The Huns at war. Artwork by Steve Estvanik
Some 1700 years ago, the Huns burst from the Eurasian steppe and sent shockwaves through Europe. Blowing apart the Germanic world, then smashing through the borders of the Roman Empire, they changed the world forever. A mere century later, the Huns and their most famous warrior-king, Attila, vanished into history. Yet to this day, "Attila" and "Huns" remain bywords for tyranny, violence and cruelty. Is this fair?
Anyone aiming to understand the Huns more objectively than this faces a major challenge. The Huns as a polity are poorly understood. They were – apart from perhaps a learned few – an illiterate people; thus, little of their oral tradition and lore endured beyond their time. Only three Hun words survive. The only complete sources on them are written in Greek and Latin by their enemies of the 4th and 5th centuries AD, the Romans.
Surviving Hun words:
Kamos: a barley drink. Medos: a drink similar to mead. Strava: the Hun funeral ritual.
The Roman historian, Ammianus Marcellinus, describes the Hun warriors as:
“A race savage beyond all parallel. Wild, thick-necked, stocky, bow-legged, they warm raw meat by placing it between their own thighs and the back of their horses. They wander about, roaming over the mountains and the woods and accustom themselves to bear frost and hunger and thirst from their very cradles. They cover their heads with round caps, and their shaggy legs with the skins of kids. They are nearly always on horseback. There is not a person in their whole nation who cannot remain on his horse day and night. On horseback they buy and sell, they take their meat and drink, and there they recline on the narrow neck of their steed, and yield to sleep so deep as to indulge in every variety of dream."
The Latin poet Claudian claimed that the Huns sacrificed their parents when they grew old (with later writers adding that the elders were actually cannibalized).
Jordanes, writing for a later Ostrogothic king, described them as "a race of almost men." In this article, I aim to cut through this hyperbole, and try to understand the Huns a little better. Origins
To this day, all we know for sure is that the Huns came from somewhere in central Asia. That said, there are a few theories on Hunnic origins - some fair, some utterly wild. In the latter camp is the clearly pejorative myth from the Goths (the Germanic sub-group who bore the initial brunt of the Huns' arrival in their lands) that they were 'the bastard offspring of witches and demons of the wind'.
Somewhere in the middle is another tale that might have arisen from the oral tradition of the Huns themselves, which claims that they pursued a wild stag into new and fertile lands, and found it to be inhabited by the Germanics (Goths and more). This might indicate that climatic migration was behind their arrival in Europe - the Huns, like most nomadic peoples, practiced transhumance, or seasonal migration. If the gazelle herds they hunted or the best grasses to graze their steeds were in the west, they would go west. In 2010, 8 million horses died in Mongolia after bad winter. Late antiquity shows several bad winters in a row - offering a plausible reason for the steppe tribes of that era to migrate to pastures new. 
The Huns attack the Great Wall of China. Artwork by Steve Estvanik.
More objectively, we have the theory that comes from Chinese chroniclers of the 2nd century AD, who write of their struggles to keep at bay a fierce nomadic tribe known as the Xiong-Nu, who frequently descended from the Gobi desert region to raid Chinese lands. After orchestrating a heavy defeat on these Xiong-Nu, the Chinese Han dynasty then begun work on a series of walls and fortifications (what would eventually become The Great Wall of China). Starved of their raiding opportunities, this theory goes, the Xiong-Nu began to move west, towards Europe.
Hun Society and Customs
The Huns were children of the Eurasian steppe - a huge stripe of treeless grassland, 4,200 km long, fringed in the north buy the sub-arctic forest, and in the south by desert and mountains at its eastern end by the river valleys of China and at its western end by the fertile lands of the Near East and Europe. The aridity of the climate in the Eurasian Steppe discouraged agriculture, but suited the breeding of horses, cattle, sheep and goats. By nature, these animals were capable of weathering the hard winters with their ability to use their hooves to dig through snow to reach pasture underneath.
The Eurasian steppe - shaded in gold.
A modern Mongolian, using two of the things vital to their way of life: the horse and the lasso.
Horses were central to the Hun way of life. The hardy steppe steeds were vital to travelling the vast distances across the steppe, and to chasing down and keeping cattle herds. A horse was a Hun's spirit animal, and it was taboo to ride on another person's horse.
Hun young would be taught to ride first on goats, before progressing to foals then fully grown steeds. Their final rite of passage was to ride out into the steppe, face and kill a wolf, alone. Returning with a wolf pelt to show to their elders, they became an adult. Every adult Hun was a master of the horse and bow, and – as with any cattle herding people – the lasso. "There is no need to labour the point that the Huns all but lived on horseback, and in sheer horsemanship they far surpassed the best Roman and Gothic cavalry."  An example of cranial deformation - binding of the skull.
The Huns even drank mare’s milk – fresh and fermented; apparently they abhorred drinking fresh water! The Romans claimed, with disgust, that the Huns ate raw meat tenderised under their saddles. This is almost certainly apocraphyl: meat would be used like this not for eating, but to act as a poultice upon their steeds' saddle sores. Their preference was to cook meat into stews - typically with balls of cheese curd and spices bought from traders.
