The Hun Conquest of the Greuthungi Goths (c. 375)

In the 370s the Huns crossed the Volga and moved west. They first defeated the Alans living around the Don and took many of them into their own army. Then they attacked the kingdom of the Greuthungi Goths (Ostrogoths), which ruled the wide lands between the Dnieper and the Don.

The Roman historian Ammianus Marcellinus writes that the old Gothic king Ermanaric, faced with this sudden and relentless attack, lost hope and took his own life. His successor Vithimiris fell fighting the Huns, and most of the Ostrogoths came under Hun rule.

The neighbouring Tervingi Goths (Visigoths) could not stop the Huns on the Dniester. In 376 they reached the Danube and asked the Roman Empire for refuge. This movement was the start of the Migration Period that redrew the map of Europe.