A Raven at Constantinople’s Gates
The Eastern Roman Empire had long played a dangerous game, paying gold to the Huns in exchange for peace but peace, when built on fear, is never lasting.
By 447 AD, Attila’s patience with Roman weakness snapped like a dry branch. With an army of cavalry archers, spearmen, and ruthless warriors, he descended upon the Balkans.
The skies above Thracia and Moesia turned black with smoke as villages burned. Fortresses that once stood for centuries crumbled in mere hours. Attila didn’t just raid, he devoured.
A Path of Fire
The Romans, caught unprepared, watched in horror as their defenses collapsed. The mighty city of Serdica (modern-day Sofia) fell beneath the Hun onslaught., Philippopolis and Arcadiopolis followed. The Huns moved like phantoms, striking fast, leaving only charred ruins behind.
Constantinople itself braced for doom. But there, the towering Theodosian Walls, built thick and high, finally stopped the Hun advance.
Attila’s horsemen circled like wolves at the gates but could not break through. So he did what all conquerors do when met with a wall: he made the wall pay.
Tribute or Destruction
Emperor Theodosius II, shaken and desperate, sent envoys with bags of gold. The treaty of Margus, once an insult to Attila, was now redrafted in his favor. The Romans agreed to pay the Huns an annual tribute of 2,100 pounds of gold, a sum so vast it drained the empire’s treasury.
And as part of the deal, they agreed to return all Hun fugitives and open trade to Hun merchants but the message was clear: Rome was no longer master of the world.
It was a trembling tenant, renting peace from a barbarian king.
The Scourge of God
Roman chroniclers began to whisper in fear, they called Attila the “Scourge of God”, sent to punish their sins. He was no longer just a warlord, he was an unstoppable force of divine wrath. And yet, for all his terror, Attila showed cunning.
He withdrew from Constantinople, content for now, with gold in his coffers and fear in Roman hearts but this was merely the eastern chapter of his story.
Beyond the Alps, the Western Roman Empire weak, divided, and drowning in intrigue awaited and Attila had already begun to turn his gaze westward, where a princess’s plea for help would soon spark the next great war.
A King Without Borders
Back in his camp, beneath the endless sky of the steppes, Attila gathered his generals. He spoke not of settling down but of new campaigns, new cities to burn, new kings to humiliate.
For Attila, conquest was not a goal, it was a way of life and Europe had not yet seen his worst.
Next Time: Attila the Hun Part Three — The Battle for Gaul
Allies unite to stop the unstoppable. In the fields of Gaul, the fate of Europe hangs on the edge of a sword.
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