Battle of the Catalaunian Plains
- Date
- 20 June 451 CE
- Category
- Military & conflict
- Region
- Europe
- Era
- Classical Antiquity
- Significance
On 20 June 451 CE, a coalition of the Western Roman Empire and the Visigoths, jointly led by the Roman general Flavius Aetius and the Visigothic king Theodoric I, confronted the Huns and their subject peoples under Attila on the Catalaunian Plains in the Champagne region of Gaul (somewhere between Troyes and Chalons-sur-Marne, the exact site remaining disputed).
The clash followed Attila's invasion of Gaul and was a ferocious, bloody engagement in which the Roman-Gothic allies seized and held the high ground, driving the Huns back to their fortified camp. Theodoric I was killed during the fighting, but the battle ended Attila's campaign in Gaul and forced his army to withdraw. It was one of the last major military operations of the Western Roman Empire, fought largely with Germanic foederati, and is widely credited with breaking Attila's aura of invincibility. Historians have long regarded the engagement as decisive in halting the Hunnic advance into Western Europe.
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Empires active in 20 June 451 CE
- Roman Empire27 BCE – 476 CE
- Byzantine Empire330 CE – 1453 CE
- Sassanid Empire224 CE – 651 CE
- Kingdom of Funan50 CE – 550 CE
- Gupta Empire320 CE – 550 CE
- Pyu City-States200 BCE – 1050 CE
Related military & conflict events
- Visigoths under Alaric sack Rome24 August 410 CE
- Battle of Adrianople: Goths annihilate the Eastern Roman army9 August 378 CE
- Shapur I captures Emperor Valerian at the Battle of Edessa260 CE
- Yellow Turban Rebellion weakens the Han184 CE
- Bar Kokhba revolt and the renaming of Judaea to Syria Palaestina132–135 CE
- Roman Empire reaches its greatest territorial extent under Trajan117 CE
Further reading
The wider story
SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome
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