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This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. You think you know a browser, but Gemini and Chrome? That's new. It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50 page restoration block. Or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks. Gemini and Chrome is here for it, ready to make anything online make sense. There's no place like Chrome. Check responses set up required compatibility and availability. Various 18/study and play come together on a Windows 11 PC and for a limited time, college students get the best of both worlds. Get the unreal college deal everything you need to study and play with select Windows 11 PCs. Eligible students get a year of Microsoft 365 Premium and a year of Xbox Game Pass ultimate with a custom color Xbox wireless controller. Learn more@windows.com studentoffer law supplies last ends June 30 terms@ aka mscollegepc the most feared warrior in the ancient world wasn't a Roman. He wasn't a Greek. He wasn't even 6ft tall. He was a short, broad chested man from the steps of Central Asia. His name alone would empty entire cities. He got the most powerful empire on earth to pay him nearly a ton of gold every single year just to leave them alone. And his name was Attila the Hun. And today we're going to hear the real story behind the crazy barbaric legend. How he allegedly murdered his own brother to take full control of the throne. How a Roman princess secretly sent him a ring and started a war that nearly burned Italy to the ground. How he sat motionless at a feast while a delegation of would be assassins ate dinner across the table from him. And the chilling thing that he did to play them all. And the question that we all want to know how did a warrior from a wandering confederation of horsemen and end up holding two empires hostage at the same time? How did he turn the greatest power on earth into a customer? And why after everything he did and built, did it all fall apart within a single year of his death? Well, today we're going to get to the bottom of all that and more. So sit back, relax and welcome to history. What's up people? And welcome back to History Camp. My name is Mark Gagnon and thank you for joining me in my tent where every single week we explore the most interesting, fascinating and controversial stories from around the world. From all history, forever. From all time. Yes, that is what I do here in this very tent every single week as I try to understand everything that's ever happened and oh, boy. There's all sorts of stuff that's happening basically every minute of every day. And even as I'm talking to you right now, we're falling behind, so I'm not going to waste any more time. But before we jump in, I just want to say thank you to you. Yes. You listening right now? While you're driving your car, while you're doing work, while you're supposed to be working and you're not, I want to say thank you to you for tuning into this program, because every time you click on an episode on Spotify or YouTube, you help keep the lights under the tent and you keep the fire burning here at the campsite. I also want to give a big thanks to my pal Christos Papadopoulos, the Greek freak himself, who claims that the best warriors are always from Athens. That's an ar. All right, well, today we're learning about Attila the Hun, who is not Greek and actually kind of embodied everyone over there. I don't know if you heard about him. Allegedly. No, no, no. Attila is the man. And if you never heard of Attila the Hun, well, strap in. The first time I heard of him was from Night at the Museum, starring Ben Stiller. And the next time I really dove into him was, like, three days ago when we were putting together some research, myself, my pal Kuldeep, and my friend Sophia kind of help me understand, really, who Attila is. Now, before we jump into Attila the Hun, we got to understand the Huns. What. What's a Hun? What is what? Who are they? Well, they are terrifying, and they've been scaring everyone in the region for decades, even before Attila came onto the scene. So when they first showed up on Rome's radar in, like, 370 A.D. that's roughly the time period that we're looking at. A Roman historian named Amanius Marcellinus, who, for the record, had never actually met a Hun in his entire life, described them as barely human. The way he gave the description of these terrifying warriors were flat faces, stunted bodies, animal skins sewn directly onto them, raw meat softened under their saddles while they rode. He claimed that they slept on horseback, had no religion, no laws, and no fixed home. Now, despite that being untrue and vaguely racist, that is kind of the idea that spread through Rome. And some of this was Roman panic dressed up, you know? You know, some of it was culture shock. Either way, the fear itself was not unfounded. I mean, look at these guys. Badass flying through. I mean, Long hair. That's who I would want to be with. I want to roll with the Huns. The horses also look demonic. Yeah, I mean, I don't know who drew this. Probably some. This is Roman propaganda trying to make the Huns look bad when actually they're just, you know, terrifying warriors. Not scary. Not demonic, though. Now, the Huns came out of the east and hit the Goths like a hammer. Now, the Goths were the Germanic people living across Rome's northeastern frontier. And the Goths had, you know, got shattered so totally that hundreds of thousands of them flooded across the Danube into Roman territory, basically begging for, like, refugee status. Now, that refugee crisis destabilized Rome's, you know, Balkan provinces and led to, in roughly 378 AD, the Battle of Adrianople, one of the worst military defeats in Roman history. The Emperor