| Battle of Nedao | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Part ofGermanic-Hunnic Wars | |||||||
 Topographic map of Carpathian Basin | |||||||
| |||||||
| Belligerents | |||||||
| Gepids Heruli Rugii Sciri Suebi | Huns Alani | ||||||
| Commanders and leaders | |||||||
| Ardaric | Ellac †[2] | ||||||
 | |||||||
TheBattle of Nedao was fought inPannonia in AD 454 between theHuns and their former Germanic vassals. Nedao is believed to be a tributary of theSava River.[3]
After the death ofAttila the Hun, allied forces of the subject peoples under the leadership ofArdaric, king of theGepids, defeated theHunnic forces ofEllac, the son of Attila, who had struggled with his brothersErnak andDengizich for supremacy after Attila's death. Ellac himself was killed in the battle.[4]
According to the 6th-century historianJordanes:
And so the bravest nations tore themselves to pieces. For then, I think, must have occurred a most remarkable spectacle, where one might see theGoths fighting withpikes, theGepidae raging with the sword, the Rugii breaking off the spears in their own wounds, the Suavi fighting on foot, the Huns with bows, theAlani drawing up a battle-line of heavy-armed and theHeruli of light-armed warriors... ...after many grave clashes, victory surprisingly favours the Gepids for the sword and plotting of Ardaric killed nearly thirty thousand men, Huns as well as other tribes who brought them aid. In this battle, the eldest son of Attila, named Ellac,whom his father was said to have loved so much more than the rest that he favoured him above all his various sons in his empire, was killed.[5]
Jordanes claimed that at the Battle of Nedao theOstrogoths fought against the Huns, but this is rejected by modern historians such asHerwig Wolfram[6] andHyun Jin Kim. The latter believes that this is a forged story and that the Ostrogoth kingValamir himself fought alongside the Huns.[7] Alternatively, J.R. Martindale andFranz Altheim accept that the Ostrogoths were among the victors of Nedao, while many others, includingOtto J. Maenchen-Helfen, believe that none of this existed at all.[8]
Hunnic dominance in Central and Eastern Europe was broken as a result of the battle. It is hard to reconstruct the exact course of events, but by the early 460s the Hunnic Empire was dissolved with theGepids,Rugii,Heruli,Suebi, and Ostrogoths achieving independence[9] and eventually becoming federates of theEastern Roman Empire.[10] The Huns, reorganized underDengizich, moved to the east, where they attacked the Eastern Roman Empire and were decisively defeated in 469. After that point, the Huns cease to exist in European history.[4]