Attila

[King Tut]

I saw Attila yesterday, and overall I thought it was pretty good excluding all the Huns were caucasian.(but that's a different subject.

)

Anyway, the question. What kind of swords, or maybe more correctly long knives' were ther Huns using?

Thanks for your time, Rick

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You may think it's funny but wait till it's your turn.

[This message has been edited by King Tut (edited 02-09-2001).]

 

[Old_Soldier]

KT,
We really don't know WHAT the original Huns were. The only bit of historical data I have on the subject is that the real Attila was red headed (not his wife as in the movie).

We know that wave after wave of barbarians swept across from the East who were caucasian.

Some of us may claim desent from the nicely civilized southern europeans, but most of us have barbarians in the background--even many of those with Italian names.

 

[Jerry Hossom]

Huns were/are HUNgarians geographically. They were and are still great horsemen. Atilla took turns tormenting both the Eastern and Western Roman Empires. In WWI, the Germans/Austria-Hungarians were called "Huns" by the Allies.

That was an entertaining movie and reasonably accurate for Hollywood. Had the budget been a little bigger, the Roman Legions might have contained more than the hundred or so men they had in the film, and the Huns were definitely understaffed.

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Jerry Hossom
www.hossom.com
The New Tom & Jerry Show

 

[King Tut]

I had read the Hun's were from Austria/Hungary/Turkey area and were of asiatic decent.(mongol?) Anyway, what kind of short swords/long knives did the Huns use? They look like a combo between a machete and a Battle Mistress.

Later, Rick

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You may think it's funny but wait till it's your turn.

 

[booshank]

The Huns according to the Scythians were descended from the Hsiung-nu and spoke a Turkic language. They were the Han Chinese main enemy around 200AD. But thanks to that big wall which forced the Hsiung-nu into pitched battles; and the Han Chinese prodigious use of the crossbow, composite bow, and stirup equiped calvary of their own, the Huns decided to leave westward for easier pickings. They quietely traveled west until about 370AD where they fought and defeated an Iranian tribe called the Alans. The remaining Alans joined up w/the Huns and by 376AD the Huns were bumping and driving all the other barbarian tribes (including the germanic Goths, Visigoths, etc) in their way further westward into the Romans causing destabilization even before their arrival. By the time of Attila, the Huns were most certainly integrated w/some other tribes however the core remained the asiatic descendents from the central steppes.

It was of course the horse, stirup and composite bow, and the form of combat that allowed (High manuverablity and "blitzkieg" tactics) that made them so effective in the west. However the lack of large viable tracts of horsebreeding grounds (compared to the steppe) west of Hungry severely limited the Huns ability to sustain westward expansion. Attila was probably already short of horses by 452. As for swords they used a broad saber type blade similar to the Chinese Ox Tail saber but there was probably a good assortment of anything that would cut well from horseback. The composite bow was their main thing though. After the Hunnic retreat from the battle of Chalons, groups of Huns stayed behind and settled down in parts of France and Switzerland among other places. There are still direct descendents living in the alps of Switzerland and its not uncommon for western european babies to be born w/the so called "mongol spot"--a small blue circle at the base of the spine associated w/asian descent. The bulk of the remaining Huns, after 470AD, either returned to the steppes or settled in what became Hungary.

Over the centuries there were lots of other eastern steppe tribes that invaded too like the Magyars, Avars, Turks, and of course the Monglols but the Huns got the furthest west and probably left the biggest imprint. The city of Venice for instance was created by refugees fleeing the Huns. The refugees figured, and correctly, that the Huns wouldn't want to pursue them into a swamp w/horses.

[This message has been edited by booshank (edited 02-09-2001).]

 

[FullerH]

The Huns were originally an Asistic steppe tribe. As such, they were horsemen par excellent as well as bowmen. Interestingly, they also used the lariat as a weapon with great effect. By the time of Atilla, they were an aggregation of all of the various peoples that they had conquered, although the core of the army remained Hunnic horse-archers.

As to the accuracy of the tv movie, I could not bring myself to watch it after I saw the trailers which showed the Roman troops marching around in Loricae Segmentatae (the banded strip armors of the early Empire, as seen on Trajan's Column) and aotherwise armed and equipped as Early Principate Legions. That would be like having the troops in a VietNam movie running around armed and equipped as the early colonists at Jamestown and Plymouth, or in the English Civil War. You know, back and breast plates, steel pakeman's pot or lobster tail horseman's pot, matchlock pistols, rapiers, lances, and pikes, Cavaliers and Roundheads. The accuracy of the equipments was so damned bad in those trailers that I gave up before I even saw the show.

BTW, the swords would have likely been some form of the Roman Spatha, the long cavalry sword that was, by the time of Atilla, in common use throughout the entire Roman Army, which, by the way, was a mobile cavalry-heavy army, not the heavy infantry Legions of the Early Principate.

I apologise for ranting on here, but Roman History is one of my current favorite subjects and I am reading everything that I can find on it.

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Walk in the Light,
Hugh Fuller