Rome 2 Vs Atilla
So where does that leave Total War: Rome 2 – Empire Divided? Rome 2 is probably not the best showcase of the future of Total War’s historical games. It’s four years old, not even the latest historical entry, and in terms of both the presentation and the real-time battles, it’s a step backwards from Warhammer 2.
Contributor4th January 2016 / 9:00PMAt its best, the series casts a spell over you. Your empire rises from nothing, surrounded by enemies who are poised to trample it into the dust. Each decision on the strategic level is a gamble on the immediate future, where “one more turn” isn’t just a stepping-stone to a new upgrade, but a perilous step onto thin ice. Each time you take to the battlefield is another do-or-die moment, a possible Hastings or Austerlitz that can open the road to conquest or plunge you into a desperate fight for survival.But the Total War series has also been defined by massive, abrupt swings in quality.
While the series has been on a linear trajectory in terms of graphics, the quality of the games underlying those vivid battlefield vistas has varied wildly. Total War at its best is interactive Kurosawa and Kubrick.
At its worst, it’s a middle-school history textbook as told by Drunk History and filmed by the cast and crew of The Patriot.So before the series (temporarily) leaves history behind for the grimdark faux-history of Warhammer fantasy, let’s put into order the times that Total War was at its best and why sometimes its lows were so very low. We’ll save the worst for last, because if there’s one thing that every Total War fan loves, it’s an argument over which games were the biggest disappointments.Total War: Shogun 2Claim to Fame: Of all the Total Wars, it’s the Total-est.Hidden Flaw: Secretly conservative and unambitiousIf you could only play one Total War, if you could only have one for your desert island exile, it should be this one.
Shogun 2 is where all the series’ best ideas have been gathered into one game, and married to a gorgeous aesthetic inspired by its setting. And with its Fall of the Samurai expansion, Shogun 2 also turned into the best gunpowder-era Total War.All Total War games have had impressive graphics for their time, but Shogun 2 remains beautiful even today. Its look owes more to films like Kurosawa’s Ran and Kagemusha than to reality, and gives each battle a vivid, dreamlike quality that’s unmatched by any other Total War.
Once the battle is joined and the last reserves have been committed, Shogun 2 is a game where you can just zoom to ground-level and watch individual sword duels play out amidst all the lovely carnage.The series’ return to Japan and its self-contained strategic context also solves a lot of other problems. The factions are all roughly balanced because they are from the same civilization and share the same level of development. The narrow and mountainous geography of Japan also gives the perennially hapless campaign AI a chance to succeed.No other Total War game does a better job combining the fantasy, the history, and the game design. This is the series at its very best, its arrival at a goal it started chasing with Shogun and Rome.Total War: AttilaClaim to Fame: Tries (and succeeds!) new ideasHidden Weakness: It’s about as balanced as CaligulaAfter Rome 2, it was hard to be optimistic about the future of Total War. Shogun 2 succeeded because it took a couple good ideas from Napoleon Total War and ignored just about everything else the series had tried since Rome. Was the future of Total War just going to be repackaged hits?Attila takes a look at that trend and veers off in a new direction.
It changes the basic rules of the Total War series in order to do justice to the death of the Roman world. Cities burn, regions are devastated, and an endless onslaught of nomadic tribes attempt to burrow their way into the Roman empire and carve out a place in the sun. Meanwhile, Roman generals turn against successive emperors, and the Huns hit like a tsunami.Attila might be the most inventive and exciting design Total War has ever had, particularly at the strategic level.
For once, dynastic politics don’t feel like a waste of time, and the different types of factions give the game a real “clash-of-civilizations” feel. And unlike the original Barbarian Invasion expansion for Rome, Attila gives the non-Romans their historical due so they aren’t just interchangeable hordes descending on the fading light of civilization.That said, there’s no other Total War game where you can feel the darkness drawing-in the way it does in Attila. It lends a real sense of gravity to those battles. Lose a battle in earlier Total War games, and you suffered a setback.
