Attila
Attila names 2 different subjects across the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf. Each is set out below.
Attila THE HUN and Western emperors
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
THE HUN and Western emperors. The Vandals, the Ostrogoths, the Gepidæ, and a part of the Franks united under his banners, and he speedily formed a pretext for leading them against the Empire of the East. He laid waste all the countries from the Black to the Adriatic Sea, and in three encounters defeated the Emperor Theodosius, but could not take Constantinople. Thrace, Macedonia, and Greece all submitted to the invader, who destroyed 70 flourishing cities; and Theodosius was obliged to purchase a peace, Turning to the W., the "scourge of God," as the universal terror termed him, crossed with an immense army the Rhine, the Moselle, and the Seine, went to the Loire, and laid siege to Orleans. The inhabitants of this city repelled the first attack, and the united forces of the Romans under Aetius, and of the Visigoths under their King Theodoric, compelled Attila to raise the siege. He retreated to Champagne, and waited for the enemy in the plains of Chalons. When the victory of Attila seemed assured the Gothic prince, Thorismond, the son of Theodoric, poured down from the neighboring height upon the Huns, who were defeated with great slaughter. In the following year Attila tried to seize upon Italy, and demanded Honoria, the sister of Valentinian III., in marriage, with half the kingdom as a dowry. When General. this demand was refused he conquered and destroyed Aquileia, Padua, Vicenza, Verona, and Bergamo, laid waste the plains of Lombardy, and was marching on Rome when Pope Leo I. went with the Roman ambassadors to his camp and succeeded in obtaining a peace. Attila went back to Hungary, and died on the night of his marriage with Hilda or Ildico (453), either from the bursting of a blood vessel or by her hand.
Attila the famous leader of the Huns
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
the famous leader of the Huns, was the son of Mundzuk, succeeding ( (with his brother Bleda) their uncle Rhuas. Their rule extended over a great part of northern Asia and Europe, and they threatened the Eastern Empire, and twice compelled the weak Theodosius II. to purchase an inglorious peace. Attila caused his brother Bleda to be murdered (444), and extended his dominion over all the peoples of Germany and exacted tribute from the Eastern
What Has Changed in the Last Century
The bare narrative Collier's gave in 1921 still stands: the sons of Mundzuk, the murder of Bleda, the tribute wrung from Theodosius II, the check at the Catalaunian Plains in 451, the Italian campaign of 452 and death in 453 are all still the accepted outline, resting on the same handful of sources (chiefly the eyewitness fragments of Priscus and the later account of Jordanes). What has shifted is interpretation. Historians now doubt that Pope Leo I's embassy is what turned Attila back from Rome, crediting famine and epidemic in Italy and an Eastern Roman attack on his rear; and the claim that Hun rule ran over "a great part of northern Asia" has given way to a picture of a shorter-lived empire centred on the Hungarian plain, with the Huns' link to the Xiongnu of Chinese records still unsettled. The old Hungarian tradition of Attila as a national ancestor has also faded, since the Magyars reached the Danube only around 895.
Written for this edition, 2026.