eign he threatened the destruction of both the Eastern and Western empires. He was able to extract huge tributes of gold from the emperor in the East and at the same time march across Western Europe with one of the largest armies ever seen in the ancient world. His military conquests and campaigns prove him as a great military leader and General, using classical Hun tactics with mounted troops as well as a "multi-national" army of many troop types. Attila was also capable of keeping together a large group of allies, both within the Huns, as well as other barbarian peoples to be the greatest threat to the Roman world in the 5th century.
             The Huns came west to Europe from the borders of China and the Steppe. There is Chinese documentation of a people known to them as the Hsiung-nu, who we believe to be the Huns, who invaded Europe, causing considerable trouble during the Han period. The Great Wall was built as a defence against the Hsiung-nu, but the adoption of mobile cavalry tactics, similar to the Hsiung-nu was more effective. As a result the Hsiung-nu were heavily defeated in the first century BC, after which their names seem to disappear from Chinese records. The Huns were from this time a nomadic people who wandered the Steppe. They would tend to travel in family groups, each given its own area to graze its animals. From time to time the family groups would amalgamate into a larger social group, under a strong leader. This Hun leader could even be considered a nomad king and would control a large area of Steppe. The direction of their travel was random up until the late 4th and early 5th centuries, when, conditions on the Steppe changed causing a general westward movement of all the nomadic peoples of the Steppe. Conjecture around the reasons for westward movement of the Steppe peoples is far too numerous to document. One reason that I believe could have had a great effect on nomadic movement was a change ...