Polygamy was the norm, with Hun men taking several wives - probably in order to establish and preserve inter-clan relationships. Women were not passive in Hun society though: they held political power, trained on the horse from a young age, and sometimes fought alongside the adult males. To the so-called 'Western' eye of Late Antiquity, the Huns probably looked unusual. Not just because of their slightly different bone structure or skin colour, but because of their dress and customs. Huns were known for their severe hairstyles, sometimes shaved back from the hairline to the centre of the head. There is evidence of infant skull-binding, perhaps reserved for those bound to join the Huns' shamanic priesthood. The Huns also practiced ritual face scarring, and one theory is that this was a symbol of grief (blood rolling down your cheeks instead of tears). Contrary to the picture often painted of the Huns exploding into Europe, bent on war (yes, I am guilty of using that imagery at the start of this article), their arrival on the European scene was actually far more gradual. For years they traded fairly with settled Germanic and Roman peoples on the steppe borders, offering meat and wool in exchange for grain and tools. Dressed in goatskins and leathers, marked and groomed in their striking way, they would have been an impressive and captivating sight to anyone who had been brought up in the relative comfort of a Roman city or a Gothic village. And warfare would come soon enough. Masters of War
The Huns were simply too quick and skilled for the Roman legions and Gothic warriors.
The Huns were masters of cavalry warfare - in a way that the Romans and the Germanic tribes simply could not cope with. As Ammianus describes:
“They are the most formidable warriors. When they go into battle, they form in a solid body, and utter all kinds of terrific yells. They are very quick in their operations, of exceeding speed, and fond of surprising their enemies. When at a distance they use missiles of various kinds… but when they are at close quarters they fight with the sword, without any regard for their own safety; and often while their antagonists are warding off their blows they entangle them with twisted cords, so that, their hands being fettered, they lose all power of either riding or walking.”
In their 5th century heyday, they were tactically superior to almost every opponent. Fielding dense wings on horse archers, they would swarm like hornets, remaining far enough away to be safe from enemy spears, but close enough to shower arrows on their for, shot from their powerful composite bows. Once the enemy had been broken or brought to panic by this, they would then charge using the spear and lasso to tear apart what was left.
"The Huns were totally ignorant of fighting on foot. But by wheeling and charging in good time and shooting from their horses, they wrought immense slaughter." Attila & the Empire of the Huns
The origins of Attila – easily the most famous of the Huns – are sketchy. His birthdate is unknown. Even his name (Attila is a Germanic moniker, meaning “Little Father”) is almost certainly one given to him later in life, as opposed to his Hun birth name. But chronicles of the Hun world reveal that he was the son of a certain Munzuk, brother of Bleda, nephew of Ruga and Octar, and that the king during his adolescence was named Uldin. This was a time when the Huns were not a united people, but a number of nomadic clusters each ruled by a minor king.
During Attila's lifetime, this would change. The period of his youth spent in Rome as a political hostage must have given him insights into the empire's inner systems, strengths… and weaknesses. He and his brother, Bleda, grew to become powerful figures in Hun society, uniting the many Hun factions, and the many Germanic tribes subjugated to the Huns, under their joint rule as high kings of the Huns. Yet there remains a suspicion around what happened to his brother. When, in 445, Bleda died, classical sources claimed it was by Attila's hand. Was it Attila reaching for ultimate power? Or was this another example of the fearful Romans blackening Attila's name? Either way, Attila was now sole king of all the Huns. What little knowledge we have of prime Attila in particular comes through the works of Priscus (a Roman who was part of embassies to Attila's court). Sadly, most of his work is lost, but the remaining fragments shine a very telling light on Attila, describing him as frugal, moderate and shrewd, and all the more frightening for it - he was not simply a slavering, bloodthirsty warlord, but an educated and measured individual. A leader in complete control of himself and his formidable empire. 
The court of Attila, King of the Huns.
Under Attila, a Hun Empire emerged, centred on the Hungarian plain. Here, the Huns evolved culturally, letting go of their nomadic roots and adopting a semi-sedentary, agricultural way of life. Perhaps this was due to necessity - the Hungarian plain has nowhere near the grazing capacity of the steppe proper. From this base of power, the Huns struck blow after blow upon the Roman Empire.
It is thought that Attila never desired to possess the Roman world, but understood - probably due to the teachings during his youth in Rome - that to sustain his own empire, he needed a constant source of pillage. This, he did by securing tribute from the Eastern Roman Empire - first 350 pounds of gold annually, before demanding it be doubled to 700 pounds and eventually 2,100 pounds. Some Eastern Romans actually preferred living under Huns, free of huge imperial tax burden (because Attila was taxing Constantinople, not his people) and left largely unpestered. 
Attila's Hun Empire, circa AD 450.
Come AD 450, Attila's attentions turned to the Western Roman Empire. Why? Some say it was because he had bled the Eastern Roman Empire dry. Others claim it is because Gaeseric the Vandal King of Africa bribed him to do so. And there is a third potential reason: apparently Honoria, the Western Emperor's sister, had offered him her hand in marriage. Attila assumed this meant the Western Roman Empire would be his dowry… and assembled his forces.
Whatever turned Attila's head westwards, it was a twist that would lay ruin both to that realm and his own. In the west, his aura of invincibility on the battlefield was broken, but so too was the spine of the Roman West. Within a few years, Attila was dead, the Hun Empire gone, and Europe in ashes. Read all about his turbulent and incredible life in THE EAGLE & THE WOLF!
References
Getica, Jordanes
The extant works of Priscus of Panium Carmina, Sidonius Apollinaris The Roman History, Ammianus Marcellinus Universal History, Eunapius The Fall of the Roman Empire, Peter Heather The Hun, Scourge of God AD 375-565, Nic Fields The Fall of Rome Podcast, Patrick Wyman Ancient Warfare Magazine A History of Attila and the Huns, E.A. Thompson.
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AuthorGordon Doherty: writer, history fan, explorer. 
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