Who really \"won\" the Battle of Chalons?

[Flavivs Aetivs]

Magister Militum Flavius Aetius wrote:

It should be noted that all three of these towns were under Roman control in 451. Aetius re-took them in the Frankish war of 444/445.

Not going by map of Attila's route to Orleans in 451AD. Whether some of these cities were sacked or not. The ones that were not sacked would have submitted even if for a short time so any prior Roman presence would not have mattered at least in 451AD. It would militarily be stupid of Attila to leave Roman occupied towns on his line of advance to Orleans so to my mind what the Romans occupied in the 444/445 AD would have been irrevelant in 451AD during Hunnic invasion except to reduce the size of Hunnic army as troops would be peeled off main force as needed to keep an eye on recalcitrant towns. I understand that a lot of these towns had Christian Saints who are celebrated for being martyred during Attila's invasion of Gaul.


[attachment=9916]routeofattila.jpg[/attachment]

Regards
Michael Kerr

A lot of these towns weren't actually sacked. For example, the cities of Trier, Mainz, Worms, Strausborg, Metz, and Reims have the characteristic Ash Layer that dates to roughly 450 indicating the Huns sacked the cities, but the ones at Cologne, Tournai, Cambrai, Beauvais,and Amiens don't have an ash layer dating to roughly 450 in excavations on-site.

The proposed theory by Hughes is that the lands around these cities were ravaged by a force of Huns split off from the main group to subdue the Franks (although there were settlements of Salii in these lands, the cities themselves were under Roman control, however nominal). The Riparienses had pulled back to the main army for the Battle (Jordanes records this). The cities themselves weren't sacked because the force split off was too small to mount a siege and probably ordered to move fast.

Aetius realised that sieges delayed and weakened Attila, and used that effectively in 452 when he stationed a large garrison at Aquileia to block Attila's advance. Attila was forced to either besiege the city or leave several thousand Roman soldiers at his rear, cutting off his escape.

In doing so, you would be using the nomen that historians have been familiar with for the past 2 1/2 centuries. This branch of the Alans actually settled around Orleans/Augustonementum immediately after they crossed the Rhine in the winter of 406-407. They had been attached to the Vandals, but they had been Christianized in Pannonia beginning in 380 by Bishop Amantius (Arian).

Just to correct you here, the first settlement of Alans in Roman Gaul that is recorded is in 414 when they were settled in the general vicinity of Narbona: if I recall correctly, they were the same Alans as Sambida's. There is no record of Alan settlement on the Loire Valley until 442 with the Chronica Gallica 452 recording said settlement and that the settlement caused a second Aremorican uprising.

You are correct though on why they were settled on the Loire: they were critical to Aetius and he used them to prevent Aremorican, Frankish, and Visigothic expansion East/South/North respectively. Same with Sambida, who was settled near Lugdinensis/Augustonemetum to prevent Visigothic expansion East and Burgundian expansion West/South

The idea that Goar's name was changed to something new... or that Sambida's name became Sangiban... has no foundation in a priori manuscripts. It's a modern interpretation, or concept, espoused by shaky theory and linguistics. Some of these guys are whackos. Certainly, personalities may have been recorded by their titles, but their nomen was their nomen. Any attempt to equate the personage of Sambida with Sangiban fails. And it fails totally because there is NO LINKING historical record to back such a supposition.

Ian Hughes equated Sambida with Sangiban, and Goar with Eochar, which is what I went off of.

I don't know much about Alanic/Sarmatian language, only Hunnic, and even then because there's almost no information on the Hunnic language.