The Huns and their Germanic allies raze Aquileia by Steve Noon

October 04, 2023

The Huns and their Germanic allies raze Aquileia by Steve Noon

"He invaded Gaul to win himself a wife. In the spring of 450, Honoria, the ambitious sister of Valentinian III, emperor of Western Rome, sent Attila a ring and asked him to help her get out of the impending marriage to a Roman aristocrat her brother was forcing on her. Attila, who already had several wives (the exact number is unknown), took Honoria’s overture as a proposal. He claimed her as his newest bride, and half the Western Empire as her dowry. Attila would wage his next two military campaigns in Honoria’s name". (taken from History[dot]com)

"The Huns crossed the Julian Alps and then besieged the heavily defended city of Aquileia, eventually capturing and razing it after a long siege. They then entered the Po Valley, sacking Padua, Mantua, Vicentia, Verona, Brescia, and Bergamo, before besieging and capturing Milan. The Huns made no attempt to capture Ravenna, and were either stopped or did not try to take Rome.

At the end of the 4th century, Ausonius enumerated Aquileia as the ninth among the great cities of the world, placing Rome, Constantinople, Carthage, Antioch, Alexandria, Trier, Mediolanum, and Capua before it. However, such prominence made it a target and Alaric and the Visigoths besieged it in 401, during which time some of its residents fled to the nearby lagoons. Alaric again attacked it in 408. Attila attacked the city in 452. During this invasion, on July 18, Attila and his Huns so utterly destroyed the city that it was afterwards hard to recognize its original site. The Roman inhabitants, together with those of smaller towns in the neighbourhood, fled en masse to the lagoons, and so laid the foundations of the cities of Venice and nearby Grado". (taken from Wikipedia).