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A Disturbing Collection of History’s Most Brutal Rulers

Khalid Elhassan April 30, 2022 37 min

12. The Brutal Hun

Brutal Rulers - Attila the Hun — Attila the Hun. Encyclopedia Britannica

Attila the Hun (406 – 453), a brutal nomadic warlord, ruled a multi-tribal empire dominated by the Huns, that spanned Eastern and Central Europe. During his reign, 434 – 453, he earned the moniker “The Scourge of God”, as he terrified the civilized world. He attacked Persia, terrorized the Eastern and Western Roman Empires, plundered the Balkans, and extorted vast sums of gold from Constantinople. He next invaded Gaul and was beaten back, recoiled, then struck into Italy the following year, before he finally drank himself to death on his wedding night.

Attila was born in the Hungarian Steppe in 406 into the Hun royal family, and inherited the crown jointly with his brother Bleda in 434. The brothers were challenged early on but crushed the opposition. When their surviving enemies fled to the Roman Empire, the brothers invaded. They forced the Romans to surrender the fugitives, and agree to an annual tribute of 230 kilograms of gold. Attila and Bleda then turned their attention to the Persian Empire, which they invaded and plundered for years before they were beaten. So then they returned their attention to Europe.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.