In Attila, a lost battle likely means that a city and its inhabitants are about to disappear. No pressure.Medieval: Total WarClaim to Fame: Perfects the early Total War designHidden Weakness: There’s not all that much to that designIn its second outing, the Total War series attained near-perfection. I’m still not sure a more balanced Total War game has ever materialized. The Risk-style map is easy for the AI to manage, and the different starting positions of each kingdom and empire allows for some true AI superpowers to form and challenge players late in the game.To this day, I have an almost Pavlovian distaste for all things Byzantine because of an especially painful game in which they slowly, inexorably rolled my English empire back from Poland and Egypt all the way to the Channel. Yet those bitter memories are tempered by all the apocalyptic battles we fought along the way as my increasingly beleaguered armies fought a doomed holding action across Europe against the tide of imperial-purple death.The other thing Medieval did brilliantly was portray a world completely torn to pieces by religious strife. Jihads and Crusades marched back and forth across the Mediterranean, each a terrible force in the right hands but driven by a ceaseless need for conquest that almost invariably led them to disaster.
The logic that governs other military campaigns (most importantly, knowing when to stop) doesn’t work with militant religious expeditions. So huge armies of zealots march to their death repeatedly over the course of this game, throwing the game into chaos.The role of the Pope in Medieval: Total War also deserves special mention as one of the most enjoyably infuriating villains of any strategy game. Just when things are starting to go well for a Catholic ruler, the Pope can always be trusted to screw things up for the next ten years, which makes Medieval a pretty good argument for the Peace of Westphalia.Medieval is a triumph of simplicity, and it took a decade for Total War to come close to matching it.Napoleon: Total WarClaim to Fame: The greatest hits of the horse-and-musket eraHidden Weakness: Has very little to do with actual Napoleonic warfare.On the heels of the disappointing Empire, Napoleon did two things to right the listing Total War ship. First, it got specific about its era. Rather than being a vague pastiche of 18th century warfare, it focused on the armies of the Napoleonic wars and the career of the man who gave the era its name. That makes for a better and more manageable strategy game than Empire but, it also means something far more important: extravagantly detailed military uniforms!Napoleon still doesn’t completely come to grips with warfare in the horse-and-musket era.
When the campaign begins, none of the foremost powers of Europe have figured out that you can have two and even three ranks of soldiers firing simultaneously if the guys in front take a knee. It takes years of research for someone to have this idea, apparently. Grenadiers also throw grenades at close range, which is Total War at its most endearingly literal.But it doesn’t matter because Napoleon is such a beautiful, wistful game.
The lighting is more dramatic than in Empire, giving all the action the look of the great oil-paintings that memorialize many of the pivotal moments of the Napoleonic Wars. Cisco csd report. Smoke billows and hangs over lines of blue-coated French soldiers, soldiers march into battle to the sound of fife and drum, and waves of cavalry dash themselves against dense squares of infantry.After the unfocused Empire, Napoleon gave people what they wanted: huge, bloody battles between fabulously-dressed European armies and the chance to play through one of the most astonishing military careers in history. With its Peninsular War DLC, Napoleon also helped establish a trend of odd, experimental expansion campaigns that would eventually help the series to break new ground with games like Attila.Continue reading about the on page two.Shogun: Total WarClaim to Fame: Laid the groundwork for everything to comeHidden Weakness: Not a lot built on those foundations hereIt’s appropriate that Shogun lands in the middle of this series.
It’s the founder of a great strategy game empire, and I have an affection for it that goes far, far beyond the game itself. What Shogun did was almost unimaginable at the time it came out.
It let you control an entire strategic campaign, from any side, but also take command of epic real-time battles? It was a dream made real.Shogun is also a beautiful, elegant game in a way that few of its descendants have managed to replicate. The hand-drawn map with its miniature figurines representing armies and agents deployed in the field, the throne room from which you conducted your diplomatic affairs, the traditional music that played during battles Shogun does everything possible to make you feel like you’d been transported to another place and time. On the battlefield, where each province has its own unique map, armies wage war over a mythic topography of Japan, where armies fired arrows from sheer mountain slopes and cavalry rolled like thunder down through deep valleys.It has its flaws and strange touches like little movies showing ninjas dying tragicomic deaths while on missions, or geisha murdering your rivals with the same delicate fastidiousness with which a cat attends its litterbox. The strategic layer itself is very thin, and the near-identical factions were interchangeable. But those issues are nothing compared to how new and amazing this inaugural Total War was.That Shogun rates so low on this list is a testament to the ways in which the Total War series grew beyond its origins.Rome: Total WarClaim to Fame: The first “modern” Total WarHidden Weakness: How much time do you have?Wait, what the hell is Rome: Total War doing down here? It’s the game that made the Total War series a blockbuster franchise, so how is it one of the low-points of the series?Simple: Rome is the snake in the Total War garden.
