Bangkok--12 Dec--Image Impact
Program Title: The Huns
Channel: HISTORY on TrueVisions (A23) and (D48)
Telecast date: Sunday, December 14, 2008
Telecast Time: 8.00 p.m. (Thai)
The Huns were a mysterious people who fell upon the European continent like the vengeance of God. Some say the Chinese built the Great Wall to keep them out, and they swept in from the east with a savagery that was almost unparalleled in warfare.
In the fifth century, the Huns strike the Roman Empire at its weakest, when it is divided and in decay. The Roman try to deal with them diplomatically, paying trivute, exchanging ambassadors and even allowing the children of the Roman Nobility to live as guests (hostages, in reality) in the camps of the Huns. One of these, Aetius, grows to become one of Rome's greatest generals, and it is he, armed with an intimate knowledge of Hun life-style and tactics, who eventually faces one of the greatest Hun rulers of them all--Atilla the Hun.
By 448, the Huns under Atilla establish an empire stretching from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean--an expanse half the size of the continental United States--with a yearly extortion from the Eastern Roman Empire of over 2,000 pounds of gold.
In 450, the Emperor's sister, Honoria, offers her own hand in marriage to Attila--together with half the Empire as her dowry. Her brother, the Emperor, contemptuously dismisses Honoria's proposal and the state is set for an epic battle between the forces of Rome and the Huns. Only the one-time hostage of the Huns, Roman General Aetius, stands between the "Scourge of God" and the Roman heartlands.
On June 20th, 451, on the Catalaunian plains, near Orleans, France, the forces square off. The two sides are equal in number--between 30,000 and 50,000 men all told. The Battle of Chalons erupts in a fury of blood and steel--but in one of history's great riddles, the Roman general does not crush the damaged Hunic armies when he has the chance. The Huns escape and prepare for continued war with Rome.
But in the end, it is disease that conquers the Huns, as malaria decimates their ranks. And Attila, at the height of his powers, dies on his wedding night, drowning in his own blood...