Valens himself was killed on that battlefield. Now, here's the crazy part. The Huns didn't even mean to do that. The Huns were just going west and the Goths happened to be in the way. So the Huns reshaped the map of Europe kind of on accident. So let's clarify, who actually were these mysterious, you know, people from the East? Well, the Huns weren't a nation. They were a confederation, a military and political structure that other groups could kind of like, join, fight with, fight for, and then eventually be absorbed into. And they weren't really like a country. They were like an umbrella idea. And so once a group came under this, you know, Hunnic leadership, Roman sources just called them the Huns. Regardless of where they originally came from or what they look like or who they are, it wasn't just one group all migrating together. It was a rolling coalition that kept absorbing conquered groups like the Allens or the Gepids, and, you know, basically kind of organizing them all into the same direction. But being a confederation didn't mean that they were disorganized. It was actually the opposite. The Huns ran their empire through tribute and elite integration. So subject kings were able to keep their crowns as long as they sent men and gold when they were told to. Now, the Hunnic nobility intermarried with Gothic and Germanic elites, so diplomats would be shuttled constantly between courts. And so by the time Attila came around, the Hunnic empire had a real, you know, bureaucratic machine. Like, you had secretaries writing in Latin and Greek, you had envoys fluent in Roman court protocols and treasurers that were, you know, tracking tribute schedules from every different group that was basically absorbed. This wasn't just like a horde of people. This was an empire that just happened to be run by from, like, a wooden war camp rather than like a marble palace. And that wasn't the only way that the Huns were different. The Huns were specifically horse archers. So they used a composite bow built from, you know, like, horn and wood. And it was short enough to still be able to fire at a full gallop. So a skilled Hun could shoot accurately in any direction, including straight backwards over his shoulder, while riding away at speed. And that is difficult to deal with. And Rome had dealt with mounted archers before. You have the, you know, the Parthians, the Sasanians, they had been giving them headaches for years because of their horseback skills. But the Western empires of the four hundreds didn't have the manpower or the logistics or the political stability to mount any type of sustained response that it could back in the day. And the Huns knew exactly how to use fear as a weapon. So they promised that cities that surrendered would get decent treatment. Cities that resisted would get leveled totally. And news of that destruction was allowed and even encouraged to spread ahead of them. So every city down the road had to do the math. Is resisting actually worth it? And most of these cities decided that it wasn't. I mean, Genghis Khan was like a legend for this exact same tactic. It was like, we're going to decimate entire towns so that we don't have to fight other towns going to be so brutal once that every town that hears about us afterwards will just surrender and we can all just live in peace. I mean, that's maybe a generous way to describe Genghis Khan or Genghis, as they say, but it is an interpretation, and that is the world that Attila the Hun was born into, a world where, you know, his people had already shaped kind of the politics of, you know, how their confederacy would work and how they were able to conquer. And so by the time he became their leader, the fear in the infrastructure of their bureaucracy was already built. He just made it ten times more powerful. So for a man who would eventually terrify two empires at the same time, we know not really anything about Attila's early years. We don't even know exactly when he was born. It's estimated sometime between, like, 395 and, like, 406 AD and it is kind of just like a. A guess. We do know his father, Munzuk, was one of the three brothers who shared power amongst the Huns. And he died fairly young, and power eventually passed to Munzuck's two sons, the younger Bleda and the older Attila. Now, there's one famous story about Attila's youth that gets repeated all the time. Some historians believe that Attila may have been sent as a teenager to go live at a Western Roman court as basically like a political hostage. And this is a thing that happened all the time. Back in the day, this was a general like, like a alliance custom that empires would swap high status hostages to keep treaties honest. And it's possible that that's a thing, you know, like, it's possible that this is what happened to Attila. But the evidence here is not super sound. Most of it comes from later traditions rather than like, you know, rock solid contemporary sources. What we do know for certain is that the reverse happened. So a young Roman nobleman named Atius spent significant time as a hostage among different barbarian groups, including the huns. And in 434 AD, the brother's uncle Rugilla died, and Bleda and Attila inherited the Hunnic leadership. Together, they ruled side by side for about 11 years. And they had a pretty good little system. Bleda would sign treaties, he led campaigns. He was, on paper, technically the senior partner. But Bleda exists almost entirely in Attila's shadow in the historical record, partly because most of what survives about this period was written as after Attila had already become the center of the story. And then around 445 A.D. bleda died. The historian Priscus, who was actually alive during that time, and we'll get into his story in a second. He