We do not know how large the Gothic army was at any stage. It is said to have mustered 40,000 men outside Rome. The figure is not impossible, especially if it included camp followers as well as the fighting men, but we have no idea whether or not it is accurate. The demand for 7,000 silk garments as part of the price for breaking the first siege of Rome has been used to infer that there were that number of properly equipped, genuine warriors. Again, this is perfectly possible. The Goths never attempted a formal siege or assault on Rome. Whatever the size of their army they were vastly outnumbered by the inhabitants of the city, but these were not organised or equipped. The Goths needed only to be numerous enough to prevent substantial supplies of food from reaching the city. In these circumstances even a few thousand confidently led warriors could make life extremely hard inside Rome. Similarly, the various barbarian groups that crossed the Rhine seem unlikely to have been especially numerous - bands of a few thousand warriors from each group seeming more likely than armies of tens of thousands or more. Their behaviour, much like the ability of the Goths to move about, crossing mountain passes when necessary, surviving for years on plunder and foraging within the provinces, does not suggest big forces. Wherever such groups struck, the local impact was doubtless terrible, but their numbers meant that only small areas would be affected at any time. The Goths were probably the largest force, supplied at times from imperial resources and by this time largely equipped with the products of staterun arms factories. In appearance, they probably looked little different to regular Roman troops."
There is equally little impression of especially large and unambiguously Roman armies in these years. Stilicho's thirty units with allies may well have been one of the largest forces to take the field. It is also worth noting that the 4,000 soldiers sent from the east to Ravenna profoundly affected the balance of forces in the campaign. In 409 it was said that 6,ooo soldiers were sent to defend Rome itself, although they were ambushed and only a handful got through. If the figure is accurate then evidently such a number was considered adequate to protect the city. The Notitia Dignitatum does show signs of losses and desperate improvisation in the make-up of the western field armies. Many units were newly created - or at least renamed - after 395 and a significant proportion composed of units of pseudocomitatenses, regiments transferred permanently to the field army from the limitanei. It is doubtful that such units were replaced amongst the frontier troops. Yet, in considering the strength of the army, we come back to the basic problem that we do not know what size regiments were in practice or, indeed, how many existed at all other than on paper. The ease with which the mixed group of raiders crossed the Rhine, then survived in Gaul and finally went into Spain raises the question of just where the Roman army was. This problem is only increased if, as seems very likely, the number of barbarians was relatively small. Many Roman units may well have been drawn away to Italy by Stilicho or, as time went on, become caught up in the civil wars. Yet in the end it is hard to avoid the conclusion that many simply did not exist.'
What is certain is that none of the leaders during the operations in these decades was willing to risk heavy casualties. This was as true of men like Alaric, as well as whoever led the tribal bands of Vandals, Alans and others, as it was of the Romans. Major battles were extremely rare and none of them decisive. Stilicho and Constantius both seem to have had a fondness for blockading the enemy into submission rather than direct confrontation. In Stilicho's case, his military experience and talent may well have been modest, and perhaps he was aware of this limitation. Constantius may have been more gifted, but both men were primarily political soldiers. Heavy losses could not easily be replaced and might well involve a loss of face that could precipitate rapid dismissal and execution.
Similarly, Alaric depended for his significance on maintaining a formidable force of warriors under his command. The same was true of the other barbarian leaders. Warbands or armies isolated deep within the provinces had no ready source of substantial reinforcements. It is more than likely that successful groups would attract new recruits from warriors who had crossed into the empire individually or in small bands. The empire's frontier defences were in no state to prevent this. There were also army deserters and runaway slaves. Yet these would only join a leader they believed to be successful. Even minor defeats, especially several in a row, would discourage such men, as well as perhaps prompting desertions from amongst the existing warriors. Major battles were simply too risky unless a leader had an overwhelming advantage, in which case the enemy were unlikely to fight in the first place. Therefore, campaigns were generally tentative, each side aiming to gain an advantage to be used in negotiation. For the imperial governments, the enemy all too often offered the prospect of effective soldiers for their own uses. These were wars of skirmishes and raids, and doubtless the Roman army continued its fondness for ambush and surprise attacks. Campaigns would be decided by many small actions rather than major set-piece battles. For the men involved this difference was doubtless academic, and a small skirmish could be as vicious and dangerous as a famous battle.
