of their wrath three days before the city’s fall.
[31] Now part of Viterbo.
[32] The same gate Alaric used to sack Rome in 410 IRL.
[33] A nobleman who served as Consul in 454 with Aetius, whose only other notable act was founding the great Studion Monastery (destroyed twice, first by the Fourth Crusade and then again by the Turks) in what’s now the Fatih district of Istanbul.