wrote that Bla died, quote, as a result of the plots of his brother Attila. What? So did Attila kill him? Was it a plot that went sideways and he got killed as a casualty? We can't say for sure, but after Bleda died, Attila now held all the power amongst the Huns. So good, so good, so good. New markdowns up to 70% off are at Nordstrom Rack stores. Now. Stock up and save big on shoes, tops, dresses, accessories, and more must haves for summer. Join the nordiclub to unlock exclusive discounts. Shop new arrivals first and more. Plus, buy online and pick up at your favorite Rack store for free. Great brands, great prices. That's why you rack. And we're live from the living room as Doug eyes up the match day spread. He's reaching for the buffalo wing. Perfect. Hang on. What's this? Oh, he's gone for a can of Pepsi too. Incredible. What a finish. Sensational combination. Look at the delight on his face. There's no doubt about it. It just tastes better. Match days deserve Pepsi Food deserves Pepsi Grab a pack of Pepsi Zero sugar for today's match. It's poetry in motion. Then, two years after probably murdering his own brother, Attila launched the most devastating campaign of his career. In January 447 AD, an earthquake collapsed a massive section of Constantinople's legendary walls. These are the walls that made the city basically untakeable for decades. And on top of that, the city was already dealing with, you guessed it, the plague. The timing for Attila could not have been better. He crossed the Danube and pushed south through the Balkans, and a Roman army came out to meet him and just got destroyed by the Huns. After that, there was nothing standing between Attila and the greatest city of the ancient world. So he made it to the outskirts and discovered that the walls had actually been patched back up. The entire population of the city had been mobilized to rebuild them in under two months. And as a result, Constantinople held. So what does Attila do? He turned south and he burned through Thrace and Macedonia, all the way down to Thermopylae, the most famous pass in Greece. Of course, from the, you know, Spartan legends and 300 and things like that, one source claims more than a hundred cities were taken or destroyed in this single campaign. And that number is almost certainly inflated. But the scale of devastation was undeniably enormous. So the Emperor Theodosius of the Eastern Roman Empire chose payment over a more destructive path. Six thousand pounds of gold was immediately paid to the huns, plus, like £2,100 every single year after that. And additionally, the emperor handed over a strip of Roman territory south of the Danube as a buffer zone for the Huns to occupy. Rome wasn't defeating Attila the Hun. Rome was paying him to stay away. But they did this because at this point, the Eastern Empire was already strained. Tax revenues were, you know, dwindling. Manpower was stretched. The empire was leaning harder and harder on federate forces which were barbarian allies that Rome paid to fight its wars. So the whole system was basically just running on a margin. And Attila looked at all that and made a calculation. Attila didn't want to destroy Rome. A functioning Rome was way more useful and profitable to him than a broken one. So Attila was basically running like a mob style protection racket on like a imperial scale. You know, how like a mob guy would come up to your business and be like, oh, man, you got a nice little laundry business. Would be a shame if something happened, you know, some Guys in the neighborhood throw a brick through a window. That would be expensive. Well, we can protect it for you. It's like, okay, we're just paying you to not throw a brick in our window. It's crazy. And that's what Attila did. And then in 449 AD, Rome decided they'd had enough of this racket. They were sick of this Hun who had been bleeding them dry. So the Eastern Roman government sent a diplomatic delegation to Attila's court. And one of the men on it was a Greek diplomat and writer. This is a guy that we've already met. His name is Priscus of Panium. And Priscus wrote everything down that he saw. And what survives of his work is the only eyewitness account of Attila that we actually have. That came from someone who wasn't just, like, employed in writing propaganda for the Huns. But Priscus didn't know that the embassy he was on was of a more secretive kind. It had an ulterior motive. And here's what was happening behind the scenes. The Eastern Court was exhausted from tribute payments, obviously, right? They don't want to be giving gold to some, you know, random empire. And they had decided to do something a little dirtier. Guys don't really talk about what happens as you get older, but you start to notice it. Your energy is lower, gym recovery takes longer. You're doing the same workouts, eating pretty well, but not getting the same results. And for a while, I just thought, all right, I'm getting older. But for men, testosterone can naturally decline as early as your 30s. And when that happens, it can affect energy, muscle recovery, focus, and how your body stores fat. And that is why I started taking Mars for Men. I've been on it for a few months now, and I've noticed more consistent energy, better workouts, better recovery, and sharper focus going into the summer. Mars Men is just a natural supplement. No synthetic hormones, no stimulants, with ingredients like Tonga Ali, Sheila G, zinc boron, and a bunch of other stuff designed to support healthy testosterone levels. It's made in the USA, third party, tested every batch and backed by a 90 day money back guarantee. And for a limited time, the listeners of this program will get 50% off for life plus free shipping and three free gifts@ Mengotomars.com that is men. Go to Mars.com and after you purchase, tell them that Mark and Cristos from the campsite sent you. It really helps. Now, let's get back to the show. So a Powerful court official named Chrysafius head quietly approached one of Attila's top commanders. This is a dude named Adikon who had recently come to Constantinople as a Hunnic envoy. And the deal was pretty simple. 