Hunnic Invasions of Europe

The Huns, a nomadic people who appear in the historical record east of the Volga River by around 370 CE, triggered a chain reaction across Europe by pushing Gothic and Alanic peoples westward, forcing many of them to seek refuge inside the Roman Empire's Danube frontier by 376. The Huns reached their greatest power under Attila, who ruled jointly with his brother Bleda from 434 and then alone from 445 until his own death in 453, extracting heavy tribute from the Eastern Roman Empire and welding the Hunnic confederation into a formidable military force. Attila led a large invasion of Gaul in 451, fought to a costly standstill by a combined Roman and Visigothic army at the Battle of the Catalaunian Plains, and followed it with an invasion of northern Italy in 452 that, according to tradition, Pope Leo I helped persuade him to abandon. Attila's sudden death in 453 fractured Hunnic power within a few years, but the pressure the Huns had placed on Gothic and other Germanic peoples is widely regarded by historians as a major catalyst of the broader Migration Period that contributed to the Western Roman Empire's collapse.