Alaric and his successors hoped to win rank, position and as much security as possible within the Roman system. They could not overthrow the empire for there were simply not enough of them. There were stories that the Goths had taken oaths to overthrow the empire even before they crossed the Danube and Athaulf is supposed to have spoken of his plans to replace a Roman with a Gothic empire. He changed his mind when he decided that Roman laws were necessary to run a peaceful state. Yet the simple fact that they were exploiting periods of instability within both the empires also made their object harder to obtain. The rapid rise and fall of successive powers behind the emperors produced radical shifts in Roman policy. On several occasions this robbed both Gothic leaders of the chance of successful negotiation.'-
Within a few short years of the sack of Rome, Emperor Honorius celebrated a triumph in the city - and a triumph over a Roman rival, something that would have been unimaginable in the first or second century. Life in the city continued. The Senate met and, when not interrupted by civil war, the people continued to enjoy entertainments and state-supplied doles of food. Politically, the Gothic blockades and actual plundering of Rome had made no impact on the life of the empire, the centre of which had long since transferred to wherever the imperial court happened to be. Psychologically, the news of the sack shocked the Roman world, including the eastern provinces, which now had their own emperor and capital at Constantinople. Pagans blamed the disaster on the abandonment of the old gods. Christians struggled to refute these claims, with ideas we shall consider later (see page 353). Today scholars are inclined to play down its significance in the long term. In practical terms they may well be right, for the Western Empire continued to run after 410 much as it had done before. Yet this is to miss the fundamental point that the imperial government had been incapable of preventing the sack happening in the first place.
In the end, it is the impotence of the imperial government that most stands out during this period. Riven with in-fighting, nominally led by weak emperors and in practice by favourites or dominant officers whose position was always precarious, it proved even less capable of dealing with problems than the regimes of the fourth century. The military challenges it faced were not markedly greater than those faced in earlier periods. The Goths were somewhat different, in that they were an enemy that came from within the provinces, largely as a consequence of the earlier failure to defeat them fully in 382. Even so, they do not seem to have been overwhelmingly numerous. Yet there were never enough imperial troops to defeat them or, indeed, any of the other enemies that emerged, with the exception of Radagaisus' raiding party. The weakness of the empire certainly encouraged more attacks, just as it had always done, but again, there was nothing new about this. No one was ever able to marshal the still considerable resources possessed by either the Eastern or Western Empire effectively enough to meet these challenges. In the end, the Western Empire was content to a
ccept the existence of allied, but at least semi-independent, tribal groups within the provinces. The power of the emperor in Ravenna was gradually seeping away.
17
The Hun
`The barbarian nation of the Huns ... became so great that more than a hundred cities were captured and Constantinople almost came into danger ... and there were so many murders and so much bloodshed that the dead could not be counted. They even captured the churches and monasteries and slaughtered great numbers of monks and nuns.' - Callinicus, describing the Hunnic invasion in the 44os.'
ttila the Hun remains to this day a byword for savagery and destruction. His is one of the few names from antiquity that still prompts instant recognition, putting him alongside the likes of Alexander, Caesar, Cleopatra and Nero. Of these, only Nero has a reputation so wholly negative, for Attila has become the barbarian of the ancient world. All too often his life merges with that of a later - and far more successful - conqueror, Ghengis Khan. The images are of thousands of narrow-eyed men on ponies, pouring out of the Steppes beneath wolf-tail standards to spread blood and ruin, of burning towns and mounds of skulls. At the close of the nineteenth century, first the French, and then more often the British, would dub the Germans as Huns. They did not choose Goth or Vandal, or any of the other names of peoples who could plausibly be seen as ancestors to the modern Germans. In 1914 it was the Hun who `raped' neutral Belgium. It helped that the name was short and catchy, which was highly convenient for slogan writers as well as poets like Kipling. More importantly, it conveyed an image of an enemy utterly opposed to all that was civilised and good.'
Within this stereotype is at least a shadow of the real fear inspired by the Huns in the late fourth and fifth centuries. Some of this was based on race. Huns looked different, even to other barbarians already in contact with Rome. They were short and stocky, with small eyes and faces that seemed almost featureless to Roman observers. Many accounts emphasise their ugliness, although curiously none mention the elongated skulls that a minority of Hunnic men and women sported - a deformity deliberately created by tightly binding a child's head to distort the cranium. No one knows why this was done, although similar practices have been fairly common in other cultures. For once, we are probably right to assume a ritual motive for something we do not understand.'
The Huns appeared alien to Roman and Goth alike. They also seemed terrifyingly ferocious and deadly warriors. Yet they were not invincible. Attila's empire was large, if not quite as extensive as his boasts - and some historians - would have us believe. His armies travelled deep into the Roman provinces spreading destruction, but they could not stay there. Some frontier regions were ceded to him, and more were devastated, but overall his territorial gains from Rome were modest. Attila's empire was also very short-lived, tearing itself apart in the years after his death as his sons squabbled for power and subject peoples rebelled. The Huns themselves are unlikely ever to have been especially numerous, and Attila's great armies seem always to have included a majority of allied warriors, including Goths, Alans and other peoples. Nor were the Huns only ever enemies of Rome. Both the Eastern and Western Empires frequently enlisted bands of Huns who fought very effectively on their behalf.