50 pounds of gold and a very comfortable life under Roman protection. And all you have to do, Adikon, all you gotta do is kill Attila the Hun. Adacon says yes. And then he went straight back to Attila and he told him everything. So by the time Priscus and the delegation arrived at Attila's camp, Attila already knew what was coming. And he just had dinner. He sat across from the people who had no idea that he knew of the secret plan. And he just sat there eating. He watched them, and he just waited. And he set the trap on his own schedule. So at the dinner, the food came out on silver plates and the guests would drink wine from gold cups. And the hospitality was, by all accounts, the finest that any empire could offer. But Attila, he didn't do all of that. He ate from a wooden plate and he drank from a wooden cup. The man who was simultaneously, like, extorting two different empires, pulling in literal tons of gold every single year, used wood rather than the fine dishes and gold in China. And it wasn't because, you know, he couldn't afford it or anything like that, but because in Hunnic culture, not needing things was the whole point. It was like the basis of their strength. His power didn't come from showing off wealth, and the guests, like Priscus, took note of that. So during dinner, they even had a court jester come out and perform, and everyone was just sitting there dying, laughing. But Attila did move a muscle, and then his youngest son walked in, a boy named Ernas. And some energy in the room changed. You see, Attila pulled the boy close, and Priscus says that he looked at him with, like, this gentleness in his eyes. The only softness that Attila seemed to show anyone at all that Priscus ever saw was to this young boy. And it stood out enough that Priscus turned to the man beside him and asked, why? And the answer is kind of strange. He basically tells him that the seers of the land, basically like prophets or like clairvoyance, had prophesied that Attila's family line would one day fall. But this son or nos, would be the one to restore his family line. Now, remember that story and that prophecy, because it's going to come up later. Now, later down the line, the Romans send a second envoy and among them was this guy Vigilas. Now, Vigilas was an interpreter, and he was the man carrying the gold for this assassination payment. Now, upon arrival, his bags were searched, and inside it, they find 50 pounds of gold. Now, why does this interpreter need 50 pounds of gold to meet with, you know, like, this royal court? And so he tries to explain it, but Attila knows what the payment is for. And so Attila told him that his son, who had made the trip with him, would be killed if he didn't confess. So what does he do? He confesses. Now, most rulers in the ancient world would have declared war on the spot. Said, hey, you tried to pay for my head. Well, I'm going to destroy you and everyone you've ever met. But Attila did something more interesting. He sent one of Vigilas men back to Constantinople wearing the bag around his neck, the very bag with the gold in it. And his instructions were to stand in front of Theodosius and Chrysaphius and ask if they recognized it and then deliver a message which basically said this, that the emperor had fallen so low that he was plotting against someone above him in the natural order. A slave trying to betray his master. Attila is basically saying, like, hey, you're my little boys, all right? I'm your master, you're my slave, and you're not gonna try to flip this on me, okay? That's the backdrop to the dinner that Priscus describes that night, where Attila publicly emasculates the Eastern emperor in front of a delegation that had plotted to have him assassinated. And the dinner is not the only thing that Priscus described while he was there. He also gives the only physical description that we have of Attila to this day, at least coming from someone that actually saw him that wasn't, you know, doing propaganda. And he described him as short, broad chested, a big head, small, deep set eyes, a thin beard going gray, a flat nose. And he moved, according to Priscus, with a dignified and proud air. And there's one more thing that he recorded, and you can tell from the way that he wrote it that it actually really bothered him. Priscus wrote about Attila's camp, and it was in what is now southern Romania, a collection of wooden buildings inside, basically a log fence. Nothing impressive by Roman standards at all, but it was organized with very clear rules about rank and hierarchy and protocol. And somewhere in the camp, he writes about running into a man dressed in hunnic clothes who suddenly greeted him in fluent Greek. And it turned out he was a former Roman merchant, and this guy basically got captured in an earlier raid, was assigned to a Hunnic household, fought alongside his captors on later campaigns, and then was eventually freed from his indentured servitude as a reward. And so now this Roman merchant had a Hunnic wife and kids and a home, and he had zero interest in going back to Rome. And so he actually told Priscus that life under the Huns was better and that there was no brutal taxation, no corrupt courts squeezing him at every turn in a raid. They shared what they took. But Priscus defended Rome to this very guy, and he argued back, and the conversation rattled him so much that he wrote it down. And as a