Here come the Huns

There was a time when we thought we knew about the Huns. 

There was a time when we thought we knew about everything-but naturally enough we are still learning.

The Huns moved off the steppe of the Great Eurasian Plain, they used an asymmetric composite bow that was a world beater.  Some of them, or all of them, practiced, facial scarification and cranial deformation and so to Europeans looked utterly hideous. The one description we have of their body type makes them sound like Comanches, powerful, squat and bandy.  I suggest no connection.

Apparently, they favoured a mouse skin garment, which sounds funny until you consider how many mice had to be carefully flayed and tanned to cover even a bit of the smallest Hun.  That was conspicuous consumption on a grand scale.

We don’t know their language, or even what they called themselves never mind what the actually looked like.  We do know that when in battle they could disperse and combine at a frightening speed shooting their hard hitting bows at will.  Unlike some other nomadic horse archers all Huns liked to get stuck in.  Ferociously.

For a brief period the Huns ran the greatest protection racket the Classical World had ever seen. Many subject German Peoples fought for them.  A combination of sheer terror and a share of the loot for the leading aristocrats held them in place.  The Huns really did change everything as Peter Heather rightly tells us.  

These are mine for Romans Rampant.  That leaves me with just one more unit of unarmoured German cavalry to do and my retinues for Roman Lion Rampant can hit the table for a try out.