This morning, I’ve been reading a bit about the Battle of Chalons, where of Attila and his army of Huns fought and lost against a combined force of Romans and Visigoths in the year 451. Considered one of the bloodiest battles in history, with one contemporary historian reporting the tally of dead at 165,000 and another recording that it was a whopping 300,000. Romans, barbarians and Huns. Spears, arrows, axes and swords. Blood, guts, dismemberment, grevious wounds and death. A king, trampled under the hooves of his own men’s horses. The field, “piled high with corpses”. They just don’t fight battles like they used to these days. Pussies.

Entirely truthful or not, I absolutely love this description by the historian Jordanes of the sheer volume of gore:

“For, if we may believe our elders, a brook flowing between low banks through the plain was greatly increased by blood of the slain. It was not flooded by showers, as brooks usually rise, but was swollen by a strange stream and turned into a torrent by the increase of blood. Those whose wounds drove them to slake their parching thirst drank water mingled in gore. In their wretched plight they were forced to drink what they thought was the blood they had poured from their own wounds.” [Link]

This one, by Damascius, while fanciful, is kind of cool as well:

“…[The fighting was so severe] that no one survived except only the leaders on either side and a few followers: but the ghosts of those who fell continued the struggle for three whole days and nights as violently as if they had been alive; the clash of their arms was clearly audible.”