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.

[7] The parts of Gaul still securely in Roman control were the Mediterranean coastline; a region including Aurelianum (present-day Orléans) along the Seine and the Loire as far north as Soissons and Arras; the middle and upper Rhine to Cologne; and downstream along the Rhône.

[10][Note 2] Modern scholars now believe that this explanation was Jordanes projecting contemporary events and political opinions onto Attila's time, and it was likely not original to Priscus.

[14] Other contemporary writers offer different motivations: Justa Grata Honoria, the sister of the emperor Valentinian III, had been betrothed to the former consul Bassus Herculanus the year before.

[18] Schultheis notes, however, that sacking of Metz on April 7 may have been a literary trope used by Hydatius and Gregory of Tours to emphasize Attila's pagan nature to a Christian audience and may not be reliable.

The most likely explanation for Attila's widespread devastation of Gaul is that Attila's main column followed the Roman roads and crossed the Rhine at Argentoratum (Strasbourg) before marching to Borbetomagus (Worms), Mogontiacum (Mainz), Augusta Treverorum (Trier), Divodurum (Metz), Durocotorum (Reims), and finally Aurelianum (Orléans), while sending a small detachment north into Frankish territory to plunder the countryside.

[22] Modern scholars tend to 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.

[40] Sidonius Apollinaris offers a more extensive list of allies: Rugians, Gepids, Geloni, Burgundians, Sciri, Bellonoti, Neuri, Bastarnae, Thuringians, Bructeri, and Franks living along the River Neckar.

Thompson expresses his suspicions that some of these names are drawn from literary traditions rather than from the event, The Bastarnae, Bructeri, Geloni and Neuri had disappeared hundreds of years before the time of the Huns, while the Bellonoti had never existed at all: presumably the learned poet was thinking of the Balloniti, a people invented by Valerius Flaccus nearly four centuries earlier.On the other hand, Thompson believes that the presence of Burgundians on the Hunnic side is credible, noting that a group is documented remaining east of the Rhine; he believes that the other peoples Sidonius mentions (the Rugians, Sciri, and Thuringians) were participants in this battle.

[44] Lindner argues that by crossing the Carpathians to the area of modern Hungary the Huns had forfeited their best logistic base and grazing grounds, and that the Great Hungarian Plain could only support 15,000 mounted nomads.

[46] Kim notes that the Huns continued use of the Xiongnu decimal system, meaning their army was probably organized into divisions of 10, 100, 1000, and 10,000, but no real estimates of Hunnic military capacity can be determined.

The Hunnish king Octar was defeated by a force of 3,000 Neckar Burgundians who would later come under Hun subjugation, and Heather estimates that the Gepids and the Amali Goths could have each fielded a maximum of 15,000 men at the Battle of Nedao in 454.

[46] The Chronicon Paschale, which preserves an extremely abbreviated and garbled fragment of Priscus' account of the campaign, states that Attila's forces numbered in the tens of thousands.

[58] This draws on the earlier work of M. Girard, who was able to identify Maurica as the "les Maures" ridge of Montgueux, based on the second Additamenta Altera to Prosper's Epitoma Chronicon, which states it took place five Roman miles from Tecis or Tricasses, the modern Troyes.

"[62] The insignificant number of Roman troops reported is probably due to the fact the majority of Aetius' army was stationed in Gaul, combined with Sidonius' need to embellish the account in favor of Avitus.

[64] The coalition assembled at Arelate (Arles) before moving to meet the Goths at Tolosa (Toulouse), and the army was supplied by Tonantius Ferreolus, who had been preparing for a Hunnic attack for a few years.

He states that the choice to begin the battle at the ninth hour was due to the fact that both sides spent the entire day carefully deploying their coalition armies.

The Romano-Gothic charge apparently swept past the Hunnic camp in pursuit; when night fell, Thorismund, son of king Theodoric, returning to friendly lines, mistakenly entered Attila's encampment.

In this desperate situation, Attila remained unbowed and "heaped up a funeral pyre of horse saddles, so that if the enemy should attack him, he was determined to cast himself into the flames, that none might have the joy of wounding him and that the lord of so many races might not fall into the hands of his foes".

On the Catalaunian Plains, not far from the city of Metz, which they had taken, the Huns were cut down in battle with the aid of God and defeated by general Aetius and King Theoderic, who had made a peace treaty with each other.

But when he had crossed the Rhine and many Gallic cities had experienced his savage attacks, both our people and the Goths soon agreed to oppose with allied forces the fury of their proud enemies.

Although the slaughter of all those who died there was incalculable – for neither side gave way – it appears that the Huns were defeated in this battle because those among them that survived lost their taste for fighting and turned back home.

[86]The Paschale Chronicle, preserving a garbled and abbreviated passage of Priscus, states:While Theodosius and Valentinian, the Augusti, were emperors, Attila, from the race of the Gepid Huns, marched against Rome and Constantinople with a multitude of many tens of thousands.

[101][102] Kim's suggestion of Jordanes borrowing Herodotus has been noted by prior scholarship: Franz Altheim drew a parallel between the Catalaunian Fields and Salamis, and thought that the battle narrative was completely fabricated.

He concludes that losses during the retreats were heavy and led to an indecisive outcome, which an analysis of the chronology of primary source accounts shows over time was embellished into a Gothic victory.

[112] This has been disputed recently by Meghan McEvoy, who argues that Valentinian III wanted to be an active emperor and simply needed to remove his manager, and that there was no real direct cause for Aetius' murder.

[117] The first individual historical survey of the battle was given by Edward Shepherd Creasy, who heralded it as a triumph of Christian Europe over the pagan savages of Asia, saving classical heritage and European culture.

Even though all parties to the protection of the Western Roman Empire had a common hatred of the Huns, it was still a remarkable achievement on Aetius' part to have drawn them into an effective military relationship.

[123] Kim argues that the battle significantly weakened the military capacity of the Alans, Visigoths, and the Romans, which allowed for Frankish and Burgundian hegemony in North Gaul.

Without depreciating the achievement of Aetius and Theoderic we must recognise that at worst the danger they averted was of a totally different order from the issues which were at stake on the fields of Plataea and the Metaurus.