result, that conversation has been preserved through history as one of the only testaments to what it was like living inside the Hunnic Empire. And. And that gives us a whole other layer to understand who Attila really was. He was the kind of emperor who was surrounded by former Roman citizens, former Greek citizens, you know, basically like Persian, you know, captured people in Mongolia, like every different type of people group from that region. Again, Huns isn't an ethnic category. It is a federation of many different types of people that got absorbed under this one dude. And many of them were captured, enslaved, and then eventually given the choice, you know, to stick with them in the event that they got freed. And that is an interesting ripple when looking at Attila, that it was like, well, some people preferred to live in that type of environment even when they had the ability to go. And now that brings us to 450ad, the year that two things happen almost back to back, that completely redirect this entire story. The first emperor, Theodosius ii, the Eastern emperor, who had been paying all this gold to Attila for years, he dies, and his replacement is a man named Marcion. And he has a very different approach. The tribute of all this gold, Marcion said was done. We're not doing any more gold to Attila just to be protected. We're freaking the Eastern Empire of Rome. We're not going to get pushed around by some random guys from the steppes of Central Asia. And just like that, Attila's mainstream of income gets cut off overnight. Now, the second thing was a letter from a woman named Honoria. Now, Honoria was a sister of Valentinian iii, the Western Roman emperor, and she was in a very bad situation. She had been caught in a relationship with a court official and punished severely. She was sent away to Constantinople, forced into an arranged marriage to A senator that she didn't want to be with and was locked out of any control over her own life. So she did something crazy, something that no one ever saw coming. She secretly sent Attila a ring, and she asked for his help. Now, we don't know exactly what she expected him to do. Maybe protection, maybe help her escape from her marriage, or like, you know, help with maybe, like a political negotiation against her own brother. Historians have argued about her real intentions for centuries, but Attila saw a different opportunity. He treated this ring as a marriage proposal, and suddenly he wasn't this barbarian warlord asking for concessions, but he was a fiance. He was the legitimately betrothed husband to a Roman princess. He wasn't just demanding tribute anymore. He was demanding half of the Western Roman Empire as Honoria's dowry. So Valentinian, predictably, just refuses outright and said, this is crazy. Honoria was quickly married off and placed under heavy guard, and Attila was told that there was nothing left to discuss, that he was never going to meet this woman or marry her, and that he was never going to be married into the Roman delegation. So now Attila has a new grievance which gave him a cause and a direction for his next move. So in early 451, he crosses the Rhine with a massive force. I mean, Hun cavalry at the core, wrapped on all sides by every different conquered people that he had accumulated over, you know, 20 years of conquest. We're talking, like, Ostrogoths and Gepids and Franks and every other different type of person that could be involved in this coalition and the crossing alone. According to sources, forces stretched on for miles, and the Western Roman Empire started to panic. Remember Atius? Well, now it's his turn to come back. So Flavius atius was, by 451, the supreme military commander of the Western Roman Empire, the man who actually ran the army while the emperor sat in Ravenna doing nothing very important. But Atius wasn't just a general. He was, by this point, essentially the entire functioning government of the Western Empire. He held the army together. He managed the federate alliances with the Visigoths and the Burgundians and the Franks. He played the imperial court against itself to basically stay in power. So without him, the Western Empire would have probably already collapsed. But here's the crazy part. Atius had grown up amongst the Huns. Remember this whole part? When he was young, he spent a significant time as a hostage in Hunnic society. So he spoke their language. He knew how they fought, how they thought, how they respected each other, what they feared. And in the decades since, he had built his entire political career on top of his Hunnic relationships, literally using Hun mercenaries as the military muscle of the Western Empire, calling on them to put down rebellions and leveraging old friendships to keep all of his rivals in check. He was the most powerful Roman of his generation, and he had been running the Western Empire on borrowed Hunnic steel. And now the two largest armies in the world were about to go up against each other. But Atius was forced to scramble because all of a sudden, with Hun mercenary support no longer on the table, he had to build a whole new coalition in, like, a couple weeks. So what does he do? He gathers Roman and Germanic peoples with long, bloody histories between them. And he called Visigoths under their king Theodoric, he called Franks and Burgundians and Allens people who just were, you know, a year earlier at each other's throats. And the thing uniting them wasn't loyalty or friendship. It was the mutual hatred of one enemy and basically the idea that if Attila won, life would be worse for all of them. The Western army caught up with him at the Catalanian plains, somewhere near modern day Troyes in eastern France on June of 451ad. Now, what happened there was one of the