Rome 2 Vs Attila 2018
It was seductive and promising, but it also introduced a raft of new ideas and complications that were either poorly-conceived or poorly executed. New Total War games came and went, but the rot behind the edifice remained.Yet there was undeniable greatness here. The sprite-based armies of the first two games were replaced by unbelievably detailed and lifelike armies of individual 3D models that brought history to life as never before. Watching legionaries go leaping over the ramparts of a Greek citadel and into hand-to-hand combat with dense rows of archers, or seeing lines of infantry and cavalry marching across a European plane towards the last army of a barbarian king gave me chills. The Roman endgame, with its sudden plunge into civil war between the Roman faction, may also be the best finale that any Total War campaign has ever managed.But Rome is also the game where the series developed AI problems that it would consequently prove unable to solve despite repeated efforts. While the gorgeous 3D battle maps were a revelation, the 3D strategic map proved to be a millstone around the neck almost every subsequent Total War game.
The AI factions couldn’t use it effectively, nor could they build the kind of advanced empires needed to support high-level units. The strategy half of the Total War equation was practically lost.Rome was impressive for its time, but it left a legacy of mediocrity.
Rome was a huge success in part because it was so gorgeous and atmospheric that nobody noticed the game didn’t work.Medieval 2: Total WarClaim to Fame: Medieval again but like Rome this timeHidden Weakness: Medieval again but like Rome this timeThis is a tough game to rank because it shares almost all of its flaws with Rome: Total War but without the novelty and freshness that Rome could boast. On the other hand, it does work ever so slightly better than Rome.That’s partly down to the setting.
Rome tells its story from a position of Roman supremacy. The Romans can keep upgrading cities and units until nobody can stop them.
The barbarian factions, on the other hand, are operating with a huge series of handicaps, so a lot of the wars are lopsided. Medieval assumes rough parity between the various medieval kingdoms and their armies, and so at least the fighting tends to be good. Toss in some early pike-and-shot warfare in the late stages of the game, and Medieval features a pretty good tactical game by the end.Still, it’s all stuff that the series had covered in its recent past, but tied to the terrible design for Rome.
While it may be a better game than Rome, it’s not memorable like Rome. Rome is a tragic hero, fatally flawed and hugely ambitious. Medieval 2 is Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.Empire: Total WarClaim to Fame: Total War attempts grand strategyHidden Weakness: It failsThis may be the strangest Total War ever made. On the one hand, it’s wildly ambitious. The action takes place across the Americas, India, Europe, and the sea lanes in between. There is technological progress as the Enlightenment paves the way for Industrial Revolution.
It’s the first Total War to really try and represent historical complexity, to wrestle with the double-edged swords of progress and imperialism. No, the campaign AI never really got a grasp on the game or the multi-region world map, rendering a lot of this new complexity dead-on-arrival, but Empire gets credit for trying something new.On the other hand, there may not be another Total War that gives less of a damn about the era it depicts.
Regimental uniforms? Empire has never heard of them, but instead imagines 17th century warfare to be something conducted by a bunch of guys wearing identical wool coats dyed different colors. They carry muskets and rifles, but aren’t too clear on their purpose, since the AI just charges with everything it has the moment it spots the enemy. Sailing ships? Empire thinks they, and the wind that powers them, are too complicated, so it reimagines the Age of Sail as a more sluggish version of Sid Meier’s Pirates. A community theater Gilbert and Sullivan revival shows more care and concern for historical detail than Empire.
The jury is still out on which is more fun, however.And finallyRome 2: Total WarClaim to Fame: Remember how much you liked Rome?!Hidden Weakness: Yes, we do.Credit where it is due: the Emperor’s Edition made Rome 2 a lot better than it was at launch. On the other hand, when you’ve hit rock-bottom, up is the only direction you can go.Rome 2 may no longer be the worst Total War game ever made. It works better than Empire does these days. But it remains uninspired, full of systems that don’t really work well together and held hostage by a sprawling map that’s full of empty space and endless delays.
