Aetius: The Man Who Stopped Attila

n 451 AD, on a wide plain in what is now eastern France, a Roman general led a coalition of Visigoths, Alans, Burgundians, and Franks against the largest army the West had seen in centuries. Across the field stood Attila the Hun, the man Constantinople paid in gold to keep at a distance, who had crossed the Rhine and was burning his way south through Gaul.The Roman general was Flavius Aetius. He had been raised among the Huns as a child hostage. He spoke their language, knew their kings, had ridden with them. And he was the last man in the Western Empire who could have built the alliance that stopped Attila on the Catalaunian Plains.This is the story of Aetius — the soldier, diplomat, and political survivor who held the Western Roman Empire together for two decades while it should have already fallen. The man Sidonius Apollinaris called the bulwark of the West. The man history would eventually name the last of the Romans.He bought Rome twenty more years. He was murdered in a palace chamber by the emperor he had served his entire life. And six months later, that emperor was dead too — killed by Aetius's own men.