largest, ugliest battles that the world had ever seen up until that point. And sources describe a brook running through the battlefield that day that by the end of it, was so swollen with blood that men dying of thirst couldn't even drink from it. The Visigothic king, Theodoric was thrown from his horse and trampled to death in the chaos of a cavalry charge. The Hun center buckled under the Roman counter push, and night fell. With the field uncertain, Both armies tangled in the dark. Soldiers basically like tripping over corpses, trying to find their own units. It was just mess. A historian named Jordanes, writing about 100 years after the fact, says Attila pulled his army back into a camp surrounded by wagons, and he had his men build a huge fire out of saddles. Now, why would he burn all these saddles to start a fire? Well, the reason is simple. If the Romans broke through the next day, Attila would rather die in the fire than be captured alive. But that breakthrough never came. Atius made a decision that historians have been arguing about for 1600 years. He didn't destroy Attila. He let him leave. And that would be a very fatal mistake. But the question is, why? When Attila had nowhere left to go, why did he let him free. The most convincing explanation is that Atius was thinking two, three, maybe four steps ahead. A fully victorious Visigothic kingdom riding high off a major battlefield win, led by a newly crowned king with momentum, would be almost as dangerous to the Western Empire as Attila was atheist, had spent 20 years carefully balancing the federate kingdoms against each other so that none of them could threaten Rome alone. If he destroyed the Huns completely, then that balance would collapse from just a different direction. The thing is, he wanted Attila damaged, but not completely gone. So Attila pulled back with his core army intact. And the year after that, Attila came coming right back. In 452 AD, Attila crossed the Alps into northern Italy. And when the Western Romans got wind of it, they started to panic again. Atius no longer had the coalition that had stopped Attila the year before. The Visigoths had gone home to deal with their own secession problem. The Emperor Valentinian III seems to have seriously considered just abandoning Italy altogether and running for North Africa. Meanwhile, Attila kept moving south. And then came Aquileia. Aquileia was a major city at the top of the Adriatic Sea, one of the most important in all of Northern Italy. After a siege, Attila destroyed it so completely that later legends claim these survivors fled to the islands of the Venetian Lagoon. From that desperate flight, they slowly built what would eventually become the Venice that we know today. Now, whether that story is actually true, historians will still debate it. But the total destruction of Aquile, though, that's not debated. People remembered it for generations, and it wasn't just them. It was, you know, Milan fell and then Pavia fell, and the panic spread south ahead of him like a wave. And then delegation after delegation came out to meet him. The Western emperor sent three men to negotiate with Attila near the River Mincio in northern Italy. And one of these three men was literally Pope Leo I, the Bishop of Rome, a man with immense spiritual authority and absolutely zero power. Now, the meeting itself was private. No record survives of what was actually said. But afterwards, Attila turned back. He just left Italy. And historians to this day have no idea why. The Church, predictably later called it a miracle. Centuries afterwards. You know, the Renaissance artist Raphael painted that very scene on the walls of the Vatican. Pope Leo standing very firm and proud, Attila retreating, while the Apostles Peter and Paul hover above with flaming swords. So the more grounded historical reason is that Attila's army was in bad shape. His campaign south had stripped northern Italy of food, meaning that his own men were also running short on supplies, disease was tearing through the camp. And back east, Marcion had sent Eastern Roman troops across the Danube to hit Hunnic territory in Pannonia in modern day Hungary, while Attila was tied up on this campaign in Italy. So as a result, he was getting squeezed from both ends, and that's obviously not good. So with that in mind, Pope Leo walked into a meeting with the military situation that was already a little bit half decided. Attila was probably going to leave anyway, and the Pope just kind of gave him the final push in that direction. Hey, guys, we're gonna take a break really quick because I want to talk to you about gld. This is an awesome new company that we're working with that I'm actually wearing right now. I actually got this crucifix right here. And honestly, even just getting it, you know, sometimes, like, when you work with some companies, you're like, all right, I really hope the product is good. This one is. I. I wear it all the time. This is actually like the new crucifix. 