Want to sail a fleet from the Adriatic coast of Italy to the tip of Sicily? That will be three turns, please. Want to make like Caesar and invade Gallia? Hope your legion brought their walking shoes, because that’s all they are going to be doing for a while.Rome 2 somehow dumps everything that made Rome memorable while also losing the refinement that made Shogun 2 the pinnacle of the series. Dynastic politics remain a feature, but without any engaging systems to help manage them. The Roman Civil War strikes like a bolt from the blue, devoid of any feeling that old allies and friends are somehow turning against one another. Even the battles themselves feel like cartoon versions of history, as flaming arrows turn into 2nd century B.C.
Cluster bombs, and the Rome 2 version of Egypt appears to be on loan from Age of Mythology.Rome and Empire may have been flawed, but those flaws stemmed from ambition that went beyond “old game, new engine”. Rome 2 aims low and still falls short. If anything can be said for it, it is that Rome 2 is the game that seemed to shake the series from its torpor, leading to the beautiful, series-salvaging chaos of Attila. Ironically, then, the weakest Total War in the series’ history may be the most important one since the first Shogun.
Contents.Prelude By 450, Roman authority over had been restored in much of the province, although control over all of the provinces beyond was continuing to diminish. Was only nominally part of the empire, and tribes occupying Roman territory had been forcibly settled and bound by treaty as under their own leaders. Northern Gaul between the north of and the had unofficially been abandoned to the. The on the were growing restive, but still holding to their treaty. The in were more submissive, but likewise awaiting an opening for revolt.
The on the Loire and in Valentinois were more loyal, having served the Romans since the defeat of Jovinus in 411 and the siege of Bazas in 414. The parts of Gaul still securely in Roman control were the Mediterranean coastline; a region including Aurelianum (present-day ) along the and the as far north as and; the middle and upper to; and downstream along the.The historian states that Attila was enticed by the king to wage war on the Visigoths.
At the same time, Genseric would attempt to sow strife between the Visigoths and the Western Roman Empire. However, Jordanes' account of Gothic history is notoriously biased and unreliable, and much of it is omitted or garbled. Other contemporary writers offer different motivations:, the sister of the emperor, had been betrothed to the former consul Herculanus the year before. In 450, she sent the eunuch Hyacinthus to the Hunnic king asking for Attila's help in escaping her confinement, with her ring as proof of the letter's legitimacy. Allegedly Attila interpreted it as offering her hand in marriage, and he had claimed half of the empire as a dowry. He demanded Honoria to be delivered along with the dowry. Valentinian rejected these demands, and Attila used it as an excuse to launch a destructive campaign through Gaul.
Hughes suggests that the reality of this interpretation should be that Honoria was using Attila's status as honorary for political leverage.Another possible explanation is that in 449, the King of the Franks, died. Aetius had adopted the younger son of Chlodio to secure the Rhine Frontier, and the elder son had fled to the court of Attila. It is thought that was a vassal of Attila, and the founders of the Merovingian dynasty, Childeric and, are the two claimants to the Frankish throne.
In the somewhat garbled story of the Chronicle of Fredegar, Childeric was expelled by the Franks and allegedly exiled for eight years to Thuringia, which was a Hunnic vassal at the time. Kim concludes that the character of Wiomad represents the Huns who helped Childeric fight the Romans and engineered his return from exile, stating that the main objective of Attila at Chalons was conquest of the Franks and establishment of vassal states on the Rhine.Attila crossed the Rhine early in 451 with his followers and a large number of allies, sacking Divodurum (now ) on April 7. Other cities attacked can be determined by the written to commemorate their bishops: was slaughtered before the altar of his church in; is alleged to have saved with his prayers, as is to have saved., bishop of, is also credited with saving his city by meeting Attila in person.
Many other cities also claim to have been attacked in these accounts, although archaeological evidence shows no destruction layer dating to the timeframe of the invasion. The most likely explanation for Attila's widespread devastation of Gaul is that Attila's main column crossed the Rhine at Worms or Mainz and then marched to Trier, Metz, Reims, and finally Orleans, while sending a small detachment north into Frankish territory to plunder the countryside. This explanation would support the literary evidence claiming North Gaul was attacked, and the archaeological evidence showing major population centers were not sacked.Attila's army had reached Aurelianum (modern Orleans, France) before June.
