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The Battle of the Catalaunian Plains (or Fields), also called the Battle of Châlons or the Battle of Maurica,〔Gibbon, ''Decline and Fall'', volume II, p.537〕 took place in AD 451 between a coalition led by the Roman general Flavius Aetius and the Visigothic king Theodoric I against the Huns and their allies commanded by their leader Attila. It was one of the last major military operations of the Western Roman Empire, although Germanic federates composed the majority of the allied Roman army.〔(Encyclopedia of European People )〕 The battle was strategically inconclusive: the Romans stopped the Huns' attempt to establish vassals in Roman Gaul, and installed Merovech as king of the Franks. However, the Huns successfully looted and pillaged much of Gaul and crippled the military capacity of the Romans and Visigoths. The Huns were later destroyed by a coalition of their Germanic vassals at the Battle of Nedao in 454. ==Prelude== By 450 AD Roman control of Gaul had been restored in much of the province, although control over all of the provinces beyond Italy was continuing to diminish. Armorica was only nominally part of the empire, and Germanic tribes occupying Roman territory had been forcibly settled and bound by treaty as Foederati under their own leaders. Northern Gaul between the Rhine north of Xanten and the Marne rivers (Germania Secunda) had unofficially been abandoned to the Salian Franks. The line of nominal Roman control ran from Cologne to Amiens and to the coast at Boulogne. The Visigoths on the River Garonne were growing restive. The Burgundians in Sapaudia〔Gallic Chronicle of 452 s.a. 443〕 were more submissive, but likewise awaiting an opening for revolt. The parts of Gaul still securely in Roman control were the Mediterranean coastline; a region including Aurelianum (present-day Orléans), the Seine and the Loire, as far north as Amiens; the middle and upper Rhine;〔Drinkwater, The Alamanni and Rome, 327-329〕 and downstream along the Rhône River. The historian Jordanes states that Attila was enticed by the Vandal king Gaiseric to wage war on the Visigoths. At the same time, Gaiseric would attempt to sow strife between the Visigoths and the Western Roman Empire (''Getica'' 36.184–6).〔The ''Getica'' (or "Gothic History"), our principal source for this battle, is the work of Jordanes, who acknowledges that his work is based on Cassiodorus' own ''Gothic History'', written between 526 and 533. However, the philologist Theodor Mommsen argued that Jordanes' detailed description of the battle was copied from lost writings of the Greek historian Priscus. It is available in an English translation by Charles Christopher Mierow, ''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.〕 However, Jordanes' account of Gothic history is notoriously biased and unreliable, and much of it is omitted or garbled.〔Walter Goffart, Narrators of Barbarian History, 62-68〕 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.〔Connor Whately, Jordanes, the Battle of the Catalaunian Fields, and Constantinople, 64-66〕 Therefore, any claims by Jordanes must be taken with great scrutiny. Other contemporary writers offer different motivations: Honoria, the sister of the emperor Valentinian III, 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.〔Priscus fr. 17, John of Antioch fr. 199〕 Allegedly Attila interpreted it as offering her hand in marriage, and he 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.〔A modern narrative based these sources can be found in E.A. Thompson, ''The Huns'' (Oxford: Blackwell, 1996), pp. 144–48. This is a posthumous revision by Peter Heather of Thompson's ''A History of Attila and the Huns'', originally published in 1948.〕 Hughes suggests otherwise, saying that the reality of this interpretation should be that Honoria was using Attila's status as honorary Magister Militum for political leverage.〔Ian Hughes, Aetius: Attila's Nemesis, 148-149〕 Another possible explanation is that in 449, the King of the Franks, Chlodio, died. Aetius had adopted the younger son of the Franks to secure the Rhine Frontier, and the elder son had fled to the court of Attila.〔Ian Hughes, Aetius: Attila's Nemesis pg. 151〕 Bona and more recently Kim take this theory a step further, reasoning that it was the real cause of the war, and the primary reason Attila attacked Gaul. Bona argues that Childeric was a vassal of Attila, and he identifies the founders of the Merovingian dynasty as the two claimants to the Frankish throne.〔Bona, Les Huns: le grand empire barbare d'Europe, 68〕 In the somewhat garbled story of the Chronicle of Fredregar, Childeric was expelled by the Franks and allegedly forced to live in exile in Thuringia for eight years, which was a Hunnic vassal at the time.〔Chronicle of Fredegar, 3.11〕 Kim argues that the character of Wiomad represents the Huns who helped Childeric fight the Romans and engineered his return from exile, and concludes that the main objective of Attila at Chalons was conquest of the Franks and establishment of vassal states on the Rhine.〔Hyun Jin Kim, The Huns, Rome, and the Birth of Europe, 79-82〕 Attila crossed the Rhine early in 451 with his followers and a large number of allies, sacking Divodurum (Metz) on April 7. Other cities attacked can be determined by the hagiographic ''vitae'' written to commemorate their bishops: Nicasius was slaughtered before the altar of his church in Rheims; Saint Servatius is alleged to have saved Tongeren with his prayers, as Genevieve is to have saved Paris.〔The ''vitae'' are summarized in .〕 Lupus, bishop of Troyes, is also credited with saving his city by meeting Attila in person.〔.〕 According to Hughes, there are two possible explanations for Attila's widespread devastation of Gaul: the first 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. The second is that Attila divided his army into two or three columns and crossed at different points, but he argues this is unlikely since coordination would be difficult if any of the columns were threatened and that too many unknowns were involved with the Roman opposition.〔Hughes, Aetius: Attila's Nemesis, 157-159〕 Attila's army had reached Aurelianum (modern Orleans, France) before June. According to Jordanes, the Alan king Sangiban, whose Foederati realm included Aurelianum, had promised to open the city gates.〔Jordanes, ''Getica'' 36.194f.〕 This siege is confirmed by the account of the ''Vita S. Aniani'' and in the later account of Gregory of Tours,〔''Historia Francorum'' 2.7.〕 although Sangiban's name does not appear in their accounts. However, the inhabitants of Aurelianum shut their gates against the advancing invaders. Attila began to besiege the city, while he waited for Sangiban to deliver on his promise. Both Hughes and Kim 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. Kim also argues that the Alans were never planning to defect as they were the loyal backbone of the Roman defence in Gaul.〔Hughes, ''Aetius: Attila's Nemesis'', 161; Bernard S. Bachrach, "A History of the Alans in the West", 65-66, Kim, ''The Huns, Rome, and the Birth of Europe'', 77.〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Battle of the Catalaunian Plains」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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