Macdowall - Catalaunian Fields AD 451

This electronic edition published in 2015 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

First published in Great Britain in 2015 by Osprey Publishing,

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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN: 978-1-4728-0743-4

PDF e-book ISBN: 978-1-4728-0744-1

e-Pub ISBN: 978-1-4728-0745-8

Editorial by Ilios Publishing Ltd, Oxford, UK (www.iliospublishing.com)

Maps by Bounford.com

3D birds-eye views by The Black Spot

Battlescene illustrations by Peter Dennis

THE WOODLAND TRUST

Osprey Publishing are supporting the Woodland Trust, the UKs leading woodland conservation charity, by funding the dedication of trees.

DEDICATION

To Caroline, who tramped around the battlefield with me and saw things that I missed.

ARTISTS NOTE

Readers may care to note that the original paintings from which the colour plates in this book were prepared are available for private sale. The Publishers retain all reproduction copyright whatsoever. All enquiries should be addressed to:

Peter Dennis, Fieldhead, The Park, Mansfield, Notts, NG18 2AT, UK Email:
The Publishers regret that they can enter into no correspondence upon this matter.

AUTHORS NOTE

In order to make things easy to follow I have used modern place names rather than ancient ones. Therefore it is Troyes rather than Augustobona Tricassium and Orlans instead of Aurelianum or Cenabum. I make an exception where the ancient name is well known, such as Constantinople rather than modern Istanbul.

There are many spelling variations of barbarian names, no doubt because Roman writers used an approximation of what they thought they had heard which have since been anglicised over the years. Therefore the King of the Visigoths is variously known as Theodoric, Theodorid, Theodorich, or Thiudareiks. As with place names I have tried to use those in most common modern usage.

Unless specified otherwise, all photographs are from the authors collection.

CONTENTS

ORIGINS OF THE CAMPAIGN

INTRODUCTION

On 20 June AD 451 a formidable invasion of Huns and Germans was defeated by an alliance of Romans, Alans, Goths and other Germans in a battle that took place on the plains of Champagne in France, known then as the Catalaunian Fields. The battle (more commonly and erroneously known as the Battle of Chlons) arguably changed the course of European history. It was included in Sir Edward Creasys The Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World (1851) and, as Sir Edward Gibbon so eloquently put it, All the nations from the Volga to the Atlantic took part.

For such an important battle, very little is known about it for certain. There is virtually no hard archaeological evidence and contemporary literary sources are patchy. The main primary description of the battle comes from Jordanes who, as a Gothic propagandist, glorified the Gothic actions in the battle (on both sides) and virtually ignored the parts played by other nationalities. The contemporary Greek historian Priscus actually met Attila but only fragments of his histories survive. These along with brief passages from the 5th-century Gallo-Roman aristocrat Sidonius Apollinaris, supplemented by the lives of early Christian saints, Gregory of Tours and various chroniclers are all we have to go on. Therefore, any reconstruction of the battle is a difficult task and must at times fall back on conjecture.