According to Jordanes, the king, whose realm included Aurelianum, had promised to open the city gates. This siege is confirmed by the account of the Vita S. Aniani and in the later account of, although Sangiban's name does not appear in their accounts. However, the inhabitants of Aurelianum shut their gates against the advancing invaders, and Attila began to besiege the city, while he waited for Sangiban to deliver on his promise. There are two different accounts of the siege of Aurelianum, and Hughes suggests that combining them provides a better understanding of what actually happened. After four days of heavy rain, Attila began his final assault on June 14, which was broken due to the approach of the Roman coalition.
Modern scholars tend to agree that the siege of Aurelianum was the high point of Attila's attack on the West, and the staunch Alan defence of the city was the real decisive factor in the war of 451. Contrary to Jordanes, the Alans were never planning to defect as they were the loyal backbone of the Roman defence in Gaul.
Course of the battleUpon learning of the invasion, the moved his army rapidly from Italy to Gaul. According to, he was leading a force consisting of 'few and sparse without one regular soldier.'
The insignificant number of Roman troops reported is due to the fact the majority of Aetius' army was stationed in Gaul. Aetius immediately attempted to convince, king of the, to join him.
Allegedly, Theodoric learned how few troops Aetius had with him and decided it was wiser to wait and oppose the Huns in his own lands, so Aetius then turned to the former Praetorian Prefect of Gaul, for help. According to tradition, Avitus was not only able to persuade Theodoric to join the Romans, but also a number of other wavering barbarian residents in Gaul. The coalition assembled at before moving to meet the Goths at, and the army was supplied by, who had been preparing for a Hunnic attack for a few years. The combined army then marched to Aurelianum , reaching that city on June 14.Aetius and his coalition pursued Attila from Orleans, who was leaving Gaul with the majority of his objectives completed. According to Jordanes, the night before the main battle, some of the allied with the Romans encountered a band of the loyal to Attila and engaged them in a skirmish.
Jordanes' recorded number of 15,000 dead on either side for this skirmish is not verifiable. Attila had set up a tactical delay along his route of retreat in order to keep Aetius from catching him before he arrived at a suitable battlefield location. The two forces at last met somewhere on the Catalaunian Fields circa June 20, a date first proposed by and since accepted by many, although some authors have proposed the first week of July or September 27.According to tradition, Attila had his examine the entrails of a sacrifice the morning of the day of the battle. They foretold that disaster would befall the Huns, but one of the enemy leaders would be killed. Attila delayed until the ninth hour (about 2:30 PM) so the impending sunset would help his troops to flee the battlefield in case of defeat. Hughes takes his own interpretation of this, noting that the divination may be an emphasis of Attila's barbarity and therefore possibly a fabrication. He states that the choice to begin the battle at the ninth hour was due to the fact both sides spent the whole day carefully deploying their coalition armies.According to Jordanes, the Catalaunian plain rose on one side by a sharp slope to a ridge; this geographical feature dominated the battlefield and became the center of the battle.
The Huns first seized the right side of the ridge, while the Romans seized the left, with the crest unoccupied between them. Jordanes explains that the Visigoths held the right side, the Romans the left, with of uncertain loyalty and his surrounded in the middle.
The Hunnic forces attempted to take the ridge, but were outstripped by the Romans under Aetius and the Goths under Thorismund.Jordanes goes on to state that Theodoric, whilst leading his own men against the enemy, was killed in the assault without his men noticing. He then states that Theodoric was either thrown from his horse and trampled to death by his advancing men, or slain by the spear of the Amaling Andag.
Since Jordanes served as the notary of Andag's son, even if this latter story is not true, this version was certainly a proud family tradition.Then Jordanes claims the Visigoths outstripped the speed of the Alans beside them and fell upon Attila's own Hunnic household unit. Attila was forced to seek refuge in his own camp, which he had fortified with wagons. The Romano-Gothic charge apparently swept past the Hunnic camp in pursuit; when night fell, son of king Theodoric, returning to friendly lines, mistakenly entered Attila's encampment. There he was wounded in the ensuing melee before his followers could rescue him. Darkness also separated Aetius from his own men.
