The other day I was talking to one of my work colleagues about curious fact that some places in Europe (like Greece) have nothing in common with languages around them, while Hungary for example has mysterious similarity with the language spoken in far away Finland.
By some chain of association, I have also mention fierce warriors who swept over the whole continental Europe trough what is today Hungary and in fact, one of the oldest documents mentioning my hometown Zagreb is written at the time when these warriors invaded Kingdom of Hungary so King Bela IV gave Zagreb a tax free certificate as a gratitude for giving him protection. Which inspired me to start reading this history book about Attila The Hun also known as "Scourge of God".
To my biggest embarrassment, I realised immediately that apparently I have mixed up not just the names and people, but centuries as well. Bela IV did run for his life during invasion but from Tatars and that was 13th century which I knew - the big bad guy at the time was Genghis Khan who ruled Mongolian Empire. Attila The Hun happened few teeny weeny centuries before that and he became byword for cruelty in the Roman times - there was no Hungary yet and although it was the same geographical location, Hungarians arrived some 400 years later. However, Hungarians still remember Attila as their proud and fierce ancestor and I have seen the art describing him in galleries of Budapest. Now this is quite interesting because the guy was a terror for the rest of the world but Hungarians somehow remember him as a brave hero, so there you go, it all depends on perspective.
What I have learnt so far;
Attila The Hun has absolutely nothing to do with current peoples of Hungary - he belonged to a nomadic warrior tribe of Xiongnu who were northern neighbours of China and they made their way to the walls of Roman Empire that was already split in two. Since Romans wrote down their histories, naturally they considered everybody else barbarian so the memoirs, letters and documents usually describe Huns and their charismatic leader as bogeymen - in fact, it was a simple case of two completely opposite cultures that saw the world differently and probably despised each other. The Huns galloped trough Europe, pillaging, burning and basically intimidating everybody into paying them "protection racket" just as 20th century gangsters did much later - Balkans were criss-crossed, thoroughly destroyed and burned to the ground, while big cities like Constantinople paid for "protection". It seems that at first both Attila and his brother Bleda (both princes, nephews of previous king) shared the rule, but at certain point Bleda disappears from the scene and author John Man strongly suggest fratricide - it would not be unusual or unprecedented but we hardly have any concrete proofs about anything (except Roman gossip) so at this point I started to suspect that authors imagination started to run away with him. We might be able to pinpoint a certain dates, to describe the Hun warpath and which directions they went trough but as for their intentions, logic's and reasons it seems to me too far fetched to even attempt to explain them - the book is interesting as a history lesson but author kind of loses me every time he starts to romanticise the King of Huns who used to impale his still-living victims on poles and let them die slow and agonising death as example to others - I understand Huns had their own ways, traditions and perspectives, they probably cherished bravery, horsemanship and such but to our modern day sensitivities cruelty is still a cruelty no matter how exciting or romantic it might look to John Man. A perfect example of the place where my opinion strongly divide from author's is this: "I think he had a sudden smile that could melt rocks. To be in his presence would have been to feel charisma in its original, theological sense, the power that flows as a divine gift and turns an ordinary man into a leader." This is in a strong contrast to a memoir of Roman scholar Jerome who wrote "they (The Huns) took pity neither upon religion, nor rank nor age nor wailing childhood. Those who had just begun to live were compelled to die and, in ignorance of their plight, would smile amid the drawn swords of the enemy" which is truly horrible picture of attacking army slaughtering kids who giggle not understanding what is going on around them - I don't see anything brave or heroic here, it sounds very much like ancient gangsters destroying everything on their path and basically stealing everything their culture was not able to produce.
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Just finished reading and it was quite enlightening, because author clearly loves the subject and knows his history.
I guess it is inevitable that a writer is fascinated with the subject of his biography so it kind of makes sense that John Man comes across as starry eyed when looking upon Attila The Hun but he is also surprisingly realistic later when he discusses what happened trough the centuries and how it came that for different places and peoples, Attila and "The Hun" became synonyms for different things. Basically one myth grows from another until the whole story gets a completely different focus and real human Attila is completely covered with all kinds of romantic, religious and nationalistic ornamentation's - somewhere along the way "The Hun" became a synonym for Germans which makes absolutely no geographic sense as real Huns came to Hungary via Asia and current Hungarians boast descent from Attila who lived in the same territory some four centuries before their arrival. The last two chapters - dealing with Attila's unexpected death (explained as God's punishment by Christians) and the whole aftermath of his legend were the most interesting. I might even look out for some more books by this author because his enthusiasm is quite contagious.
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