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Hi everyone, welcome to Dan Snow's History It.

Over the next two episodes, we're going to be talking about two of the greatest military

commanders in history. Two men whose names have endured. Two men who built mighty empires

using the unstoppable tactics of light cavalry, of ambush, speedy advance, retreat and manoeuvre.

They were Genghis Khan and Attila the Hun, names that echo through the ages. To talk us through

First Attila and then Genghis, we've got Dr. Kenneth Harley, a professor of classical

Byzantine history at Tulane University in New Orleans. He's just written a fantastic book,

Empires of the Steps. And he's joining us for this two-part series. Talk about these two men.

First though, Attila the Hun. The Huns pose an existential threat to the Romans in the fifth

century when they burst out of the step into Eastern Europe. One Roman chronicler writes,

the barbarian nation of the Huns became so great that more than a hundred cities were captured

in Constantinople, all those came into danger and most men fled from it and there were so many

murders and bloodlettings that the dead could not be numbered. I, for they took captive the churches

and monasteries and slew the monks and maidens in great numbers. Another chronicler describes them

simply as wolves. Of their most famous leader, we have an eyewitness account. Attila was a man

of short statue, with a broad chest and a large head. His eyes were small, his beard was thin,

sprinkled with grey, it a flat nose and tan skin showing evidence of his origin.

Attila the Hun was said to revel in battle. And at the time for his untimely death,

...