As he feared that disaster had befallen them, he spent the rest of the night with his Gothic allies.On the following day, finding the battlefield was 'piled high with bodies and the Huns did not venture forth', the Goths and Romans met to decide their next move. Knowing that Attila was low on provisions and 'was hindered from approaching by a shower of arrows placed within the confines of the Roman camp', they started to besiege his camp. In this desperate situation, Attila remained unbowed and 'heaped up a funeral pyre of horse saddles, so that if the enemy should attack him, he was determined to cast himself into the flames, that none might have the joy of wounding him and that the lord of so many races might not fall into the hands of his foes'.While Attila was besieged in his camp, the Visigoths searched for their missing king and his son.
After a long search, they found Theodoric's corpse 'where the dead lay thickest' and bore him away with heroic songs in sight of the enemy. Upon learning of his father's death, Thorismund wanted to assault Attila's camp, but Aetius dissuaded him. According to Jordanes, Aetius feared that if the Huns were completely destroyed, the Visigoths would break off their allegiance to the Roman Empire and become an even graver threat. So Aetius convinced Thorismund to quickly return home and secure the throne for himself, before his brothers could. Otherwise, civil war would ensue among the Visigoths. Thorismund quickly returned to Tolosa (present-day ) and became king without any resistance. Gregory of Tours claims Aetius used the same reasoning to dismiss his Frankish allies, and collected the booty of the battlefield for himself.
Outcome The primary sources give little information as to the outcome of the battle, barring Jordanes. All emphasize the casualty count of the battle, and the battle became increasingly seen as a Gothic victory, beginning with Cassiodorus in the early 6th century.Hydatius states:'The Huns broke the peace and plundered the Gallic provinces. A great many cities were taken. On the Catalaunian Plains, not far from the city of Metz, which they had taken, the Huns were cut down in battle with the aid of God and defeated by general Aetius and King Theoderic, who had made a peace treaty with each other.
The darkness of night interrupted the fighting. King Theoderic was laid low there and died. Almost 300,000 men are said to have fallen in that battle.' - Hydatius, Chronicon, 150.Prosper, contemporary to the battle, states:'After killing his brother, Attila was strengthened by the resources of the deceased and forced many thousands of neighboring peoples into a war. This war, he announced as a guardian of Roman friendship, he would wage only against the Goths. But when he had crossed the Rhine and many Gallic cities had experienced his savage attacks, both our people and the Goths soon agreed to oppose with allied forces the fury of their proud enemies.
And Aetius had such great foresight that, when fighting men were hurriedly collected from everywhere, a not unequal force met the opposing multitude. Although the slaughter of all those who died there was incalculable – for neither side gave way – it appears that the Huns were defeated in this battle because those among them that survived lost their taste for fighting and turned back home.' – Prosper, Epitoma Chronicon, s.a. The battle raged five miles down from Troyes on the field called Maurica in Campania.' – Additamenta ad Chronicon Prosperi Hauniensis, s.a. At this time Attila king of the Huns invaded the Gauls.
Here trusting in lord Peter the apostle himself patrician Aetius proceeded against him, he would fight with the help of God.' – Continuatio Codex Ovetensis.'
Battle was made in the Gauls between Aetius and Attila king of the Huns with both peoples and massacre. Attila fled into the greater Gauls.' – Continuatio Codex Reichenaviensis.The Gallic Chronicles of 452 and 511 state:'Attila entered Gaul as if he had the right to ask for a wife that was owed to him. There, he inflicted and suffered defeat and then withdrew to his homeland.' – Chronica Gallica Anno 452, s.a.
Patrician Aetius with king Theodoric of the Goths fight against Attila king of the Huns at Tricasses on the Mauriac plain, where Theodoric was slain, by whom it is uncertain, and Laudaricus the relative of Attila: and the bodies were countless. – Chronica Gallica Anno 511, s.a. 451.The Paschale Chronicle, preserving a garbled and abbreviated passage of Priscus, states:While Theodosius and Valentinian, the Augusti, were emperors, Attila, from the race of the Gepid Huns, marched against Rome and Constantinople with a multitude of many tens of thousands. He notified Valentinian, the emperor of Rome, through a Gothic ambassador, 'Attila, my master and yours, orders you through me to make ready the palace for him.' He gave the same notice to Theodosius, the emperor in Constantinople, through a Gothic ambassador.