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If you use the code camp C A M P. When you check out, you're going to get 40% off your entire order@gld.com. that's 40% off your whole order with the code camp at checkout at gld. And after you purchase, they're going to ask where you heard about gld. Tell them you heard about them from, you know, the good folks here at the campsite. Mark and Christo sent you. And whenever you do that it really helps, you know, support the show. And thank you so much to gld, and thank you to you for tuning in. Let's get back to the show. So, in early 453 A.D. attila took a new wife. He falls in love. This is a young woman named Ildiko, probably of Gothic origin, but we don't know for sure. And the wedding feast went late into the night, and Attila drank very heavily, which people who knew him, they found that pretty unusual. Now, remember, Priscus had specifically noted just a few years earlier how restrained and calculated Attila was with wine at that dinner in 449. He was a famously controlled man, but for some reason, this night was different. And at some point, his guards noticed that his chambers had gone completely silent, way past any normal hour. And they waited and waited, and eventually they decided that something was wrong, so they forced their way in. And when they walked in, Attila was covered in blood. He was dead. Ildiko was sitting beside him, weeping behind her veil. And here's the part that has haunted historians ever since. There were no wounds anywhere on his body. Priscus's account says that Attila suffered a severe nosebleed, something he was apparently prone to throughout his life. One medical plausibility that modern science would explain is some type of dramatic brain hemorrhage. The heavy drinking could have possibly raised his blood pressure, and the nosebleed may have been a symptom rather than the cause. And if the hemorrhage happened while he was deeply intoxicated, he may have just been unable to react. And so he choked on his own blood in his sleep and then never woke up. Now, there is another theory, and this one is darker. Some historians have suggested that Attila was murdered, that Emperor Marcion arranged the entire thing using Ildiko as the instrument. And it's possible, but the evidence is difficult to prove. And if Ildiko had carried out the assassination, it's hard to explain why she would still just be sitting beside the body, crying when the guards finally arrived. I mean, it's a pretty. I mean, it's a pretty risky gamble. Like, hey, kill your husband on the night of his wedding and then stay there when they show up. It's possible. I mean, one of the most powerful men of his time, dead on his wedding night, covered in his own blood, and no explanation that really answers the question of how or why his warriors mourned him by cutting their own faces with swords. Jordanes says that they believe that a great warrior should be mourned with men's blood, not with woman's tears, which is, I mean, tough. That's tough, dude. A great warrior should be mourned with men's blood, not with women's tears. That's hard. Now, Attila was then buried, and according to tradition, it was in a triple coffin. Iron on the outside, silver in the middle, and gold at the very center, somewhere in the Hungarian plain. And the men who dug the grave were reportedly killed afterwards so that the location of his grave would never be found. And to this day, no one has ever found it. Now, after that, the Hunnic empire collapsed almost overnight. Attila left behind multiple suns, and they immediately turned on each other. And the subject people of this sort of, you know, umbrella confederacy, the Gepids, the Ostrogoths, the Heruls, all the groups that Attila had bound together through his name and through tribute and fear, well, they all revolted, just like immediately the spell was taken off of them. They were like, why are we giving tribute to this guy? What are we doing? So in 454, just one year after Attila's death, those revolting subjects face down Attila's sons at the Battle of Nadao. This is in modern day Hungary. The Gepids, led by their king, Ardorix, smashed the Hunnic loyalists, and Attila's oldest son, Alaq, died on the battlefield. And this was the end of any type of unified Hunnic power. And then Urnas, the youngest son, the one that the prophecy said would restore the family line, he disappeared east with what remained of his followers, and that's the last that we ever heard of him. And now this is important. The Huns themselves didn't just disappear. Smaller Hunnic groups persisted regionally for decades after that Battle of Nadal. Some were absorbed into successor kingdoms. Some ended up serving as mercenaries for the very Eastern empire that their grandfathers were extorting. But the aftermath in Rome wasn't that much steadier. So Atius, the guy that we were talking about, that had grown up amongst the Huns and then outmaneuvered them at the Catalunian plains, He was murdered in 454 AD, reportedly stabbed by Emperor Valentinian III himself during a private meeting. Six months later, Valentinian was assassinated in turn by two of Atius's old retainers. The Western Empire never really recovered from any of that. And here's the crazy part. The Eastern Empire actually remained the same empire that had been paying tribute to Attila, the same empire that tried and failed to have him assassinated. That empire actually adapted. It centralized its tax base, it rebuilt its army, and it somehow survived. That civilization, which we now call Byzantine, would last another thousand years. So after 20 years of constant pressure and tribute and war, Attila had really almost perfectly orchestrated everything that would eventually lead to the collapse of the West. And 1600 years later, we still don't know where he's buried. And I guess in some way, that's like, the way it should be. Like, Attila was like such a legendary character. Like, not ever finding his body is almost more fitting. Attila never really wanted a monument. He never wanted a big palace or anything like that. He wasn't a part of his culture. He didn't want any of that stuff. He didn't even want a throne. He wanted to eat off a wooden plate while, you know, all the empires that he was extorting would eat off silver. And there's something kind of fire about that, like not needing to flaunt your strength, not needing to prove anything, and the fact that you need nothing is actually the most, you know, honest strength you have. Now, Rome, on the other hand, they spent hundreds of years pretending that it was still the empire that Caesar had built, pretending that its tax base wasn't completely gutted, pretending that the army wasn't borrowed and was actually the Huns the whole time, pretending that barbarians at the gate weren't already running half the provinces inside the walls of the empire. And they're sitting there eating off silver plates, drinking out of these gold goblets, just getting all fat and happy, and the entire time just pretending. Meanwhile, Attila, well, he's sitting there extorting them for all they got. