Osprey Trade Editions : Attila and the Huns

Of all the conquerors who swept out of Central Asia, two names stand out in European memory - Attila the Hun and Genghis Khan the Mongol. Both are remembered for massacres and devastation; yet whereas Genghis is also famous for the laws he imposed on half of Asia and for the trade which flourished under Mongol rule, Attila's notoriety seems unrelieved by positive achievements. Around AD 455 he won the leadership of a confederacy of tribes and from then on the Huns steadily grew from a barbarian nuisance into a deadly peril for the Romans. In 451, however, Attila's invasion of northern France ended in defeat, and two years later he died, leaving an empire divided between quarrelling sons which would eventually collapse almost without trace. Yet from this unpromising record arose legends which made Attila the Hun into one of the fiercest ogres of European history. But what was Attila's short-lived empire really like? What happened to the Huns afterwards, and what role did the nomads of Central Asia play in the centuries between Attila and Genghis Khan? Text by David Nicolle with illustrations by Angus McBride.