Aetius, the first man of senatorial rank in Rome, heard the excessive daring of Attila's desperate response and went off to Alaric in Gaul, who was an enemy of Rome because of Honorius. He urged him to join him in standing against Attila, since he had destroyed many Roman cities. They unexpectedly launched himself against him as he was bivouacked near the Danubios river, and cut down his many thousands. Alaric, wounded by a saggita in the engagement, died.Attila died similarly, carried off by a nasal hemorrhage while he slept at night with his Hunnic concubine. It was suspected that this girl killed him. The very wise Priscus the Thracian wrote about this war.' – Chronicon Paschale, p.
587.Jordanes reports the number of dead from this battle as 165,000, excluding the casualties of the Franco-Gepid skirmish previous to the main battle., a historian who lived at the time of Attila's invasion, reports the number of 300,000 dead. The garbled Chronicle of Fredegar states that in a prior battle on the Loire, 200,000 Goths and 150,000 Huns were slain. The figures offered are implausibly high, but the battle was noted as being exceptionally bloody by all of the primary sources.
It is ultimately Jordanes' writing that leads to the difference in opinions in modern interpretations of the battle's outcome.As a Roman victory In the traditional account, modern scholars take a very direct interpretation of Jordanes, although usually with various points of contention. Modern scholars tend to agree that the battle took place on a long ridge, not a plain with a hill to one side. Hughes argues that the Huns deployed in the center, with their vassals on the wings, because they were expecting a Roman infantry center, with cavalry wings. This way Attila could pin down the center with the disorganized Hunnic style of warfare, while the majority of his troops focused on breaking one or both of the enemy flanks. However, Hughes argues that the Romans were expecting this, which is why he placed the Alans in the center of the formation, who were skilled cavalrymen and had advanced knowledge of how to fight alongside the Roman style of warfare. Bachrach also notes that Jordanes' point of placing the Alans in the center due to disloyalty is biased on Jordanes' part.Jordanes' description of the battle, according to Hughes, takes place from the Roman perspective. Attila's forces arrived on the ridge first, on the far right side, before the Visigoths could take that position.
Then Aetius' Romans arrived on the left side of the ridge, and repulsed the Gepids as they came up. Finally the Alans and the Visigoths under Thorismund fought their way up and secured the center of the ridge, holding it against Attila.
However, Hughes differs from mainstream explanations in that he places Thorismund between the Alans and Visigothic main body, rather than on the Visigothic flank. MacDowall, for example, places Thorismund on the far right of the battlefield. The final phase of the battle is characterized by the Gothic attempt to take the right side of the ridge, in which Theodoric is slain, with the rest of his army unaware of his death. It is at this point that Thorismund located Attila's position in the Hunnic battle line, and attacked the Hunnic center, nearly slaying Attila himself and forcing the Hunnic center to retreat.
Both armies fell into confusion as darkness descended, and neither side knew the outcome of the battle until the following morning.After the battle, the allies decided what to do next, and resolved to place Attila under siege for a few days while they discussed the matter. Aetius allegedly persuaded both Thorismund and the Goths, and the Franks as well, to leave the battle and return home. Hughes argues that since the Franks were fighting a civil war in the Battle, and Thorismund had five brothers who could usurp his new-found position as king, that it is likely Aetius did advise them to do so. O'Flynn argues that Aetius persuaded the Visigoths to return home in order to eliminate a group of volatile allies, and argues that he let Attila escape because he would have been just as happy to make an alliance with the Huns as with the Visigoths. The majority of historians also share the view that at this point Attila's 'aura of invincibility' was broken, and that Aetius allowed the Huns to retreat in the hopes he could return to a status of partnership with them and draw on the Huns for future military support.
As a Roman defeat or indecisive It has been suggested by Hyun Jin Kim that the entire battle is a play on the, with the Romans being the on the left, the Alans the weak Athenian center, and the Goths the Athenian regulars on the right, with Theodoric as and Thorismund as. The return home by the Goths to secure Thorismund's throne is the same as the return to to protect it from sedition and the. However, Kim's views have received a mixed reception among scholars of the period, with one reviewer noting that much of the text amounts to 'a confused and confusing story, involving the rewriting of histories, genealogies and chronologies. Exacerbated by strange and clumsy conflations.' His view that Attila won the battle therefore should be taken with skepticism.However, other authors consider the battle to have been indecisive. This latter view is rather widely accepted, although the outcome remains in disagreement as a whole.Kim's suggestion of Jordanes paralleling Herodotus has been noted by prior scholarship. Franz Altheim drew a parallel between the Catalaunian Fields and Salamis, and thought that the battle narrative was completely fabricated.
