The Huns were pastoral nomads who, for seven decades between their arrival in Europe in 370 CE and the 450s CE, amassed a huge empire in the north and east of the continent. Their soldiers, with their formidable techniques and incredible speed, were universally feared and overcame almost every enemy in their path to forge Europe’s first and largest empire outside of Rome.
Under its infamous king, Attila, the Hunnic empire stretched from the Rhine to the Caspian Sea and from the Baltic Sea to the Balkans. Through both direct military campaigns and their uprooting of Germanic tribes, the Huns played a significant role in the decline and ultimate fall of the Western Roman Empire. Yet by the end of the 450s CE the Huns had all but vanished, leaving behind only stories of their brutal culture.
ORIGINS
The origins of the Huns are heavily debated. According to the 6th-century Gothic historian Jordanes in his history Getica, the Goths believed the Huns were the offspring of ‘unclean spirits’ and witches, put on Earth to destroy their peoples.
The French Orientalist Joseph de Guignes argued in the 18th century that the Huns were an offshoot of the Xiongnu peoples of Mongolia, who regularly harassed and invaded Han China in the 1st century BCE. This Hun-Xiongnu link, however, has been widely dismissed, and many historians agree with historian Christopher Kelly’s argument that the Huns originated “somewhere between the eastern edge of the Altai Mountains and the Caspian