Attila the man is a good deal more interesting than the myth. He was not the same as Ghengis Khan, nor were the Huns identical in every way to the Mongols of the Middle Ages. Nomadic peoples do not all conform to a single, unchanging culture. The Huns have been blamed for provoking the barbarian invasions that eventually broke up the Western Empire. They have also been credited with preserving that empire for several decades, postponing its collapse by holding the Germanic tribes in check. There is an element of truth in both claims, but neither is the whole story. Nevertheless, it is fair to say that for a generation the Huns and their kings were the single most powerful force confronting the Romans in Europe.4
From the Steppes to the Danube
For the Romans, the Huns had simply appeared in the fourth century and, in spite of various attempts to link them to groups `known' from classical tradition, they had no real idea of their origin. Nothing has survived from the Huns' own oral culture to tell of their own beliefs in this matter. In the eighteenth century it was suggested that the Huns were the same people as the Hsuing-Nu - Xiongnu is the modern spelling - known from Chinese sources. This powerful confederation of nomadic tribes had posed a serious threat to the borders of China from the end of the third century BC until they were broken up in the late first century AD. Driven away by a resurgent Chinese empire, the survivors were then supposed to have drifted further and further west until they reached the fringes of the Roman world several centuries later. While this remains a possibility, the case is not at all strong. Certainly, the Huns seem to have originated somewhere on the great steppe, but that area of grassland is so vast and contained many different nomadic groups, so that this in itself does not tell us very much.'
We simply do not know why the Huns drifted westwards. Classical sources repeat the myth of their first contact with the Goths being accidental, a party of Huns chasing a straying animal further than ever before until they stumbled over a people previously unknown to them. Such stories are common in ancient literature, but rarely credible. Nomadic groups like the Huns include some highly skilled craftsmen, including metal workers, and more especially the men who made the wagons they travelled in and the bows with which they hunted and fought. However, they have tended always to be short of luxury items and were dependent on settled communities for such things. In the end, it was probably the wealth of Rome, and indeed Persia, as well as of the peoples living on their borders, which drew the Huns towards them. In the second half of the fourth century they reached the Black Sea. By its end some had come as far west as what is now the plain of Hungary.'
As with the Goths or Alamanni and other peoples, it is a mistake to think of the Huns as a single unified nation. On the Steppes, nomadic groups often spend much of the year in small parties consisting of a few families, moving from place to place to find seasonal grazing for the sheep and goats that provide them with so many of the necessities of life. There may well already have been kings and chieftains amongst them, even if their power was loose, as well as something vaguely resembling clans or tribes. Contact and conflict with peoples like the Goths and Alans, and eventually the Romans, encouraged the importance of such groupings and the power of individual leaders to grow. Large-scale raiding required leaders to control the bands of warriors and direct their attacks. Successful raids brought plunder and glory, adding to the prestige and power of the man in charge. The warfare that caused such large groups of Goths to seek refuge across the Danube in 376 will have fostered the growth in power of successful Hunnic war-leaders. Some groups fled from the onslaught of the Huns. Far more remained, joining them as more or less subordinate allies. Hunnic leaders came to have chieftains and kings from other races loyal to them as subordinate allies. Over the next half-century the trend was clearly towards a smaller and smaller number of Hunnic war leaders acquiring more and more power. This would culminate in Attila, although even then some groups of Huns do not seem to have acknowledged his rule. After his death they fragmented into many separate bands.
The military success of the Huns against the tribal peoples they encountered needs some explanation, although not perhaps as much as is often thought. We do not know enough about these initial conflicts to assess the role played by numbers, leadership and the strategic or tactical situation. In warfare success can feed off itself, making the victors more and more confident, while at the same time demoralising their enemies until they expect to lose. This is especially true when the victors look and act differently to their opponents, making it easier to believe that these strange enemies are invincible. In the earliest encounters the Huns had an advantage in that while they could strike at the enemy's farms and villages, it was hard for these opponents to respond and attack anything that was vital to the nomads. The Huns were mobile, and the wagons with th
eir vital resources of families and food could withdraw to places beyond the range of most enemy attacks. As importantly, the Huns, all of whom were mounted and used to travelling great distances on horseback, could strike deep and move fast in their raids. Even in defeat they could often escape with only minimal losses.
The Huns were horse archers. Their horses were smaller than Roman mounts, but tough and with great stamina, which allowed them to survive the harsh winters on the Steppes. A sixth-century east Roman manual recommended attacking the Huns at the end of the winter when their horses were at their weakest. Most warriors would have owned more than one mount. On campaign, and especially during a raid, men would have regularly changed to a fresh horse, allowing the band to keep moving at a fast pace. This should not be exaggerated. There is not a shred of evidence for the claim that each Hun needed a string of ten horses. A few of the wealthier men may have had as many - although they would not necessarily have taken them all on campaign. Most ordinary warriors may have aspired to owning two or three mounts, but even as many as this required considerable amounts of fodder. The Huns used a wooden-frame saddle different in design to the four-horned type used by the Romans, but better suited to mounted archery. They did not use the stirrup, which was as yet still unknown in Europe.7
How Rome Fell: Death of a Superpower Page 38