John Wallace-Hadrill drew a parallel between Aetius and Themistocles regarding the alleged subterfuge after the battle in some primary source accounts. Other historians have noted its possible political statements on Jordanes' contemporary time, particularly regarding the Battle of Vouille and the Gothic Wars towards the end of Justinian's reign. Ultimately this has led mainstream scholarship to agree that Jordanes' description of the Battle of the Catalaunian fields is distorted, even if they do not agree with a pro-Hunnish interpretation of the outcome.Forces Both armies consisted of combatants from many peoples. Besides the Roman troops, the Alans, and the Visigoths, Jordanes lists Aetius' allies as including the, Liticiani, and Olibrones (whom he describes as 'once Roman soldiers and now the flower of the allied forces'), as well as 'other Celtic or German tribes.' The Liticiani could be either or Romano-Britons, the latter of which are recorded by Gregory. Halsall argues that the Rhine and the old British field army composed the forces of the, and Heather suggests that the Visigoths may have been able to field about 25,000 men total. Drinkwater adds that a faction of Alamanni may have participated in the battle, possibly on both sides like the Franks and Burgundians.
The Olibrones remain unknown, although it has been suggested these were Germanic Limitanei garrisons.A sense of the size of the actual Roman army may be found in the study of the. This document is a list of officials and military units that was last updated in the first decades of the 5th century. The Notitia Dignitatum lists 58 various regular units, and 33 serving either in the Gallic provinces or on the frontiers nearby; the total of these units, based on Jones' analysis, is 34,000 for the regular units and 11,500 for the limitanei, or just under 46,000 all told.
However, this figure is an estimate for the years 395–425 and one that constantly changes with new research. The loss of Africa resulted in the loss of funding for 40,000 infantry and 20,000 cavalry in the Roman army, in addition to previous losses, which was enough to permanently cripple Roman military capacity after 439 AD. According to Herwig Wolfram, with an annual revenue of 40,000 pounds of gold in 450 AD, the Western Empire would have had to spend almost two thirds of its income to maintain an army of 30,000 men. Hugh Elton gives the same figure, in 450 but estimates the cost of maintaining an army of 300,000 at 31,625 lbs.
Of gold or 7.6 solidi a year per soldier. He states that there were also other unquantifiable military costs such as defensive installations, equipment, logistical supplies, paper, animals, and other costs. The size of the army in 450 AD therefore must have been significantly reduced from its status in the late 420's.Jordanes' list for Attila's allies includes the under their king, as well as an army of various groups led by the brothers, (the father of the later Ostrogothic king ) and, scions of the. Sidonius offers a more extensive list of allies:, Gepids, Burgundians, Bellonoti, and Franks living along the. The Getica (or 'Gothic History'), our principal source for this battle, is the work of, who acknowledges that his work is based on ' own Gothic History, written between 526 and 533. However, the philologist argued that Jordanes' detailed description of the battle was copied from lost writings of the Greek historian.
It is available in an English translation by, The Gothic History of Jordanes (Cambridge: Speculum Historiale, 1966, a reprint of the 1915 second edition); all quotations of Jordanes are taken from this edition, which is in the public domain. Connor Whately notes that Jordanes' entire work may in fact be a political statement on the campaigns of Belisarius and the policies of Justinian, who also considers the Battle of Chalons to be the climax of the piece.
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Barnish thinks it was used to portray Theodoric as the new Aetius and Clovis as the new Attila. Hyun Jin Kim suggests the account is an allusion to the Battle of Marathon and severely distorted to fit Herodotus' narrative format.
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Therefore, any claims by Jordanes must be rigorously scrutinised, and the possibility that his entire account may be fabricated cannot be excluded. A modern narrative based these sources can be found in Thompson, Edward Arthur (1996) 1948 The Huns. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. This is a posthumous revision by Peter Heather of Thompson's A History of Attila and the Huns, originally published in 1948.
The various hagiographies are summarized in Hodgkin, Thomas (1967) 1880–1889 Italy and Her Invaders, Vol. II, New York: Russell & Russell. 128ff.References.