In 432 we find a certain Roua or Rugula reigning over the Huns, and receiving from Theodosius II an annual payment, which might be called either subsidy or tribute, of 350 pounds weight of gold. Finding that the Romans had dared to make alliances with some barbarous tribes, dwellers by the Danube, whom he claimed as his subjects, Roua in great wrath declared that all his treaties with Rome should be at once made null and void unless the Emperor renounced his alliance with these nations. Another question of a more personal nature also arose now, if it had not arisen before, and was the subject of ceaseless negotiation for the next seventeen years. Many deserters had fled from the harsh yoke of Roua, and taken shelter on Roman territory. The demand was made, and was pressed home with every circumstance of insult upon the trembling Theodosius, ‘Restore to me my fugitives.’ Imagine such a request having been hinted, ever so courteously, to any Roman magistrate who in the old days sat upon the curule chair, with his lictors and fasces round him. Had it not been better for the omnipotent Mistress of the Nations to have died rather than live on to endure such degradation?
But Theodosius II, who was a meek man and an excellent illuminator of manuscripts, if not a born king of men, was preparing to send an embassy to mitigate the wrath of Roua, when tidings arrived that he was dead, and that the kingdom of the Huns had devolved upon his two nephews, sons of his brother Mundzuk, men in the vigor of early manhood, named Attila and Bleda.
It was in the year 433 that the two brothers ascended the throne. Bleda is to us the mere shadow of a name, but it is far otherwise with Attila...
