Theodoric I of the Visigoths

Theodoric I was king of the Visigoths for thirty-three years and died fighting Attila on the Catalaunian Plains, which makes him the rare barbarian king remembered chiefly for defending Rome. He came to the throne in 418, the year the Visigoths were settled in Aquitaine as federates under a treaty that gave them land in exchange for military service, and he spent most of his reign testing how much independence that arrangement would bear. He besieged Arles and Narbonne, was beaten by the Roman general Aetius more than once, and each time returned to the treaty rather than breaking with the empire altogether. He married his daughters into the Vandal and Suevic royal houses in an attempt to build a position in the western Mediterranean; the Vandal marriage ended with Geiseric accusing the girl of trying to poison him and returning her with her nose and ears cut off, which gave Theodoric a permanent enemy. When Attila crossed the Rhine in 451 Aetius had almost no Roman field army and the campaign depended entirely on whether the Visigoths would join him. Avitus persuaded Theodoric that Attila would take Gaul piece by piece if the two of them faced him separately. The combined army met the Huns somewhere near Chalons in June 451 in one of the largest battles of late antiquity. Theodoric was killed in the fighting, thrown from his horse and trampled by his own men according to Jordanes, and the Visigoths fought harder for it. Attila withdrew behind a wagon laager and then out of Gaul. Theodoric's son Thorismund was acclaimed on the field and wanted to finish the Huns; Aetius advised him to go home and secure his throne instead, which is one of the more debated pieces of advice in Roman history.

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