Battle of the Utus | |||||||
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Part of Hunnic invasion of Balkans | |||||||
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Belligerents | |||||||
Hunnic Empire | Eastern Roman Empire | ||||||
Commanders and leaders | |||||||
Attila the Hun | Arnegisclus † | ||||||
Strength | |||||||
30,000[1] | 3 field armies (totalling on paper about 71,232 men) and local forces they could meet en-route.[2][3] | ||||||
Casualties and losses | |||||||
Heavy | Entire army |
The Battle of the Utus was fought in 447 between the army of the Eastern Roman Empire, and the Huns led by Attila at Utus, a river that is today the Vit in Bulgaria. It was the last of the bloody pitched battles between the Eastern Roman Empire and the Huns, as the former attempted to stave off the Hunnic invasion.
The details about Attila's campaign which culminated in the battle of Utus, as well as the events afterwards, are obscure. Only a few short passages from Byzantine sources (Jordanes' Romana, the chronicle of Marcellinus Comes, and the Paschal Chronicle) are available. As with the whole activity of Attila's Huns in the Balkans, the fragmentary evidence does not permit an undisputed reconstruction of the events.[4]