Garam Éva szerk.: Between East and West - History of the peoples living in hungarian lands (Guide to the Archaeological Exhibition of the Hungarian National Museum; Budapest, 2005)

HALL 7 - The early Migration period: the Huns and the Germanic peoples (c. 420-568 A.D.) (Ágnes B. Tóth)

86. Diadem covered with gold foil and set with semi-precious stones from Csorna. First half of the 5th century panic in the Carpathian Basin too: in addition to the raids conducted against the empire by the neighbouring Suebian, Alanic and Vandalic peoples, the fleeing Visigoths and Alans too overran the empire during their journey towards Italy and Gaul. The Suebians and the Visigoths eventually settled on the Iberian peninsula, while the Vandals and the Alans found a new homeland in northern Africa. The Huns appear as the devil incarnate in the works of contemporary historians and in European collective memory and oral tradition. In all fairness, however, the Huns left more than just a legacy of conquest and terror. As allies of both halves of the Roman Empire, Hunnic troops often warded off the attacks of other barbarian peoples (such as the Visigoths and the Burgundians) against the empire. Even though the Huns had extended their control to the Lower Danube region by the turn of the 4th-5th centuries, the centre of their empire still lay somewhere in the plainland north of the Pontic in the early 410s. Only in the mid-420s did they transfer their seat to the eastern half of the Carpathian Basin. About a decade later, they received the Pannonian provinces of Pannónia I and Valeria in exchange for the military aid given to the Roman government - the actual Hun period in the historical and archaeological sense thus lasted for three decades in the Great Hungarian Plain and for two decades in Transdanubia. The raids against the Balkanic provinces of the East Roman Empire in the 420s and 430s were led by King Ruga, while the two great military campaigns in 441^143 and 447^149 were conducted by his nephews, Bleda and Attila. Although the wars against the eastern half of the empire look their toll too, historical memory has preserved only the campaigns conducted against the West Roman Empire led by Attila, who had in the meantime become the supreme ruler of the Huns. In 451, Attila marched against Gaul, but after his defeat in the Battle of Catalaunum (or, more accurately, of Mauriacum), he withdrew his forces. The next year, the Huns and their allies invaded Italy and after storming Aquileia, they systematically sacked the towns on the Po plain. We shall never know what the Huns' next campaign would have been for Attila died unexpectedly in 453. His sons were unable to preserve his empire: the subdued peoples revolted and drove the remnants of the Huns from the Carpathian Basin after defeating them in a battle by the Nedao River in 455. The ruling elite of the Huns preserved their nomadic lifestyle, their battle tactics, their