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is an abridged history of Attila the Hun. I mean, what an interesting guy, I think. I think Attila's one of the legends of history. I mean, what's the worst thing he did? This episode is brought to you by Fox 1. Watch all 104 matches of the FIFA World cup live in 4K for just $19.99 a month, with 3 days free. Build your own multi view, choose up to three streams and follow players spotlights. Stay on top of every moment with live stats, highlights and instant replay. The FIFA World cup streaming live on Fox One offers a subject to change. See fox.com for complete terms and conditions. This episode is brought to you by State Farm. You know, those friends who support your preference for podcasts over music on road trips? That's the energy State Farm brings to insurance. With over 19,000 local agents, they help you find the coverage that fits your needs so you can spend less time worrying about insurance and more time enjoying the ride. Download the State Farm app or go online@state farm.com. like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. Brutally take over towns, Kill the people, brother. That's the nature of back in the day. War stuff. I mean, that's kind of what they were all doing. So, yeah, he wanted more land. He wanted more power. Like greed. Sure. That's not great. Love of money is the root of all evil. I'm with you, but, like, I mean, if you wanted to surrender and join him, you could. Could have said sorry. He could have said sorry, but he died too soon. He didn't know he was gonna die. It was his wedding day. It was the happiest day of his life. I think that's the most interesting part of this whole thing, how he perished. Yeah, I mean, don't drink too much on your wedding. That would be my advice. Also, don't marry a woman you don't know all that great. Yeah, I mean, I guess you should be careful of that, but it was a different time, you know, she's probably a piece too. Yeah. Now it's. It's just an interesting thing how he kind of just, like. It's. We don't know a ton about him. Like, I feel like he's not brought up that much, but, like, he really did destabilize the west and, like, kind of pave the way for, like, the Byzantine Empire to flourish. It's just like, a really interesting detail. And the fact that the Huns were such feared fighters that they were, like, hired as mercenaries by the entire Roman Empire, like, that, to me, is just, like a fascinating ripple in this whole thing. Also, why he decides to turn back in Italy. Yeah, I mean, I think that actually makes the most sense, that, like, you know, mainly because the power of God terrified him secondarily. His army was destroyed. He was getting squeezed in the East. Marcy Marcion was kind of giving him some hard times, and he was like, all right, I just got to get back there. Do you think it's been over. Dramatized how much religion had to do with that decision? I think it was mostly the power of God and the two apostles. I think it was mostly Peter and Paul looking over with swords. But there also was some other stuff that kind of contributed, but it doesn't matter. All right, Pope Leo, I locked it down. And now our new Pope Leo is also going to lock it down. How so? Because he's Ready to go, dude. He's from Chiraq. And so if anyone tries to pull up to Rome now, he's going to bust out there with Peter and Paul looking overhead with their swords blazing. Fez Barretto. Exactly. That's what I'm saying, dude. Every Pope Leo's got it. That's all I'll say on that. Anyway, what did you guys learn? Is there anything that I missed? If you're a historian, you read a book on Attila the hunt. You saw Ninth Museum 1 or 2. If there's anything I left out of this episode, please drop a comment. I would love to know Great news. If you like religious content, we have Religion Camp. If you like crazy deep dives and all the most insane mysteries of all time, well, great news, we have Camp Gagnon. And if you like talking about history, well, hey, we're doing these episodes every single week, so make sure you subscribe and check out all the future ones that we do. I would say a very similar episode to this one is Genghis Khan, if you're interested about genghis. Basically like 800 years after our boy Attila was cooking a very similar kind of story from the steps of central Eurasia and really conquers a huge chunk of the world. Well, you should check out that episode also. Anyway, God bless you all. Thank you so much for tuning into another episode of History Camp and I will see you in the future to talk about the past. Peace. Hey, we have a brand new channel that is a part of the Camp universe and we made it specifically with you in mind. And I personally think that you're really going to like it. So the right window treatments change everything. Your sleep, your privacy, the way every room looks and feels. @blinds.com We've spent 30 years making it surprisingly simple to get exactly what your home needs. We've covered over 25 million windows and have 50,000 five star reviews to prove we deliver. Whether you DIY it or want a pro to handle everything from measure to install, we have you covered. 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