The migration of the Teutonic peoples had been in great measure spontaneous, it is true, but the impetus of the avalanche had undoubtedly been tremendously increased by the irruption of a mysterious nomad people, the Huns, who broke forth from the steppes of middle Asia like a hurricane, hurled the Alans to the ground, overpowered the Ostrogoths, pushed the Visigoths over the Danube into the eastern Roman Empire, and, occupying the Roman province of Pannonia (Hungary), made it the centre of an empire which, though loosely connected, extended, more or less, over the length and breadth of Europe. About the middle of the fifth century the Huns arose anew from their Pannonian seat, and again threw Europe in a turmoil. The moving spirit of that commotion of savagery and barbarity which seemed to shake the three continents known to antiquity was Attila, called Etzel in the German lays and sagas, the "scourge of God" (_Godegisel_). His hordes were estimated at more than half a million warriors. His death was an event of immense political significance, and appears in the German saga in many romantic forms. The historian Jordanes relates, after Priscus, that Attila died suddenly of violence during his bridal night, while lying intoxicated beside his young wife Ildico (_HildikS_). In the morning his servants found him in his blood, but without wounds, beside him was the young wife with downcast eyes, weeping under her veil. The circumstances of his death were such as to throw suspicion upon the young woman. Ammianus Marcellinus reported as a fact that "Attila came to his death at night by the hands of a woman." But the legendists have tried to establish motives for the deed of violence, and nothing was more natural than the story that Ildico committed the deed out of revenge for Attila's murder of her relatives. According to the poet Saxo and the _Quedlinburg Chronicle_ she avenged the murder of her father. The famous _Nibelungenlied_, however, in its fundamental Norse form shapes the story as follows: Attila, the Terror of Europe, is the consort of the Burgundian princess Hild. He conquers and treacherously kills her brothers, the Burgundian kings Gundaheri, Godomar, and Gislahari, sons of Gibica, and afterward meets his death by the hand of their sister, his wife. Felix Dahn has immortalized Ildico by his genius, and made her the most ideal, heroic woman of the Migration period. Reared in the palace of her father, King Visigast, in the land of the Rugii, she gives her tender love to Daghar, the son of Dagomuth, King of the Sciri; but a dark cloud hovers over her young life. Attila has heard of her incomparable beauty, and is still further aroused by the descriptions of her charms given by Ellak, his son by a Gothic princess. The Hun resolves upon the possession of Ildico.